ABC Launches New Video Player

ABC launched its new video player today, featuring updated navigation and full-screen viewing — but as we reported earlier this year, no full embeds. The player offers online HD streaming, which takes a second to kick in, but looks good once it gets going.

Disappointing is ABC’s reluctance to allow fully embeddable sharing of episodes. It takes a second to weed through the PR speak used in the press release, but here are the sharing options as announced (emphasis mine):

Content-sharing tools providing users with the ability to send and share video links from full episodes with others through email or by embedding links on other Web sites, blogs and social networks.

Here’s an example of a shared link.

ABC does have an embed player for short-form content such as webisodes, sneak peeks and interviews with stars. If it’s any consolation, video companies like Veoh don’t even get full embeds from the network (but Veoh does get paid for those links).