We almost always watch TV shows online. There are fewer commercials, and the quality has improved a lot since the early days of online offerings. Lately, I heard that NBC would be revamping their online video player to better compete with ABC's. I've used both, and NBC's is a sad caricature of ABC's. Only a few shows are available (not including The Office, which is unforgivable), and the audio and video quality are terrible.

ABC's player, on the other hand, has many more shows plus some online exclusives. The video starts almost immediately, and although it is blurry at first, it transitions smoothly to a very sharp, large image after a few seconds. You quickly forget that the video is streaming at all.

There's only one problem with ABC's player. After every commercial break, you have to click a link to start the next segment. This is aggravating… haven't remote controls been around, oh, I don't know, since I was born? I'm lazy - once I get comfortable, I don't want to get up, dammit. Please don't make me click something every five minutes.

So it was good to hear about NBC stepping up to the plate - I'd like to see what they come up with. But this morning I see that ABC is (to mercilessly mix sports and gambling metaphors) upping the ante. They'll be streaming their shows in high def. That's a bold move, but it's pretty exciting… as long as they don't add more commercials, which is why I watch TV on the Internet to begin with. NBC will probably have to meet the challenge too… who knew providing free TV over the Internet could be so competitive?

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 17th, 2007 at 10:10 am and is filed under Entertainment and culture, Science and technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.