Wednesday, October 17, 2007

CBS changes their player to CBSux

Ah, what a cleaver headline. Too bad it is true.

It had been a couple of weeks since I had visited CBS’s innertube site to see Kid Nation, so the other night I decided to catch up on the episodes I had missed. When I arrived at the site, I noticed that they had totally changed the underlying technology of their web player. How did I know this? For one, the show was actually showing up on my TV screen. You might remember my post from a couple of weeks ago how I have Windows Media Edition version of XP, and it is hooked up to my TV. Sometimes, for unknown reasons, the video will not show up on the TV screen, even though you can see it on the computer monitor. You might also remember from that post how I was able to use Real Player to view Kid Nation. While the quality of the video was just ok, the streaming experience was most satisfying- smooth and with no pauses. I HATE pauses.

This however is no longer the case. Now, the video does show up on my TV, but the streaming experience is totally horrible, and you can’t watch it using Real Player anymore. I mean the steaming was soooo bad, I could not even watch it. It just stutters along and is very jerky. I think they adopted the crappy NBC technology instead of the killer ABC technology, but whatever. I tried everything. Pauseing so the stream could catch up, switching to Explorer, shutting down and re booting… Nothing was working!

I just wanted to watch some Kid Nation. So, what is a web TV watcher to do?

Joost to the rescue! Yes, I went on the Joost guide page and searched for CBS. Low and behold, they had the latest episode of Kid Nation on their CBS channel. I fired it up and was treated to a very good night of watching Kid Nation! The downfall is that they only have the latest episode on their channel, so I have to keep on the ball.

The upside of the CBS channel on Joost? The Price is Right! Yeah, that is cool. I did not watch it, but now that I know it is there, I will be.

Oh, so how was this week’s Kid Nation? It was pretty good, even if the topic was religion. That show is totally weird anyway, I mean where are the showers? Do the kids actually take showers? Or wash their clothes? I know I would not do either at that age unless I was forced by the parental unit. How long until the clothes get so stinky and stiff that there is a rebellion? Or, maybe, they have staff that does these things for the kids off screen. Whatever, I still like the show. If you have not seen it (and you have a faster connection than I do), then go check it out on the CBS Innertube page. If nothing else, the show will stimulate discussion in your house.

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