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ABC Launches Full Episode Streaming

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the well-thats-something-anyway dept.

Cjattwood writes "ABC.com has launched their free online episode streaming service earlier today. Shows available include Lost and Alias among others, and are available to watch for free, albeit with ads and commercials. It works pretty well so far, although no Linux support yet as it requires Flash 8." The first episode of Lost on there is a clip show. You can skip around to a segment of the show, but are forced through a commercial before you play. The quality is approximately what you would expect from flash video.

5 of 261 comments (clear)

  1. Re:US only by temojen · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm sure you can find a torrent link to get them in HD without the commercials.

  2. CmdrTaco Or Captain Obvious? by ObligatoryUserName · · Score: 4, Informative

    The submitted text:
    "it requires Flash 8"

    Cmdr Taco's value-add comment:
    "The quality is approximately what you would expect from flash video."

    It's actually exactly what you'd expect from Flash video, because it is Flash video. That being said, what quality would you expect? I bet it differs quite a bit based on the datarate you encode it at... Perhaps he's saying it's similar in quality to YouTube or Google Video? (We only give you a hard time because we imagine that you have one of the best jobs in the world, so don't take it personally, Taco.)

    For people asking about Linux versions of Flash 8 - they've had a separate team working on Flash 9 for quite a while and it's set to be released later this year (it includes significant changes for performance improvement, was in development to some extent in parallel with Flash 8) - and from what I understand as a casual obsverver they're going to release a Flash 9 player for Linux and just skip 8 entirely. This is in part because it's only relativly recently that they've added dedicated Linux staff, and in part beacuse this is the fastest switch between versions (8 to 9) that I can recall, anyway.

      The hope is that Linux release will be simultaneous with the Mac/Windows launch, but I don't know if anyone's commited to that yet - or if it's just idle hope.

  3. Re:US only by salpe · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can use a United States proxy from http://www.proxy4free.com/page1.html. (Example Firefox: Tools -> Options -> Conection Settings-> Manual Proxy Config. -> HTTP: 216.12.200.106 Port: 3128) I'm from Spain and I had tested with Lost (just episode 220 available) and Alias (Episodes 501-512) with no problems

  4. Re:Only for U.S. and notes... by TubeSteak · · Score: 4, Informative

    You should be able to play Flash Video files fullscreen in Media Player Classic with ffdshow.

    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
  5. Re:Monster bandwidth or network voodoo? by bizard · · Score: 4, Informative
    Actually, that is just a good example of people being very sloppy with their notation. You are correct in your calculations, but hide the units in GBps...GigaBYTES per second. Multiplying your number by 8 results in 48Gbps...GigaBits, which is far beyond even the fattest pipe between NY and Chicago on that map (at 10Gbps).

    Additionally, you are assuming that people would all watch at discreet intervals without overlapping too much and that nobody else would be using the Internet for any other purpose. In reality, there will already be a high traffic load and people will want the video in clumps. It is why people like Apple are offering downloadable video and not streaming. That way if it takes 2 hours to download a 1 hour show, at least you didn't have to sit through all of the pauses

    Finally, a 45 minute show off of iTunes currently runs about 200MB at about 670Kbps. That 10Gb pipe would max out at far fewer than 20,000 streams.