[speer]

Up until about 3 weeks ago I had been enjoying the ability to watch episodes of the Office on my Storm at NBC's mobile site. Then suddenly, it stopped working. All I get now is "HTTP error 403: Forbidden" messages.

I have searched around and this seems to be a pretty common issue amongst Blackberry users, specifically on the Verizon network. It seems that the story is pretty much the same for everyone. Used to work fine... now they get error messages... no one really knows why. Users with WAP browsers seem to be okay but I (and most of the commenters I have found) do not have a WAP browser, nor have I been able to figure out how to get one on my Storm. There seems to be no official response from either Verizon or NBC about why this is happening... in fact most people seem to be somewhat baffled by their inability to get any sort of helpful/knowledgeable response from either company regarding the issue.

What makes this really strange is that within the last few weeks there seems to have been a big push by NBC to promote their mobile episode streaming on Blackberry devices, including mentioning Storms specifically... it seems every half-***ed Blackberry blog received and posted the same press release saying they "just discovered" an amazing new service to stream NBC episodes!! YAY!! Not surprisingly these blogs are getting blasted in the comment sections by people getting the 403 error, railing on the bloggers for their lack of research before posting the info, and befuddlement at the lack of any official fix (or at least acknowledgment of the issue).

I know this isn't a big deal, but this was one of my simple pleasures... and damnit what's up with the total black hole of answers on this issue? Does anyone have any insight? Can I get a WAP browser?

[DrewCSchultz]

Good first post.

I am also disturbed by this. I had hoped, however, that NBC/Universal were shuttin' her down to make room for a mobile Hulu site.

[speer]

Interesting theory... but then why the seemingly blatant push by NBC to get coverage?

Here is one particularly interesting tid bit from another blog (am I allowed to reference the name of another site on Crackberry? For now I will omit).

The article was titled "Watch NBC prime TV free on your BlackBerry Storm"

And it goes on to say:"Everything looks beautiful on the BlackBerry Storm. At WES, many of the booths were demo’ing their products on the Storm because the combination of a big screen and smooth UI, makes for the best way to showcase your application. Video is stunning on this device and I found a good post explaining how to get NBC prime television streamed to your device for free."

So... unless I am confused here, it sounds like NBC was using Storms to promote their mobile streaming at WES.... nearly a month after it became widely known that the average Storm user was unable to access the service??

Sloppy.

It is possible that this is a case of sloppy/lazy bloggers not fact-checking. Even so, after nearly a month of this, the lack of response from either Verizon or NBC is strange.

[patches152]

no proof that VZW has "throttled" the NBC site...especially on their "flagship media/data device"...it seems like maybe NBC reconfigured something and didn't change it back? bad file types or something maybe? idk...it's kinda strange. they did something for sure.

[wmscottmc]

This appears to be a problem on the NBC site. I had no response from my email to nbc. Has anybody heard anything from NBC or Verizon about this problem?

[speer]

From looking around it seems that most attempts to contact NBC have been met with silence. Even in the tech support section of NBC's message board, posts regarding this issue are suffering lingering, unreplied to deaths.

I get the sense that although mobile technology is currently a huge buzzword in entertainment industry exec meetings, the actual resources being devoted to it right now might be rather skeletal.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[patches152]

all of my research has shown that if it were a carrier issue that we'd get a different error code, the one we're getting now is the same as unsupported media...so idk...i think your last post hit it on the head, speer.

[rukus]

speer is a wordsmith in that post...yet has 0 posts...i blame NBC