Systems and methods are described for providing a media stream transmitted from an encoding system to a remotely-located media player that requests segments of the media stream. The media stream is encoded into segments according to an encoding parameter. Data is gathered about current conditions of the network and/or the media player, and encoding of the media stream is adjusted during operation to adapt to changing conditions. The encoding parameter is suitably adjusted in response to changes in available bandwidth and/or segment transmit time, as appropriate.