Welcome to my old blog, which I no longer maintain.

For details of my current professional services and activities see www.martingeddes.com.

July 31, 2005

Stream me up, Scotty

I'm trying to watch the spectacular launch videos of the Shuttle on the Nasa website. Seven crazy folk sat in the space-going equivalent of a 1978 Chevy Malibu strapped to a bomb with a wee nozzle at the bottom. (Yeah, they added a CD player and a iTrip, but it's still a flying '78 Malibu.) It's always going to make for a spectacle.

Unfortunately, NASA went for a "streaming" video experience. Indeed, a Windows Optimized one. Which means I can't just download the launch video and watch it. No, I have to sit through a thousand "buffering" messages and herky-jerky broken video. It's totally crap. Rewind and watch without the gaps? Nah, buffer, buffer, buffer.

Streaming is a totally cretinous concept for anything other than live events.

PS -- And people think MS is going to deliver a great IPTV experience? Pfffsst haw haw! All the codec experts in the world aren't going to help you if you don't focus on the basic user experience issues.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 10:33 AM
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