Slashdot Mirror
British TV Station Offers Downloads
Richard W.M. Jones writes "Remember how the British just love
to download TV?
Well, British terestrial TV channel
five
has announced that it will become the
first to offer TV programmes to download legally.
Except that they don't quite seem to
get it yet. They are
offering
here some videos from
this
car programme which apparently didn't quite make
it to air, for the princely sum of
£1.50 (about $3), in DRM'd WMV 10 format
(mplayer plays them fine).
Still, it's a start, and it looks
like they're just testing the water.
Hopefully they won't take the lack of
response as 'proof' that there's no
demand.
There's
more
about this at the BBC's website."
Let's get some open codecs!
The NRL is a premier sporting event in Australia, comparable to the AFL. We've beena ble to download the games once aired on national free to air and pay television. Recently telstra has taken away our right todownload them and are now only offering them to telstra customers. Certain a step backwards.
We can still download them, but only for a week or so.
Damn, i've used 'download' in the above, but i really should have used stream. Thats how this site came about.
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
Thiswould be nice if it was a decent channel, but it's just Channel 5, it's all Nazi documentries and soaps no other channel wants.. it might be a start but it's not going to do much good..
I like muppets.
>>>TV channel Five has said it will be the first UK broadcaster to offer parts of its shows for sale as legal downloads.
A norwegian channel, http://www.nrk.no/ (click on NRK NETT-TV, between the ads) , already does what this article advertizes, I belive.
- It allows for downloads of already-aired shows to the public, and for no cost too.
It should be noted, however, that NRK is a government ``owned" channel, and that one could say that this service is already paid for by our tax-money.
Still - it can hardly belive that this is the only TV-channel to do such a thing.
Is this really such a new thing?
maybe someone should tell them that some trannys have six gears, and maybe they'd respond that they're not going to fall for that spinal tap rouse
Hahaha. It's called "Fifth Gear" because it's on "Channel 5". Get it?
Once upon a time, there was a BBC show called "Top Gear". Then the main presenter or two left, and it stagnated for a bit. Then there was a new station called "Channel 5" and the whole "Top Gear" production team decamped to Channel 5 to make essentially the same show. Hence "Fifth Gear".
Except Top Gear is back, and has been for some time, on BBC2
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There's also the BBC's Creative Archive, which is not yet launched.
iMP is just entering the second round of closed Beta testing I believe. It's not available for public Beta testing at this time.
I'd also recommend checking out some of the excellent historical footage on the British Pathe site. This archive is now represented by ITN.
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To people outside the UK, channel 5 is basically a terrestrial channel in the format of a tacky trash newspaper, they made their debut in the late 90's however they were plagued with problems, in order to get a frequency all VCRs in the country had to be retuned by a technician (no idea don't ask), their signal was much weaker than other stations and was known for crap reception and they were the only terrestrial channel to stick a logo in the corner of their screen, they've improved a little since then but they're still 'that' channel in most peoples minds. If they had waited for a couple of years for digital terrestrial tv they could probably have saved a whole load of money but they would be watched even less than that crappy shopping channel. Oh and the program in question - Fifth Gear is a blaitent rip-off of the BBC program Top Gear without Jeromy Clarkson.
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We've actually been able to download shows and news for a few years here in Iceland, both from RUV (state owned), Stod 2 and Skjar 1, both not owned by the goverment.
And here are the proofs:
RUV online:
RUV
Stod 2 online:
Stod 2 (their web is really really bad..brace yourself)
Skjar 1 online:
Skjar 1
hugbunadur.is
But it's a Channel 5 programme - five (and the rest of the commercial broadcasters) don't get a penny of the licence fee. The BBC (and the licence fee) has absolutely nothing to do with this.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
Not to mention that a lot of 'BBC' DVDs and vidoes are actually put out for sale by the independant production companies that made them, and not the BBC itself.