Does the iPad youtube app work, by the way? I can't remember a time where my iPhone's youtube app has successfully streamed an entire video down without dying at some random point (over wifi - 3G seems to work but the quality is abysmal).
How do you get it to load the HD versions? I'm seeing 720p and 1080p versions on my Mac but looking at the quality of the video on my iPad it looks like it streams the 360p version.
That said, I've never had an issue with my iPhone's youtube app either, so I don't know if there's something fundamentally different about my network and yours.