Vedomosti, (Moscow), October 27, 2003

RBC TV business television became a mass media of this kind. It was launched in September, 2003. If you don't have a satellite dish or other additional equipment that does not require a dish, you can easily use the www.rbc-trv.ru web site. You will see a small red button in the right section of the web page, which is a link to online broadcasting. You won't need that much in order to be able to watch RBC TV - a good Internet connection and the lastest version of media player, a program for playing sound and video, is all you need. But as it usually happens in these cases, you better watch your incoming traffic. Otherwise, several hours later you will find yourself out of money. The volume of traffic depends on how busy the line is. If the connection is good, the speed will reach several Mb per minute. In other words, those paying for traffic, shall think, may be it's cheaper to purchase equipment and watch the channel on TV.

The quality of broadcasting is quite good. At least, it is better than that of Bloomberg that RBC TV takes after. Bloomberg has its own media player on www.bloomberg.com that pops up automatically and you can't do anything with it - make it smaller, minimize or close it. The quality of live broadcasting is worse, but it's possible to watch selected programs with a good quality picture.

Now, let's get back to RBC TV's home page, which, to tell the truth, looks quite poor. A program schedule can be found here, as well as brief program descriptions and announcements. But what the channel lacks is a program archive and a possibility to watch any selected program that was on today. In addition, you won't find any information about program hosts (possibly, the reason lays in the channel's philosophy, when a program host is more of a function, rather than a personality). In general, there is a feeling that the home page is incomplete. But there are good examples here: its Bloomberg again and even RBC, RBC TV's parent company, that have no problems with their web sites at all.