Comments on: ABC and MTV making money with online video, but not much

By: abe

abe — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 07:50:00 +0000

If you hate “CLICK TO CONTINUE”, then go into SETTINGS at the top of the player and set it to not “CLICK TO CONTINUE”

By: Mikey

Mikey — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:18:42 +0000

<1% margins and a stack of press clippings is the new killing it

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:01:49 +0000

Mikey, LOL, I’m not sure they are even to the bridge yet. I also didn’t buy “it’s a really good business”. Since when are tiny profits on a gross margin basis really good businesses? “really good” is the new “it doesn’t suck horribly”

By: Mikey

Mikey — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:47:11 +0000

Albert Cheng is living in a fantasy world.

It’s as if I decided to walk from New York to LA and I got halfway across the George Washington Bridge and you called and asked how I was doing and I said:

“we have a way to go”

By: geekily

geekily — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:32:54 +0000

Heradite, I prefer Hulu’s player, as well. Is that really the reasoning behind ABC’s “click to continue” thing? It makes sense, but it’s kind of funny. I mean, I’m perfectly capable of pausing the video myself if I need to use the bathroom. (Unless ABC doesn’t have a pause function – I didn’t even notice; I only used it the one time.)

Hulu does seem to keep their videos up for much, much longer – for Chuck, their site says something about they’re able to provide the 5 most recent episodes, but in reality, they have the last 12 or something like that.

By: Julia

Julia — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:27:11 +0000

It’s not just a Firefox thing. I can’t even get the player to work on Firefox for me, so I use Safari, though it’s hit or miss if the video is going to load or not. Once it is loaded, the quality is at least as good as anything else (I’m not an HD fiend and can’t really tell the difference unless something is drastically worse in quality), but getting it up and running, and dealing with the commercials, makes me rate the player much lower than the other players.

Plus, ABC seems to keep episodes up a much shorter period of time than they are left up on Hulu by NBC or FOX.

By: Heradite

Heradite — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:26:03 +0000

Hulu has the best video player…

but ABC does put the continue thing in case you went to get a snack, or to the bathroom, or to check your e-mail.

By: geekily

geekily — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:23:13 +0000

The quality on ABC’s player is better than any other I’ve seen, but the player itself is so annoying that I can’t stand to use it – I don’t know if it’s a Firefox thing, but after every commercial, I had to get up and click “click to continue” for the episode to progress. Why wouldn’t I want to continue? Do they think viewers are walking away from the screen during that 30 second ad and feel that to be considerate, they should pause the video? I watch a lot of TV online, but like AniMatsuri said, you don’t have to put up with these little annoyance on real TV.

By: AniMatsuri

AniMatsuri — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:13:10 +0000

To be sure. Just streamed an episode of Castle on abc.com. Even at full size setting, the video I was looking at was a small screen and the audio either dropped out or wasn’t in sync with the video.

You don’t have to put up with stuff like that on regular TV.