The lack of end-to-end quality of service support in the current Internet has caused significant difficulties to ensuring playback continuity in video streaming applications. This study addresses this challenge by investigating a new adaptation algorithm to adjust the bit-rate of video data in response to the network bandwidth available to improve playback continuity. Unlike previous works, the proposed algorithm is transparent to the video client, requires no parameter tuning, and yet can outperform existing algorithms. This paper presents this algorithm, evaluates and compares its performance with the best algorithm currently available using extensive trace-driven simulations.