ABC.com goes HD, sort of
Ok, so it may not exactly be HD quality video but as compared to what video on ABC.com used to look like, it's pretty darn close. ABC recently re-launched the video player on their website giving the video overall a much better look and getting rid on that nasty freezing and jerking feature that used to be present when you tried to watch full-length programming on the site.
Unlike other network sites where the video is Flash based ABC has decided to use technology from Move Networks. While Flash is encoded at one bit rate, Move video is encoded at multipe bit rates at the same time. Broadcasting and Cable explains the difference by saying "While Flash streams video at a constant rate using the proprietary Flash Media Server, Move Networks streams its videos at an adaptive rate off commodity components on standard HTTP servers." The video quality you see is dependent on your CPU and available bandwidth allowing some computers to approach HD quality with their video. End result? Much better video quality and consistency for watching that Lost episode you missed.
[Via Broadcasting and Cable]
