NBC Direct launched its public beta yesterday, and the blogosphere was immediately awash with thoughts on the service and reviews of what it is offering.
Most of these, or at least the ones I have read, were on the negative side, mainly because NBC have seen fit to build so many prohibitions and limitations in, that NBC Direct becomes a pointless exercise.
Only For Americans
To use the NBC Direct service, you first need to be in the US, which I’m not, so that rules me out straight away. Like Hulu and The Daily Show Archives before it, licensing and rights management mean only people currently resident in America can access the videos on offer.
I know licensing is important, but that doesn’t make me, as a Brit, sitting here wanting to watch episodes of Heroes, and The Office, feel any better about being effectively banned from access.
Although it makes sense from a short term business aspect, surely companies such as Fox and NBC realise that for internet television and video on demand to continue growing, the world needs to be in on it, not just one country.
That’s surely the whole point of the web, to be a global community, with no borders or barriers placed on it.
Only For IE Users
Which brings me on to the second frustrating limitation put on NBC Direct users. You are only welcome if you have Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Media Player installed on your computer.
I have Media Player, but I choose to use Firefox as my browser, because it’s more secure, easier to use, and has a nicer feel to it. I refuse to be forced to use IE, just because a company thinks that I should do to access their service.
This also immediately rules out any Mac users from being able to access NBC Direct, which love or loathe the Apple brigade, seems a tad unfair.
Self Destruct & Limited Availability
So let’s assume you pass all of the tests NBC have required you to: You are a US citizen; you have a PC; you are running Internet Explorer; you are running Windows Media Player; you have everything updated sufficiently. So you download some episodes from NBC Direct.
The problem then is you only have 48 hours to watch them before they self destruct, and the episodes are only available for up to seven days after they air on television in the first place. Man, talk about jumping through hoops…
Conclusions
Like Hulu before it, NBC Direct has failed to grasp the fundamental fact that the world is getting smaller, and that its not only US citizens who want to be able to watch television programmes online.
Until a big network gives internet users more choice, not only about where they live, but also what software they use on their computers, services such as these will be too limited to truly revolutionise people’s viewing habits.
