Specs For Streaming Video?

[andraste]

I'm conducting a tentative experiment in streaming my vids online - hitherto, I've only made them available for download. There are two copies of my Iron Man vid at that link; the one at the bottom has a larger file size but higher quality.

The trouble is, I never watch streaming video files if I can help it - my connection isn't really fast enough, so I find it simpler to just download everything - so I don't really know what people who want streaming vids are looking for. Faster load time so you can get an idea of whether or not you want to download the vid? Or is quality an important factor?

For vidders who make their vids available for streaming, what kind of codecs and settings do you use to encode them? I've always used DivX for my downloadable files, but I'm having trouble getting the size down for streaming.

Any advice/opinions of this subject greatly appreciated!