Making sense of the intersection between media, society and technology
Video online is one of the big growth areas on the web. When I was involved in setting up the BBC News website in 1997, video meant small, blurry images in Real Player.
10 years later, visitors to the BBC from outside the UK still have to put up with the same small video clips in either Real Player or Windows Media Player. Broadband quality video is only available to people in the UK.
But there are signs that this may change. The BBC is experimenting with embedded video in Flash on stories such as this one on the future of game icon Lara Croft, or this one on a ‘new media’ family. The videos load quickly and are high quality.
This is only a trial and the BBC is interested in your feedback. While I have mixed feeling about embedding video in news pages, these examples using Flash video are a huge improvement over the current streaming technology used by the BBC.
This blog is run by Professor Alfred Hermida, an award-winning online news pioneer, digital media scholar and journalism educator.
No Responses to Tell the BBC what you think about Flash video
Wordblog » Blog Archive » BBC going Flash
May 16th, 2007 at 2:25 am
[...] Hermida who was involved in setting up the BBC site in 1997 hails it as a huge improvement over the current streaming technology used by the BBC, but has doubts about embedding video in the [...]