I'm finding navigating the site a lot quicker since yesterday. Not super fast, but huge improvement.
Just watched three short vids that had runtimes of 10, 13, and 15 seconds. These were ok after a few seconds of buffering. Tried watching a vid that was 3mins 45secs and that took longer to buffer then kept stopping to buffer several more times. That said, watching it would have been 100% impossible a few days ago.
I take the overall improvement as a positive sign that further improvements are coming. Many thanks to MM and all involved!!!