So Adobe TV just released its new website. It is a much more "typical" looking website obviously inspired by Hulu. Although the site is brand new and deserves a grace period for bugs n such, I found it to be pretty unpolished. Granted, I viewed it on a machine with IE 6, but so is about 30-40% of my audience according to Google Analytics, so that's no excuse. The "Dim the Lights" feature has potential, and is used by Hulu, but currently it dims the entire page including the video player! I know, they're working on it... but I found that pretty comical.
Stefan Richter points out that this is one of the first public players to use the Open Source Media Framework. I'll be keeping an eye on Adobe TV to see what features they slip in, as I'm sure many of them will become standard in the near future.
The PGA tour has been on top of live Flash streaming for a few years now, but seems to fly under the radar in the Flash community. I'm here to tell you that their live video application, especially for the Masters, is usually very slick and gives us a preview of how TV should be.
Now I haven't seen this player yet, but past Major events have included live chat, PIP, and player tracking to name just a few features. They even have an iPhone app which lets you watch the live video.
I don't know about you, but the first, and only, live TV I've ever seen on my iPhone was from the PGA. They deserve some serious points for that in my book!
They will be broadcasting much of the action live over the next few days so try to check it out... Oh and I've heard that this is only available in the US which is unfortunate, but at least some of us get to enjoy it.
Update: Apparently the iPhone app is $1.99, which is kinda high for an app that works for 4 days. I suspect it is an experiment which hopefully isn't a sign of things to come for the PGA.