>xVideos has an improved timeline showing which parts of a video are buffered. If you're watching a video, and it buffers the first minute, then 0-1 minute will be highlighted in red on the timeline. If you then skip later in the video to the 3 minute mark and watch for another few seconds, it might buffer the 3-4 minute time period of the video. The timeline would then show 0-1 minute in red, and 3-4 minutes in red. You could then click anywhere in red on the timeline and the video would instantly start playing, since as the timeline shows, that part is buffered and ready to go. I've never seen the same feature anywhere else, YouTube and Vimeo would display the timeline as having 0-4 minutes buffered, which is incorrect, since they don't accurately display the gaps missing.
How is this useful to the end user? From a developers perspective I suppose it's satisfying, but from someone who want to see titties I don't care what's buffered or not. To paraphrase steve jobs, buffer management is stupid (for a user to be doing.) While he was wrong about tasks, I'm pretty sure I'm right about buffering. I have zero action I can take wrt buffering problems. So why do I need this information?
It's useful on slower connections, if you're trying to locate and move to an area of a video that's already loaded, without aimlessly clicking around.
It also sort of acts as a bookmark, to know what you've watched. Sometimes I'll open a long video (1 hour or more), and skip around watching a few parts for 30 seconds here and there. I then realize I want to return to one of the parts I skimmed over, but I have no idea where it was in the timeline. I'll drag the slider around trying to find it again, and sometimes I succeed, and sometimes I give up. With the buffered parts highlighted, I'd at least have a better idea where it was located (or better yet, the timeline could highlight the sections I've viewed).
How is this useful to the end user? From a developers perspective I suppose it's satisfying, but from someone who want to see titties I don't care what's buffered or not. To paraphrase steve jobs, buffer management is stupid (for a user to be doing.) While he was wrong about tasks, I'm pretty sure I'm right about buffering. I have zero action I can take wrt buffering problems. So why do I need this information?