YouTube decided: 720p is no longer HD

Petteri Pyyny
18 May 2020 7:34

It might sound like a very small change, but it is interesting decision nevertheless. YouTube has recently changed its video quality classification in a way that no longer categorizes 720p video as High Definition (HD) video.
From now on, only videos with 1080p resolution or higher are being listed as HD videos in YouTube listings. This is also visible when user changes the quality of the video playback - there, the small HD label appears only for 1080p and beyond.
YouTube itself hasn't commented on the change, but the trend is pretty clear. A decade ago, yes, 720p could be realistically categorized as "high definition", as most videos were still using 480p resolution (or worse) and 1080p was the de facto best video quality available for most people. But since then, 4K videos have become commonplace, as have TV sets and services that are capable to ourput such videos.

For comparison, the good olde 720p video has 921'600 pixels in each video frame. Meanwhile, the most common 4K videos, using UHD resolution, have 8 294 400 pixels per frame. Thus, 4K videos have almost ten times higher resolution than 720p videos.
What do you think, should 720p still be classified as HD?