CBS.com just joined the online HD party, streaming some low-grade, high-definition video.
You can’t find the content on the CBS home page, only on the labs.cbs.com site, where it was unearthed by someone at TechCrunch.
The player is your basic basic. The images look quite good, with no buffering issues whatsoever on a cable modem. Some clips had better contrast (and pop) than others, and everything looked on the soft side.
Don’t get too excited — the video streams at 480p, not high definition in my estimation. The content is limited to 2-minute clips of the usual suspect shows: “NUMB3RS,” “CSI,” “How I Met Your Mother” and four others. Like Hulu, the CBS content uses the H.264 video codec.
NBC Universal-News Corp.’s Hulu started its high-def activities at 720p, streaming a half dozen movie clips. Hulu streams some full-length content at “high res” 480p, such as “Ice Age,” the super-crisp animated movie (“Ice Age” was the first or second high-def content I ever saw, on a digital VHS format way back. Cool.)
By comparison, your Blu-ray player brings the funk at 1080p — which you won’t be seeing online anytime soon due to bandwidth limits.
Hulu’s HD Gallery has grown a bit, but they’re still trailers — of new movies like “Leatherheads” and old stuff such as “American Gangster.” The player is Hulu’s outstanding display system. The gallery is now sponsored by Intel, which kindly takes only a PBS-style sliver of your pre-viewing time.
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