[whatwg] Limiting the amount of downloaded but not watched video

[Roger Hågensen]

On 2011-01-17 18:36, Markus Ernst wrote:
> Am 17.01.2011 17:41 schrieb Jeroen Wijering:
>> We are getting some questions from JW Player users that HTML5 video 
>> is quite wasteful on bandwidth for longer videos (think 10min+). This 
>> because browsers download the entire movie once playback starts, 
>> regardless of whether a user pauses the player. If throttling is 
>> used, it seems very conservative, which means a lot of unwatched 
>> video is in the buffer when a user unloads a video.
>
> Could this be done at the user side, e.g. with some browser setting? 
> Or even by a "stop downloading" control in the player? An intuitive 
> user control would be separate stop and pause buttons, as we know them 
> from tape and CD players. Pause would then behave as it does now, 
> while stop would cancel downloading.

I think that's the right way to do it, this should be in the hands of 
the user and exposed as a preference in the browsers.
Although exposing (read only?) the user's preferred buffer setting to 
the HTML App/Plugin etc. would be a benefit I guess as the desired 
buffering could be communicated back to the streaming server for example 
for a better bandwidth utilization.



-- 
Roger "Rescator" Hågensen.
Freelancer - http://www.EmSai.net/