Filed under: Design, Developer, Video
ABC.com goes HD, sort of
Ok, so it may not exactly be HD quality video but as compared to what video on ABC.com used to look like, it's pretty darn close. ABC recently re-launched the video player on their website giving the video overall a much better look and getting rid on that nasty freezing and jerking feature that used to be present when you tried to watch full-length programming on the site.
Unlike other network sites where the video is Flash based ABC has decided to use technology from Move Networks. While Flash is encoded at one bit rate, Move video is encoded at multipe bit rates at the same time. Broadcasting and Cable explains the difference by saying "While Flash streams video at a constant rate using the proprietary Flash Media Server, Move Networks streams its videos at an adaptive rate off commodity components on standard HTTP servers." The video quality you see is dependent on your CPU and available bandwidth allowing some computers to approach HD quality with their video. End result? Much better video quality and consistency for watching that Lost episode you missed.
[Via Broadcasting and Cable]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Rick said 1:41PM on 4-03-2007
I love that the word proprietary is used to describe Flash Media Server completely ignoring that last I checked Move Networks tech was also proprietary. This also completely ignores that you need to install Move Networks player plugin to make this work.
Not to mention there are several ways to deliver bandwidth appropriate content using Flash Media Server.
Admittedly having the varying bitrates available in one file and built in player mechanisms for choosing the right stream are very nice and something Flash is sorely lacking. However, I'm not a big fan of pushing the end user to install and run a new plugin when odds are good they already have something that is perfectly capable.
I'd be interested to hear some stats on how many people do the plugin install vs. how many bail out and can't be bothered.
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Bart said 3:30PM on 4-03-2007
ABC is *not* the first major network site to have full-screen video. CBS has had full-screen video for a long time, if not always (since they started adding videos of their tv shows...). They use Real Player for the video, so it's a lot easier for them to do full-screen than it is with Flash.
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Nick said 4:53PM on 4-03-2007
This isn't NEW news, they updated the player almost two weeks ago. The quality is a lot better than the previous flash player they were using. I've used it on my laptop and was not aware of a varible bit rate. I'll check it out on my 19" widescreen monitor when I get hope and see how good the quality looks there.
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a.m. said 6:43PM on 4-03-2007
ABC.com has ended up being pretty much the online online TV video we watch regularly, so I was temporarily happy when I saw the HD option a week or so ago. But when it suddenly wanted me to register & download a plugin--with no info about it that I saw--I went straight back to the old, glitchy version. It's not that I can't be bothered--more, why must I be?
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Eleventeen said 10:18PM on 4-03-2007
The problem is, this is a bad move for those of us who watch TV on locked machines. While I can watch flashed-based video all day, not everyone can install the plugin that makes the Move player work. I hope they keep the old player around for a while for 'legacy' users.
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dissapointed said 6:51PM on 4-05-2007
the player isn't working for me with either IE7 or Firefox 2.0 using windows vista
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DY said 12:58PM on 5-26-2007
I can't get the abc new player to install on my powerbook. I used the old player fine and now I just get error message when I try to launch the new one -
It says 176% loaded (what's that??? How can it be more than 100%? looks like an error code really) What's wrong anyone know?
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kpo said 1:29PM on 5-25-2007
bugger! they've gone ahead and removed the link to the old player! argggh!
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islagirl808 said 12:44AM on 5-31-2007
i can not get the new player to install on either of my lap tops... i have tried to contact tech support, but did not recieve a response- it has been over 2 weeks... i, like others have used the old (deleted) version just fine... : (
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