Why do official video sites suck?

6 Mar

Let me get this straight:

  • A fan posts the hilarious Natalie Portman rap video from Saturday Night Live on YouTube.
  • NBC asks YouTube to remove it. Which is a drag, but that’s their prerogative.
  • NBC posts the video on their own “Web Favorites” site.
  • …where I cannot make it play. It just sits there, an empty window, in both Firefox and IE.

Adding insult to injury, NBC tells me that this is somehow a convenience to me – that they are helpfully collecting all of their content in one place so I don’t have to search for it. A place where I can’t watch anything.

I always have problems with Comedy Central’s Motherload, too. I do not get this: Google Video always works. YouTube always works. Why do entertainment-industry sites with locked-down video content not work as well?

Grr.

* Searching the Web is really hard. If only there were a way you could enter keywords that describe what you’re looking for into a text box, and quickly search the entire Web – or a specific Web site – to see if the video you’re looking for is there. Man, whoever comes up with that technology is going to be a total chick magnet.

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