And that's also what I'm talking about. I do use Handbrake for pretty much anything, including Youtube videos. (Although, I admit I don't get too much off of Youtube these days.) Basically, if I don't care enough about the video to re-encode it, I really don't care enough about the video to watch it in the first place...

If you mean by "resolvable detail" the amount of compression rather than the amount of resolution, then again, my argument is to re-encode the high-quality video to the proper resolution. You'll get the best results that way. And, of course, the audio stream is left untouched by this process.

Sure, if this is some video I don't care about, I agree it is convenient to throw a mismatched video at a device and still be able to view it. My argument, however, is that even if you can play a 720p or 1080p video on your phone, the result will inevitably be a lesser experience.

No matter how much hardware you throw at it, HD video displayed on a 854x480 lcd screen must suffer compared to the same video encoded at the precise resolution required by the display. Decompressing and downscaling simply requires more effort than decompressing alone. Any time spent downscaling is time that could have been better spent on supporting a higher bitrate, or on multitasking, or on saving battery juice. The extra resolution in the HD video wastes both storage space and internal data bandwidth. I just don't see the point of forcing inappropriately sized video onto a cell phone...