Part 2: Why You Can't Watch Videos on ABC.com, CWTV.com, or Fox.com
Written by Alice Jester
It was my goal to keep digging at the Move Media Player issue until I found the ultimate “Eureka!” answer, ready to share with the world. After all, many of us couldn’t play videos on ABC.com, CWTV.com or FOX.com and were left frustrated, even though there was always the acceptable and far more secure workaround of using the Firefox Mozilla browser.
We had a breakthrough in our household, so I thought. My daughter’s Compaq laptop could play the videos on the above mentioned sites, as well as other sites running the Move Media Player with no problem on Internet Explorer 7. Our other three computers in the house couldn’t do that. I had notions of comparing her browser and antivirus settings with mine and set them identical. The problem was as I went through them, they were identical. Aside from the fact that her laptop had far less software than mine, there was no difference.
I noticed with her laptop when I uninstalled the Move Media player and reinstalled the install process was seamless and instantly played the videos. Mine didn’t go so well. When I ran uninstall process on my system, I found that it did indeed uninstall the programs properly and deactivate the registry keys. I reinstalled and was prompted to restart the browser. That was something I never got on the Compaq. I would restart, go back to my test site, CWTV.com, and eventually I would get “Error” on the bottom.
Since the last article, Move Networks put out an update. My husband uninstalled and reinstalled the Move Player on his system, which like mine is running Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7. Suddenly, the videos were working for him. However, when I did the same, I would still get the dreaded “Error”. So now two of our four computers in the household were working, and we had no idea why. I poured through registry settings and Active X controls. Little tweaks here and there did nothing. Setting the ABC.com and CWTV.com sites as trusted sites didn’t work, but I knew that wasn’t necessary since those sites weren’t setup that way on my daughter’s and husband’s laptops.
There was one nagging thing that went through my mind during all of these exercises. Why do I have to go through such hoops for Internet Explorer, when Firefox worked effortlessly? Finding that Firefox doesn’t use Active X controls, something IE does use which is known to open Internet security risks, was one reason for me never to consider streaming video from IE again. Also bothering me, the numerous registry keys, over a hundred, created on my system by installing the Move Media player for IE. These didn’t exist for Firefox, for they aren’t needed.
Furthermore, why do I need to install their player anyway? Move Networks is taking the opposite approach from Hulu.com and TheWB.com, which stream directly from their site and do not require users to download a player. They are taking the approach that through their player the videos will be downloaded onto your system, thus reducing buffering times and improving video quality. That sounded like a legitimate architecture decision, until I saw that I had no video streaming difficulties with Hulu or TheWB. The fact that someone was downloading content to my computer became unnerving. Doesn’t that tactic also promote greater security risk? Maybe not if the player security protocols are configured properly, but it wasn’t giving me warm fuzzies.
I'm Not Giving Up
Still, my stubborn streak continued. Why won’t these freaking videos play through my IE? It was a vendetta now. I sensed that the upgrade had fixed issues, but my daughter’s PC got through an “Authorizing” step before the video played, where mine errored out before it got that far. Something was going wrong in that Authorizing routine and chances are the Move Media player didn’t install properly on my system.
This is where it gets weird. There was a setting on my Antivirus (I use Trend Micro Security) that had checked “Prevent Unauthorized Changes”. I unchecked that, uninstalled and reinstalled, and the same error happened. Then my husband noticed I had both the Google Toolbar and Yahoo Toolbar installed, as well as a small piece of communications software that I needed for at home access from my former employer. His machine didn’t have those. He uninstalled those programs, then uninstalled the Move Media player and then reinstalled them through the CWTV site. Low and behold, the videos started playing.
He went and turned the switch back on for “Prevent Unauthorized Changes”. The videos still played. I reinstalled the Yahoo and Google Toolbars. The videos still played. Does anyone else have “Whale Communications” on their system? Considering it’s not a widespread application, I can’t imagine that would be causing everyone’s problems.
We did tons of things to try and recreate the problem, and that didn’t change anything. While I should be pleased that I can finally play videos on IE (but I won’t, Firefox is much safer), the why is driving me crazy. It is our conclusion (though no tests can confirm this), that a setting in the Move Media Player somehow got turned on without numerous factors interfering, and turning them back on after the install have no effect. Otherwise, the only other explanation is Gremlins.
So What Have We Learned?
IE sucks. For one, judging by complaints there are obvious issues with the player running on IE. After getting intimate with the setup, I can see why. Someone could have some piece of incompatible software or some obscure IE or Antivirus setting out there that innocently prevents videos from being downloaded for streaming and never find out what it is.
I did a Google search on whether people were having trouble playing videos on Hulu.com and there were hardly any complaints. There were still tons on the Move Media Player. Obviously, the idea of moving the streaming to the local PC rather than playing the video on the host site is not improving the user experience, and one wonders if the decision was more over the cost of bandwidth than user experience.
I’m not sure if Move Networks ran an extensive beta test, but I know Hulu did and TheWB.com is still in beta. As someone who has supervised extensive beta programs before, they are the best way to identify potential problems with a variety of user PC configurations. Microsoft has grown into an uncontrollable monster, and no in-house set of test PCs can represent all the PCs out there and how end users use the program. It’s kind of interesting that those with known Beta programs are having less issues.
Try This
If you cannot run a full episode of abc.com, cwtv.com, or fox.com, or various espn.com programs and abcnews sites, first go into Control Panel, Uninstall programs and see if the Move Media Player for Internet Explorer is installed. If it is, uninstall it. The install actually works well and does what it needs to deactivate the registry settings and delete the proper files. Go to cwtv.com or abcnewsnow.movenetworks.com (don’t go to abc.com, the install interface is clunky), play any full episode or video if the latter. The player will be installed. If it prompts you to restart the browser, chances are the install didn’t work and you’ve got a setting in Anti-virus or IE preventing the install. Logging in as administrator and trying the install might help get around this.
If you are running Firefox Mozilla and cannot play videos, go to the Tools, Add-ons section and uninstall the player. Go to the sites in the previous paragraph, reinstall the player and it should start working. If it does not, does an error happen? I’m interested to know the issues, so please share in the comments. Chances are I can provide good advice to get through Firefox issues.
My advice is if you can’t stream from abc.com, cwtv.com, or fox.com, go to www.hulu.com and see if you can play videos there. Chances are if you can play videos in YouTube, you can there. If no videos play, no matter what, no matter what the browser, you have a firewall issue or ISP issue. Do not take advice from Move Media from the FAQ sections and start turning off anti-virus or opening settings in browser controls, especially the Active X add-ons. Unless Move Networks is listed as a restricted site, none of that should be necessary and if anything opens you to security risks.
All in all, this experience has taught me that if playing videos becomes rocket science to a hard core tekkie like myself, then chances are the process isn’t worth it. Go rent the videos on DVD or try getting Netflix. For those watching NBC or FOX shows, at least you have Hulu.com as an option. CBS.com doesn’t seem to be a culprit either. There’s always Bittorrent and YouTube too, but I better not go there. Of course if these networks would provide a better user experience, I wouldn’t have to.
Still having problems? Tell me about it. I might be able to help.
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After going back to uninstall recent encoders which may have added conflicting codecs, my system now plays video without problems. In troubleshooting this issue I discovered that I could delete or disable codecs using the Windows device manager, or a nice piece of software called Codec Sniper. Check out this link for more info: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/12/how-to-remove-or-uninstall-audio-video.html
By chance I noticed that my Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 project file, file extension .prproj, is somehow associated with an older Premiere Pro (probably version 2.0). After some trials and errors I decided to uninstall both the old version, and grudgingly the CS3 version of PP which is part of the Adobe Production Premium CS3 bundle, and eventually I was able to reinstall PP CS3.
The amazing thing is now PP CS3 encodes way faster before, a small project now takes 12 minutes to encode in H.264 instead of almost 3 hours it used to take. A very pleasant side effect of this is videos from TV sites now play consistently smooth, and if they ever stutter it's almost always because something else is running in the background, Kaspersky Antivirus or a scheduled backup that took off running. No more unexplainable choppiness. Web pages are loading a lot faster, too, especially TV sites as they almost always try to play some video on your computer.
So definitely it was some codecs associated with an old piece of video editing software were the culprit. I made sure to take a duplicate image of my system disk so I have something to revert to when things go haywire again. At least I'm having my computer back for a little while until things go obsolete again.
Here's something you can do to help me pinpoint. Try playing in Firefox. Go to Tools, Error Console. Let me know what you see there. A lot of those errors mean nothing, but others like "permission denied" and things like that are of interest to me.
As for IE8, I can answer that! IE 8 isn't supported by Move Media, although I heard recent upgrades to ABC.com and either Fox or ESPN improves IE 8 capability. CWTV has not done that upgrade yet. Although, it should work on Firefox.
I think NBC.com connects to Hulu. If that's the case, yes, their site is going to work different. It's really sad that all these players work different and one little change in Windows, Flash, Java or anything causes something to fall apart.
Good luck! I'll do everything I can to help you with this.
Any ideas? Thank you!
Also, try this link. I can't remember if you said you had Vista or XP, but this place has some better instructions. They said it's important to uninstall the old version. I didn't know that!
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/vista_codec_package.htm
Chances are, since that's the exact problem I initially had, you're running into a conflict with another device driver or plugin. I know some 3D graphics drivers cause problems. I had a conflict with a work communications program. I would disable all plugins in IE, reinstall the Move Media player and see if any new drivers were installed in that update.
Also, you wouldn't happen to be running in 64 bit Windows, would you? Chances are you aren't, but sometimes I have to ask that question.
Anyway, let me know if any of that helps. I have plenty more suggestions.
Let me know what happens!
Give me a little time to get the problem fixed on my end and I'll share what I did to get it to work (unless it's another Mozilla bug, I hate those).
ETA: This is really insane now! Now it won't work on IE8 either. I was watching Supernatural on cwtv.com last night! I wonder what Firefox did to block it. I'm running AVG antivirus. Are you?
permission denied for www.view.atdmt.com to call method Location.toString on www.cwtv.com
1. Go to Tools, Clear Recent History. Select details and make sure only Cache is marked. Change the Time range to clear to Everything.
2. Go to Tools, options, content, exceptions and add www.view.atdmt.com and www.cwtv.com to allow popups and load images (second exceptions box).
Try the video again. If that doesn't work let me know. There's plenty more things to try.
document.body is null
and
permission denied for to call method Location.toString on
Any thought on this?
I also seem to be having the same issues with my Mac
1) using Finder, locate Safari
2) Get Info
3) Select "Open in 32-bit mode"
Please let me know if this works, since I don't have a Mac myself to try this on.
I followed your instructions, and boom! It worked. (Uninstalled Movie Player, visited a tv network site, started a video and asked me to reinstall Movie Player).
Thanks
if promted to install
just hit no and the video u want to watch will still play
also mega problems for me
old g3 mac will play youtube with flash 8
but nothing newer and the move media ting wont load up on my comp??????
simple answers only im not a comp junkie yet
and i have caveman computer
http://www.jesterz.net/the-red-headed-monster/10-all/487-part-3-why-you-cant-watch-videos-on-abccom-cwtvcom-and-foxcom.html
I have a section on the main www.jesterz.net page that says "contact us". That'll let you send messages to my email address. It might be easier if we go back and forth through that right now. Of course comments are fine too! I'll get back to you very shortly with what I find out about pt.rewardtv.com.
I'm going to install Java update 12 and test it out. I'll get back with you to see if I have similiar issues. I upgraded to Java 11 not too long ago and found I had to reinstall the player. Chances are slim you'll get it to work on IE. There are too many potential ActiveX conflicts.
That's good Hulu works. It means it's Move Media's flaky programming, and not your system.
There's a way to confirm if this is actually a move media player problem, or an abc.com problem. Have you tried playing any full episode videos on cwtv.com? If you have the same problem, it's definitely the move player. I have heard of abc.com having specific issues that other sites don't have from time to time.
Also, do you have this problem with other sites like hulu.com? If you don't, that eliminates an isp problem, which is good. Also, what version is your java? I heard there are issues with 6.11. If that's what you're running, that may require you to uninstall and reinstall the move player.
Let me know if any of this works! I do have more suggestions.
Also, do you have any other plug-ins installed? Some cause conflicts. I heard Skype is an issue, but there are several others too that might cause problems. It might help at least in Firefox to disable all the other plugins and see if you have a problem. Then you can re-enable them one by one and see which one is causing the conflict.
Let me know if that works!
Now, I DO have the Move Media Player plugin installed, and so far, nothing's fallen over and died. (I think I got the prompt to install it over on abc.com at some point.) Have you (or anyone else who's been troubleshooting) tried this in the Windows version of Safari, just out of curiosity? Does it work there as well? I haven't seen much of that version of the browser in action, myself; I keep wanting to install it on my own office computer for work-related cross-browser testing, but Help Desk still won't let me, curses upon them....
Since I've been able to get the Move Media Player to work on my IE though, I've been getting some errors on my iTunes and various other programs about Active X objects being disabled. This player really does seem to step on the toes of other players and software using Active X controls on the system. That only strengthens my plea to run the Move player on alternate browsers and forget IE.