Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
A lot seems to be going on in the world of online video.
NBC and its affiliates have returned to iTunes, and brought quasi-HD quality with it. Welcome back to Eureka and Heroes, and in a much better quality than previous TV shows. ABC has also started rolling out shows in HD quality.
The move was paired with the release of iTunes 8, which hasn’t necessarily been a smooth upgrade when paired with the AppleTV. The syncing between iTunes and AppleTV has generated some problems, and you can only purchase HD TV shows on iTunes—they’re not available directly on the AppleTV.
Joost is now web-based rather than requiring a separate player. I’m trying it now, and the quality isn’t too bad; about what you would find with Hulu and other lower resolution videos. No HD-like quality yet, but hopefully in time.
The streaming is a little rough, but that could also be a problem along the pipe. One advantage Joost has over so many other online video services is that it provides content for people in most countries, not just the UK, or the US. Of course, we all don’t see the same content.
Still nothing yet from Roku as to when we can expect the additional content for the Roku player.
In the meantime, the first town to go all digital, Wilmington, North Caroline, has not imploded yet from the change, so there’s hope for the rest of the world. The local news stations I pick up using an HD tuner have started to man phone lines during news broadcasts in order to answer questions about the conversion. It’s still going to be interesting times when the switch is turned on.
