ABC TV’s new player rocks

You are sooo right. I was really impressed when I watched Lost last week using it.

Works on my Mac. Looks awesome.

Only on Windows... and only in the US, alas.

It would rock if ABC stopped disabling the player based upon my IP.

I have watched every episode of DayBreak on the ABC website and am surprised that it took them almost a whole season to wait to upgrade. It does cause a dilema for me. Will all the other alphabet's change their tunes and go full screen forcing me to get a Mac Mini insteat of paying 2 dollars an episode on Apple TV.

I am sure it rocks Robert but what about the UK viewers?

You guys get to see the BBC viewer that us UK citizens pay for through our license fee but we don't get to see ABC's commercially-paid for content.

Not fair.

Does not work with IE7 or Vista :(

Seems to be distributed by Move Networks, http://www.xlontech.com/.

Worked perfectly on the Mac with Firefox!

I'm pretty sure FOX uses the Move Networks player on their pages too.

It does look good, but something DivX has that the ABC Player doesn't, is the ability to take videos off the PC. Videos on DivX Stage6 are compatible with any DivX certified CE device.

Just a quick comment from the DivX perspective, thanks for the shoutout Robert!

JoeM: I'm using it on IE7 here. Will test shortly on Mac and Vista.

Tell me how to get it onto my TV. And what it looks like when it is there!

@David: Get your Notebook and connect it to your TV. If you are going at the AppleTV you pay for the content. This is free minus the five 30 second commercial you have to sit through. It looks great on my 52" LG DLP. Yes Robert, my DLP does look great. It is much better looking than the AppleTV that are on the Sony Bravias at the Apple store. But, ripping my DVD will look great on the AppleTV since the res is much better than what I can buy from iTunes.

Saw this player at abc just yesterday. You are right, amazingly Joost-like!

I've been using the ABC Player since fall '06, and I've alwyas loved it.. I find out they have anew player, and I'm pissed that I cant view it cause I have vista on all my machines. Cmon ABC! Your error message does not even make note that it doesnt work on Vista.

Word of mouth network? Talk about Johnny-Come-Lately's, six months or so. Maybe the massive regular advertising, big PR pushes and the hit shows that sent people to it, had more of a hook, ya think, maybe? If you guys ever lift yourselves offa the laptop screens, you won't need self-serving VCs to tell you the weather. :)

One thing I noticed awhile back, it doesn't seem to work with Vista. Bleech. Fix that ABC.

I work for Move Networks the company that provided the video player technology behind the new and improved ABC Full Episode experience.

We also are the video player provider for Fox Broadcasting and CW TV. Go to http://myspace.com/fox and also http://video.cwtv.com to view more content through the Move Video Player.

We currently support Win2000 - WinXP on IE 6.0-7.0 and also on the Mac 10.3 - 10.4 with Safari and Firefox with Vista support is coming in a matter of weeks.

Our video player technology uses On2 video codec.

Christopher, to be fair, I think they are referring to the "new and improved" ABC player. But, you do have a point, basically this is old news...

It wouldn't let me download, I have Vista Home Premium. :-(

Too bad it's only for viewers within the US :( Other countries watch TV, surprisingly!?

On2 rocks, always liked On2 TrueMotion VP7, beats H.264 & MPEG-4 and better fees, and even VP6.2 kicks. Great player too...Tosh, just fix Vista support and all is well. :)

Eh? "New and improved" ABC player? I guess it was so gradual that I didn't notice, the "old" May 2006ish one seemed great too.

http://weblogs.macromedia.com/md/archives/2006/...

Emerging options for online content distribution are sure to change how many "Old Media" companies like TV networks do business going forward.

Anyhow, I thought I would take this chance to pass along an opportunity to have input into the development of this space. If you qualify as someone who makes decisions about distributing content online, Mercer Management Consulting will pay you $100 to complete an online survey about new options and business models content distribution. Visit http://survey.mercermc.com/digitaldistribution to get more info and begin the survey.

The player needed some work so that it could run under Vista's "protected mode" security sandbox. AFAIK, all of the necessary changes have been made, and Vista should be supported soon. Since I am a fuddy-duddy, I won't be running anything outside my safe, secure "protected mode" sandbox, so I haven't been able to start using it yet.

Not really surprised, but it doesn't work at all on Vista. :(

This video player kicks ASS!

I hate television commercials and hate waiting for a specific show time, so I usually prefer to watch my favorite shows on DVD. But ABC has an almost painless compromise: about 10% of the commercials. They stream videos from their site through their new "player" apparently released at the beginning of April 2007, and archive each of the four most recent episodes of their currently running programs. (Older programs are available for immediate download for about $2 each.) The picture is superb and the sound quality is pretty good too. Leave regular television as soon as possible!

I used to watch ABC shows online until last week. My Mac is not installing the new player. I have a Power PC G4 running osX 10.4 and I'm trying to install the new player with Safari and Firefox and it doesn't install. It starts the installation process, fills up the blue bar but nothing happens :( it is very sad, I used to watch the shows in the little screen and it used to be perfect.
The worst part is that there isn't any where to get service or ask questions because not even that part works, once you send your comments the response is "this webstie is too busy to process your request"
I wish they will put up the old player again

When ABC offered both the old and the new players, this was great -- watch the high quality on supported platforms, regular everywhere else. This week, ABC dropped all links to the "old" player. The upshot is that now only Mac and Windows viewers using the correct browsers who are willing to install whatever excutables ABC wants onto their computers can watch *at all.* At least previously there was some nod towards cross platform compatibility -- something, I might point out, all the other networks that offer streaming video still have.

WOW....I have never seen a player produce this kind of Quality....Watch out Cable and Satelite!! This Company is showing the way to future Video delivery!!

Here is some really exciting news about the Move Networks player. Yes, it has been adopted by ABC and Fox, but it is also the player used by a company called Maxcast, www.maxcast.com. Maxcast allows individuals to upload and broadcast their content from their own Maxcast channel. So, upload your own videos and now broadcast it with the same high quality ABC and Fox are using! Look out YouTube! Maxcast will even digitise your old home videos and upload that content to your Maxcast account where you can easily edit, share and enjoy it. You can get your own Maxcast channel for FREE with 60 minutes of free broadcast minutes when you join Photomax for free at www.photosafe.com.au.

Claudia U.: I had the same problem attempting to install the plugin on a Mac -- little blue bar goes all the way across, but nothing happens. I wrote to ABC and Move Networks actually responded (!) within an hour (!!) with this helpful instruction:

"Please follow the directions below to check whether or not the player was
successfully installed.

- Click on Finder
- Select your account from the left-hand pane.
- Select Library from the right-hand pane.
- Select Internet Plug-ins from the right-hand pane.

There should be a file in this directory called 'Move-Media-Player.plugin'.

If you do not see the plugin, please download and run the file from
http://qmedia.xlontech.net/100513/support/qmpse... "

For whatever reason, the "normal" installer doesn't work, but when I downloaded this file and ran it directly on my Mac (and then rebooted my web browser), everything worked fine. I hope it works for you as well.

Scott, thanks so much for your message. My mac has had the same problem, and I never received a message back from ABC, but this solved it!

re: scott - that's what happened to me.. but I'm using 10.2 which abc.com says it's supports, but the plugin says that it's for 10.3 and higher.. ?

Thanks so much for the link Scott! I am on a Mac and have been trying forever to watch the videos. However, even after using the download link Scott provided, it still would not play in Firefox. The player would still tell me I did not have the plug-in, but then just kind of stalled out. BUT, I just tried opening ABC player in Safari and it works. So to those of you who it doesn't work for, try it in Safari!

I'm sorry but trying to even find a place to download this player is the single most irritating thing I have ever tried to do. I can't find where it is, have been to abc, cw, movenetworks, nowhere is there a simple DOWNLOAD NOW button that I can find. Completely infuriating, I can't believe the company doesn't have this on their own home page.

This has been the most frustrating computer experience of my life (and I've been a tech-savvy person since my early teens). I have been trying to install the plugin via the abc.com website a few times each week for months. I have had it install successfully 2 times. Yes, 2 times. But whenever I reboot and go back to abc.com after it has been installed, the site all of a sudden does not think I have the plugin (I do - I have the Move-Media-Player.plugin file described above), and it hangs on installation in both the latest version of Firefox and Safari. I have no idea why it tries to install after it has already installed. I have no idea why 1% of the time it installs correctly, and every other time it fails. I sent an email asking for help and got no reply. I am currently downloading the link provided by Scott at a whopping 1.2 KB/sec, fingers crossed.

What blows my mind is how hard it was to find mention of this problem online. This page is one of like 2 places I have found other people experiencing the same problems I have been having for months.

Fantastic customer service provided by this company.

Fellow mac users.... tried the Fox download for Move Networks and had the same result - blue line download progress line, then nothing. Clicked the "help" icon and they said "Please note that currently the Move Media Player isn't optimized for Safari 3. We expect to provide support for this browser in the future." Honestly!

Ater HOURS of following every instuction offered by ABC, Move Media and Move Network, I am still unable to get the chosen video. I have a HP Media Center PC. The site downloads, but when you make your choice of show to watch, the center screen "Loading..." never loads. I used to enjoy watching ABC shows on their last media player, but I am so frustrated with their lack of support (just "form letter" type of response), I won't recommend them (Move Network) to anyone in the industry (even though they cost the broadcaster less than other more reliable media players). Sadly, i understand Fox uses them, too...yuck!

Move Media Player = FAIL.

Too much crap involved in getting this plugin to work correctly on any browser. Obviously this is all about locking the media behind multiple layers of complexity to prevent direct downloading.

SO just like SONY's copy protection schemes, we can expect this system to be broken for about 30% of the people, about 60% of the time.

My installation was pretty painless (firefox 2.0.0.4, OSX 10.4.11), pending the usual google check to appease the instant fear that a plug-in was required & was legit. I found no screaming headlines. My only hope is that I do not have the earlier issue of reinstallation as above. But if it happens again it won't be any big thing...

Look guys, everybody has computer problems. Stop complaining and move on to something else after posting that its not worth your trouble. The ABC people will get the message that their media player is buggy and they need some sort of miracle codec that plays on everybody's machine, while protecting their investment from direct download. Do you have any idea how much they spent on production for these shows? Honestly I have no idea but it is probably a lot. & it shows. We love watching this. In fact they want us to watch it for free on their webpage. It builds brand (ABC) loyalty. More commercial views is good business. Most any web traffic is good traffic. They want it to work on everybody's computer. If you want a copy buy the DVD or pay, what was it for? $2 a download?

Be patient. Send enough original posts that it doesn't work and they will move to the next thing. There is no set standard for web media and youtube doesn't broadcast in HD. You are stuck with this.

BTW can anybody help me to fix my web permissions to allow a google map? I think I screwed it up somehow.... lol never mind, I'm moving on. Peace

ABC TV downloads Move Media Player totally broken!!!!!!
Exact same very frustrating problem as "Kbelle" - I have tried on multiple modern fully loaded up computers, follow all instructions, install all plug-ins, everything looks fine but then always gets stuck on the screen with "loading..." on it and absolutely no sign of any network traffic or any other progress. Looks like ABC invested a ton in doing this web site with all of their shows on it - *but* if all it does is make people waste time trying to use it and never getting any shows what good is it!??!!!

Foo Bar and others, try going to

http://movenetworks.com/support/renderer.html

and following the instructions. You may need to empty your browser cache, close and restart the browser, THEN try the site above. It fixed my problem.

Foo Bar

I was experiencing the same problem. Whenever I would try and access a show, all I would see is a loading screen. I tried disabling my Norton Security Suite while watching ABC shows and that did the trick!! You might give that a try.

I am working with an SEO client that has lots of videos for MOVE player. Are there any SEO tips associated with these? Do they have to be converted before submitting to YouTube and stuff like that?

HHey guys. Question: I'm currently using Windows XP and Firefox 3.0 but for some odd reason.. these sites do not allow me to download the ABC player. Can someone help me out?

I downloaded the movmedia software. When I try to watch ABC's Grey's Anatomy, it works for about a minute, then Internet Explorer intercedes and closes. What is going on?