Has anyone else noticed, when playing HD YT videos on their computer, that it often takes quite a few seconds before it’s ACTUALLY in HD? Whatever I do (beyond downloading the stream locally) it often seems impossible to get the initial seconds in HD. Really annoying!
Weird!!
I notice this on my iPad all the time!
But never on my desktop PC… never ever…
I put it down to the age of my iPad (a Mini 2) where the desktop is blazingly fast?
On the iPad, the first ten secs or so are like watching an old 8 bit ZX Spectrum or something 
Is your PC low spec’d?
If it were, I wouldn’t have asked the question. 
LOL!
Only 6 months old, close to top spec laptop.
I wonder if this is a FlashPlayer v HTML5 thing.
(I’m great at throwing ideas, that I don’t fully understand, into the discussion. 
)
Adobe Flash?
Possibly… but in my case then, the iPad doesn’t support Flash so that’d make HTML5 on the desktop slower?
Can’t be… Surely… Can it?!
I’ll force mine to Flash some time, and find out.
I’ve noticed it recently but can’t remember if it was on phone or laptop.
I actually thought the start of my video was screwed up.
Well … 
Mobile devices using the app use “smart buffering” to decide what the best quality is based on your internet connection / speed. As far as YouTube are concerned the “experience” is better when there’s no stop/start buffering rather than having the top quality. Something that I think most people disagree with…
On Desktop devices though it should stay true to whatever quality you select and buffer as needed.
You used to be able to get an app that tricked YouTube into thinking you had a Wi-Fi connection when you were on 3G/4G so that it would buffer HD automatically but I’m not sure if that’s still around.
You can specify the speed in the Android app.
It’s desktop (laptop - Win10 - hi spec) that’s NOT starting at the speed specified. Easy to see it “click” in at about 10/12 secs, usually.
Interesting. I wonder if it’s another thing where YouTube are trying to be clever - I’ll experiment (nerdy things like this interest me lol)
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just changed computers to accommodate Resolve. When I play videos from this forum every one starts off blurred for the first 35 seconds . All goes sharp after that. Any help would be appreciated.
YouTube?
Yeah - dunno - happens to me for about 10 to 15 secs.
Doesn’t happen on Vimeo.
I’d suggest it’s probably something YT related rather than computer related.
i have a very much the same problem
Terry thanks for that. Saved me hours checking everything!!!
Are you chaps using Chrome?, its the only browser I can get happily play anything on YT nicely and every time. (I’m on OSX btw)
Edge, Chrome, Firefox, IE11. All the same when it happens.
Also, all the same on those clips where it doesn’t.
Will try Chrome thanks
don’t seem to have any prob with you tube don’t know if its anything to do with download speed when i was at work it took a while to go to hd at home same comp and its fine at home i am getting 190-220 mbps download and 30 mbps upload at work i only get 50 mbps max