ABC.com's free online HD player is live

ABC.com's long awaited free "HD" player is finally available on its website, delivering 720p video at 24 fps. Users with a fast PC and at least a 2 Mbps connection can take a look right now, at one episode each of Lost, Desperate Housewives, Ugly Betty or Grey's Anatomy. The streaming technology adjusts to available bandwidth, on a 6Mbps cable connection, it kept the HD light in the lower right hand corner lit and high quality video streaming, however if bandwidth drops it can become a pixely mess in a hurry. Check after the break for a few more screens of the player and let us know how its working out for you so far. Good enough that you won't worry about DVR'ing HDTV episodes of Lost anymore, or not quite ready for prime time viewing?

[Via LostRemote]

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 25th 2007 2:16PM]

It looks great! Some small pixelation, but overall, some of the best streaming I've seen! Kudos to ABC!

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 25th 2007 2:18PM]

I am on a 40 megabit connection and it won't even get close to HD on that little meter. what a piece of garbage. if you are promoting somehting in HD, give me the HD, give me the option to wait a few minutes and buffer the HD as opposed to watching horribly pixelated full screen video.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 25th 2007 2:26PM]

Wow, something must be wrong Hayes. I'm on a crappy DSL 2 MB connection, and mine indicates HD, looks great...

- Jon

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 25th 2007 2:57PM]

yeah, this is incredibly frustrating, i wonder if MSU (where I am) has some ports throttled or something, if this isn't coming through port 80.

oh well, i will try again later. i do wish you had the option to just buffer the HD no matter what.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 25th 2007 3:42PM]

Pretty sweet. Anybody know if there's a way to stream this to my HDTV via xbox 360? My pc is in the office so an hdmi connection isn't possible.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 25th 2007 7:31PM]

Video looks great and the HD light stays lit for me (on FiOS in central MD) but the sound is choppy and desynched... Probably an issue with my aging desktop. Video is not nearly as good as an HD channel but an acceptable backup if I forget to DVR something.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 26th 2007 12:11AM]

unsurprisingly, only for US viewers. anyone knows a way to circumvent this?

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 26th 2007 10:28AM]

US proxy that's fast enough to stream the HD to you, so no, not really.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 26th 2007 1:05AM]

Looks okay for a launch! I'm playing this on my Samsung 40" 1080P connected to my media center PC. Hit the F11 for full screen IE and can detect some pixelization. I'm on Cablevison @ 10MBPS so the 'HD' light is steady.

I'm surprised how some people b**ch and moan about quality. I remember the very first streaming video from RealNetworks @ 56k and this is a leap above. It does need work but not that much.

I won't be using this though, I have HD cable so I get HD ABC anyway. Just curious so had to try it out. I'd bet in 5 years, the evolution of this will get exponential and then I might just have to cancel my cable subscription :D

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 26th 2007 1:56AM]

Nice... even works in Vista... definately the best online streaming from any channel i've seen...

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 26th 2007 11:41AM]

I love ABC now. The other network streams are total garbage. CBS is borderline unwatchably laggy. ABC has been the best since the beginning and I can't wait until next season. Oh, if you use firefox you probably want to install the "full-screen" addon because firefox doesn't do full screen as well as it could.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 26th 2007 11:13PM]

I cant get the player to install in Mac OS X 10.4.10 in any browser.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 30th 2007 11:02PM]

Lame, no Linux support. Though having to install an application is even more lame.