Buffering – Stop The Chop

I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it.
OK, that line was stolen from some movie, and I’m not that up in arms. Nevertheless, I was sitting at home today, trying to enjoy a web-only episode (webisode) of Rock Star: Supernova over at MSN Video. Man, does that technology suck the big one (for the record, the show is not much better than the technology).
Every two minutes, I am getting a “buffering” message. That is so 2001. So is it MSN, is it my Windows Media Player, or is it my connection (not likely, I have ultra high-speed)? Where’s the bottleneck?
Point is that if we are looking to video as some kind of salvation or killer app to really tip The Tipping Point of online success, we have to get beyond buffering issues. I’m a fairly easy-going person, who is willing to sit through buffering nonsense… to an extent. There are days (like today) when technology simply frustrates me.
We all want online video to rock (hmmm, be the online Rock Star?). Let’s get the buffering issues resolved. Otherwise, it becomes very challenging for marketers to pitch online video when the experience is riddled with buffering chops and poor quality resolution.
This is nothing new, but the technology works and the pipe is big enough, so let’s get this streaming strolling along, shall we?