Online Video Players
I don’t watch alot of television anymore. I know that sounds weird coming from a nerd like myself. But this doesn’t mean I don’t watch alot of TV shows. I love Reaper, Heroes, Chuck, Psyche and House. I’m even a closet My Name is Earl fan and don’t get me started on how much I love ‘Good Eats’ on the Food Network. I could watch Penn & Teller’s ‘Bullshit’ for hours. I can watch and record all these shows on a 36 in plasma screen. Do I do it? Nope. When I want to watch something, I do it online. Most major networks put their new episodes up online shortly after their original air date. They have all made the conversion to some sort of Flash player, probably streaming FLV files. Some do it better than others, and that’s what I’m going to review today.
The Best:
NBC/USA - Ok, technically not a tie since they share content. Law and Order, Monk and even Psyche(one of my favorites) is being picked up by NBC from USA. So it would stand to reason, their video players are almost identical. NBC does a better job wrapping the player in a show themed stage or template, but they both use the same ad technology, which works pretty seamlessly with the show you’re watching. Full screen functions pretty much as you would expect it and the commercials don’t interfere with that. More on that later.
Runner-Up: Fox. When watching a show, they have a bar at the bottom that shows you the quality of the stream you’re getting, which is way cool. The stream will downgrade automatically if there’s lag, so you never get a jumpy presentation.
The Mediocre
The CW Network ???????? - I absolutely love Reaper. I’m a big Kevin Smith fan, so him being attached to it meant I was going to give the show a shot. To my wife’s regrets, I love the show. I think it’s one of the more creative shows out there. That being said, the CW network has to pony up some bucks and get their online video player up to par. You can go full screen, but as soon as it’s time for showing a commercial, the whole player goes to the smallest resolution possible and, here’s the kicker; it doesn’t return to full screen. You have to actively click the full screen button again. Really annoying when you’re across the room or running the whole thing through a TV or projector.
The Worst
A&E - The player is really small, there’s no full screen button or even resolution control. Their full episodes are actually multiple clips that play in order and have to re-buffer after each commercial break. Oh, and here’s the worst thing of all…they run one commercial for their entire site. I watched a couple of episodes of Intervention last night and I had to watch the same Priceline ad at least 20 times. The other networks at least change the commercials, some even have really cool interactive commercials that you don’t see watching TV. I recently read that A&E has sought to change it’s demographic and has been pretty successful in doing so, but they’re really dropping the ball here.
The Absent
The Food Network - Ok, I know the Food Network doesn’t target 21-35 year old computer geeks, but Alton Brown’s ‘Good Eats’ actually has a bit of a cult following among college kids and middle age nerds like myself. So I was really surprised to find out that a network that doesn’t syndicate their content, doesn’t offer episodes online. They only offer short clips. I can find that on YouTube. For a network devoted to shows about very specific processes, you would think that would offer a way for people to review what they’ve watched, get a recipe they missed, or learn the difference between grilling and true bar-b-que.
