CNN Relaunched with a slightly tweaked site (nothing to major, some xhtml, and slight code clean up apparently). The big feature is now the video (which was subscription only since 2002) is now free. The downside is that it’s no longer Real Player, but Windows Media. The quality isn’t at all bad. It didn’t detect WMP in Firefox, but it has a button to override detection, so I could still view the video just fine, but not good for Mac and Linux users. I wish they would have stuck with Real Media. At least they are relatively decent at being cross platform, even if their player is extremely bloated. If you want to support all platforms, and use one of the big 3, Real Media is still the best. If Mac and Windows is your target, Apple wins by a longshot (the player is essentially identical on both platforms). Real is a bit lacking on non-windows platforms, but does appear to cover the most with a player.
At least there’s free video now. Finally catching up to MSNBC and FoxNews. MSNBC obviously uses Windows Media, while FoxNews uses Flash, which is slightly lower in quality, but cross platform, and loads relatively quickly.
Update: I reinstalled WindowsMedia for OS X, and it did detect just as it did with Firefox on Windows. But it for some reason never got past my Firewall (unlike the windows version). Both systems are behind the extact same firewall with the exact same settings. So it didn’t work, but it’s progress. Perhaps with the next update it will work, or there’s a work around. I’m open to any comments/suggestions on getting it to work in Firefox and/or Safari on OS X.