Monday night I had a DVR crisis. A new episode of Two and a Half Men, the launch of Rules of Engagement, and “24″ were all on, and I had yet to cancel recording Heroes (a time filler while reruns of other shows aired.) So I missed “24.” Damnit.

So I turned to the web to catch up. I have watched other networks’ offerings before, and been brutally disappointed, as you can read in previous posts. But this time was different.

Watching “24″ on Fox’s official platform, I was amazed at the quality of the stream. Even at full screen, there was absolutely ZERO pixelation and not one break in the stream. In a complete surprise, I fully enjoyed watching an hour of television on my computer. Fox had one intro pre-roll ad and a companion unit which goes away when you switch to full screen mode.

As I learned this morning from some co-workers, the quality comes from Fox’s implementation of Move Network’s technology.

After realizing how high the quality was compared to my previous experiences with NBC’s Rewind offering, I decided to check back with NBC to see if there really was a difference. And there is. Screenshots to follow. here.

Additionally, NBC’s Rewind stopped to buffer on a number of occasions, despite breaking the show up into 5 minute segments. Also, a few times it seemed that NBC was trying to serve a mid-roll ad that would start for about 1 second, and then resume the programming. Maybe a delayed frequency cap? I can’t be sure.

While I appreciate all of the networks’ contributions to the online video world, and making it easier to catch up on missed shows, my hat is off to Fox for understanding the importance of the user experience and truly delivering.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 at 2:57 pm and is filed under Streaming, WebTV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.