HQ vs HD
When viewing videos in YouTube, most people are already content with the standard videos that are shown as default. For those who do are not content with the low quality, there’s HQ and HD videos. To examine further the differences between HQ and HD videos, we should know the meanings of HQ, which stands for High Quality, and HD, which stands for High Definition.
If you view a video in HQ, you simply get a video that has a better quality than the standard video. It has an increased bitrate and the video would look finer. With HD, the video complies with the HD resolution that is also used on TVs. While standard videos have a resolution of 480p, HD videos have a resolution of 720p minimum and 1080p maximum. When viewed on a computer screen, HD videos are bigger and would take up more space. HD videos would also look better when viewed fullscreen on large displays. HQ videos as well as standard videos would appear blocky when viewed fullscreen in an HD display.
But if you are looking at a small display, like what you get on most smartphones, the two would be pretty much identical. This is also true if you are using a display with non-HD resolution as the computer needs to downsize the video to fit the display.
The downside to viewing HQ and HD videos is it takes a bit more time to load, especially if you are on a slow connection. HD videos are worse than HQ videos when it comes to loading times as the much larger resolutions directly translate to a larger file size.
HD videos are typically better than HQ videos, which are better than normal videos. If you have bandwidth to spare, you may appreciate the better video qualities provided by HQ and HD. But if you are on a slow connection, just go with the standard video.
Summary:
1.HQ means High Quality while HD means High Definition
2.HQ indicates good picture quality while HD indicates a high resolution
3.HQ and HD will pretty much look the same in a small display
4.HD videos take longer to load than HQ videos