Growing multimedia content offers more options for LDS community
David April 3rd, 2008
I don’t know about you, but I have been surprised lately with the availability of online multimedia content. I’m not just talking about the popularity of YouTube with user-contributed content or downloading music from the Apple iTunes Store. I’m talking about traditional media entities offering professionally written content on their web sites. Radio stations such as National Public Radio (NPR) not only have recorded podcasts of their broadcasts, but regularly suggest additional content for their listeners to find on their web site. Do you hate missing the KSL Greenhouse Show on Saturdays? Like many other sites, you don’t have to miss it if you subscribe to a podcast on the station web site. Offering a mix of traditional and new media sources, here are the top sources for online news, ranked by the number of visitors (from Ars Technica):
- Yahoo News
- MSNBC
- CNN
- AOL News
- New York Times
- Gannett
- ABC News
- Google News
- USA Today
- CBS News
While most of these sites are offering short video and/or audio clips, some media sites are now offering premium content that they normally reserve for television or radio (together with new advertising). Did anyone see the NCAA Basketball finals on CBS.com? Did you miss seeing who was eliminated from American Idol on Fox? (you can also see their recent performances on their web site)
Most of these sites are using Adobe Flash streaming technology (like YouTube), but others are starting to use HD video plugins such as those created by American Fork, Utah company, Move Networks, including ABC, Discovery, FOX, ESPN, and Oprah.com. BYU Television, also using Move Networks’ HD video plugin, is one of the first stations that has around the clock broadcasting content on their site. In comparison, the lds.org site will host transcripts, video, and audio downloads of LDS General Conference once they become available, but BYU.tv promises to include live HD video of for all morning and afternoon sessions. LDS Church members in Utah may not appreciate how rare it is to be able to watch Conference in your own home around the world as it is being broadcast.
[…] but BYU.tv promises to include live HD video of for all morning and afternoon sessions. … credit : […]
After watching some General Conference online and comparison with broadcast television, I don’t think that the byu.tv transmission can be classified as HD quality (at least for me). I tried on both my laptop and PC and the results were similar… either the transmission wasn’t consistently high quality or else my hardware wasn’t able to keep up with the refresh rate needed to display the quality of the video, especially if I played the video at full screen size. (Most of the time it was fine, but the occasionally graininess was distracting.) Despite this, the quality of the audio appeared to be consistently high.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that I can justify to my wife the purchase of a high-end PC just to make sure that the online broadcasts we may watch are not grainy. ;-) As better hardware becomes available, I’m sure that this will become less of an issue. But right now, for those areas of the globe where these broadcasts are not normally available, this is already a wonderful service even with current hardware standards.
I just found out that KSL television is also broadcasting LDS General Conference using the same plugin from Move Networks. For those whose internet connection or PC is not good enough to view streaming video, KSL is also offering live streaming audio.
[…] posted an article on Thursday regarding the multimedia options available for the LDS community. While the […]