Works well. But not with Firefox
That said, the system, said to have been developed in partnership with Kontiki, works well. When it works. It's still in Beta and has a number of known issues.
There seem to be two biggies currently. First, AOL's HI-Q Video Delivery Manager isn't displayed correctly when viewed using the increasingly popular Firefox browser – Internet Explorer 6 is what's recommend for the moment and Firefox users are told this in no uncertain terms.
AOL's HI-Q Video Delivery Manager
has to be accessed with IE 6
Worse, users attempting to download videos – which they have to do in IE 6 via AOL's HI-Q Video Delivery Manager page - can find themselves locked out with a less-than-helpful error message. They're told, "The content you are trying to access could not be resolved to the proper Delivery Management System server set", and asked to "contact support for further information" – but not given any contact details.
Things were going swimmingly for us until we saw this error message. It arose after we'd shut down IE 6 completely, restarted it and then attempted further downloads so we could do accurate timing tests. AOL says it's tracking the problem and hopes to have it resolved "soon".
Our fingers are crossed but we'e expecting that the problem will turn out to be largely suffered by those outside of the USA and that it will be due to the way that AOL automatically routes site visitors to their local AOL portals. At least, we found that the problem went away when we went to the Delivery Manager page via AOL's international site, then the US site and only then to the final destination. (Update - but this was not necessary the following day. Go figure!)
The system is said to be able to deliver DVD-quality videos directly to consumers more quickly and efficiently than conventional methods and we were certainly impressed by the speed of download – a quick cup of tea job in each case - though the file sizes of the trial videos aren't massive and there wouldn't have been millions of people trying to download at the same time as us but there might well be when the full service gets under way.
King Kong clip download at 98 per
cent
The videos that we were able to download – and which we found squirreled away in a newly-created folder (My Deliveries) within My Documents - range from 28MB up to 55MB. That's for WMV 9 clips that were between two-and-a-half and three-and-a-half minutes long, up to 720 pixels wide and with playback data rates up to 1.99Mbps. According to AOL's download status tool, these were coming over at a data rate of about 316Kbit/sec. So, each half-hour-long TV programme - which would be close to a 450MB download - would take a lot longer coming over and be a bit of a hard-disk-hog.
Despite these issues, though, AOL's download service is well worth a try and one to keep a close eye on. But, of course, AOL's not the only contender. Things were already looking interesting even before mid October when Apple announced the immediate start of sales of music videos, short animated movies and some current US TV programmes through its iTunes stores.
A follow-up announcement claiming that Apple has sold over a million videos in less than 20 days, confirmed that floodgates of a sort had been broken.
However, UK TV-license-holders look like they might end up being the ones getting the biggest cherry from the biggest cake – and getting it free. The BBC is developing a raft of systems and technologies, some in co-operation with Kontiki, and carrying out a wide range of trials as it prepares to make its archives available on the net to UK TV-license payers. And, not just old programs but also all new programmes for seven days after they're broadcast.
