Embrace the Technology - Are TV channels missing a trick with torrents?
By Dave Adamson in Reader
Posted in Uncategorized on October 24, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Some time ago, I commented about whether or not it would be illegal for someone to download a programme that had been on UK TV recently, as long as they have a TV licence - http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/user-blogs/dave-adamson/1909/downloading-those-types-of-thing-is-it-really-that-wrong.thtml
So, here I am sat in front of my laptop and it got me to thinking… Are broadcasters missing something? Couldn’t this be a winner in their attempts to draw back the viewers that some people would have us believe are deserting TV in droves?
But, first, a bit about me. I hate watching TV series on TV. I prefer to buy the DVDs so that I can watch the whole series all at once. I occasionally record stuff and get round to watching it eventually, sometimes on TV, sometimes on my computer depending on circumstances.
I know that I can access stuff like 4oD and the BBC iPlayer to watch their programmes online, and the BBC has recently launched their archive which is fantastic. However, I’m thinking that it’d be nice if the broadcasters got together and said “You know what, it’d be nice if there was some system that wasn’t intensive on our hardware that could distribute our TV programmes, legally, to a particular territory.” Okay, I know that people can use proxies to pretend to be in a different country, however we shouldn’t stop something just because we can see a hole in it - if we did that, the solution to film piracy is to stop making films!
Using bittorrent would be an ideal way to do this. Imagine it, you can access programmes for, say, 30 days after broadcast using ratio maintained trackers (or whatever they are), rewarding those who upload programmes that they’ve capped from British TV.
Of course, it’s not going to stop people downloading the whole of the next season of Prison Break, but it’ll surely enable people who want to watch programmes broadcast on British TV that they might have missed.
It’s a pipedream, I suppose, that the broadcast companies out their would all come together and put this idea into action. Or even consider the idea for that matter. But, then, I guess everything was a pipedream at some point.
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Loading ...Comment by Sharon Jackson - October 26, 2007 on 3:36 pm
I was thinking about this the other week. I timeshift my TV watching using SKY+ which works well generally. However, the other week a programme overran causing me to miss the last 5 mins or so of CSI:Miami. Of course, that’s the bit where everything is explained! Channel Five don’t seem to repeat programs like SKY 1 so I went online to see if I could download it from their site - I could but would have to pay for it. I was disappointed (especially as it wouldn’t work with Firefox or Vista) and have resigned myself to missing those few minutes. We pay, through license fees or watching adverts, and it seems a good idea for TV stations to allow free downloads - even if we couldn’t then skip the adverts lol.
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