Week One Blog Assignment The BBC

I often get my news from http://news.bbc.co.uk/, because BBC headlines show up on my Firefox toolbar. BBC headline stories are typically accompanied by a short video piece to further support the article.  Although I find BBC news articles to be well written, the streaming video content is suffering due to technical issues.  In my opinion, websites incorporating streaming media should load promptly or else viewers lose interest and move on elsewhere.  This is my biggest complaint regarding the BBC’s streaming video content: it loads too darn slow! After attending last weeks lecture, I realized that the BBC is using progressive download technology. It seems as though the BBC is trying to push too much data down the pipeline, and it takes my Internet connection quite awhile to assemble enough of the initial data packets to begin playing the video stream.  However once my computer receives the initial data packets from the BBC website, the progressive download plays fine from start to finish with no unbearable hiccups. I think the BBC news organization needs to adopt the New York Times approach to streaming video content, because it loads promptly and most of the video pieces are very well done!