Complete Guide to Watching Your Favorite Shows Online

All four major networks offer most of their programming online. We compare the viewing experience on each network web site.

It’s finally here. After a strike that all but ended the 2007-08 TV season in December, all your favorite shows are back, and the networks are excited to get you back watching them.

Never before have more shows been freely (and legally) available online, so there’s no excuse not to be caught up on your favorite shows. Forget to set your DVR? Cancel your DVR service to save money? Cancel cable entirely to save money? No problem. The networks have you covered.

All four major networks (ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC) offer full episode replays of most of their shows online, and all four offer some form of HD content. In an effort to keep your TV watching list full, I present to you the Fall 2008 Field Guide to Watching Your Favorite Shows Online.

Some notes before we get going: First, this list examines the four major networks sites (i.e. ABC.com). We’ll note partnerships those networks have (Hulu, etc.), but there’s too many sites that aggregate video to list here (For more check out - Exploring Your Video On Demand Options). If there’s one you really like, let us know in the comments. Second, I’ll be examining the HD content mostly. Standard definition content from all four sites was pretty comparable and we’re all interested in the good stuff anyhow. Finally, the show counts are for shows currently airing on broadcast TV, not classic shows that might be available.

ABC
Full Episodes: 16 (of 26 shows)
HD: 9
Plugin: Yes
Extras: Yes

ABC was the first network to offer full episodes online, and their experience shows. They have the most polished presentation in my opinion, with their Emmy-winning “Full Episode Player” living in a self-contained window. I know a lot of people dislike pop-ups, but I liked being able to move the window around my monitor while I was doing other things. They’ve served up more than 441 million episodes since launching the player in 2006.

Browsing available episodes is simple, and there’s several ways to find a show. ABC uses the Move Networks player, which requires a plug-in. It’s a painless install, but may require a browser restart.

ABC encodes its content in 12 different profiles ranging from 164 kbps at 240 x 136 resolution up to 2000 kbps at 1280 x 720 and 24 frames-per-second for their HD offering. Standard definition caps out at 1600 kbps and 960 x 540.

“As the users’ resources fluctuate - network congestion, CPU load, etc. - the player will adjust the bitrate to maintain optimal viewing experience,”says Karen Hobson, VP of corporate communications at ABC.

The social web is on ABC’s mind too. Along sharing episodes from the player, Hobson told me that they launched their “Open ABC” initiative in September. It gives interested third party developers access to ABC’s MRSS feed and catalog, so they can generate new applications that can live on fan sites, individual blogs, and open platforms like Facebook and Yahoo.

HD - When it comes to HD, your Internet pipes better be robust. A 2Mbs Internet connection is required and after several attempts at different times, I wasn’t able to get to the HD level. (A bandwidth meter at the bottom of the player shows your level. When you hit HD, it lights up.) That being said, watching on both a computer monitor and on my 32-inch Sony LCD via RGB connection produced very pleasing results. I saw very little banding in the dark scenes and virtually none of the pixeling that too often plagues Internet video. Stuttering wasn’t an issue either. Even if it wasn’t HD, watching a full episode here would be a treat.

Extras – Several shows have video extras available in the full episode player. The network also has an “ABC Starter Kit” for nine of its shows available on the main ABC site.

CBS
Episodes: 15 (of 27 shows)
HD: 12
Plugin: No
Extras: Yes

CBS seems to be making a push this season. As I started to research this piece, there wasn’t much by way of full episodes on the site, and the HD content was mostly clips. Now that the fall season is underway, it seems like the “eye” network is adding new shows quite regularly.

Despite a lot of content, including classics like Family Ties, CBS’s offering suffers from poor organization. The layout of the site doesn’t promote browsing and it’s laborious to find full episodes vs. clips. Once you get to a show, the quality is hit or miss. Contrary to the other sites, it’s easier to go to a show’s home page and look for video than to the dedicated video page.

CBS does have some interesting features, such as the ability to watch a show while chatting with others. You can share episodes with Facebook as well.

HD – Unlike ABC, CBS is not dependant on a bandwidth limit to watch its HD content. When you go to the HD gallery, you have the choice of HQ (420p) and HD (720p). There’s plenty of potential for the HD option. Looking at one frame of video the picture is crisp, and colors and contrast are good. Unfortunately, those frames have to be put together, and frame rate is a big problem. Both the HQ and HD streams seemed to suffer from low frame rate and the presentation was very jumpy. Comments on the site lead me to believe I wasn’t the only person thinking that. If I were to watch a full show on CBS, I think I’d opt for the standard def version at this point.

Extras – There’s a lot of clips to choose from. Some of them are just snippets from an episode; some are web-only extras. Once again, it’s hard to tell what-is-what with the way the site is laid out.

Fox
Episodes: 19 (of 26 shows)
HD: 5
Plugin: Yes
Extras: Yes

Fox takes the trophy for most shows with 19 available, but they also take the trophy for fewest shows in HD. This is more a result of Fox’s animated and game show-heavy lineup than anything else. It seems that if the show airs in HD on Fox, it’s available in HD online. Finding a show is easy; just click the “Full Episodes” link on the home page. Probably due to the small amount of HD content available, there’s no way to browse just HD video.

Like ABC, Fox uses the Move Networks player so the presentation is similar, but Fox has added its own tweaks. Their new player was just released a few weeks ago and added true full screen viewing and a cool way to share video with others. Using a form, you can select the start time and end time to share a clip of any part of a show. Ratings are also available as is the ability to link to social networking sites.

According to Fox, the average bitrate for its shows is 700-1000 kbps, but they can go as high as 2.5 mbps for their full screen HD content. Their HD shows averaged 975-1300 kbps. Much like the ABC player it adjusts to a user’s situation, but once it settles in, it maintains that rate throughout an episode.

Bill Bradford, SVP and chief product officer for Fox Digital Media told me that they are seeing significant growth in long-form episode viewing online. He also mentioned that Fox has a partnership with Hulu and they are constantly looking for ways to get their shows in front of more people online.

HD – When Fox introduced its new player, it removed the bandwidth meter. And when in full screen, the player controls are not available. Bradford said they are still optimizing the player so it’s likely these could return. Because there was no meter, I wasn’t able to tell if I was getting Fox’s HD feed. I can tell you what I saw impressed me. Picture quality was great, on-par or perhaps slightly better than ABC. Watching a recent episode of “Fringe” featuring a gun fight in a dark forest produced wonderful results. Definition was great even in the darkness and the bright flashes from the gun blasts didn’t produce any noticeable picture flaws.

Extras – Fox offers 2-4 minutes recaps for a lot of its shows, and several of the shows have extra clips available on the show’s dedicated pages.

NBC
Episodes: 18 (of 26 shows)
HD: 10
Plugin: No for SD, Yes for HD
Extras: Yes

I’m not sure where to start with NBC. They offer a lot of episodes and their extras and web-exclusives were the best of the bunch. They also took a big step this fall and released some of their fall premiers online a week before they aired on TV. You can even set up a viewing party and invite a group of people to join you online. Don’t forget that NBC is a big player on Hulu.com. Add to that the massive amount of ways you could watch the Olympics online this summer and NBC seems poised to jump to the front of the pack.

But things take a big step back when you look at the fact the NBC is the only network that forces you to download not just a browser plugin, but a separate program to watch HD shows: the NBC Direct Beta. Further, once you download the program you have to register with NBC to get access to the HD shows, and once you start watching, there’s a 48-hour window before it becomes unavailable to watch. In this aspect, NBC is far behind the other sites.

HD – Even with all the good things NBC is doing on its site, it’s hard to get past the NBC Direct Beta thing. NBC looks at it as a positive that you are actually downloading the shows to your PC, but the downloads are laced with DRM, can’t be shared among computers, and can’t be backed up or moved to a portable player. On top of that, to watch a show you have to download the player, install it, register, choose an episode, download the episode and then watch it. In that time, you could probably watch a full episode in HD from any of the other three networks. You might think that by downloading the show, you’d get a bump in quality. You’d be wrong. In my tests, NBC’s downloaded HD wasn’t as clear as Fox or ABC.

And remember the player is called Beta for a reason. I had problems with sign in, verifying my account and even getting downloads started during my tests.

Extras - There’s plenty of web exclusive content from shows like “Heroes” and “The Office,” including a couple shows that have recurring webisodes. The “Two-Minute Replays” make it easy to catch up on a show. 

Final Thoughts
We’ve come a long way in a couple years. The networks seem to finally realize the reality of online video and are adjusting accordingly. There’s still a lot of room to grow but the bottom line is you could easily keep up with all your shows, many in HD, without paying a dime for cable or satellite.