News ABC struggles to keep Desperate Housewives satisfied

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/05/04/abc_ad_support_tv_download_crash/

 

The service is pretty damned good quality compared to that offered by the likes of say, Channel 4 (they are offering the first 2 eps of LOST for free).
They also do a nice low and high res version but its a shame they dont offer full screen, but that probably has something to do with the fact that it runs in some weird macromedia flash streaming player type doo-dah.

It also appears that the ads are not in the middle but at a slightly more regular set of intervals just like our television programming. I know the first one is after 10 mins of the show and there are a further 2 after that.

 

IP lookups to stop non US viewers???? WTF??? surly they could ask for somthing that could not be bypassed in under 3 seconds with a US proxy :S -- ah well.. yay for streaming TV

 

I tried watching the day it came out (I think) and had mixed results. I'm on a college campus, so my internet connection should be plenty fast (generally 10megabits/second is what the connection is listed as, but I've seen my bandwidth higher than that at times when downloading).

As soon as I heard it was out, I tested it out from a computer in my office, and it worked quite well -- smooth video, pretty hi resolution for both the "hi" and "low" options, great stuff -- Later that day, from my campus apartment (still on ethernet, and this is the connection I've measured the bandwidth from) I had frequent video stutter/pause/stop issues on the low bandwidth stream, and couldn't even get started on the high bandwidth stream. The slow stream occasionally popped up a warning saying "your connection to the server is less than 500K, so your experience may not be optimal" and when I tried the high quality stream, it warned me about not meeting the 800K minimum. Based on my experience with my own connection, this is likely a problem on their end...and it also seems like they don't do much "buffering" to help alleviate bandwidth issues.


My personal opinion: even if you don't like the shows, you have to admit that ABC (and other networks) are finally getting smart by offering content for free just like we are used to getting over the broadcast airwaves (or cable, if you like to think TV is free that way...). I would never pay $2 for an episode of a show I could have legally recorded myself...but I never mind putting up with a couple commercials to watch what I want to watch.

 

Never had a problem with C4 eps before, all the IT Crowd ones were more than adequate and the BBC streams are also generally of good quality.

The one thing I don't like about this service is the inability to resize the video... I hate watching things at anything other than full screen!!

Good to see streaming really starting to kick off though!!

 

the crap here is that other people around the globe cant see these episodes.

 

And for no reason whatsoever, too. I thought the whole point of the internet was to make information available to everyone, everywhere. Guess not.

 

yeah, but C4 and that wouild be pissed off if ppl start watching the series as they are broadcast in america and then not watch it on C4 when they show it. They must have to pay quite a bit to ABC to show lost in the UK and then ABC give it away for free.