ESPN Motion

ESPN.com’s new redesign now features embedded multimedia for users with high-speed connections. The new ESPN Motion uses the Windows Media format to deliver high-res video highlights taken from various ESPN on-air shows. What’s cool is the quality picture, which is delivered at 678K bit/sec, including 48K bit/sec dedicated to audio. How do they do this? Caching is the name of the game.

When a new user first hits the page, ESPN checks to make sure they have the proper system configuration (currently Windows only, with Mac version promised) to support the media. It then downloads a plug-in that checks for new content and downloads it before alerting the user it’s available with an “E” icon in the system tray. Whenever a Motion-enabled user visits the site, they’re presented with a list of cached highlights on their machine and can watch them at anytime. Of course, each clip’s got an ad at the end, but you can stop it without having to watch the whole thing.