TechCrunch TV Launches… Now. | Hacker News Reader

TechCrunch TV Launches… Now.

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30 pointsjordanbrown23 comments

The current interview with the CEO of Yahoo is so awkward and offensive. Arrington starts it out with "How the fuck are you", which Carol Bartz tries to respond to while seeming cool. But its just awkward.

Then later Carol Bartz says "I want to own it... I would be the queen of {something} computers". They both come off as arrogant.

The other shows seem to be much better. For example they had Charlie Rose interview DST’s Yuri Milner.

Clearly they are targeting the Fox News demographic.

Wow, for all the "hiring and spending" that went on, the site is surprisingly bad. I realize a lot of effort must be going into production and the video side of things, but the site blows.

That was my first impression. Anyone could have put it up in less than a day, it seemed like they put very little effort on site design. Horrible.

If you are going to spend so much money, make it right.

if you have specific feedback we'd love to hear it.

Overall appearance of the site is poor. Too much whitespace which is blinding and basically dwarfing the content. Design like this could've in principle worked for a designer's portfolio site, but for a media broadcasting website the design is inappropriate.

Also the small details, the way "TCTV Live" in my browser looks, for the lack of better word, - sloppy. Something from an 8bit Amiga era. Not polished.

In short - the site looks unattractive. You are loosing heaps of visitors by not delivering really good "first 10 seconds" impression.

You are loosing heaps of visitors by not delivering really good "first 10 seconds" impression.

Just to nitpick, you have no idea if this is true. They probably do know if it is, because they're looking at the analytics, but you're making an assumption based on your own tastes.

For what it's worth (read: almost nothing), I think the site looks fine. People watch shit on megavideo for crying out loud.

The menu bar looks off...

Logo top left looks terrible. Green on green makes the 'Tech' bit slightly unreadable and looks cludgy.

Advert next to it, fair enough.

Menu bar looks like it's trying to be 'retro' but failing miserably. Bad readability and looks like it was made in MS-Paint in a couple of minutes.

Body of site looks odd in white, too much space.

Footer looks like an afterthought, without any actual usual footer items.

Page also takes up a ton of CPU and makes it so I can't really scroll it very well.

From the announcement: "welcome to the future"

Yeah I'd take a look at http://twit.tv and http://cnettv.cnet.com/live/ who have been doing this for quite some time.

The first thing that shows up on my machine is a huge "handbags sale, 80% off" on the top right. I really wondered where I had landed!

The main menu pops up behind the video (Chrome, Windows)

As someone who directs live TV for a living, I'd fire the cameraman, light grip (basically key grip altogether), switcher, audio mixer and a guy that did intro with generic templates from videocopilot. Otherwise, it's great!

On a more constructive note (technically sans sarcasm):

Camera / switch: - Simple rule - master shot | closeup | master shot | closeup

- master shot -> needs to be wider, a lot

- closeup | closeup - don't inter-cut with master if you can do a 180 degree rule with two cameras http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/180_degree_rule

- camera positions are way too odd, but judging by the size of studio shown... tough one

Audio mix:

- bugs or a boom for conversation (bugs, better) and one small ambient mike. Throw a carpet on the wall, if mikes are too expensive, to kill echo.

Lights+Camera:

- Obviously lights are underpowered for lens settings on cameras. Also, white balance, seriously.

I can go into specifics on how to make it look better, but I'll stop being boring now. Apart from technical issues, it's always good to see anything happen from start to finish, so congrats!

Autoplaying video... (large) pixel fonts for the nav... no clear structure to the links in the center.

Someone please hire a UX designer.

It's pretty normal for there to be some rough edges at the beginning of a program. I think tweaking the formats is a natural thing to do for any program in its first few weeks of release. It will improve.

What should be TechCrunch's main concern now is how to monetize this. Online and broadcast tech video has been tried by many sites in the past, and I can't think of a single program/channel/site that has been a commercial success. Video is expensive to produce (especially using a staff-generated content model) and most shows do not generate huge audiences. Advertisers have too many options to choose from, which keeps prices down.

I don't know how they are doing with monetisation but twit.tv is cool

The site looks tossed together and the first couple videos aren't very impress -- its strange they'd release such a seemingly unpolished product.

Better to launch and get some traction than keep putting it off till it's "perfect."

If you launch a new video site and it's tech-focused, you'd think it would play on an iPad. Not so much.

They updated the post to say it will be available in about a week

Juju-only for now.

For a second there, that seemed like the real Tom Cruise.

To think that all this is growing out from a single blog post 5 years ago is quite impressive. This is a blog post going on to build a media empire. I think little details like the UI will be sorted out as time goes on.

I am just worried that TCTV might start eating up some of the little spare time I have left :(

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