WOW, Windows Vista presentacion España No embedding: click the image to open the site in a new window
The new MSN Video has impressed Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read/Write Web: see Surprise: MSN Has Built the Video Site of the Future. He writes:
There are big changes underway over at MSN Video, some of which represent a real look forward for the industry. It's hard to believe, and it isn't pretty, but this is a site you've got to check out. The site's design, full screen player and advertising model are big.
I think he likes the way you can watch multiple videos without ever reloading a page, and the way it pushes ads at you. Or, as Microsoft's press release puts it, introduces "a new time-based advertising delivery model".
I'm not sure why he doesn't mention that the beta has been around for a year, as Soapbox (below).
What impressed me was the performance. Turns out I can right-click, hit F11 and watch the news practically full screen in reasonable quality, without any pauses. (Click the screen grab below for the full-size image.) That's nowhere near possible with YouTube or Google Video, where I usually either let the whole thing download before trying to watch it, or just download the FLV file with FlashGet.
Of course, that may be because YouTube is overloaded while MSN Video is a ghost town, but it's still pretty impressive.
Either way, it would be a great demo for Microsoft's Silverlight technology.... except it's actually done in Adobe Flash 9!
