online TV streams freezing during ads - potential work-around

[darkoshi]

I've been streaming the show "A Million Little Things" on the abc.com website.
I used the MS-Edge browser for it at first. But there was a problem - except for the ads at the start of the show, the ads did not play. At the ad breaks, the playback simply froze and didn't continue even if I waited for several minutes. I got past the problem a few times by reloading the page but later even doing that didn't help.

So that day I switched to using the Chrome browser. It had some problems too, but at least the playback didn't freeze and I was able to watch the show.

But today while watching another episode, my Chrome browser froze up at the ads like MS-Edge did last time. Reloading the page multiple times didn't help.

So then I tried playing the show in a Chrome incognito window. That way, the ads played fine and I was able to finish watching the show. So hopefully this method will work next time too.

Comments

[frith]

The targeted ads approach is so very broken. It's invasive, it's fraught with malware potential, it's lazy and since every corporate entity down the pipeline wants a piece of your attention, it ruins the stream by preempting it at unforeseen instances with adverts. At least on broadcast TV, ads only interrupt live broadcasts, other programs pause to sell you soap and resume thereafter. In print media and local over the air broadcasts, the venue knows what is in the ads. So I use an adblocker and turn off cookies and JavaScript at every opportunity.

[darkoshi]

My regular browsers (WaterFox, Firefox) also have add-ons that block Javascript/etc. But that makes it difficult to stream content (except for YouTube & Vimeo which I've got configured), as there are usually so many different domains to unblock, each time reloading the page and clicking Play again, to try getting it to work. Until I get it right, sometimes the ads will play ok but the desired content won't. That's why I use other browsers for things like this.

I don't mind ads too much if it means getting to watch something online that I otherwise wouldn't be able to. But having to spend half an hour trying to get two minutes of ads to play, so I can continue watching the rest of the show isn't worth it.

I agree that even with the ads working as designed, the current approach has a lot of problems. I'd like to be able to indicate what kind of ads I'd prefer to see, but don't want companies tracking everything I click on, trying to figure it out for themselves. And there are other aspects of it that are even more disturbing & concerning.