Well, if Al Gore invented the internet, Barack Obama broke it. I tried watching his inaugural address via live video feeds over the internet, and it was an unfortunate experience. Not only was I hanging on his every word, the video streaming seemed to hang on every other word.

It’s amazing the assortment of sites streaming this event. They must have seen record amounts of hits. If 2008 was the year of online video, maybe 2009 will be the year they iron out online live streaming video. I remember Obama’s acceptance speach, and his announcement of Joe Biden as his running mate, both as a smoother viewing experience, but not without hangups.

For the inaugural address I tried watching live coverage on cbs.com, foxnews.com, and hulu.com, with similar results. CBS seemed to hang less than others, but I can’t tell you how frustrated I got jumping back and forth and having to watch that damn Audi commercial over and over again.

For some reason, I have never been able to get the video from Fox to work in either IE or FireFox, but the stream from Hulu.com came through, even though it seemed to be a repackaged Fox broadcast.

Thankfully, I should add, I’ll be able to watch, and even download the speech, from any number of sites when I get home tonight.

Did anyone have a positive live online video streaming experience of this event? If so, what site(s) were you on?

If you like what you read, please bookmark it: