Free TV episodes are great… but sometimes you get what you pay for.

I’ve been watching television shows online for as long as networks have gotten a clue to start offering them.  In the past several years I’ve encountered networks that wanted to make things difficult (ie downloading special software/plug-ins for their “superior” media player).  But in the end it was just a simple download, maybe a browser re-start, and the show would play just fine.  That is until today.

Of course the claim for these “indispensable” downloads is that it provides the best picture, though I never saw an advantage over standard plug-ins.  I suppose their idea of a “better viewing experience” is the ability of their enhanced media software to embed impossible-to-avoid ads.  Which is understandable, because they need to make money somehow to keep it free for the user.

But when this enhanced software is so convoluted that it doesn’t work, nobody wins.

Which leads me to today.  I’ve watched shows on abc.com as recently as a few weeks ago, and it worked just fine.  Long story short, I tried 3 different browsers (firefox, safari, IE) on 2 different machines (PC, Mac) and everyone of them resulted in the same thing: a blank gray page.  Any required plug-ins were downloaded and installed, even restarted the browsers and the computers.  Still didn’t work.

So I watched hulu.

Bottom Line: I’m not the type to be beaten (especially when it comes to technology), so I went back to abc.com and scrolled down a bit and saw the “New Full Episode Player BETA.”  The beta option was beneath the default player and in a smaller font size, with a note claiming that I am one of the first in America to see it (which is better than the alternative of no one in America seeing anything on the standard player).  The beta played just fine.  Note to ABC developers: spare America the frustration and make the beta the default.