Why does PHP change my echo'd strings?

[phpjitsu]

I suspect there is a very easy answer, but am having a hard time finding it.

I have a fairly simple PHP page that spits out a bunch of html with a youtube video in the middle.
The youtube URL is fetched from the database but something is wrong.
It doesnt show in the browser and when I view the page src code from the browser, it has changed characters like & to &.

Example.

---

<embed src="<?php echo $datarecord->youtubeURL;?>&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed>

This gets mangled and looks like this in the browser:

<embed src="http://youtube.com/watch?v=uSpfyIaS6wE&amp;rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed>

What causes this? How do I stop it?

[ManWithNoName]

Have a look at http://se2.php.net/manual/en/function.html-entity-decode.php

[Weedpacket]

I don't see why '&' would be converted to '&amp;' by PHP since in the excerpted code given the '&' isn't even in a PHP block.

On the other hand, "&amp;" and not "&" is required in URLs for HTML validity...