Tonight, I noticed something that made me very, very happy: StarWars.com has updated their video player!

They've made the following improvements in the Star Wars Video section of the Official Site:

* You can now fast forward and rewind videos.
* The audio stays in sync after it has been paused and resumed.
* The loading issues seem to be fixed (the one where the video would begin to play and then give you a black screen for a long period of time before resuming.
* Full screen playback.
* Original size playback.
* Direct URL to the video (found in the More options menu)
* Embedding of videos (found in the More options).
* RSS feeds (found in the More options menu).
* Social networking features like del.icio.us, Digg, My AOL, My Yahoo, and My Google (did they forget Windows Live?) (found in the More options menu).

I'm so happy about these changes. When I took the StarWars.com survey a few days ago, one of my only complaints about the site was the poor video playback options. But today, those issues were magically fixed! Great job LucasOnline!

Click here to watch the Star Wars: The Clone Wars Series trailer in the new video player.


12/21/2007 Update:
LucasOnline has updated it again! It's a whole new design. Visually, it looks much nicer, and the ads aren't as annoying. Video plays much better than before, and you can skip around easier. But they did take out the community features (in the More options menu). Oh well, they were nice, but I didn't use them all the time,so I guess it's okay. Other than that, I love it even more!