Will regular old fashioned CRT monitors show the HD on Youtube videos set to the HD speed?

720 is generally 1280 px X 720 px. That is kinda pushing the limits of what a standard CRT is capable of. A common resolution was around 1280 X 960 but 1024 X 768 is prevalent too.

Your browser does report your monitor resolution to the server if it is requested. So it is very possible that youtube checks if your monitor can support 720p and if it can’t sends you 480p.

It’s not speed, it’s resolution.

I concur. Odds are that if your monitor is the 15” size that was common “back in the day”, you’re only running 1024*768. A 720p video is 1280*720; you do not have the horizontal pixels to try that, so it’ll kick down to 480p.

If your monitor is 17” or larger, then it might support 1280*1024 which would have the width to allow viewing 720p video in “letterbox” format, but I haven’t seen a CRT monitor that goes past 1600*1200, which isn’t wide enough for 1080p… and even those monitors are big enough that they are trouble to fit on a desk.

I think now you can see part of the reason why LCD monitors have been “the thing” for a little over a decade now.

Thanks guys. I get it now. My monitor is 17” and it is indeed 1024 X 768, and that’s what my Windows resolution is set at, as well. So no HD for me, I guess.