My Internet connection is sometimes slow, but I’ve no problem watching YouTube, I just press the Pause icon, wait for some or all of the video to load, then press Play. (It’s annoying not to be able to Pause when YouTube self-pauses during load, but that’s a separate problem.)
However I can not watch the shows at thedailyshow.com. After being paused for several seconds, the video skips to the next segment.
Please fight my ignorance. Is there a simple workaround? Am I doing something wrong?
The flash coding at thedailyshow.com almost always screws up for me as well. I think it’s just programmed badly. You could torrent the episodes-- they usually get posted around the same time or before it goes up on TDS site.
The Daily Show is still available on Hulu. You might have more luck there.
…Television?
Seconded.
Except to check out extended interviews that I’m interested in, I stopped using The Daily Show and The Colbert Report websites quite some time ago- specifically because I hated the players. I was watching on Hulu yesterday and ended up getting called away unexpectedly. I paused, put my computer on standby, left for an hour. When I came back I started the video at the exact second where I had paused it and it played immediately with no problem.
Oh right. I always forget that people in America can watch Hulu without spoofing an IP. That’s probably the best suggestion.
Thanks for all your suggestions, BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed and everyone.
I live in Thailand and can’t access Hulu. I’ve tried accessing it via freeproxyserver.net; this doesn’t seem to work – perhaps a complaint that javascript is disabled (even though it’s enabled). 
Perhaps there is a better way to spoof IP than freeproxyserver.net … or I could just watch Daily Show on days when bandwidth is good. (Though even then I always seem to lose most of the guest segment.)
I’m something of a technophobe, and am not thrilled even about downloading a DIVX player, whatever that is.
Huh. I didn’t know the Comedy Central sites were available outside the U.S. The fact that you are not in the U.S. complicates matters.
Have you tried letting watching the individual segment videos, which shoudn’t skip at all?
Does the Comedy Network limit feeds to people outside of Canada? They have the rights to TDS and TCR in Canada and the episodes are available online. Perhaps you can try to view them there?
Just to answer this question:
I click on your link; click on Jon Stewart; video seems to start loading with no complaint … but … an Alert box “Sorry, there was an error” soon presents.
Anyway, thedailyshow.com works OK on days when my connection is getting good bandwidth. I’ll just have to treat bad bandwidth as a Message from On High to do something more constructive with my time than use Internet. 
Anchor free (you have to download it) lets me stream Hulu.
I just click the Pause button right away. Once YouTube loads enough to start to play, it immediately pauses.
I’m on Firefox 8.0, under Linux. YMMV.