> HLS support on Android is incredibly spotty

I assume you mean spotty in Android pre-4.0? I'd worked on HLS streaming for Android recently and didn't have issues with ICS and later. But then again with Android you can't possibly test on all OS/device combinations, so would love to know if there are things I should be watching out for.

> Why offer the multiple bitrates on the HLS stream at all? You know what the client's bandwidth is

If you're watching video over a cellular network, it's very difficult to use a single bandwidth since it can fluctuate a lot. So the best practice (as dropbox is doing) is to offer multiple streams at different bandwidths to the client, and allow the client to pick the best one for the following segment based on current network conditions.