There is more to serving videos well than meets the eye. Not all browsers support all codecs. Not all devices have sufficient bandwidth to stream the highest quality encoding or the available bandwidth isn't constant. Does the server have enough bandwidth? How much does the hosting service charge for outgoing traffic?
While you can put an mp4 file on a webserver and call it a day, it'll most likely be a pretty bad experience for the users.
You may have missed the point of the parent comment.
Without defining the experience you can call it better or worse than any random thing!
But if the video stops every 0.1 seconds to buffer for two hours, is that better than stopping very 25 minutes for a 30 second ad?
If the video must be 24 x 32 pixels for the bandwidth to be low enough for your server restrictions, is that worse than the above scenario but a 4k 60fps video?
> I think no video is better than one that starts with ad. At least for long term mental health
That's vague. I think most people would disagree, and the commenter is right that people put up with ads for a certain degree of quality. We used to have 4 minute ad breaks on TV. The only reason people moved to streaming is because the quality was the same.
I can't imagine ads are doing much more damage to our mental health than the content we consume in the first place. Likely less.
While you can put an mp4 file on a webserver and call it a day, it'll most likely be a pretty bad experience for the users.