This probably matters more when more people use Airplay and devices like it to bounce from mobile to bigscreen. As of now, solving for that edge case seems like a waste of time vs. the far more general case of folks watching video requested by a mobile device on said device.

To be fair, one survey in Dec '11 estimates that Apple will have 32% of the tv-box market (http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/164141/apple-t...) so it may be more common than I suspect...

As a compromise, I wish Netflix and others would just let me as a user choose whether I want a high stream or a low stream and not worry about all that "detection" stuff. This allows me to control my bandwidth usage to better reflect the conditions I'm in (paying per byte vs. my home network, etc.). Then work on making all this auto-adjustment stuff while always giving the user the option to ratchet it up (and suffer drops) or ratchet it down (and lose resolution), as they see fit.

(Related, a bit, to WSJ article (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230381290457729...) about new iPad users blowing through their bandwidth due to excessive use of higher def video)