What's the maximum bitrate practical to offer for streaming HD content?
 

I've seen some sites offering 8000kbps for their true HD videos but then I've also heard that for streaming you shouldn't offer above 3,000 or 4,000 kbps. What would be the best to offer for HD?

For STREAMING, if you go much over 2000kbps you're going to make it so a lot of people can't stream it. All those huge sizes you're seeing should be for downloading, not streaming.

What you may want to do is offer two sizes (bit rate and actual size), one for people with slower connections, and another a little higher for people with faster connections, like a 480p and a 720p. You can browser detect their speed and load the correct one.

Save the huge files for downloads.

Thanks for the info.

Yeah 3-4k is max i think.

Side note, do many still offer downloads at all?

I've seen quite a bit that still offer downloads.

On that note, some sites I go to, when I hit their download button for a movie, the movie will just show up in my browser and start playing. So if I want to download I have to right click on the download button and hit 'save link as' in order to save to desktop. Other sites when I hit the download button it will prompt to save to desktop automatically. What causes this difference? I actually need to figure that out if I plan to offer downloads as well.