Big problem I'm noticing in video playability

[peestandingup]

I've only been using the video service for a couple weeks. I'm getting a LOT of feedback from visitors who are unable to pay the videos smoothly. I've been asking around as to why & I believe its the way SM automatically serves up a specific video size based on the viewers screen resolution.

The problem is that a lot of older computers, or computers with slower processors, still use higher screen resolutions whether it be VGA or DVI, which in turn causes the SM video player to serve them the HD version of a video, which of course stutters & putters like crazy on their screen, causing them to get discouraged & go bye-bye, which is a BAD first impression for them & turns them off pretty quick. Yes, I know a user should just click on a smaller size, but still, this is really self-explanatory, especially to non-savy people. And then they would have to do that everytime they play a video, which would get old pretty fast.

So, I'm thinking that serving up different sized video resolutions based on screen resolution alone isn't such a good way to go. Isn't there a way to somehow automatically sense if a video isn't playing smoothly that the player could downsize the video for them? Or just base it on processor speed alone??

[Shizam]

Its possible to detect two things:
-Bandwidth
-Current framerate (vs the framerate it should be)

Now, we could automatically make decisions on what quality level to show the user based on that data but what if the user would rather just pause and wait for the movie to buffer at the current quality (which is what we do now based on bandwidth).

The current UI makes more sense:
-Buffer up data until the movie can play at the users bandwidth
-If they don't want to wait and just click play, fine they can
-If they want to just watch the movie at a smaller size sooner, fine they can

This is the 'Show the awesome and allow you to turn it down' approach, as opposed to the 'Show the ok and let you crank it up' approach. If we instead detected their bandwidth/framerate and gave them a smaller video to start with they may never notice there are more awesome options available they'd just be 'satisfied' with ok.

Sam

[peestandingup]

This is the 'Show the awesome and allow you to turn it down' approach, as opposed to the 'Show the ok and let you crank it up' approach. If we instead detected their bandwidth/framerate and gave them a smaller video to start with they may never notice there are more awesome options available they'd just be 'satisfied' with ok.
I'd wholeheartedly agree with this method if most people's hardware/bandwidth was capable of display the larger sized videos smoothly. The fact of the matter is, its just not there yet. Not even close. So the current method is causing many many users a lot of unnecessary click-downs.

I know you wanna show off the awesomeness first (and so do I), but you have to see it from the typical end users POV. I wish everyone ran Core Duo & up machines, but they dont.