Those of you who are keen to watch Lost or Grey’s Anatomy know ABC has been kind. For over a year now, ABC has let users stream episodes of all the hit primetime shows for free via a flash-based video player. Though it’s fantastic, a lot of users probably wanted to start jumping on the HD-bandwagon. ABC listened and is now offering users a beta of its video service in HD.
Got a 1024×768 resolution or higher? Broadband? OK then. Normally you’d just fire up a web player and sink into your chair, but ABC requires you to install a player from Move Networks. Sorry ABC, but myself and pretty much every Mac user just isn’t down with the third-party software. Call us when you figure out how to do it over a web browser. In the meantime, those of you who are qualified can check the beta out here.
ABC.com Launches HD Streaming (in Beta) [Business 2.0]
I agree how lame. There is no reason to force a 3rd party movie viewer on anyone unless you intend to:
1. Enhance the security.
2. Track the viewers habits.
3. Dump tons of ads onto the users machine.
But Dude…What is even lamer is to be a technology writer who insists on using a computer that can’t do what 90% of the computers in the workd do.
Oh well, I am qualified, so maybe I’ll try the POS ABC movie viewer to see if my guesses are right.
Thats what you get for using Macs.
Vince,
Did you even try this? All it does is update the browser plugin–which you needed to do in ABC’s previous version–before the new HD feature was enabled. It took all of 15 seconds, and then your ready to watch–IN THE BROWSER. I noticed no difference between this and the previous version, except I could now watch HD. And it looked good, all on a MacBook.
No “3rd party apps” and it works great on a Mac. Not to be harsh, Vince, but you might actually want to try something before you write about it.