It was just over a year ago that ABC started exerimenting with offering some of their shows to viewers via the internet.  The idea being that one could catch up on a show they missed, or were never able to watch without pirating it.  I loved the idea from the get go.   You get to watch the same show with fewer commercials at a time and place that is convenient to you, and it remains free just as it would if you were watching it on the actual tv.  Now of course everthing has its limitations, but being someone who loves to try out new services like this (and someone who needed to catch up on her ALias) I jumped in with both feet.

I liked the idea from the get go, my only problem was that my computer at the time was getting old and couldn’t handle it. It never picked up a stong enough wifi signal and watching video on that machine was just horible.

Anyway I persevered. The ABC experience was an ok first start. The experience a year ago is very similar except now it requires installing their player which is limited to windows and macs. I have been using Ubuntu for the past few months or so and was very disappointed to find this out. So far as I know ABC is currently the only network doing it this way. Although I think NBC is going to be doing similar.
So I will continue with the review using the current version. When you launch the player it opens a new window with a list of the shows available. They actually just updated the look of this recently. You click a show you want to watch and the episodes available show up. Click the episode you want and it begins after a pretty brief commercial. Usually you get 3 to 6 commercials depending on the length of the show.
It used to be that you couldn’t really change the size of the window it played in. I like to do this so that I can have it going in one corner and the still be working on other stuff. Currently you have the option of mini, regular and full screen.
there are two things that I annoy meabout abc’s service (besides the fact that its not linux friendly). First, when when the commercial comes on it maximizes the window to play its commercial. When it goes back to the show, it doesn’t minimize back to the location it was last docked. Its not the end of the world, but it annoys me none the less.
The second thing is that while a comercial plays, there is a little countdown telling you how long until the show continues. However when that countdown ends you have to click a button to start the show again instead of it just starting back up. This requires that you attend to it instead of it just taking care of itself. And sometimes the commercials are tricky. Sometimes they are longer than the countdown so you sit through this commercial out of habit when you could have been watching your show that much sooner.
I applaud ABC for being the first major network to take the leap faith and trust that this would work. I am so glad that they kept with it. What I wish they would change would be to just have the comercial play in what ever size window the person chose to watch the show in. Also I wish they would just play the comercial and not make us have to click to continue. If we are interested in the sponsers products we will seek them out in a different window or after the show. Additionally I would love it if the viewer could resize the window that we watch the show in the what ever size we wanted. And of course offer the rest of your shows. There are shows that I have gotten hooked on on account of being able to watch them online. There are shows that I know I like but always miss due to things I am doing while not in front of the tv and they are not available online. If I could watch any primetime show I wanted in my studio when I was arting I would be a very happy camper. I would watch them all because I can’t stand silence and love tv.