ABC Player: No way to tell if the episode is available in HD, unless you go to the "HD Showcase". If you select "full screen", the episode looks like CRAP. The first commercial breaks required a "click to continue". Absolutely unacceptable. I'm not even going to spend the time to link you to them as an option.
Sadly, if you the HD, the commercials still require you to click to continue and though if you want to watch in "full screen" (you know, because its a nice beautiful HD Picture) - it just maximizes the window and you still the start bar on the bottom and the window bar on around the picture. Yeah, thanks for the help ABC. You suck. Full screen should be FULL SCREEN.
ABC's Grade: D+
NBC - I had to install the "Windows Media Center Plug-in for Firefox" in an attempt to use their new DirectNBC service, which supposedly lets you download episodes. After it completely failed to work, I tried it in Internet Explorer as well; but just got so frustrated with the whole process I gave up.
The normal NBC player isn't horrible. The commercials advance on their own, and full screen goes full screen. Sadly if you want HD, you can't stream it - you have to go through that bullshit process above. They at least stream "normal" broadcast quality, which is nice enough for me.
NBC's Grade: C
CBS - Worthless. HD picture the movement was blurry, and the frames were jumpy - not to mention I couldn't find a single full episode on their site. All "clips" and such.
CBS's Grade: F-
Hulu - The saving grace to the legal online streaming. RSS (so you can setup a single place to check for new episodes), good full screen, lots of shows, easy to jump around between times - if you make an account, it'll keep track if you close your browser where you left off.. its nearly perfect. (HD is still limited to a "gallary" and not linked into the shows; though most allow you to up to 480p - which looks pretty darn good).
Hulu's Grade: B+
Fox - Okay, I wrote about Hulu before hitting Fox (I almost forgot!). Wow, Fox is brillant too. They let you bounce between HD / non HD seamlessly, RSS your shows, watch them easily, etc. Nearly perfect. I even signed up (which was absolutely easy). Kudos to Fox for not making me go through a bank level signup process. I will actually RSS my Fox shows here over Hulu.
Fox's Grade: B+
The Pirate Bay - Illegal, and the best. I'd gladly download all my shows from the broadcaster WITH commercials intact. Why they haven't figured out an easy way to do this, I dunno. Obviously the biggest problem here (besides being illegal) is that you don't get to watch your show immediately. Trade off is super high quality, and no commercials.
TPB Grade: B- (yeah, just B-. It can be a pain waiting. RSS sucks / doesn't work, and there isn't any "quality control".) This is why I use Fox / Hulu over it.
Require software:
ABC, FOX, Discovery, CW - Require "Move Network" player
uTorrent if you want to download any Pirate Bay Shows. VLC Media Player to watch them (you should be using this player over all other ones anyways).
***MOST IMPORTANT PART*** -- RSS -- Not a chance I can keep track of which shows are on when, and new episodes, and which ones I've seen. So, if you have a google account (yes, there are plenty of other RSS options, this is the easiest for most), you have a great RSS Reader.
Go to Gmail, click "Reader" at the top. (or go to www.google.com/reader and login)
Now, when you're at Fox or Hulu, just click the icon that looks like:
Then right click the RSS Icon, and click "Copy Shortcut" (in IE), or "Copy Link Location" in Firefox:
 |
Finally, go back to reader, and click add subscription and paste in the link. Bingo.
Now whenever there is a new episode, you'll get notified of it in reader. Its a bit of work for one show, but once you have all your shows there - its golden.
Anyways next week I will put up a full list of all the shows I'm watching (or trying to watch), and the all the options to watch w/o cable TV.
********
Rant: So what would be the "A+" setup from a network? Well, they are getting there; its just a sum of the parts:
1) Offer all the shows in standard / HD (streaming)
2) There are no need for "clips" to be part of the download site when you have a player that lets people make their own custom (like Fox / Hulu). This is important to keep the site "clean". Let me know when they originally aired, and when you put them on the site. This should be an easy process. I don't want to feel like I'm playing freak'n Stratego with your clips.
3) Allow episodes to be downloaded in HD, in multiple formats (including ones that play on portable devices). Afraid I'll just skip the commercials? Yeah, I will. Make me watch a movie trailer before I get the download link, then let me download it without commercials.
Want another idea? How about linked to my login is "Fox Points". I get points by watching interactive 30 second commercials (yeah, I have to click on something so you know I'm there or better yet, so you know how a 28 year old male responds to said commercial). Hell, if you're good this might actually be fun. I then get to use those points to download OR watch episodes without commercials. Want to get really edgy? Make a Fox Point iPhone application (and soon to be Android App). While I'm taking a crap, I can watch commercials on my cell phone to get my points for when I get home. I'd do it. So would a million other people.
4) RSS / Subscription service. I don't want to guess if I have seen it or not.
5) Post them as early as possible. Part of the awesomeness of The Pirate bay is I can start the download of Heroes before I go to work at 7am, even when its still 13 hours away from technically "airing"... because you already aired it in Japan, and some great Asian dude posted it for me. If I come home for lunch, I get to watch it 8 hours before any of my friends. Remember those Fox Points? Yeah, guess how many the average user would blow to be able to watch their favorite show a bit early. You get people to actually WATCH and INTERACT with more commercials than ever.
Final Part: The most irritating thing to me is that all these ideas are VERY doable. There isn't anything in there that would make this problematic for any of the studios. Hearing them complain about Tivo and about piracy when all the normal consumer wants is for them to show a little innovation. And don't even get me started on the recording industry.
No comments:
Post a Comment