Channel 4's 4OD

Tom Dunne

I was trying to find a suitable location for this thread, this is probably the nearest match.

Anyway, anyone tried out 4OD from channel 4? It's pay tv on demand over the interweb and it is available to us here in 'Eire'. I've downloaded the software and it looks a tad basic, but the prices seem to be excellent - 99p sterling for tv episodes and £1.99 for films. I think I will give it a go over the weekend.

Opinions?

Dodge

Prefer bittorrent. At least they offer it to us...

gerryo

tom dunne wrote:

I was trying to find a suitable location for this thread, this is probably the nearest match.

Anyway, anyone tried out 4OD from channel 4? It's pay tv on demand over the interweb and it is available to us here in 'Eire'. I've downloaded the software and it looks a tad basic, but the prices seem to be excellent - 99p sterling for tv episodes and £1.99 for films. I think I will give it a go over the weekend.

Opinions?

Had to use it to get some "missed" BB episodes while we were away.
Worked quite well, although it appeared to me that it might be using some of your BW to serve content to other customers.

**I've not checked this out fully**, but it looked to me that if you had the app active & someone was looking for content you had downloaded, it could use your PC as a server to send to the next user.

Watty knows more about it.
If it uses the same protocols as $ky's services, then I believe it will use your PC as a node (something like Skype does). This can really be bad if you are on a cap (as most Irish users are).

I've not used it since.
Remember, it forces you to upgrade XP media player to the latest, it uses DRM, so you only "rent" shows, i.e, you can't watch them for ever.

Guess that's why it's so cheap.

Tom Dunne

gerryo wrote:

**I've not checked this out fully**, but it looked to me that if you had the app active & someone was looking for content you had downloaded, it could use your PC as a server to send to the next user.

Watty knows more about it.
If it uses the same protocols as $ky's services, then I believe it will use your PC as a node (something like Skype does). This can really be bad if you are on a cap (as most Irish users are).

That's interesting. I've seen some of Watty's posts on Joost and the like, and if this works in the same way, then it could be a pain.

gerryo wrote:

I've not used it since.
Remember, it forces you to upgrade XP media player to the latest, it uses DRM, so you only "rent" shows, i.e, you can't watch them for ever.

Guess that's why it's so cheap.

TBH, I wouldn't mind that. I only watch things the once anyway. Having said that, myself and herself went looking for a film to watch last night, nothing really caught us. Ended up watching Yahoo Launchcast instead.

watty

It may keep running and serving others even when you not watching or downloading. I don't know. Read the fine print carefully. See what processes are running before install and after you stop downloading.

Does it fully uninstall?

I think a PVR is safer.

Tom Dunne

watty wrote:

Does it fully uninstall?

I will be trying that sometime this week. I installed it on my laptop to try it out, I'm going to install it on my HTPC to give it a go.

watty wrote:

I think a PVR is safer.

I agree, but I like the idea of being able to download it there and then instead of trying to remember to set Sky to autoview and GB-PVR to record. Must get me one of those IR blaster thingys.