I had that same problem earlier after my system lost power and I rebooted. It might be related to either cookies or some java settings.
Whatever it was, I resolved it as follows.
I clicked on the youtube link in the article and got the same thing you describe.
I then clicked on a known good link I had saved on my system - it played just fine.
I compared them and found that my good link had /watch_popup? in the url and the bad one only had /watch? in the url. Here’s an example (this link is short and very funny, heheh):
bad link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeXMxuNNlE8&feature=g-logo-xit
good link: http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=NeXMxuNNlE8&feature=g-logo-xit
I clicked on the bad link and then edited it (in the address bar) to include _popup then hit enter, it worked fine. After doing this a few times, the original bad link started working which made me think it was either no cookie or a bad cookie or bad Java setting or something similar.
Anyway, system now back to normal, LOL.
The good and the bad link both worked fine, but when I go to view YouTube, the screen goes black, sometimes with the little circle indicating it is there but nothing comes up.
I'm looking for YouTubes I've seen before but they come up black now.
I've never subscribed to YouTube before. Do I need to do so now.
Did Google and YouTube merge? Is that maybe why I am having problems now? Maybe it is the sign up thing. Something has changed.
Do I need to update FLASH? If so, how would I do that?
TIA.