[marcosdumay]

It used to be that if your network was bad, you could just play the video once without watching, and then you could play it again and watch it without it locking.

Nowadays, if your network is bad, you can just forget it. Every single media site seem to have migrated into this format at around the same time. It's obviously to stop downloaders, what it evidently didn't, but it will never change back.

[ric2b]

Is it to stop downloaders? I doubt it since they work just fine, it's probably just a way to reduce resource usage on more constrained platforms like low end mobile phones or smart tvs.

There is probably a lot of code sharing among all platforms such that companies don't want to support two different buffering flows.

[chris_pie]

It also decreases bandwidth and processing server-side, when a user leaves before finishing the video.

[kadoban]

It's MPEG-DASH, and I think Apple has HLS. It's basically better by every possible metric _except_ the one you mentioned, which I'm sure you'd agree is an uncommon use-case. It's not designed to stop downloaders, it's trivial to download.

If you really want to play things multiple times, you can probably muck with your browser's cache settings, just tell it to cache a ton. I used to do that in Firefox when my mobile connection sucked, so I could buffer it all up and then just watch. Or easier yet, just use a download tool.

[kylebenzle]

Why not just go with the flow and use/develop a downloader browser extension?

[marcosdumay]

I've used them a few times for dealing with a bad network.

But this is a "me" solution, and I'd imagine those sites would like to be accessible for more people. (I'm personally a very bad "customer" for them.)

Anyway, it's a mild annoyance for me (I have that "me" solution), and not really my problem to solve.