Apparently, “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” doesn’t apply to Web 2.0, or technology in general. Of course it never has, which is why I was well employed in the tech support sector for many years. Just when I had it all figured out, just when had a solution to share with everyone on how to watch their favorite shows on ABC.com, Fox.com, and CWTV.com on the chosen Move Media player, it all unraveled. This time, the issue had nothing to do with the Move Media player itself, rather one of its components. Adobe made some “upgrades” to its Flash plug-in and things stopped working.
It’s been a while since my last article, so let’s review how this whole mess began. It all started because I wanted to watch Life On Mars on ABC.com. After struggling for weeks trying to get the video to play on IE, I ended up installing the Firefox browser and after installing the latest version of Adobe Flash, Java, and the Move Media player, I was watching the shows without issue.
My quest didn’t stop there though, for I was still determined to crack the IE mystery. Eventually I found that there are plenty of other programs that can cause ActiveX conflicts in IE, plus Vista has some very tight security, so even though the Move Media player install showed success, it wasn’t installing correctly (the video not playing being the clue). Once I disabled every add-on in IE, uninstalled an application I needed for remote access at work, plus logged on as administrator, the install seemed to work for I could finally play videos for those sites in IE.
Since then though, I’ve looked at the Java code thoroughly for ABC.com, CWTV.com and Fox.com and concluded that Firefox is still the most secure browser to run the videos with, mostly because it doesn’t use ActiveX. However, given what Adobe Flash has done to its player since version 9, IE might not be any worse.
The Plot Thickens
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Mark Buckingham
Good work! I had a similar problem about a year ago that turned out to be related to my sound card drivers. Same exact symptoms...YouTube video would play for a couple seconds, then froze.
Ended up being a problem where I would toggle off the audio hardware from VMWare to mute the virtual machine rather than muting from the audio properties icon within the virtual machine's taskbar tray. When returning to the host machine, the audio drivers got screwed up somehow from doing this. That was a bugger to pin down since I didn't immediately correlate VMWare to the audio problem, though it happened on a few different occasions. Finally the light bulb flickered on.
After reinstalling my audio drivers the last time, the videos played normally again, and have ever since, now that I know what to watch out for.
2 - bliffle
Anyone who knowingly uses ActiveX or Flash deserves whatever ill fate befalls them. Neither of those products is designed to deliver a good user experience, but both are very good at stealing an end users private data from his computer and delivering it to a remote hacker. Oh, and on the way it will plague the user with commercials.
Disable ActiveX in your browser and refuse to download/install Flash.
If someone wanted you to see their video clip they would publish it in MPEG or some other open architecture format. Why not? The OA formats are as good or better than the prorietary formats, and they have more years of debugging behind them.
If you MUST look at a youtube video, First DL it to your internet computer without running it, then move the clip to a separate computer which is not connected to the internet. Look at it there. A number of OA programs will play it.
For example, I was interested in the Gordon Brown talk uploaded to youtube by CNN (or was it CSPAN?) today so I downloaded it then moved it to a computer which never sees the internet to play it. Both are linux systems, incidentally.
I do not suffer from identity theft or hacking, because I don't open the door.
3 - John Dowdell
Hi, sorry, I gave the three pages of text with different ad-loads a couple of reads, but couldn't tell which webpage you were trying to view in which browser on which system.
(The Move Networks part particularly confused me, because that's entirely separate from Adobe Flash Player, and used in parallel by ABC.com for some of their content. The repeated Java mentions drew me off-track too. Adobe Flash Player 9 was released back in 2006, which made "Player 9 broke it" tricky to understand. Hard to pull out the question.)
I *think* the main core is "If your Adobe Flash Player isn't working normally, use the uninstaller to remove everything and install it fresh," which is the information given in the troubleshooting guide at adobe.com/support/flashplayer.
Glad you're up and running now, though.
jd/adobe
4 - Alice Jester
John - Yeah, it's a little confusing when this is the third article I've written about a problem that started a while back with the Move Media player used by abc.com. There were links to those articles early in this one.
The issues started happening with a particular release of Flash 9 (r11 or r12 I believe). I saw many complaints about this as late as October 2008, right when Flash 10 was released. It only happens with Firefox as IE is okay. There are numerous articles I read from doing a google search talking about this problem with YouTube videos. Whatever happened with YouTube in some cases is affecting the Move Media player as well.
The issue also was we didn't know it was the flash player at first. It took many troubleshooting hints to get to that point. Once I figured that out I did check out both the Adobe and Mozilla troubleshooting links. Sadly, none of those solutions worked, for the uninstall and reinstall wasn't working properly. It wasn't until we tried the solution I listed that it finally started to work.
Thanks for the link though, for I'm sure there are others that will need to go to that link to troubleshoot.
5 - Michael
Didn't work for me. After uninstalling Adobe, Hulu never alerted me it needed Flash player. I installed from Adobe page for IE, had to save file to desktop for Firefox. Never work, but it use to. Tried System restore and that didn't work either.
6 - Pete
Do you know why abc.com's new player won't play at all in linux firefox?
7 - anny
there is also something wrong with mine ,it is boring !
8 - Meglet
Oops my bad, just commented on your older article. Followed the instructions precisely and still no go. I get the little spinning cursor like it's loading but it just cranks and cranks and never does anything.
9 - Alice Jester
Sorry guys - I've been taking a while to catch up.
Pete - From the list of disclaimers from Move Media, they don't support a linux plugin. No reason given, but I speculate that they realize the average user doesn't run on linux and they don't want to go through the trouble.
Michael - I heard that there are troubles with the adobe uninstall in removing some of the older versions. There's a link above in the comments to their troubleshooting site. There is an uninstaller I believe that searches for all older versions, but I had trouble running that myself. You might have to be logged in as administrator for that.
Meglet - No worries about where you post the comment, I get them all regardless. It sounds like the Move Media player didn't install properly. I would uninstall and reinstall the Move player, especially if your flash is now upgraded. I'd also try it logged in as administrator. That cursor spinning is definitely a problem with the Move player. If it was a flash problem, it would play for a few seconds and stop.
10 - Meglet
Guess I just wasn't meant to watch!! I have uninstalled and reinstalled twice now. The first time I uninstalled the addon from my firefox browser, the second time I closed the browser and went to control panel and removed it that way. When I did it that way and came back to ABC it never prompted me to reinstall the Move player again but tried to play and did the same thing (cranking cranking). I've tried going to CWTV and it just says "error". Grrrrr. I give up! (although I'll probably continue to google every now and then and see if somebody figures it out :D)
11 - Alice Jester
Meglet - Yeah, that "error" on cwtv.com definitely means the Move player is acting up. If you were never prompted for the reinstall, then it never uninstalled and your copy of the player is bad. Chances are its not deleting the registry in Windows. I would check to see if it is an add-on in IE as well, and deactivate it there. Another place to look (assuming you are on Vista, it might be the same for XP) is c:users(username)AppDataRoamingMove_Networksie_bin. There is an uninstaller there, or just delete everything there. That might prompt the reinstall.
12 - Tinu
That's a lot of hoops to jump through to watch shows online. I prefer watching TV online though, so it's good to know there are fixes for the issue.
13 - Jeannie
I have been reading your article and i hoped after doing all the things you said it would finally work but it still doesnt. It opens the new window for the video on abc.com, it shows me the commercials and then it says i should click the "continue" button. As soon as i do that the arrow turns into a blue circle and it says "loading", from that moment on it doesnt do anything else. I read that installing the Mozilla Firefox would help but didnt change anything. I installed the move player again but nothing. If I go on hulu.com i can watch the videos there without any problem. Do you have any idea what else i can try?
14 - Gerry
My abc player stopped working misteriously so I fell on this page upon researching a fix. I am NOT computer savvy but decided to give her method it a shot.
I operate Windows XP with Internet Explorer and this is what I did:
*Erased all the cookies
*Unistalled Adobe Flash Player
*Unistalled ABC Move Media Player
*Restarted computer
*Loaded Flash player from hulu.com as indicated bot ONLY using the Explorer browser (I did not bother with Firefox browser.)
*Restart
*Test player on hulu.com (Worked fine).
*Went to abc.com to the videos, was prompted to download their Player.
*Restart
*Voila!!!!!!!!!
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
15 - Abra
I am so jealous of everybody that has gotten their players to work. The exact same maddening spinning whirl happens to me as well. I have been reading all the blogs and have officially tried *everything*. Flash is updated and settings correct, installed (and uninstalled) Mozilla, cleared cache, un/reinstalled directly from Move Networks, tried the Hulu trick and still STILL cannot get the whirl to go away. Please I beg of you. Help.
16 - Alice Jester
I became aware of these settings to check within the last week. This might solve your problem.
Open the Firefox browser:
1. Go to Tools, Add Ons, on the Firefox Browser and check to see if Adblock Plus is enabled. If so, disable it.
2. Go to Tools, Options, Content, Advanced, and make sure Move and Resize Windows is checked.
Restart Firefox and try playing again.
17 - Abra
I have tried that as well and still can't get the thing to work. Can't make it happen in IE OR Mozilla. Any more ideas?? Help!
18 - Alice Jester
Abra- No problem, I have plenty more suggestions.
From my experience, the spinning swirl is a Move player problem and not flash. Do you get the swirl on abc and "error" on cwtv? Does it play on Fox? (I can't remember how it errors there). If it doesn't work on any of those sites, it's definitely the Move player. If it's just ABC, then I can send some more suggestions because their setup is far more involved and they do more downloading from different servers.
Chances are, the player isn't installing properly. There are no errors and signs that this is happening. Are you on XP or Vista?
As for IE, that's way tougher. You'll have to disable just about every Add-on, reboot, uninstall everything, reinstall as administrator and try again. That won't be a guarantee it'll work either. The Active X controls for other software really mess with the setup. Troubleshooting Firefox is easier.
Also, can you play on hulu.com? I just want to eliminate the possibility that it's your ISP.
19 - Abra
Hi Alice
Thanks a million for your help. I'm on Vista and Hulu works just fine. On ABC it's the swirl, on Fox it's just a black screen instead of the episode and fox is a black screen and error above the status bar. It's frustrating because all the ads and previews play without error it's just the episodes that don't work. I've tried doing the install directly w/ move and it says it's installed but the screen never plays. I am at a total loss as to what else I can do so any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
20 - Alice Jester
The Move player isn't installing properly. I suspect an older version might exist on your system. I would go into both IE and Firefox and disable the Add-on for Move Media. Then, go into control panel, uninstall a program and uninstall the Move Networks Media player. The one there might be for Internet Explorer, or there might be a couple of versions. Make sure all versions are uninstalled.
Another place to check is the c:users(username)AppDataRoamingMove Networks directory. Nothing should be under that after the uninstall. If there is an ie_bin directory, the uninstall didn't work. Just delete that directory if it is there.
Reboot the system. When you come back in, login as administrator (I'm very sorry if you've done all this before. I just want to cover all the bases). Install through Firefox first and do the install through cwtv. Their install process is a lot more stable.
Let me know if that helps! Trust me, I've got more.
21 - Abra
Uninstalled everything, checked c: directory, recycled, rebooted when to cwtv, loaded and then: black blanck screen with "your video will resume shortly". Didn't work. *sigh* This had better be the best season of Lost ever.
22 - Alice Jester
Abra - This season of Lost is so worth it! Best yet imho. We need to get this working for you.
What I could do now is go through all the Firefox settings. IE is just too much of a mess. My first question is, when you select Tools, error console, what do you see? There should be some errors "expected declaration but found" but I'm looking for something glaring, like unable to open or permission denied. Also make sure the popup blocker is disabled.
If you'd like to take this offline and work via email, select the url next to my name on this message. It'll take you to my homepage. There's a "contact us" section that will send your message to my email. Otherwise, we can go back and forth here too.
23 - nicki reid
I hope this will help someone - all of a sudden I was unable to play episodes on ABC after never having any problems. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the flash player, the move media player both on IE and Mozilla. After days of trying everything, I remembered that I recently downloaded the new version, 3.0, of Mozilla Firefox, so I uninstalled that and went back to the older version and it worked perfectly. This obviously should not be the answer but at least it works. I'm sure it's not good to keep the older version but since I am no IT genius, this is what works for me right now. ABC and/or Mozilla should fix this glitch. Any ideas of how I could use the new version and still be able to watch episodes would be greatly appreciated!
24 - Meglet
I wish I could do this but I work on my computer from home and Firefox 3.0 is required for my job. :( If I get desperate enough I may have to keep going back and forth installing and uninstalling though lol
25 - vman
Thanks. I followed the instructions in your article, to handle this problem for a client of mine, and they worked beautifully.