[whatwg] Video source selection based on quality

[Philip Jägenstedt]

On Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:31:30 +0800, Mikko Rantalainen  
<mikko.rantalainen at peda.net> wrote:

> The actual average bitrate is simple, it's the duration of the binary
> file divided by the length of the movie in seconds. I don't care if this
> is Mbps or kBps as long as we have some clear definition. This is needed
> for the streaming case: UA shouldn't automatically select a movie for
> streaming that has higher average bitrate than the current data
> connection can transfer.

The bandwidth isn't a property of the connection, it's between the client  
and the server. For example, I may have high bandwidth to computers within  
the network/country/whatever but very poor bandwidth to computers half way  
across the world. The browser would have to perform some kind of bandwidth  
test against the actual server serving the video to make the decision.

In any event, for the record, I don't think it's realistic to change the  
resource selection algorithm to support dynamic switching between sources  
and think this kind of thing belongs at the protocol level or in a  
resource file.

-- 
Philip Jägenstedt
Core Developer
Opera Software