Not on demand
Tech Digest: 4oD launches next week
Channel 4: How to use 4oD
Channel 4's 4oD service is perhaps one of the most significant media news stories this year, but you could be forgiven for not knowing about it because its announcement was so low-key. This year's long ITV saga has perhaps been responsible for 'blocking out the sun' in terms of media news so an announcement like this tended not to get the attention it deserved.
The good news? Channel 4 with its new 4oD service is offering the vast majority of its extensive archive for viewing if you have a PC with a broadband connection. This officially launches next week, though if you have suitable equipment (and of course a broadband connection) you can now sign up for a beta test service.
Channel 4 is supposedly the first broadcaster in the world to offer most of its programme back catalogue in such a manner, with the main exceptions being certain imports for which the channel no longer has the rights for (or to offer in the form of downloads), though there is a charge which varies depending on the manner of usage (watch once or to keep a copy).
4oD in a sense is testing the market just to see how popular such a service is by charging for most downloads (at least to begin with), even though Channel 4 has a deal with PACT (the independent producers association) to provide programme downloads free of charge for up to 14 days after transmission. However there is a catch to all of this.
Now for the bad news. For 4oD you will need a PC running Internet Explorer 5.5, 6 or 7 and Windows Media Player 10 or 11, so no Macs, Firefox browser or Linux users need apply, and of course the whole issue revolves around DRM or Digital Rights Management which is used to prevent unauthorised copying and viewing of downloaded content.
Whether or not Channel 4 decides to make its content available later on using other DRM methods remains to be seen (as Tech Digest points out, Microsoft WMP 10/11 has been cracked anyway), but until it adopts an alternative DRM method, non-Windows/IE users will have to be content with trawling BitTorrent sites for downloads of dubious legality and quality.
Of course other popular non-Microsoft DRM methods aren't necessarily available to all computer users either, but Channel 4 has for whatever reason(s) chosen Microsoft's copy protecton method which is narrower in scope compared to certain other copy protection methods, though I suppose it may have been chosen for the available method(s) of rights management.
It will be interesting to see how Channel 4's 4oD will compare to the BBC's forthcoming iPlayer (which will appear very soon for news content), as well as what ITV has planned for its own video download service, though ITV initially appears to be concentrating on making current programming available for download as a catchup service (but I could be mistaken).
But is it too much to ask British broadcasters - especially the commercial sector - to standardise on an widely available media platform for broadband video, or are they all merely biding time until someone else (such as Apple) ends up defining another standard which everyone in the UK ends up adopting instead?
