Seriously?? It's just a few fake TV show clips they recorded specifically for this video. And for me, the channel buttons do nothing but bring up a description of the current "channel."

[edit: the channels do change after a delay]

Aside: I'm sure I've heard it all throughout my life, but it was only a few days ago that I looked up the lyrics and backstory behind this song. For a song written just shy of 50 years ago, it blows my mind how good it is.

http://rock.rapgenius.com/Bob-dylan-like-a-rolling-stone-lyr...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Like_a_Rolling_Stone

How long did you stick with it? It cycles through the same few channels at the very beginning and starts you on the same channel (food channel?) each time, but after that I think you're in control.

EDIT: OK, so I messed with this some more. It does appear to change channels on its own from time to time, so it doesn't seem possible to see whether they recorded the entire song for each channel. Also, it didn't start me on the food channel this time. Nevertheless, it's not the same each time you do it. I suspect that each channel only contains portions of the song and there are enforced channel changes as a result

I think once you change the channel once, it let's your stay on a certain channel for the entire song. I was able to watch a single channel for the majority of the song. And the first channel that is chosen for you seems to be random, it's been different the 3 times I watched it.

There's a brief delay between pressing a key, the channel banner changing, and then the video stream changing, but it definitely responds.

Ok. I was getting confused by the delay and the initial lack of control. I couldn't tell the difference between a delayed change and an automatic change. Thanks.... point still stands that it's simply a bunch of fake tv clips, probably all the exact length of the song.

No doubt. It seems each "channel" is a complete music video in and of itself, and the channel buttons switch between synchronized streams. And, like my TV, it feels like it takes too long to switch channels. ;)

The ESPN set is real with Steve Levy anchoring and obviously "The Price is Right" and Drew Carey are the real deal.

They're the real sets/hosts, but not real broadcasts of those shows.

Evident in the quality of play in the channel showing tennis...

There are 16 custom videos, one for each channel: http://video.bobdylan.com/credits.html

As pure speculation, I'd expect they recorded each channel singing the full song and then switch stream and sync the times when you change channel.

It would be really interesting to see how they dealt with the buffering on slower connections, since presumably the video can't prefetch too much ahead as the channel is likely to change regularly.

I can help answer that:

They didn't, changing channels or even leaving it playing is awfully slow, though the site's probably getting hammered by Reddit/HN. Great concept though.

EDIT: Or apparently they did and my connection is still too slow to catch up.

They probably use a HTTP Live Streaming-like approach to test the connection quality before serving you a set of clips. Changing channels is more like changing playlist files starting at whatever index.