SideReel

Well. I’ve done it. I’ve achieved the *nearly* impossible and successfully installed the NBC Direct player AND watched an episode of Heroes. Kudos to NBC for trying something(anything), but they have a ways to go before they’re going to see significant adoption.

First - the experience:
Overall the experience, once you get through the installation, is quite good. Video quality is so so - not at the level of Divx and, ironically, not at the same level as when it’s streamed live through the NBC site. But the convenience of having the file locally to watch when you want (within the time limited window - see below) is outstanding.

Here are the hurdles:

• Must be on Windows
• Must be using IE
• Must have Windows Media Player 10 installed
• Must download the NBC Direct player
• Must reboot post-install
• Must download each show or subscribe to the show

Do not attempt the install of the player if you don’t already have windows media player 10+ installed - it will not work and you’ll have to install it a second time.

Here’s the rub:

• Downloads expire after 48 hours
• If you’re online you can refresh them for another 48 hours
• Shows expire completely 7 days after the original air date of the show(you cannot redownload them at that time)
• Downloads include video ads

To summarize, this is a good first step, but will frustrate a lot of users and probably turn off all but the hardest core users(who are probably bittorrenting the content today). Areas for improvement - the inane and painful installation process, and the rapid expiration of the content.

user accounts are great. user profiles are even better.

we’ve just launched the beginnings of what will become a rich, social experience around entertainment online. talk to friends, discover new stuff, keep up with your favorites.

we’ve got a little video of me doing a walkthrough of the new user profile page. check it out! there’s more to come soon!

We’re not actually calling it that, but certain terms bring to mind concepts better than others and “My” anything gets to the point. Starting now - you can personalize your SideReel experience…

• Add to your very own list of favorites
• Forgot what that show was you checked out the other day? We’ve got you covered - check out your history
• Looking for a recommendation for something new to check out - we’ve got that too!
• You can even share your user page with anyone you like…

And there’s more coming soon! Check it out and tell us what you think!

we’ve got page specific feeds! keep track of your favorite show, add it into My Yahoo or iGoogle. all feeds get updated as new links get added. so stay tuned to that feed for all your delicious video watchin’ needs!

lots of new stuff has appeared on our site!

- feeds: check out www.sidereel.com/_us/feeds for a list of our early feeds. they’re built to keep people up-to-date with changes and notifications about watchlinks. there’s lots happening on the site!

- link history: want to see all the changes to a pages watch links? check out the link history page via the icon at the top of the watch box. want to re-add a mis-deleted link? just click ‘re-add’ next to that link!

pantera, shawn, and john have been hard at work! more neat stuff coming soon.

we changed! we launched on april 19th with a very basic site and a fairly basic design. the idea was that we wanted to see how people used the site before making guesses. much of the feedback had to do with the difficulty in editing pages or in figuring out which link was desired.

our initial response has been to make the watchbox significantly more hierarchical. links are grouped into seasons and episodes (user defined headings will come). by moving the watch links editing out of the wiki markup, we’ve made the editing portion significantly cleaner. now people can edit the pages without all the watch link markup getting in the way.

this work also plays off some significant engineering work done by our resident big-brains: pantera arzhintar, john cook, shawn gatchell, and tim maurer. most of our data model changed in about three weeks. now it’s primed and ready for API building!

stay tuned…

there is lots of kerfuffle about the perpetual beta that is endemic on the web today. we’re not going to do that. we’ll constantly be adding features and making changes, but our core technology and product value will already be laid in.

how’s that going to happen? well, we went to a live site really early. we’re still working out lots of exciting stuff, but rather than make decisions in a vacuum we wanted diverse feedback early and often. without that sort of information it’s hard to make smart bets on features.

our first month of beta has really clarified stuff for us, people are editing our site, watching stuff on our site, and spending a lot of time per visit (more about that later). we’ve got really awesome stuff coming up soon:

- awesome new interface for our watch box

- user accounts and personalization

- feeds and widgets (very granular and user defined)

- community features

stay tuned for more details!

ya know. a web-based one on both sides. maybe with a nice little skype plugin. it wouldn’t be that hard and would be 100% awesome. charge a monthly fee (see www.crazyegg.com for a nice, but early product) and it’d be decently profitable. if this sidereel thing doesn’t work out we can always go make that! nah…that’s never gonna happen.

anyone want to go make one? please?

We sidereelers are lamenting last night’s finale of the office. A sad day indeed.

How long do we have to wait for more???

PS - if you like the US version of the office, have you seen the original from across the pond?