It seems that not only is youtube website on https now, but the videos also stream on https.
Any way to use http for youtube instead? At least the video streaming.

Thank you.
The whole web is (unfortunately too) slowly moving to https everywhere.
May I ask why you care, and you you want to disable SSL?
if you use chrome,get an extension called HTTPS everywhere and go to youtube.com the site will open in https as usual,now click "https everywhere" icon (in the search bar where the url is typed) and untick yourtube.com restart chrome,and voila going to youtube will use http instead of https,as for the video streaming there might be something you need to untick too,the downside of this is that you will be redirected to the https version of any site that offers it unless you untick it from the extension menu.

and a side question do you consider https bad ? and rahmu you meant unfortunately slowly or unfortunately moving ?
https isn't bad but if it were still http, the videos would be cached at my ISP so they would download faster if I want to watch them a second time.

Is there any sense in transmitting a publicly viewable video over https? I can't see the benefit of https for audio or video streaming when the link is publicly available and does not require logging in to view.

If I understand correctly, google forced https on youtube video streaming to avoid ISPs caching videos.
a change i noticed is that when you use https the videos are streamed using webm format,and on http the regular MP4 format instead.so it might have something to do with this.
m.sabra wroterahmu you meant unfortunately slowly or unfortunately moving ?
I meant it's moving too slowly unfortunately. I'm all for encryption everywhere, for obvious privacy reason. I don't think that HTTPS is the solution, as SSL presents a lot of problems. But that's another topic to discuss some other time.

@hussam: You're right. Privacy advocates should realise that encryption will add performance penalty in cases like these. Personally, I don't think it's up to the ISP to do selective caching of videos (even though it could enhance performance greatly), but it's up to the content provider to use smart content delivery. And fwiw, I don't see any malice in Youtube going https. I think it's a choice that Google made to take position in the privacy debate.
hussam wrotehttps isn't bad but if it were still http, the videos would be cached at my ISP so they would download faster if I want to watch them a second time.

Is there any sense in transmitting a publicly viewable video over https? I can't see the benefit of https for audio or video streaming when the link is publicly available and does not require logging in to view.

If I understand correctly, google forced https on youtube video streaming to avoid ISPs caching videos.
I don't agree with you that you can get videos faster if they were cached by ISP.
After all, if you're subscribed to 1mbps plan then your max speed is 1mbps.
It will not benefit you that much that it benefit the ISP.

The only case where you can take advantage of this IMHO, if the ISP it self having big problems with bandwidth on their backbone.
rahmu wrote
m.sabra wroterahmu you meant unfortunately slowly or unfortunately moving ?
I meant it's moving too slowly unfortunately. I'm all for encryption everywhere, for obvious privacy reason. I don't think that HTTPS is the solution, as SSL presents a lot of problems. But that's another topic to discuss some other time.
Privacy is good, but so is caching and proxying.
m_zeid wrote I don't agree with you that you can get videos faster if they were cached by ISP.
After all, if you're subscribed to 1mbps plan then your max speed is 1mbps.
It will not benefit you that much that it benefit the ISP.

The only case where you can take advantage of this IMHO, if the ISP it self having big problems with bandwidth on their backbone.
If you have a normal connection (not like a corporate connection where you pay like $1k/month), such as DSL or whatever, then it's a shared connection, then you are always sharing the backbone bandwidth with many other users and having 100% of your max speed is more an exception than the normal situation. No need for "big problems with bandwidth or their backbone", just a regular "peak-time" evening or morning. Of course, if you browse at 3 in the morning then you're not going to notice the problem.
m_zeid wrote
hussam wrotehttps isn't bad but if it were still http, the videos would be cached at my ISP so they would download faster if I want to watch them a second time.

Is there any sense in transmitting a publicly viewable video over https? I can't see the benefit of https for audio or video streaming when the link is publicly available and does not require logging in to view.

If I understand correctly, google forced https on youtube video streaming to avoid ISPs caching videos.
I don't agree with you that you can get videos faster if they were cached by ISP.
After all, if you're subscribed to 1mbps plan then your max speed is 1mbps.
It will not benefit you that much that it benefit the ISP.

The only case where you can take advantage of this IMHO, if the ISP it self having big problems with bandwidth on their backbone.
Depends on your ISP. I get 256kbit on VISP. But if something is cached, it opens with up to 1Mbyte per second.
I think that if you are NOT logged into a gmail, youtube is http. It becomes https when you are logged in. I am not sure about the videos though
user wroteI think that if you are NOT logged into a gmail, youtube is http. It becomes https when you are logged in. I am not sure about the videos though
Thank you! yes, it is http when not logged in
Videos too!
Good catch @user :)