Trial and Error

Fox.com Fares Well, Not Great

April 11, 2007 12:39 AM

Since we spent time checking out CBS’s full-episode streaming yesterday it only seems fair now to peruse the competition.

So, I stop by Fox.com. Immediately, a short clip from “Prison Break” plays. I search around that general vicinity, looking for a link to the full episode. But the full episode feature – Fox on Demand – is housed a little lower on the main page.

Once I spot “Fox on Demand” I click on that link, taking me to myspace.com/Fox. Hmm, are all of Fox’s full episodes stored on MySpace? Who gets credit for the stream – MySpace.com or Fox.com?

In any case, I click on “24” and the page does look sharp and is chock full of surrounding features like forums and links to friends as well as a list of episodes.

I toggle through the different features – pause, rewind and my new favorite feature to test, the scroll bar. They work well for the most part, but I do encounter some minor buffering when I move the scroll bar.

It’s interesting to see how each site and network lays out the features just a little differently. I try the expanded screen size option, but when you do that, you lose quick access to the fast forward and pause buttons. I contend that lickety-split access to pause, minimize and mute are some of the most important features in any form of online video.