schematic

The battle for Olympic gold in the global video streaming event is well and truly under way. With Microsoft having a head start in partnering (*ahem paying*) with NBC to deliver 2,200 hours of live, interactive video, plus integrated broadcast coverage. Their NBCOlympics site will have massive spikes of traffic based on the hotly contended events, as well as peak viewing periods.

With the eyes of the world closely scrutinising their offering. It goes without saying, that what ever is produced needs to be designed for performance and deliver a brilliant user experience. This being the case, NBC and Microsoft have teamed up with UX glitterati Schematic to design the Silveright based NBCOlympics Player application. The application will offer users the ability to switch between multiple live streams (i.e. cameras), and multiple events simultaneously, as well as offer enhanced picture-in-picture, and interactive features for all users watching at any given time.

Whilst it has been widely reported that NBC will be forcing users to download Microsoft’s Silverlight player in order to see live and on-demand video. This is not necessarily the case. Of course Microsoft would prefer users to download Silverlight in order to get the best user experience, but users who don’t have the plug-in, or choose not to use it, will still be able to get stand alone video streams if they have the Windows Media player. Having said that, given that the market penetration of Silverlight is still pretty low, Microsoft are obviously hoping that the Olympics will be the face to launch a million downloads. In theory, this isn’t such a bad plan, so long as the technology actually delivers on the promises from from an end UX perspective (which unfortunately it didn’t in my small focus group).

Despite having Silverlight installed on our Macs, when we attempted to view/test any streaming content via the NBCOlympics Player our browser(s) continually crashed. Additionally, if you’re not running Windows Media Centre, or are on a Mac, you won’t be able to access NBC’s online Olympic video centre (NBC Olympics On The Go) either. According to TVTonics’ site if you don’t have the following system requirements (below) you can forget about any streaming (or on-demand) video.

System Requirements

• operating system — Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit currently not supported)
• Windows Media Center required — included with Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate
• processor — 1GHz 32-bit processor minimum
• memory — 1GB mininum RAM (2GB recommended)
• disk space — minimum of .5GB per subscribed channel + 1GB add’l
• video — 1024×768 minimum resolution; support for DirectX 9 graphics, minimum 128MB VRAM, WDDM Driver, Pixel Shader 2.0 in hardware, 32 bits per pixel

*Update* according to comments left over at TechCrunch – Comcast, Cox and others users whose ISPs throttle their downloads, or users on Timewarner and others who have metered bandwidth charges won’t be able to tune in either.

All-in-all, the fact that NBC, and Microsoft have seen fit to restrict the availability of a global sporting event in this manner is pretty disappointing from an end user perspective. Personal annoyances/disappointment aside, as an advocate of rich internet applications, and the genuine benefits they bring end users, I wish NBC/Microsoft every success with this endeavor – and honestly hope we don’t see a repeat of the Microsoft/Mosiac strike out earlier this year with the US Major League Baseball site.

The bottom line is that if users are required to make the effort to download/install a new run-time (regardless of flavour) to support the viewing of rich/digital media – anything less than a stellar end-user experience will do way more damage to the overall benefits of RIAs (as a whole) regardless of which platform they’re built on.