A Nice Hard Slap – Buffer My Dick.

We recently ran a piece featuring the excellent red band trailer for Tropic Thunder, one which requires the user to download it through Itunes. Sounds like a pain in the ass on the surface, but I cannot tell you how amazing it was to be watching a movie trailer on my computer without the hiccups and annoyances I’ve grown so accustomed to. Aside from Quicktime, which is traditionally stout, I am so baffled at the lack of consistency and quality in streaming downloads all these years along the way and the faster connectivity and improved technology available.

Some things, like when I use my Slingbox [gotta watch my baseball games when out of town], feature speeds directly in connection to where I am. At home it flies, but at home I can just look at my television. Places like IGN and Yahoo oftentimes give me fits regardless of what browser I use and where I’m situated. At home, my sports bar hideout, and at coffee shops. It’s why I wish every single file was able to be downloaded to the desktop just to ensure uninterrupted play. What baffles me even further are files that won’t load up when you pause them. I mean, if I’m willing to wait for the video then the video should appreciate my patience. Instead, it still chugs along like a total asshole.

I don’t even want to get into the clusterfuck that is Microsoft Silverlight, the software that the MLB site is currently using to do me no good at all.

Buffering only works if it’s seamless. It reminds me of when I bought my first internet capable computer, one with a state of the art 14.4 modem. The patience we all had back then, waiting through the devilish squeals of the machine God as it caterwauled our connection to Prodigy into existence is one thing. There’s no reason today that we should have to wait like that. Not while YouTube and Quicktime have found a way to make it work.

Buffering is bullshit.