Agreed. When I had 12Mbps down, Vimeo was a real borderline PITA to use and it seemed jumping to points in a video took 10+ seconds to actually occur whereas with YouTube you could jump around the video quickly. Now I have 70Mbps down, Vimeo is somewhat more bearable, but it's still not as good an experience as YouTube.
All that said, Vimeo's video always seems better quality to me, even if it slow to load or cumbersome to control. And I suspect that, like me, you're in Europe.. so that might also have a part to play.
Agreed on all counts, and I'm in Iceland. I also know that local ISPs have dedicated caching servers for YouTube videos, which gives them an advantage in my region.
I realize that it's very expensive to have great connectivity in all regions, and I definitely think they should focus on player improvements (which might of course involve considerable sever work, too) since my main beef is with how slow connections are handled by the player.
All that said, Vimeo's video always seems better quality to me, even if it slow to load or cumbersome to control. And I suspect that, like me, you're in Europe.. so that might also have a part to play.