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

[David Singer]

On Jan 18, 2011, at 5:40 , Boris Zbarsky wrote:

> On 1/18/11 6:09 AM, Glenn Maynard wrote:
>> I'm confused--how is the required buffer size a function of the length of
>> the video?  Once the buffer is large enough to smooth out network
>> fluctuations, either you have the bandwidth to stream the video or you
>> don't; the length of the video doesn't enter into it.
> 
> The point is that many users _don't_ have enough bandwidth to stream the video.  At that point, the size of the buffer that puts you in HAVE_ENOUGH_DATA depends on the length of the video.
> 

It certainly used to be true that many users of Apple's trailers site would deliberately choose higher quality (and hence bandwidth) trailers than they could download in realtime.

David Singer
Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.