Comments on: Comedy Central’s Video Player: So Bad it’s Funny

By: James

James — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 19:28:51 +0000

Now that Viacom has pulled The Daily Show and Colbert from Hulu - has their video player experience improved? NOOOOOO! I have to refresh the page and re-watch commercials at least once every time I try to watch an episode! . . . I call conspiracy. I don't think it's that Comedy Central CAN'T get it right - I think it's because they don't want to. The content is good enough that they figure they don't have to care about the online experience.

. . . I still watch. But I wish I could stop in protest. I just love me some Stewart and Colbert.

By: The Online Video Producer Blog

The Online Video Producer Blog — Tue, 26 May 2009 11:24:36 +0000

@ Silvia

The content companies like NBC, CBS, ABC, CC etc… are cracking down on international viewers in the hope of licensing the content in other countries. The problem is that idf no one buys the content for Australia you won’t have access to it anymore! More on : http://producer.tech-no-media.com/2009/05/unlike-hulu-video-podcasts-are.html

By: Liz Gannes

Liz Gannes — Thu, 21 May 2009 20:05:36 +0000

@DP81 - Some days it feels like you need a PhD just to watch this stuff.

By: DP81

DP81 — Thu, 21 May 2009 19:10:36 +0000

I completely agree with one caveat. I often hook up my computer to HD TV to watch Daily Show after the fact or for short clips. If you try to stream from CC site it looks awful on TV.

The obvious option is to simply go to Hulu, but CC is deceptive in that their Hulu "full episodes" do not contain the complete clip - at least not always. Example: the famous Cramer debate. The Hulu clips are cut. The only way to see the entire interview is on CC, which was obnoxious on a TV. I do not think this is a one time case, but I do not have any other top of mind examples. It might be interesting to call CC out on cutting their episodes on Hulu to force fans to go to their site if they want to see everything and then highlight video quality issue.

By: Liz Gannes

Liz Gannes — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:49:54 +0000

@ Silvia - That sucks! Do you remember when that happened and on what service? Seems like a bunch of stuff was restricted about three months ago.

By: Liz Gannes

Liz Gannes — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:47:36 +0000

@ Frank - Yes, the new Adobe Strobe and the Akamai Open Video stuff. But the content companies and video hosts will need to jump on that train.

By: Silvia

Silvia — Thu, 21 May 2009 12:03:28 +0000

I am more disappointed that the daily show recently stopped being viewable outside the US. It was a great time for a while where we were able to catch up with the latest shows on the web. I was even willing to accepted ads that were Australia-specific. But now, there's just a sad white message.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 21 May 2009 05:58:36 +0000

Well, they are embeddable, they're just not as good as hulu's or even fancasts.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 21 May 2009 05:57:27 +0000

Whenever I want to embed something I usually hit hulu and fancast first--sling's also pretty good too. But the network sites really need to figure it out and make a good player. Why do none of them have easy to use, embeddable player? The CC one is pretty bad.

By: Frank Sinton

Frank Sinton — Thu, 21 May 2009 05:38:42 +0000

Hi Liz, There are some efforts within the studios to standardize players (NBC, ABC, and CBS all have diverse sets of players across their business units / properties). Mainly, this is being driven by the need for standard ad delivery and tracking.

It would be great if some of the big video companies (YouTube?) driving an industry standard for a player and API to interact with it. Are you seeing any efforts to try and make this happen in a broad "industry" sense?