We really prefer Vimeo.com around here, but that doesn’t stop people from uploading video to YouTube — meaning you have to live with the results.

You can make YouTube slightly less painful, however. Old news — the setting popped up a few weeks ago — but if you’re like me and haven’t changed your settings yet, now’s the time. Here’s how:

You’ll need to be logged in. Go to Account > Account (the header on your My Account Page) > Video Playback Quality and choose “I have a fast connection.” You don’t need a terribly fast connection, because the upshot of all of this is that you bump up to 480×360. (Yeah, I know — be still my beating heart. Vimeo, Blip, and others already have HD, and YouTube has 480×360.)

Oh, and it gets worse: not all videos have been converted to the new format.

And worse still: the content uploader apparently has no control over this whatsoever.

Did I mention how much I hate YouTube? Still, it’s worth the 30 seconds it takes to change the setting.

For more discussion:

Watch Higher Quality YouTube Videos [Wired.com How-to Wiki]

Videohelp Forum Thread

Anyone with uploading tips for taking advantage of this, or how we can lobby Google to give us something that doesn’t suck — just let us know.