I think they were relying on video services being able to detect available bandwidth and alter the stream to fit. Netflix does this, for example. If you have a narrow connection, you're probably going to get 240p video.

If the streaming service doesn't do this, you just get a terrible experience (buffering... buffering... buffering...).

That's why streaming on bad (narrow, high latency and/or jitter) connections is a bad idea, no? Download in the background, then view, makes much more sense.

I don't think there's one right answer for that.

Buffering is a terrible experience everywhere.

On my desktop, I'd rather wait to get the best quality video that I can get. On mobile though, I probably prefer for video to start NOW at a lower bitrate if need be. It will save bandwidth, and battery, and time and the quality is probably good enough.

I'm not a mobile user, so this is probably unworkable.

But anyway, why not download to desktop, and then transfer to mobile device? Destroys spontaneity, I know.

> Destroys spontaneity

It's exactly that. I'm sitting in a waiting room or the departure gate at the airport flipping through Twitter or Instagram and a click on a video. I don't need that 6 second video to play in 4K. That it runs instantly is the most important quality, IMHO.