CNN Pipeline

I was checking out today’s headlines at CNN.com and I noticed something called CNN Pipeline. It is a video player that gives you access to 4 live video news feeds and several packaged news stories.

It looked interesting because I can be a news junky and I sometimes get tired of listening to music while I work, so listening to the news while I work is refreshing once in a while.

The service costs either 99 cents a day, $2.95 a month or $24.95 a year. They have a 14 day trial. So I thought, why not take them up on the trial. I signed up and so far I am fairly happy with it.

It is not the actual CNN broadcast. Some feeds don’t contain something exciting at all times (like right now it’s a shot of the airport waiting for Bush to arrive). But with 4 feeds, there is usually something good to have in the background. They also have a Pipeline host. Some guy who conducts interviews and informs you at all times of what is available in the other feeds. Apparently you also get informed whenever there are Breaking News in any of the feeds.

For Windows users, you can access the service through your web browser or you can download a small application to view the feeds, which is kind of nice because it can be made a tiny window, put in a corner of your desktop and you can also pin it on top.

For Mac users, you can access the service through your web browser. This is a refreshing change as most companies don’t even bother trying to make services available to Mac users. This bothers me because the Internet is supposed to be a platform-independent medium.

When I signed up I figured I would probably cancel within the 14 free days but right now, I think that I may keep it. $25/year is not a bad price if the quality is as good as it seems so far.

Posted by david at 9:52 am | Permalink |

Filed under Observations, Entertainment