[vitd]

I find this to be a worse user experience. I would rather wait the 5-10 seconds for the high quality stream to buffer than have every video look really crappy for the first minute, then slowly get better. I guess I'd prefer a consistent experience overall. I stopped watching Netflix on my TiVo and switched to only watching it on my AppleTV because of issues like this.

[AceJohnny2]

You're in the minority: https://gigaom.com/2012/11/09/online-viewers-start-leaving-i...

[fulafel]

The results of this study can be explained by 2 plausible hypotheses:

* Users have been trained to expect that if a random site spins the beach ball for a few seconds it's unlikely to get better. Akamai customers are a mixed set of smaller web sites, and these often have an "eternal progress meter" as failure mode of video players.

* Viewers in the Akamai mix are impatient because content includes a lot of emailed links, and ancillary (eg news article related) content

Neither of these would apply to Netflix and Youtube

[james-skemp]

So would I, but my guess is that, like me, you were stuck with dialup long ago. It drives me crazy when I can't pause a video to let it buffer anymore, but knowing at least one other person like me might help. :)

[TylerE]

I don't really mind. The first 10-15 seconds of most stuff is just studio logos and the like anyway.

[X-Istence]

Apple TV does the same thing, except for some reason it starts high, and then drops down if necessary. During heavily congested times of day on Comcast, I would find myself starting at 1080p and then two seconds in freeze and drop down significantly.