Currently, the “Watch together” feature will force-stream to two users despite one or both of them having already a downloaded (sync’d) copy of the video in question.
This is far from ideal because it puts unnecessary strain on both bandwidth and compute (especially if transcoding is involved). Not to mention that multiple other issues related to lag and buffering could be mitigated if one or two parties have a local copy of the video.
I’ve seen that this feature suggestion has been mentioned at least a couple of times in the past but nothing came out of it. I’m creating this topic because I believe this is a crucial feature of “Watch together” that is currently missing and the user experience could be drastically improved by developing it.
For instance, In cases where users regularly use this feature (for instance when watching one or two episodes of the same show on a frequent basis), one or both parties could download the episodes or movies in advance and the watching party would be less likely to randomly stop for buffering or start looping (as it often does).
