Add human/result-oriented auto quality variants
When watching a stream (or VOD), the existing quality options are fantastic! But sometimes I wish I could tell auto what aspect of the stream I want prioritized and just let it pick what's best for that priority.
I imagine a submenu that says
Auto > Prefer:
Quality (default): Whatever looks good at my current player dimensions and my computer and internet connection can handle.
Low latency: Even if it sometimes means I see a lower quality image for a while, I care about every millisecond. Find the fastest quality level that my internet connection and/or PC can reliably decode
Continuity: I don't want to ever see a buffering icon or hear an interruption in the audio. Even if that means a few seconds extra delay so that my browser can switch sources and synchronize behind-the-scenes, or handle momentary connection losses
Readability: The stream/VOD I am watching will likely have small text that I care about (for example, a "closeup" view of a magic card, off to the side of the main video region). Delay is a lot less important, and perhaps framerate is too (if there's an easy way to skip frames browser-side, since I assume you won't encode an additional video stream just for this).
Mostly audio: I'm letting the stream run off to the side while I play/work on something else. I'll occasionally glance over, so you can't discard video entirely, but it would be a waste to use high quality (and if I'm gaming on the same system, I don't want you competing for performance!). Audio continuity is somewhat important to me, but you can let the video portion buffer if you must. Feel free to pick whichever quality option costs you the least server load
Only audio: Your window might not even be visible to me at most times, so feel free to discard the visual part of the stream entirely
I'm sure you can come up with better user-facing descriptions, have a far better understanding of your own architecture to determine which options are meaningful (although two options that behave identically but are described differently might still be ideal to help users select the best one), and can probably find a handful of use-cases I never even considered.
