Things I tripped over on my way to the internet

sds:

‘Cause their online video player sucks—big time. Perhaps they intended the interface and usability to be bulky and counter-intuitive. Or maybe they’ve just never actually seen Hulu to get an idea of how it should work. Some reasons why ABC’s player stinks:

• It requires a special plugin. It doesn’t just run on Flash, like Hulu.
• Much of the time the “player is unavailable” for no apparent reason. Other than from intentional removal, I’ve never had a video on Hulu not play.
• The ads are ridiculous. If you’re watching a show in full-screen and it breaks for an ad, ABC auto-toggles your browser out of full-screen to view the ad.
• During ads, ABC gives you a 30-sec countdown that runs with a blank screen for at least half the time. Then the ad starts, but you are allowed to click “continue” before the ad finishes because the 30 seconds are up. I’m sure ABC’s sponsors are excited that viewers have the option of catching only 75% of their commercials.
• Once, in the middle of a show, it started lagging and then I got an error that said something unexpected occurred and could not continue. So I clicked “okay” and guess what? It continued.

When I suddenly realized last night that we had a LOST episode to catch up on, my wife said, “Oh yeah! I knew there was a show we were forgetting” (besides Fringe and 24). The reason we forgot about LOST? It’s not on Hulu like everything else we watch.

Ditto. Every word.