Given a URL to media content, downconvert audio or video files or streams server side, providing a link (perhaps temporary, but give at least a few hours until expiration) to the lower-fidelity "copy."
As an added bonus, if the provider has access of reasonable speech recognition technology (and cloud apps are THE home of closed source) why not provide text transcripts of spoken word podcasts?-- LoriZ, Oct 15 2014 Mobile version of the BBC http://m.bbc.com/news [not_morrison_rm, Oct 16 2014] Bandwidth reduction as a technology has been Baked for decades.
It's not compression; with compression, there is minimal or no loss of resolution. Actually reducing the density of the stream does confer inprovements over and above what compression can deliver.
[suggested-for-deletion], Widely Known To Exist.-- 8th of 7, Oct 15 2014 So when I'm at my in-law's house with a 56K modem and no cell-phone reception, there's a web site I can go to that will down-convert or a YouTube video for me so I can view it (or maybe listen to audio only, or see a text transcript) without spending hours queuing the video up?-- scad mientist, Oct 15 2014 Yes, or at least there was a few years ago - it was a subscription service.-- 8th of 7, Oct 15 2014 Streaming often involves handshaking where the receiver will say "Hey fyi I can take x resolution, so you needn't send better."
Oh, any I recall a day long ago when you had the choice to download 160px or 320px versions. Only those days are gone and it's all automated now by benevolent robots.
Automatic captioning is very baked too. Even YouTube does it.-- the porpoise, Oct 15 2014 Who are you calling benevolent ? You lookin' at us ?-- 8th of 7, Oct 15 2014 [+] I was just reading an article about how Chrome 38 was going to do some of this (cooperation serverside required of course). Bleedin' obvious from day one: send your UI specs to the site server and it sends back content tailored for your system, duh.
Meanwhile every time I go onto YT I have to keep stopping it from sending me 1080p, when I'm happy with 360. If I want super-high resolution I'll go to the store.-- FlyingToaster, Oct 15 2014 Hmm, this is kind of fixed these days because of the number of mobile devices, there's a mobile version of most websites, that's what I use...like hotmail, bbc.
The low-fi solution for youtube is stop the damn video downloading asap and use a downloader add-on, preferably to .3gp format.
Helps if you install a copy of linux, like Lubuntu, then don't install the FLV plug-in, so YT never gets to play anything, but you can still download. Does make for some pot-luck viewing.-- not_morrison_rm, Oct 15 2014 //Helps if you install a copy of linux, like Lubuntu, then don't install the FLV plug-in, so YT never gets to play anything,//
YEah, but most of us can't hack into the mainframe and bypass the firewall... I expect [LoriZ] is asking for a user friendly non-technical solution. YT is terrible for auto selecting highest bandwidth, and forcing autoplay.
I think one of the problems is everyone is trying to get you to consume bandwidth. So there's little motivation to help you manage it.
The streaming issue is a different one, most streaming services I've attempted to use put severe limits on buffering so if your connection is slow or patchy, you simply can't use them at all. People suggest fixes for this, but they involve levels of technical competence limited to 1 or 2 % of the population or less.
[8th] if this is widely known to exist - where is it? The idea is for a service you can use, not just for the technology to be possible.
This idea gets my [+]-- Custardguts, Oct 16 2014 Erm, assuming you can use the add-on Downloadhelper, you get to pick the resolution. I go for .3gp as I don't really need to be able to do a skin pore count on whoever is in the video.
How to do this, go to YT, find something you might like to look at, click on it, then hit the pause button, use Downloadhelper to pick a format to save it to, get it going, close the tab on the browser for the YT, as otherwise it'll just be downloading it twice and just wait a bit.
Mobile venison of the Beeb linky
// //Helps if you install a copy of linux, like Lubuntu, then don't install the FLV plug-in, so YT never gets to play anything,//
Ok, go get a version of Puppy Linux (download the ISO and write it onto a CD). Put CD in tray, reboot pc, you can run it as is, or if you do this a lot, make a puppy save file on the hard disk (won't mess with whatever OS is on there) and save a bit of clicking. You should also be able to do this with whatever live cd version of linux.
For the more sneaky, it's also a great way to hide browser history..assuming you take the CD out..as no browsing footprint whatsoever on the pc once it's booted back to its more usual OS.
I'm not exactly a computer nerd, but even I know all this crap due to being on very elderly laptops..-- not_morrison_rm, Oct 16 2014 NB "Put CD in tray"
That's the optical drive tray of the pc, not the fridge or ashtray one.-- not_morrison_rm, Oct 16 2014 random, halfbakery