A fun idea I had was to divide hd video over 4 and/or 16 and/or 64 lower resolution videos. For the 1/4 the pixels from video 1,2,3 and 4 would be arranged like so.

   1 2 1 2
   3 4 3 4
   1 2 1 2
   3 4 3 4

You could for example consume a HD stream then distribute [say] only 3 lower resolution streams. If the connection craps out or your graphics processing cant keep up you don't have to skip frames but can gradually degrade the image. There could be different frame rates too as long as they combine to something sensible.

If you have [say] a 640 MB recording at 120 fps you would only need to successfully receive 2.5 MB at 30 fps to be able to watch the entire thing. With a slight delay in playback you could even hop from one sub set of channels to another.

It should work offline too. One could have the cutting edge crispy resolution on a large display or watch the same on a crappy old laptop. (and everything in between)

For fun I one time convert a 3.5 hour lecture to 75 MB and was stunned by how watchable it still was.