Hey Streaming Vid Guys

Good to know that we're not alone here in the colleges with spotty video streaming quality. Major League Baseball has caused a stir by deleting a bunch of comment posts about their struggles, but for me the real takeaway is down the story:

Some subscribers have also encountered what MLB describes as a “weird black screen” upon starting up the video player. “This one is a bit scary. We think it is related to pre-roll advertisements. That has been removed. We will be monitoring this one closely,” Sunday’s post read. Other problems have included “spotty” access to some archived games, as well as audio issues.

Were they watching our video this fall? We had some of those exact problems. Most colleges are still in the Windows Media Encoder world, but some have migrated to Flash. MLB started last fall in Silverlight, and moved to Flash for this year -- but to no avail as they're struggling to get either one to be locked-down reliable in the streaming mode.

Two side thoughts -- first, this is a Mac story, and hey they're a great platform but there's something not quite right when they try to take streaming media from the WME world (anytime you need a second program like Flip For Mac to see the stuff in your browser, you're just asking for compatability troubles). Second, while Hulu, et. al., have VOD locked down, streaming at the high quality level we now want is still emerging tech -- sorry, it is. You better have the right connection, the right equipment, the right software or there will be hell to pay on the user end.

Soon, let's hope very soon, we will be at a point where it's like TV -- plug cable into set-top box and go -- but that will require something the internet loathes: a single, lowest common denominator standard. That's a human variable that no amount of computer engineering can overcome.