As far as I know, the featured video is always manually selected through the admin panel. If you're getting the same 5 videos going to featured, then maybe there's a bug somewhere (I put a post about it in the bug forums).

For some reason on a couple of my sites, for which I had no explanation, newly uploaded videos would go straight to featured. When looking at the videos through admin panel, where it says "featured?" the box said no, yet they are in the featured...so IDK. I think there's a bug somewhere in the featured video thing...but at any rate, you can fix it all through the admin panel. Just tell the video "no" to featured and pick something else and then come back and tell it "yes" if that's what you want featured.

After I put in the quotes in index.tpl, I uploaded a video and it didn't go to featured...I'm not entirely sure if the quotes are needed or not,or if that is what resolved my issue, but like you say...I figured if the rest of them have it, then this probably should too.