Having problems viewing the videos

[John]

When I try and view any video using either IE8 or Chrome I just get a blank window.  If I right-click on the blank area it says "movie not loaded".  I tried updating to latest flash player 10 but still get the same.

Any ideas what is wrong?

I am just about to delve into the Telerik controls and would like to view some videos!

[Todd Anglin]

Hello John-

Sorry to hear about the trouble you're having with TTV! Unfortunately, I'm unable to produce the error locally in either Chrome, IE8, or Firefox 3.5 running on Windows 7 with Adobe Flash Player 10.

Are you trying view the videos behind a corporate proxy or firewall? Sometimes corporate networks block traffic to content like TTV unless specific traffic exceptions are granted. Also, have you tried using Firefox? If possible, I'd suggest trying Firefox with Firebug. That should help you further debug what's happening on your computer (i.e. is it a network problem, is it a JS error, etc.).

If you can send any additional details or test results, we're here to provide any assistance that we can.

-Todd

[Shawn]

Well, I can't view any of the TTV videos in either FF, IE8 on 2 different machines.  The blank screen just sits there. 

[Todd Anglin]

Shawn-

Sorry to see you're have issues accessing Telerik TV, too! I notice in your screenshot that the thumbnail image links are broken, too. It appears you may have some content filter or proxy server that is breaking your access to Telerik TV. Our content is served from Amazon S3 content servers spread around the globe and we've observed that some corporate networks block access to these servers.

For debugging your experience, would you mind inspecting your Net traffic using Firebug in Firefox or Fiddler with IE? That should reveal if you're getting 404s for the video resources or some other error. If you are getting 404s, the most likely cause is network settings on your local network.

I'd also suggest trying to access TTV from a separate network (such as your home network) to see if the problem persists. Give some of those tests a try and let me know if you learn anything. We'll do our best to help you gain access to Telerik TV content based on the information you share. Again, apologies for the inconvenience.

-Todd

[Shawn]

Yep, that's id.  Viddler.com is blocked by OpenDNS under my filter settings.

[John]

We are OK now also - our network guy also confirmed that viddler.com was being blocked.

[Joe Kahl]

I need to watch your training videos.  My firm uses Telerik and I am leading the technology discovery and recommendation for development of a large windows desktop app.  I need to see these videos.  I get the same problem as the other guy above.  So does my teammate.  I can try from home tonight, but I need to do this during the days.  And so do several other people.  What is my best course of action?  Do I need to get our IT to allow access to your URL or can you change the way your videos are posted?

Sincerely, Joe

[Todd Anglin]

Joe-

Sorry for the trouble. The videos are served as FLVs in a standard Flash video player. If you are able to view videos on sites like YouTube, you should have no trouble viewing the videos on Telerik TV.

Often, in corporate networks, the problem can be corporate firewall rules. Please make sure that your firewall/content filter allows you to access videos being served from viddler.com (our back end content delivery network provider). If you can try accessing the videos from a computer on a different network, you can verify if that is the problem you're encountering. Alternatively, you can use a tool like FireBug in Firefox to inspect your browser traffic and see what HTTP errors you're hitting.

Hope that helps. Let us know if we can provide any additional assistance.

-Todd

[Joe H]

Websense classifies the site www.viddler.com as "Illegal or questionable". So, I can't see any of these videos. It would be great if you could either get in touch with Websense, if that classification is incorrect, or switch providers to avoid these problems.

[Joe Kahl]

www.viddler.com is blocked by our firm.  We have a process to request clearance, for the whole firm, to access a blocked URL.  It requires management approval and could be denied.  When I spoke to my director about it he told me to just work from home and watch the videos.  That went well.  I also downloaded copies of a few of them and found a free FLV viewer, called "FLV Player", and now I can watch the videos locally.  (http://www.martijndevisser.com/blog/flv-player/)  This is inconvenient, I know, but I got my work done.

[Joe H]

Suggestion for Telerik - move the videos to YouTube. Many companies have their videos up there now.

[Todd Anglin]

A couple of quick updates on the Telerik TV video delivery front:

1. We are currently working on adding a CNAME alias to our video delivery, so all videos will come from a Telerik.com domain. Hopefully this helps resolve any issues where corporate firewalls are blocking common video CDNs (like Viddler, YouTube, etc.)
2. We are going to start adding more videos to the Telerik YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/telerikinc), but not all videos. YouTube limits video length to 10 minutes, so it is not ideal for our video collection, especially recorded webinars. YouTube's bitrate and encoding is also not ideally suited for screencasts (which is mostly what we do), so we can deliver better quality on other services.

There are some major updates in the works for Telerik TV. Hopefully these combined with our infrastructure improvements will help improve your video experience.

-Todd