1080p YouTube videos? Um, sure.

Get ready to upload: 1080p YouTube videos are coming next week, the company said today.

Ever been Rick Rolled in stunning 1080p HD? Well, now you can!

Announced Friday on its blog, video sharing site YouTube will begin displaying videos uploaded in 1080p at their native resolution. What's that mean? Mediocre, shaky clips can be displayed as no one ever intended them!

But seriously, isn't enabling high-definition video on YouTube akin to using Kobe beef for a stew? Picassos for kindling? A Hummer for soccer practice chauffeur duty?

Well, maybe. But as YouTube software engineer Billy Biggs points out, YouTube is just positioning itself to keep up with the times. "As resolution of consumer cameras increases, we want to make sure YouTube is the best home on the web to showcase your content," he writes on the company's official blog.

In other words, YouTube's not saying all your home videos should be shot in 1080p, it's just saying that if you want to drop money on the latest video gear, and use swaths of hard-drive space to store it, only to use up gobs of bandwidth to upload it so others can leave snarky comments about it, YouTube wants to be your video site of choice.

And don't forget: your average PC hooked to the Web will have a hard time choking down such a large video file, so to take advantage of the new high resolution format, users will need a fairly robust computer and a good Web connection (or hefty dose of patience) to match.

One segment of users who will surely make immediate use of the new format: Hollywood studios. In April, YouTube made its first challenge to Hulu, buddying up with the BBC, CBS, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Sony, and Lions Gate Entertainment.

YouTube is actively soliciting good HD videos, vowing in Friday's blog post to feature the top submissions on its homepage.

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See also:

Google video chalked up ten billion clicks in August

YouTube rental challenge: getting off the desk, onto the couch

Screen wars: stealing TV's 'eyeball' share

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