Sad but true. Tonight is the season finale for Lost, and what a season it has been. But that’s not important right now. What is important is what ABC is doing to make their online viewing experience as good as - maybe even better than - TV.

Last week, ABC announced their new video player for the fall, powered by Move Networks, as is their current version. While we’re eager to get a crack at the beta player (hint hint, ABC.com PR folks), their current player is currently the king of the hill.

So before you sit back tonight for the two-hour finale, catch up on anything you’ve missed (minus the pop-up-video-style Cliff’s Notes on the repeats on TV) on the ABC.com site. They’re leveraging a powerful combination of Move Networks content delivery with on2 Technology’s VP7 codec.

At the Streaming Media East conference last week, I had the chance to spend some time with Eero Kaikkonen, CMO of on2. on2 acquired Hantro Products, a video compression software and solutions company, in May of last year. Eero and I spoke at length about codecs and the user experience, where convergence is headed, and the features and functionality that mobile devices will need before they hit their true tipping point. Phones, digital cameras and digital media devices (read: iPods and Zunes) will all need high quality audio and video capture capabilities, plus built in hardware encoding and decoding, so you can plug your iPhone into a 50″ TV and enjoy a high quality, lean-back experience. According to Eero, we’re still a good 2-3 years away before we start to see that technology make its way into consumers’ hands.

So while you wait, plug in your laptop or media center PC to your TV, fire up the ABC.com player, and enjoy the highest quality streaming video available right now. And remember, those few pre-rolls and mid-rolls make it all possible. So don’t forget to thank those advertisers. There’s probably only one for the whole show, so we’re not asking for much.

Tags: , abc.com, Move Networks, on2

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 2:07 pm and is filed under CDNs, Content, Convergence, Streaming, Web 2.0, WebTV, technology. 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.