Gregory Maxwell wrote:
Yes, but the browser isn't psychic. It doesn't know how long its going to take to download the file. Before it starts it doesn't know how
This is not the browser development list, and I'm not interested in developing or upgrading my browser. I'm interested in video on Wikipedia and making it work for large numbers of users, using their existing browsers and versions.
I can to upgrade my own browser, but I can't upgrade the browser for large numbers of other users. All I can do here and now is to note that today's browsers aren't ready for this.
Can we determine what today's browsers are ready for? Will 2 megabit/second videos work? If so, let's set that limit for the coming year, and reevaluate the limit in early 2011. Wikimedia Commons generates thumbnails for still pictures, so it could generate reduced bandwidth versions of videos.
But is it really the video bandwidth that sets the limit? I can watch videos with 2.3 and 3.4 megabit/seconds without any problems. It's really odd that 4.6 megabits should fail so utterly when 3.4 works so smooth.