Lab Exercise 7

Streaming Video Players
The Purpose of this Exercise is to evaluate several different video streaming websites on the Internet. The Evaluation will include YouTube, Hulu, and Veoh. To begin I will show a Trailer for The Karate Kid on each website, then I will also show a few other videos.

YouTube
YouTube is a very popular video sharing site which was first introduced by sharing videos with other end users. The site now hosts millions of videos with new content being uploaded every hour all over the world.

The Karate Kid - Trailer for the new 2010 movie



Net Neutrality - A video offering an opinion on what the principles of video neutrality is and the ways in which it will affect internet culture.



Hulu
Hulu is a popular streaming site which showcases several popular TV shows. This is a way for networks to stream their content over the web to more consumers. Popular among college students and other young people who don't have a normal TV or others who do not like to succumb to TV schedules but still haven't invested in digital recording equipment, Hulu has experienced an explosion in popularity.

The Karate Kid - Same trailer for the 2010 movie



Net Neutrality - A viewpoint on Net Neutrality from the popular Attack of the Show on G4 Tech TV



Veoh
Veoh is a video streaming website which hosts lots of full length broadcast television shows for view at anytime on it's website.

The Karate Kid - Same trailer for the 2010 movie


Watch Karate Kid Trailer in Entertainment | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Other Video - For the last video we were required to post a video about someone different from ourselves. So I decided to post this video about the Mormon Family. I am not Mormon but have some Mormon friends and I thought this would be the best way to examine diversity.


Watch Mormon Church and Family in News | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Summary
My thoughts on the three video streaming websites are somewhat mixed. YouTube has always been a favorite of mine even if the quality of the videos is not the best in the world. Quality is increasing which is a good thing. However the number of ads on YouTube has also gone up.

Hulu, has always been commercial. Their selection is not as wide as I would like but I still enjoying using the service. The ads there are a minimal distraction at least and the quality of the videos is very high.

Veoh, I had not used before. It looks like they have lots of videos. But the site is also very confusing and congested. There is no simple indexing system. The website also caused my browser to freeze up on multiple occasions. This is a problem and I probably won't use the site again because of that.

In the end I believe that it is good that there is a healthy level of competition amongst bide streaming and hosting sites. This leads to advancements in technology and also better choices and options to the consumer.

However, the consumer should also still be wary. All three of these video sites rely on one companies technology. That company is Adobe. And that technology is Flash software which runs all three of the sites.


Addendum I: Additional Web Sites
As an addendum to the the three previously listed websites, I have also enclosed clips from the other sites from the revised grading rubric on this assignment.

Joost
A video site which uses P2PTV to generate and distribute content. Currently in a public Beta



Anivide
Anivide doesn't actually host videos, instead it links to sites that do like YouTube

Fancast
Another video streaming site which hosts full length TV shows and movies. Similar to Hulu in business model.



Final Thoughts:
These are just a few more additions to the previously mentioned web streaming sites. Quality varies with both Joost and Fancast being on par with Hulu which is better than YouTube. And once again all of these use Adobe Flash to power their video playback engines.


Addendum II: Web Browser Analysis

All three web browsers seemed to work about the same. Internet Explorer 8 felt a little bit cumbersome to use merely because I don't use it often. It's not my browser of choice. But it was able to playback all of the media with no problems.

Google Chrome is my browser of choice and it worked well. I like the streamlined usage of the browser in its current state. Chrome had some problems with Joost however. Chrome didn't want to access Joost because of some Adobe Flash security settings.

Mozilla Firefox is the old mainstay of browsers and easily my number two choice. While not as streamlined as Google Chrome, Firefox is still elegant and efficient. It also worked well with all of the sites except Veoh. Veoh caused the browser to freeze up a few times.

All three of these modern browsers work in a very similar manner. I believe that this competition between browsers is a good thing because it gives the consumers choices and fosters innovation in web browsing technologies.