12 Comments Add your own

• 1. thedetroitchannel  |  September 15th, 2007 at 7:06 pm

  i just finished watching a live stream provided by the city and county of honolulu of waikiki beach with the thunderbirds doing an aerial show above. while not the best player around, the show itself was great!

  network tv beware!

• 2. Darrien  |  September 15th, 2007 at 8:20 pm

  ABC has the best player, imo

• 3. discreet_chaos  |  September 15th, 2007 at 10:59 pm

  I have to say that I prefer CBS’s “Innertube”, but that may be because I’ve used it a lot more than the other network’s interfaces. HIMYM came on far too early in my timezone; I’d use it whenever I missed a “Jericho” and because “Grey’s” was what my wife wanted to watch during the season, I’d use it to catch-up on the “CSI-LV”.

  My second most often used network stream was NBC and perhaps if you added-up all of the hours, I may have actually spent more time on their website, but it was always less often, but in longer chunks. I’ll also say that there may be some benefit from the chapter menu, but that’s mostly because if you pause a stream during a commercial, then you’d have to go back out and re-enter the show to find your place, so there is a benefit from not having to fast-forward to the point that the software bugged.

• 4. BJ  |  September 15th, 2007 at 11:16 pm

  ABC has the best design and quality that make the viewing experience considerably better than other networks because you don’t feel like you’re watching youtube.
  that said, all of these network streaming sites still have a lot to improve on though…

• 5. Joe  |  September 15th, 2007 at 11:46 pm

  The ABC player is really amazing, especially when you take the 30 seconds to download the HD plugin. If you’ve got a good connection and monitor it looks better than TV.

• 6. wren  |  September 16th, 2007 at 6:43 am

  I like the Magnavox although the Philco works fine for my DuMont shows. Have you found any of them good for this new UHF?

• 7. Stephen Downes  |  September 16th, 2007 at 9:00 am

  Well, let’s see now:

  ABC: - ‘Only viewers within the United States can watch these full-length episodes.” Jerks. 0/10

  CBS: - ‘This content is not available for viewing outside the United States.” But they were happy to play a series of commercials, flashing the message for less than a second in between. Big jerks. -10/10

  NBC: - “We’re sorry, but the video you’ve selected isn’t available in your location.” Shown after the 15 second commercial. Jerks. -8/10

  Fox: “Thank you for your interest in FOX. This video is currently availble for viewers living in the United Stated.” What they don’t say is that it is NOT available to people livin outside the U.S. So - Fox wins the prize for most dishonest message. And maybe shoul have checked before loading and installing a large Java video applet. No commercials, though. 0/10

  CW: - :Thank you for your interest in The CW. This service is currently available to viewers living in the United States.” Right away, no fuss, no crap. Still. 0/10

  Comedy central - videos play, no muss, no fuss. Imges are a bit small. It’s a big difficult to pick the show. But I’m watching the Colbert Report as I type this. 5/10

  YouTube: - shows load right away, there’s no crap about where you live, and the videos aren’t created by jerks. Some obscure videos produced by out of date and insignificant companies are missing. Could use better program selection tool. 8/10

• 8. !  |  September 16th, 2007 at 9:03 am

  and hsplaybook.com has been (finally) pointed to the parent site!

  10/10, but not even an atta boy?

• 9. thedetroitchannel  |  September 16th, 2007 at 9:07 am

  btw- last night while watching the fabulous thunderbirds fly over waikiki i sat and enjoyed an icy mojiti… that hawaiian drink with the little umbrella.

  not bad.

• 10. Rob  |  September 16th, 2007 at 11:03 am

  I can relate to Stephen. I spent a year overseas and almost missed out on some of my favorite shows because the networks wouldn’t stream them outside the US. Fortunately I found out about this program on the InterWeb called BitTorrent.

  One thing’s for certain … ABC’s grip on their content isn’t winning them any friends. Locking people into using their players on their terms isn’t what people want. CBS is smart in listening to the people. Syndicating their content and bringing back Jericho are both excellent examples of giving people what they want.

• 11. Charles  |  September 16th, 2007 at 12:28 pm

  I really like ABC’s player, although if they add any more programs, they may want to re-work the “wheel” format to make program browsing a little quicker. FOX’s is kind of ugly looking, but the quality is really good. CBS, I used once, and thought it was functional but a little too plain for what it *could* be. NBC’s never works well on my computer for some strange reason, always freezing up and having out-of-sync audio/video, or even just a stalled image for a full minute while the audio goes on. All the other network’s players work absolutely fine, though.

• 12. Curtis  |  September 17th, 2007 at 9:37 am

  ABC is the easiest to navigate, and never makes you wait more than 30 seconds for ads to pass. (sometimes by the time the NBC ad loads, you’ve waited 40 seconds)

  However, NBC had a cool feature that allowed you to watch actor’s commentary side-by-side with the actual show. Despite the occasional load time, it was a really great idea that usually paid off.

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