I hate sites that deliver video content by streaming it. As soon as I see the word “buffering”, I close the browser window and do something else.
Streaming is straight-up bad technology. Let us download the files, already.
(I have always thought this, but post about it today because I discovered Cory agrees with me.)
7 thoughts on “Streaming Video”
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It might be bad technology, but it’s good advertising. You have no choice to see the content (unless you close the browser) and you can’t download it to “own” it…
I hate advertising on principle anyway, but if “you can’t download it if you like it and you can’t avoid it if you hate it” = “good advertising” then I hate it even more. Bill Hicks was right:
Ooh my comment is “held for approval”!
I APPROVE OF PEARCE’S COMMENT*
* does not indicate approval of Pearce’s comment
“Posting youtube link to blog complaining about streaming video” == IRONY
P.S. Alligator: If you use Firefox, install the Flashblock extension. Reclaim the web!
John: actually, YouTube is the deliberate counterpoint to what I’m talking about. YouTube is technically streaming, but of a different sort, so that you don’t get the endless dropouts and fails and “buffering” messages that live streaming gives. I don’t know the word for this. (A quick google only turns up this: “Youtube isn’t streaming in the classic, traditional sense of the word; a finite amount of data arrives at a variable rate, and not in fixed, “streaming” kbps”, http://fiat.cybercatholics.com/?p=860 )
Its a usability thing – I hate video streaming where it doesn’t give the user control over the experience in the way YouTube does. The bad kind is when you want to pause or back up the video, and you get a “buffering” message while it requests a new stream of data. Most annoying instance, where the datastream doesn’t keep up with the playing of the video, but you can’t pause or hold the video to wait until it’s buffered enough. Usability HELL.
John: You can download Youtube video. Not directly from the site, but it took me about 2 minutes of googling to find out how to do it.
So 8=====D to your irony.