The proliferation of broadband has permanently changed the face of the web to allow for greater flexibility in what you can deliver and how you deliver it. It has given us the opportunity to use more bandwidth intensive applications, content and designs. However, file size is still an issue for most people, even those with extremely fast connections.

We, as internet users, are impatient. We want what we want as fast as we can get it. If you have a site where the content is basically a commodity, or if your site is likely to be unknown to the user prior to arriving, you need to load initial content quickly because your target users are still not going to wait unless they feel that what they are going to receive is going to be unique or of high quality.

Progressive downloads
The benefit of using progressive downloads for online video delivery is that delivering the video will not require flash streaming server, the user can jump to different parts of the video easily and it is easy to upload and change files. While on the other hand, some of the cons with using a progressive download is that the entire video file is downloaded to a user's hard drive; this may create copyright issues with respect to the content, and the practice is very bandwidth intensive.

If there is a concern about the copyright associated with a file, or if it is important to avoid relatively easy third-party manipulation of the file, you may want to avoid the progressive download method of delivery. Bandwidth or maintenance are always considerations; however, various simple methods can circumvent either issue and should not be the driving force behind choosing progressive downloads vs. streaming. User experience and legal requirements should be of primary importance in any circumstance.

If you need to use large files, try to break the content up into the smallest chunks possible, or make sure that the user knows that what they’re waiting for is something of high value.