Having Trouble With Youtube on Safari

I'm having a pretty significant problem with my browser right now. He's the deal:

The hardware and software:

Macbook Pro 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
OSX 10.5.8
Safari version 5.0.4

The problem:

-Safari crashes immediately whenever I access the Youtube home page. Freezes up, spinning little rainbow circle thing, and I have to force quit.
-I can watch videos as long as I don't access them through the home page.
-This problem does not occur when I access Youtube through Opera, and I'm assuming other browsers as well (though I haven't bothered checking).
-I made no changes to my system which caused this problem. One minute it worked, next minute all of this.

My steps so far:

-Goes without saying that I've tried restarting my computer numerous times. No effect.
-I fully uninstalled and reinstalled Flash Player. No change.
-Cleared browser cache and cookies. No change.
-I have ClickToFlash installed on my system, but disabling it did not affect the issue.
-[NB] When I disable Java Script the crashing does not occur. However, this is not an acceptable solution because of how severely it affects browser functionality on other sites.


This is about the extent of my own ability when it comes to technical issues. I'd welcome any suggestions from the community. I've seen that other people have had this problem in the past, but I couldn't find anything recently, and I tried the most common fixes already. Is there a way to debug Java Script or something?
This is a really annoying issue for me because I don't like having to switch browsers every time I want to navigate to the Youtube home page.


So..... What do?
Thanks very much in advance for any replies.

I have a macbook, same specs, and am having the same problem.

I have updated flash and safari, restarted my computer, cleared cookies and cache ; to no avail. The browser always crashes as soon as I open the youtube homepage. This is frustrating because I'm so used to opening youtube to the homepage--and I find myself forgetting there is an issue, oops--so I open it by reflex and lose all my windows after it freezes!

In the last few days its become even more of an issue and I can't even watch some youtube videos (without navigating through the homepage) without it crashing.

Oh look, now it crashes firefox as well.

I'm not getting any useful information or errors from activity monitor.... I am simply at a standstill.

Sorry I couldn't give any useful advice, I just wanted to mention I am having the same problem. Does anyone out there know what to do? Thanks.

I hate to have to tell you this, but mine actually fixed itself. I've concluded that this was an issue on Youtube's end, because for me the issue stopped as soon as the site update was finished.
Have you tried disabling JavaScript?