In general, I agree I'd also rather _not_ have web players.
However, in the specific case I am talking about, the videos were more or less 6 hours long, so I'd rather not download the whole high resolution stuff (and likely see the process fail), but be able to skip parts and/or watch/download a few parts in lower resolution and other ones in high resolution.
Subtle hint: the handful would need to grow a sixth finger :-)
...
Not subtle hint: 'y' is a vowel too.