&gt; <i>And what, exactly, is the difference for a server?</i><p>Off the top of my head:<p>* &quot;Streaming&quot; could imply a few different files of differing quality that the downloader dynamically changes between.<p>* Scrubbing to see previews further ahead and back, in order to jump to playback at a particular point.<p>* Throttling bandwidth to just that required for realtime playback. Most people don&#x27;t watch the full video, so no need to download too far ahead of where playback is.<p>* Not downloading too much further if the video is paused.<p>There are definitely times that you want to download the file, but I definitely think of &quot;streaming&quot; as encompassing the above features. When I&#x27;m in a bandwidth constrained environment, in particular, I often prefer the streaming experience.