I Hate NBC’s Online Player!

On October 24, 2007, In Comm, By Tac Anderson

Between work, family and my MBA program I have one guilty pleasure. The Office .Â The TV show The Office is by far my favorite TV show ever.

I don’t watch much TV. I know everyone says that but seriously I don’t watch any TV. I don’t have time. I don’t care about sports. I get all of my news on-line. I despise reality television. I love The Office.

The Office comes on at 8:00pm, which is also bed time for my three children, which really means I fight with them from 8:00-8:45 trying to get them in bed. iTunes saved me. Every week I would go and happily pay my $1.99 to purchase my wonderfully commercial free, 22 minutes of escape.

Once a week, after getting our children to bed, my wife and I would snuggle up in bed with my HP Pavilion and fire up iTunes and watch The Office. It was great. It was the perfect television experience.

Then for some unknown, asinine reason, NBC pulled all their programming from iTunes. I heard rumors that they didn’t like Apple’s restrictive pricing model. I can understand that. I personally think that Steve Jobs is a controlling megalomaniac. But at least he understands the importance of a great user experience.

But now my only option is to illegally download The Office or watch it on NBC’s new on-line player. Which forces me to sit through their moronic commercials.

I will never buy Crest Whitening Strips. I may never buy anything from Crest.

I will never again buy Febreeze. I will publicly mock the product and their horrible advertising.

These two brands will forever be positioned in my brain with one of the worst television show viewing experiences of my life.

NBC’s on-line player is horrible. It freezes up without warning, the streaming kills my wifi, and did I mention the forced commercial viewing. At first I thought this was just my computer or my Internet but then I ran into Jim Stogdill at the Web 2.0 summit and he confirmed having the exact same experience. We live in two completely separate parts of the country and both have the same problems. I have also confirmed this lousy experience with several other people.

Now I am a Windows user so having an application freeze up from time to time is par for the course. No biggy. Refresh. Nope. Close the browser start over. Now I have to choose the episode again, choose the chapter I left off on. Watch the horrible Febreeze commercial again (seriously why would anyone sniff their carpet?) followed by the disingenuous Crest commercial. The episode starts out on the first chapter despite the fact that I specifically chose chapter three. Click on the time line bar to where I’m guessing I left off. Sit through the worlds worst Febreeze commercial again!

WHY IS THIS IDIOT FREEBASING HIS CARPET???

WHY AM I NOW WATCHING SOME POINTLESS COMMERCIAL ABOUT TEETH WHITENING? DON’T PEOPLE REALIZE THAT TEETH THAT WHITE DON’T LOOK NATURAL????

Now it’s playing several minutes ahead of where I left off. I try and click on the bar to go back a few minutes, it pauses, jitters and continues playing without moving. There is no way to fine tune the point where you are watching. The show freezes up again. Seriously. Repeat last three paragraphs without throwing my laptop through the wall.

I’ve tried both ABC and CBS on-line. Neither of them are this bad (neither of them are perfect but they’re better than NBC). Neither of them have The Office though.

Apparently NBC will be getting around to letting me download the episodes, with commercials and they will expire. Gee thanks. And sometime after that they may let me buy the episodes, commercial free to keep. Great so sometime in 2008 *maybe* I’ll get back to where I was last season.

WHY NOT WAIT UNTIL EVERYTHING WAS IN PLACE BEFORE SHIFTING AWAY FROM ITUNES ???

This is why consumers are illegally downloading content. This is why they have Tivo’s. This is why we hate and rail against main stream media. You make us play by your rules. Well guess what we don’t have to play by your rules. I refuse.

I don’t know when or how we’ll be watching The Office again but it won’t be on that horrible player.

I think I’ll just buy the DVD’s
The Office – Season One
The Office – Season Two
The Office – Season Three

Popularity: 32% [?]

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Dave

I Hate NBC announcers. They suck. They are one sided, payed off Little girls. Get them out of sports. Let the real stations commentate. Tell them to go home and enjoy their frappes. Never again will I watch NBC!!!

Tac

Kelly,
This is definitely one of my most searched for and commented posts.

I've finally got to the point where I just wait for Netflix to get the entire season of a show and then watch it on their player, because their player rocks.

I've even tried Hulu.com and while it's better than NBC it's not much better.

Kelly

I googled "NBC episode player sucks" to see if there were any other people experiencing similar freezing problems. Of course the first site that came up was this one. It seems like others found it through googling the EXACT same thing! Hilarious. I just wish NBC knew how people felt and fixed the problem!! I watch episodes of Lost on abc.com all the time, and don't have to suffer through constant freezing issues. What's the deal NBC??!!

Becky

oh my goodness i agree i agree!!!!!

Kevin

Big Office fan, no other tv likes, no cable. Here to report that the NBC online player is still just as horrible as when you wrote this. I don' mind the commercials - they're paying for it, just like in tv - but the player is absolutely terrible. Also, the home page of the show says you can download it for free (which I"m sure means commercials - but somebody has to pay for it), but you CAN'T. Those sponsers sure aren't getting what they're paying for, either, 'cause I can't even bear to watch the show like this!

Emily

It always freezes for me. Then you can't get back to where you were without substantial effort. They should realize people will stop using this service and go to illigal downloads if they dont fix these problems. Plus, its frustrating, because you tend to think it is your fault, something wrong with your computer, or internet connection, something you are doing wrong when in reality, this player should function as promised with minor issues.

Christina Young

I got to this thread by googling "NBC episode player sucks". LOL. Nice to know I'm not the oly one feeling this way.

Tac Anderson

JDS, of course you're the black sheep, your a Linux user :)

You must be a much more patient man than I am. For me it's not worth it.

JDS

Hmm. I guess I am the black sheep. I love the NBC video player. But mostly because, as a Linux user, I am so used to being needlessly shut out of some websites for reasons that aren't really technical in nature, and the NBC video player just works. Albeit slowly and choppily and for me, pretty much in exactly the way as described here.

But the commercials? I agree that commercials suck but I (1) do not have cable, (2) do not have a DVR of any kind, but I do (3) have a DSL line. So 1 30 sec commercial break that is over before I can piss is fine by me, because where else can I watch a whole bunch of TV shows for free and pause, rewind, etc.?

Josh Woodard

I thought I was reading an autobiography!! I hear you on the annoyance of NBC's AWFUL setup.

Share your thoughts with the only open-ended option they give you: webmaster@nbc.com. No response yet...

Jim S

I have to follow up...

So, out of desperation I polled my friends to find out who had a DVR stuffed chock full of this season's office episodes. Then I offered to buy them a couple bottles of wine and whatever else they might want if I could come over during the weekend and just sit down in their den and watch them back to back. I promised I'd be as quiet as a mouse and they wouldn't even know I was there.

It was great. Highlight of my weekend.

I just wish they had stored "House" on their DVR too...

Tac

LOL, Wiley, that's probably my best comment ever. Thanks for sharing.

Wiley

Thank you for a place to vent... (and saving my laptop from that trip through the wall)

Top 5 reasons NBC's player SUCKS:

#5 - Michael, Pam, Jim and the crew frozen in mid sentence - with what can only be described as ..unflattering looks on their faces
#4-I get to watch crystal clear girly shows like Grey's Anatomy and Desparate housewives with my wife on ABC's online player...I JUST WANT TO WATCH THE OFFICE
#3-nothing like waiting 3 minutes for a punch line...or half of a punch line
#2- I watched a grown man sniff a carpet...5 TIMES
#1- I would have given 10 reasons, but I just watched a two hour episode of a 22 min. episode of this weeks "The Office"....
and I am tired

Candace Sweigart

NBC has a new player that you can use to download the full episode if you have a Windows PC. The new player and downloaded episode is much smoother than the old one. The only catch is that you still have to put up with the lame commercials. I guess you can't have it all :) You can be sure that "Bertolli" is getting none of my business.

David

I hate their video player....same problems. Im dying to watch my episodes but it ends up freezing at least 20-30x before i can finish a damn episode. Their last players worked a 1000x better.

Mona

This is EXACTLY what I have been expiriencing. I am completely frusterated. All I want to do is watch the office, but it won't play and when it does, its absolutely horrible. There has got to be some way to let NBC know how horrible their player is...especially compared to other online players like the one that the discovery channel has...it still has a few commericials (not as annoying) but at least it works. This is just really rediculous, and i'm really glad that I'm not the only one. Thank you!

Candace Sweigart

Thank you Thank you for airing out my NBC player grievances for me! I have had the exact same experience yet continue to come back to that stupid player and the stupid commercials. I'm so glad that it isn't just me!

Jim S

I'm sad to report that after struggling through the first two episodes on NBC.com I simply gave up. I can't believe I'm waiting for the DVD to be available (in about a year!) on netflix, but that's what I'm doing. I just got tired of cussing at that damned nbc video player. Meanwhile I keep surfing the iTunes store trying to find something that will assuage the loss.

Brian Critchfield

I had the same problem with The Apprentice about a year or so ago and wrote a blog about it. Now that we moved into a new house, multi-room DVR has saved my bacon on multiple occasions. Watching shows on the networks crappy browsers suck bad enough, throw in forced commercial viewing where there was none before and there is bound to be a mutiny. Maybe an IHateNBC.com community would help them wake up.

Daniel

Had the same issues with Heroes... And another one: the full-screen mode would jump no normal at each commercial and I'd have to set it back up again. Also, the picture quality isn't i-tunes caliber. Overall, very frustrating.

Tac

I've been a big fan of Febreeze in the past but I don't know if I'll ever be able to use it without getting frustrated beyond belief.

I don't have a DVR because I haven't watched enough TV to justify getting one. Seriously I don't watch TV. I have cable for my internet and phone but not for television. I just don't watch enough to justify the cost.

Josh McD

Try wearing a wetsuit for a week straight and then tell me you don't appreciate febreeze at the end of that trip! That stuff can work wonders man. - But I'm with you, The Office rules and it sucks that it is not on iTunes. Don't you have a DVR?

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