BBC iPlayer alternatives rated

By Ian Morris on 22 May 2009, 3:27pm

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4oD

There are two ways to watch Channel 4 shows on 4oD. You can either stream them, in a regular web page, as you do with ITV Player and iPlayer, or you can use a download service that’s similar to the old iPlayer downloads which the BBC has now abandoned. Ever since we first tried to look at 4oD we’ve always had terrible trouble with the software. On our test machine it refuses to install, and that’s really quite frustrating.

In terms of picture quality, 4oD promises a bit more than ITV player, but actually delivers about the same. Subjective picture quality is better than ITV, but the frame size is similarly tiny. Channel 4 does something slightly more irritating than ITV though -- because the video window size is larger than ITVs, but the videos all play in a cropped region within that. The actual dimensions of video is around 512x287, whereas the main video window is actually 625x352 pixels.

One major irritation with 4oD is that if you leave it paused for a long time, when you come back to carry on playing the video, it won’t cooperate, generally presenting you with an error.

Despite Channel 4 offering HD programmes via Sky, there is no apparent move to offer these via 4oD. This is a great shame, and yet another thing that puts Channel 4's service behind the BBCs. That said, it would be unfair of us not to forget that that the BBC gets 3 billion quid a year off the public, which gives it a lot more to play with.

Oh -- and one more thing. When we were using the site, there was an advert for B&Q, and there was something wrong with the audio on it. So we got nasty audio blasting into our ears every time it played. Totally unacceptable.