You may have noticed something new at www.cnettv.com over the past few weeks. We've been letting a small portion of our daily visitors test out the new CNET TV 2.0 beta and provide their feedback. Well, today the test is over, and we are opening the floodgates. All visitors will now get the new CNET TV 2.0 beta. We've been working on this for many months and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised, or, worst case, at least surprised. We've redesigned and rebuilt TV 2.0 largely based upon your feedback. I'd like to highlight some of the key updates to help you get acquainted with TV 2.0.

Consistent CNET look and feel

The first thing you'll probably notice is that CNET TV has lost its black background. This was probably the hardest decision we had to make in the redesign process, but in the end we felt that having a header and navigation consistent with the other CNET sites you're already familiar with would make for an easier user experience.

New channels

In CNET TV 1.0, our channels had catchy names that just never caught on. In CNET TV 2.0, we've renamed our channels with easy-to-understand titles and provided subcategories to allow you to find exactly what you're looking for.

Promotion of hot videos!

When we asked our users what kind of video they want to see, we heard the same answer over and over again. They want to see the "hottest, coolest, latest, and most interesting" videos. Since this is a bit different for everyone, we've carved out a good chunk of space on our home page to display a wide array of the "hottest, coolest, latest, and most interesting" video. These change all the time, so you can come back frequently and never get bored. (I'd suggest 20 times a day, if possible.) But hey, you don't have to believe us about what the best videos in our library are, we've added a list of the most popular videos of the past week sorted by most user views. You'll find this on the home page on the far-right side.

Product metadata

We can only squeeze so much content into a video, but that doesn't mean we don't know a whole bunch more about the products we review. To solve this, we've added metadata tabs. On the video view page (the one you get to by clicking on any promotion on the home page), you'll see a series of tabs directly under the video. These provide a summary of our editor's full review, user opinions, specs, and even the latest prices.

But wait, there's more!

I've only outlined a few of our new features; you'll have to do some exploring to find the rest. And if you're wondering why this is still beta, it is because we have a bunch of features left to add. In the near future, look for true full-screen support, video podcasts, RSS feeds, and more exciting features that I'm not allowed to divulge. I hope you enjoy the new CNET TV and I'd love to hear any feedback you have, just click the big feedback button on the right side of the page. - Justin

Thanks for all your feedback. We have fixed the audio problem that many of you reported with the full screen video mode. On the Windows Vista + IE = Choppy Video problem the fix that I previously posted about has worked for a lot of you, though not everyone. We are actively working with Adobe to solve this problem. In the mean time user toms_ has a fix that might work for you: "Adding www.cnettv.com to 'Trusted sites' worked for me but had to uncheck 'Require server verification...'"

In the last two weeks we've gotten a large number of reports of choppy video on CNET TV. The symptoms were so odd that I had to reproduce them myself before our engineers would believe them. Users have reported that they hear the audio on CNET TV just fine, but to get the video to play smoothly, users reported, "I have to move my mouse in circles."

The good news is we have narrowed this down to a bug that occurs in earlier versions of the Flash Player when running Windows Vista, with IE 7 in Protected Mode, with a site that has two Flash components that need to talk to each other. The not-as-good news is that we can't fix it on our side, but you can easily fix it on your side. Just follow these simple steps:

1. Uninstall the Flash player. You can download a small application from Adobe that will do this for you:

Flash Player Uninstaller

2. Install the latest version of the Flash Player.

Even if you have the latest version and you are having this problem, you'll need to uninstall it and reinstall it to solve the problem.

If this doesn't solve your problem, please let us know--either via the feedback link on CNET TV or in the comments here--and we'll try to help. Let us know:

1) What OS you are running?

2) Did you upgrade to that OS?

3) What browser and version do you use?

4) What version of Flash are you using? (Find your version of Flash here)

One of the most requested features since the launch of CNET TV has been progressive download. We've received countless e-mails asking for "the ability to pause and let the video load like you can on YouTube" and to "fix your bandwidth problem, so I can watch using dial-up." Although virtually none of the users requesting progressive download knew what to call it, they all knew how to describe it. Progressive download sends the video file to your computer as rapidly as you can receive it, whereas streaming sends the video to your computer as it is needed. If you're interested in a detailed comparison, you can read Streamingmedia.com's lengthy comparison of streaming vs. progressive download. The bottom line, however, is that if you pause a video on CNET TV the player will continue to download the video file--just like good old YouTube.

Hi I'm Justin Eckhouse, Product Manager for CNET TV. I've managed all sorts of products over the years, but CNET TV is the most exciting project I've worked on in quiet some time (hopefully for you too). I'll be using my posts here to give you a look at what's next for CNET TV as well as insight into why we've made the design & development decisions we have. So let's get started.... CNET TV was built to be an immersive multimedia experience featuring one stop shopping for all the audio & video content CNET has to offer. We've accomplished half of that equation, but as many of you have noticed our wonderful podcasts are notably missing. Never fear! This will be addressed so you can enjoy all your podcasts like Buzz Out Loud and Studio C without leaving the comfort of the soothing and sleek CNET TV backdrop.