[onosendai]

I second this. I've been using youtube-dl for years and it's essential for viewing video content on your terms.

A little know fact that no one seems to mention about this tool is that, the name notwithstanding, it also supports many other sites besides Youtube (use --list-extractors for a full list, currently 108!)

[arprocter]

I also found newer versions have a --buffer-size option which allows you to set a huge buffer and download at a much higher speed