Written by Chris Albrecht
Posted Sunday, November 11, 2007 at 6:32 PM PT

 

NBC Direct: Don’t Bother

NBC launched its NBC Direct beta over the weekend. The service allows you to download NBC shows to your computer and view them for 48 hours, but compared with the rather elegant (though still limited) Hulu — which is part-owned by NBC — NBC Direct is an overly complicated mess.

First, it’s a separate download client that’s Windows-, Internet Explorer- and Windows Media Player-only. AOL dropped its Hi-Q service, which required a download, after low adoption. Rather than learn from history, NBC appears doomed to repeat it. It could just be the machine I was using, but the install process was long — it took more than 10 minutes just to get the software onto my computer.

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NBC Direct offers only a few shows: 30 Rock, Bionic Woman, Friday Night Lights, Life and The Office. According to NBC, the shows available at any given time will expire seven days after being posted. So if you download one on the sixth day, you only get 24 hours to watch it before it disappears.

You can begin viewing a show while it’s still being downloaded, though when I tried to watch 30 Rock this way, it started, played through the opening credits and then abruptly went back to the beginning (where I had to sit through the pre-roll ad again).

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I will say that the full-screen video looked fine, if a little grainy, with no stutters or stops or interruptions. The fast-forward and rewind buttons were finicky — working well sometimes, not working at all others.

The video “management” feature seems not even half-baked. Clicking on the icon drops you off back on the main web page where you can choose to subscribe. But all it says is “subscription change confirmed.”

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And since this is NBC (GE), it’s chock-full of ads. There’s a pre-roll before the start of every program, then 15-second spots where there would normally be regular TV commercial breaks — which just reinforces the feeling that NBC is treating this as re-purposed TV. There are no embeds and no way to share. NBC says it will add more features, including cast and crew info, as well as commentaries and viewer reviews. It’s hard to muster a yawn.

In short, there is nothing user-friendly at all about this incarnation of NBC Direct and you should avoid it like the plague (or like season two of Heroes — which isn’t available on NBC Direct anyway). I could see it maybe being useful if I was flying somewhere and didn’t like any of films in my Netflix stack — maybe. But that’s hardly a reason to try it.

Sure, it’s in beta, but so was Hulu, and that service offers the same content plus a lot more, not to mention a much better user experience. Heck, NBC.com offers a better experience without any hassle. Right now the quality is not worth the effort, and with only NBC shows ever being available on here, I can’t imagine a time when that limited amount of content would be worth a separate download. Stick with streaming.

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Topic: Networks & Studios

Comments (9)

  • Any insight as to why NBC is rolling this out WITH Hulu?
    Seems like they are just flailing around trying anything..or is that the strategy? :p

    GearsofWar — 9:17 PM on November 11, 2007 Reply

  • their strategy is half baked is what it is.

    the experience of this service is the worst. after a 20+ minute install the shows would not even download. i have no desire to go back and try again. torrents are two clicks and it starts, done in 10 min. i could download and watch roughly 150 torrents with the same effort it required to watch zero shows on nbc direct.

    buster — 9:47 PM on November 11, 2007 Reply

  • NBC fails at online video. Again.

    Mike Abundo — 10:34 PM on November 11, 2007 Reply

  • I tried it and I hate it compared to there streaming options at plain old NBC.com.

    persch5 — 4:22 AM on November 12, 2007 Reply

  • So this is ad supported Peer Impact who had many of the same shows NBC Direct has and NBC could of just acquired that service with better video quality and faster progressive playback .Wurld Media Peer Impact’s parent company was sold to Roo for about 5 million earlier this year .

    Matt Hendry — 4:34 AM on November 12, 2007 Reply

  • “Windows-, Internet Explorer- and Windows Media Player-only.”

    What a shock, with that big “MS” hanging over NBC. Even General Electrc says “How high?” when the Redmond Beast says “Jump.”

    Fred Tourette — 5:09 AM on November 12, 2007 Reply

  • lol…NBC Direct? This is laughable, if we want to watch NBC shows we can just go to Youtube or Cavenger.com

    Mark — 6:06 AM on November 12, 2007 Reply

  • This piece of garbage also installs a process that runs on your PC even when not using NBC Direct. Its called MediaAgent and when I looked at it for awhile in the taskmanager it was using 60 megs of ram and would somtimes even eat CPU cycles without even being used.

    Needless to say I deleted this garbage software right away

    Joe — 4:56 AM on November 20, 2007 Reply

  • It’s still a pile of junk with the same problems.

    Bill — 8:31 PM on December 11, 2008 Reply

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