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."

Comments

Codecs

[XanC]

Maybe your mplayer plays them fine. My 64-bit mplayer's offerings are a bit more basic.

Let's get some open codecs!

First?

[pshuke]

>>>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?

Channel 5 History

[t_allardyce]

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.

Re:Channel 5 History

[TobascoKid]

Oh and the program in question - Fifth Gear is a blaitent rip-off of the BBC program Top Gear without Jeromy Clarkson.

It's not a blatent rip off, it is Top Gear. When the BBC cancelled Top Gear five got most of the cast and crew of Top Gear involved in Fifth Gear. When the BBC realized thier mistake they they got Jeremy Clarkson back for a completely new show but with the Top Gear title.

We've got this in Iceland

[hugsa]

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

Re:BBC should make this available for free

[TobascoKid]

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.