NBC Direct Beta

NBC Universal has been going all out creating new ways to get their content online with Hulu.com, NBC.com and now NBC Direct. I have been fortunate enough to be a beta tester for these new applications. While NBC plans to use many platforms to make their content available including iTunes, the move by NBC is essentially driven by the desire to cut out the middle man and deal directly with the viewer. By the end of the year, NBC Universal will be hitting online consumers from every direction.

NBC Direct allows you do download an entire show to your computer. Finally, portable no cost content from the networks has arrived. (It is important to note that NBC does not require you to give any personal data or even an email address. Kudos to them for figuring this out.)

Once you start to view a show, you have 48 hours to view it as many times as you want. After that the video will expire. All videos in the “select a video” are available for 7 days. After that they will expire regardless of when the show was downloaded or renewed. All of these rules sound absurd? Well they are. NBC is trying to find that fine line between controlling the rights and mass media online distribution.

They have created what amounts to Tivo-To-Go but have attached strings to it. 48 hours seems a little much but we all know that will change shortly.

Based on early reports, NBC used three development companies to create this application. ExtendMedia did the interface, YuMe sells the ads and Pando Networks is doing the P2P distribution.

Technical issues. NBC Direct uses Windows Media Player 11 so you are always greeted with a link to upgrade to the lasted security or DRM fix from outside of the player. Hopefully this will be resolved once beta development is over.

Now for the breakdown of the player:

• No timeline in the player unless you go full screen. Very odd oversight.
• Intrusive ads. NBC figured it out in Hulu.com so why put pre rolls in portable content?
• Decent video quality. VCR quality playback in the video. Very impressive.
• No social aspect. Hulu.com has a number of web 2.0 apps in it so why are they all left out here?
• No small portable video player. Maybe NBC thinks that most users will want to view this on a plane or in a car. The flexibility for portable media to be just that seems to have been overlooked here.
• Two tabs – Select a video and My videos. Nice straight forward information panels.
• Small Ad banner. The player has a small ad banner in the lower left that oddly enough doesn’t work when you click on it.
• Nice clean player design. All of the controls are straight forward and you don’t have to go digging just to start a show.
• Does not work in FireFox

All in all NBC Direct addresses the video on the go market. This is a growing segment in the industry. Even with all of the minor glitches and insulting regulations, it is good to see a network moving in this direction. NBC has made another great leap forward with Hulu.com. Once they combine the two, NBC will be the leader in the race for online viewership.