The NY Times’s Michael Marriott writes on online video, which is great, and appreciated, because any time a mainstream and respected publication writes on your industry, it’s a testament to leading the charge into new, exciting terrain.
But one part struck me:
Buffering … buffering … buffering. Seeing these words blinking at the bottom of the postage-stamp-size screen during a download of jerky video defines the annoying experience of entertainment on a computer monitor.
It’s not bad if that was a passing reference in the article, he starts off by that line!
I’m not the only one to object: Dan Rayburn adds on his blog:
in the very first sentence of the article it speaks to our technology as if it’s still 1998 by saying, “Buffering … buffering … buffering. Seeing these words blinking at the bottom of the postage-stamp-size screen…” I don’t disagree that there is buffering, that’s how streaming media works. But to say that the window of a video clip in is the size of a postage stamp is just flat out inaccurate. The average window size of videos on the web today is 320×240 pixels. That’s more than 8x larger than a postage stamp. Has anyone seen any video over the past few years in a window as small as the postage stamp above? Absolutely not.
I tend to agree with Dan here. When we launched WatchMojo.com, we went with a 340×190 player, we use a widescreen, anamorphic format. We’re about to relaunch, and see the video below and tell me if this new 480×270 size makes you think “postal stamp”?
Yeah, I didn’t think so!
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