[amelius]

> Interesting thought experiment, but there just isn't a compelling reason for doing so, and many drawbacks.

How about:

* Partially encoding the video on the client, until the user decides to close the browser?

* Encoding the video on clients run by other youtube visitors in the background?

* The encoder could also be implemented in ASM.js, I suppose, so that would eliminate the problem of codec/bitrate/resolution.

[jallmann]

Massive increase in complexity (distributing and tracking encoding state), significant increase in resource usage for everyone (network transfer, CPU). Not a win.