Channel 4's 4oD: TV on demand, at a price
Tags: watching, demand, bbc, programmes
Channel 4's new on-demand TV service, confusingly named '4oD', is similar in concept to the BBC's iMP project, allowing you to watch TV shows you've missed. There are, however, a couple of important differences between the services.
The BBC's player is rumoured to be similar to its seven-day radio player, which lets you to catch up on programmes you've missed in the last week. The 4oD player provides some classic archive television shows like Spaced and Drop the Dead Donkey as well as the chance to catch up on recent programmes. On the flip side, while the BBC's player will be free to licence-fee payers, many of the 4oD shows are provided as pay-per-view. This means that you'll be paying 99p each time you watch an episode -- let's be honest, that's a bit steep.
Installing the application was simple enough: the program makes sure that you have the latest software, and where required will help by updating anything that is out of date, such as Windows Media Player or your .NET libraries. Registration is also pain-free, with no need to put in credit card details until you've decided to buy something.
The really bad news is that the videos are DRM wrapped to prevent you from watching them past their expiry date and from sending them to your friends. Crave is not best pleased as this really restricts your playback options -- forget putting any of these videos on your iPod or other portable device. And don't forget you can buy both series of Spaced on DVD for just £14 -- a price suspiciously close to the on-demand cost and unfettered by any DRM nonsense.
On our PC's monitor the quality is far from high definition, but is fine for catching up on other people's bowel movements on You Are What You Eat or watching Supernanny telling off naughty children. We haven’t had a chance to look at the video on a proper telly yet, but we would expect somewhere between VHS and DVD quality.
So, Channel 4: great idea, just a shame that it's too expensive and restrictive at the moment. We do live in hope as it is a beta, so the service may improve in the future -- especially once the BBC provides some competition with the launch of its own free player. -IM
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AnonymousSat 6 January, 2007 12:45am
4oD is a complete rip-off, 99p for crap resolution DRM protected file which expires after 48 hours?
why not just use sky+ or a dvd/hdd recorder and keep it for as long as you like? and you'll be able to encode it to any format you like.
who is even gonna pay for this nonsence, poor people would be to poor to buy it and there won't be any point of rich people buying it cos of the disgusting quality and they'll probably have Sky+ already set up to record their fav shows.
AnonymousFri 19 January, 2007 10:33pm
Hi all,
IF YOU DONT HAVE A TRULY UNLIMITED INTERNET CONNECTION YOU WILL END UP KICKED FROM YOUR ISP OR PRESENTED WITH A BIG BILL
A few points you may like to take into account before using 4OD or Skys on demand service as they both use the same software, There are also reports that the sky version leaves kservice running after uninstalling. For me 4OD did remove kservice after uninstalling but please check.
This is a Peer to Peer application It WILL degrade your internet connection ALL THE TIME.
It shares files weather you have downloaded anything or not AND even after you have shut it down in the task bar it continues.
The only way to stop it is to manualy shut down the KSERVICE.EXE program.
If you have limited bandwidth or have a fair usage policy with your ISP (EG Tiscali unlimited) you WILL fall foul of it or be charged for going over your limit.
After installing this and shutting it down I noticed a significant slowing in my connection and alot of traffic going to and from the machine 4OD was installed on. After looking at the traffic on that machine (download tidmon and tcpview to take a look and use to shut it down) I found a program that I didnt recognise (kservice.exe) I then checked the amount of data transfered on my router, this showed in the last 24 hours over 1gb down and nearly 200mb up, FAR more than the hand full of ebay pages I had viewed that day, and the machine had been off for 8 hours.
Ive met more friendly virus's and malware
So be awair
Cheers
Jay
SamSun 21 January, 2007 5:46pm
After using, the channel 4 download beta service I was left disappointed. After seeing and using in service in Japan that allows me, to download and watch movies. The sevice allows me watch movies based on my internet connection. If you have a very high speed connection, you could watch a film in 20 secs and have to wait for the whole film to download. If your coneection is slightly slower it takes longer before you can start watching it. Channel 4 makes you download the whole film, making you waste time. The cost is also very high for watching films or programmes. A subscription service should be offered like napster.
AnonymousThu 20 March, 2008 1:27am
when your playing a video on 4od, right click the video and select 'properties' then were it has the file source, copy that and enter it in windows explorer and u can copy the videos over. and then play them in any other player you like.
i dont if im right but yh :D
AnonymousThu 17 April, 2008 9:41pm
4od Is Ok For Streaming And Watching And Episode Once Without Pay But Why Not With The Films, The Video Quality Is Ok But Not As Perfect As It Could Be.
I Respect Why They Don't Let You Download It Onto Your Comp Straight Off But you Just Download It To 4od Which Is Basically And Honestly Just Absolute Crap Really Because It Only Lasts About 2 Days Which Is A Complete Piece Of Piss Which I Why BBC Iplayer Is Better In That Respect Because It Lasts Around A Week.
AnonymousSun 29 June, 2008 7:25pm
Did they not teach you about capitalisation in school ?
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SimonSharksWed 3 January, 2007 3:10pm
4oD is very disappointing. The video quality is terrible, nothing like DVD, you can clearly see it has been heavily compressed. All the video has DRM, which means you can't watch it on anything other than your PC (note no Mac compatibility). And it's a rip off!
In fact my DVD recorder does exactly the same and allows me to backup to DVD. Why can't I download a DVD quality MPEG2 video that's DRM free, so I can watch it on any device I like and backup to DVD? Whats stopping them?
At the moment 4oD is a waste of time. Lets hope they sort it out.