iPlayer and 4oD
By Dave Adamson in Reader
Posted in Uncategorized on March 12, 2008 at 9:51 pm
I downloaded and installed iPlayer and 4oD this week.
Both of them use a P2P delivery system to deliver DRM content (in the form of WMVs) to play in everyone’s favourite media player - Windows Media Player.
The problem I’ve got now is addiction. You see, I have 30 days to play the content before it expires and, from clicking play, 7 days to watch it as many times as I want. Except, I seem to be downloading everything that I can get my hands on - programmes I’ll never watch… programmes I’ve already watched and programmes I might watch if I’m not watching a DVD instead! And, “out of the box”, I can’t do anything to save them beyond the 30 days. Oh well, I’ll just have to go cold turkey. At least, it means I can catch up with some of the programmes that I have been missing in my less than religious TV watching lifestyle.
I have watched a couple of the downloaded offerings and I’m moderately impressed. Okay, the picture quality isn’t as high as you’d find elsewhere in other formats, but it’s passable, though I am still to output it to my LCD TV. Maybe that’s something to do at the weekend.
What baffles me is the quality (as I say, it’s passable (more than passable, really.)) Obvioulsy, the file sizes (your average 45 minute programme from 4oD seems to be about 350MB) and picture quality are linked. With it being distributed using P2P it’s not like they need a single server to house larger and, therefore, higher quality files on. Nor are they limited to one download option per file - a different “stream” for each high quality, mid quality and low quality would be a great idea.
It is ashame that we’re stuck with WMV, possibly simply because they have to build DRM into each offering to satisfy those who fear the mass piracy of The Weakest Link. Okay, okay, that was being facetious… obviously there’s prime content on there too… Torchwood, Doctor Who (when it returns), Skins and Shameless (for 4oD). However, I’m willing to bet that the people distributing those shows will be using higher quality masters that they may even have capped themselves (after all, the equipment to do it is so cheap these days!)
All said and done, though, 4oD and BBC iPlayer are definitely a step in the right direction for newer methods of content delivery and it’ll be interesting to see what both systems (which I believe are actually from the same brainchild) have planned for the future.
Rated: 90% (2 votes)
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