Hi William,
3 to 6 Mb/s pretty high for standard streaming. Many people are still on 1 Mb/s connections out there.
3-6 Mb/s is more often used when you are doing scalable streaming where the speed changes according to a user’s connection speed.
At this point in time, I would keep the bit rate under 1.5 Mb/s and in VRR 2 pass. At the end of your post you mention “player”, which tells me that you may not be talking about streaming but download?
H.264 is pretty much it right now when it comes to compatibility with either streaming or download. There are different encoders out there, but better quality and price aren’t exactly linear.
Vince Becquiot
Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area