I watch many more videos online in the new gig than I used to. More likely than not, the videos I want to watch are trapped in wonky, inline pages that simulate TVs or something else weird.
In both cases, you have to use the weird interfaces to view the streaming video. You can't download it, and there doesn't seem to be a podcast feed available. More importantly, there aren't vibrant comments and incoming link communities like you'd see on YouTube.
More Standard, Less Wonky
Which brings up the quick idea: why not start mirroring these videos on YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo! Video, or elsewhere? Sure, you guys all want to put ads in there, no problem, just put them in there: people may fast forward through them, but so what? More people will view the video and you'll become more relevant.
YouTube is a wonky interface of it's own, but at least it's more standard than individual publishing/media houses interfaces. Ideally, the publishers would just provide the MP3 versions of the videos as a podcast, but I'm way too jaundiced in this area to think that'll ever happen.
The Dread WMV
Which brings up another multi-media sore spot: what is the deal with WMV? I mean, how weird can you get? MP3 is a perfectly fine format that works everywhere. Meaning, it's a great format if you're trying to win over as many people as possible. For sure, because of the sheer dominance of the Windows platform, there are a lot of WMVs floating around, but, come on? What's the deal?
The only thing worse than WMV's, of course, are Apple's own format, AAC. One could argue that Apple's current success is predicated on their ability to lace their iTunes Music Store sales with DRM. One day, the market will wake up and realize the scam hidden in DRM'ed formats: you're not buying music anymore like when you bought you a CD, tape, or record, you're just renting it until the music-lord wants to up the rent.
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