Video on demand
Video on demand services seem to have sneaked up while I wasn’t looking and implanted themselves all over the web. First of all, there’s the disarmingly simple-looking Seesaw, a recent launch from the broadcast services company Arqiva (by “broadcast services”, I mean they own/run transmitters, digital radio multiplexes and so on). Seesaw perhaps doesn’t have the range of programmes that other services do, but it does a clutter-free interface well, along with high-quality compression (the “low quality” 500kb/sec still looks pretty impressive)
Then, there’s the even more recent (launched in March 2010) MSN video. Oddly, it doesn’t require Microsoft’s own Silverlight, but instead uses Adobe’s Flash, which makes little sense to me from Microsoft’s point of view. The range of programmes is excellent though – while there are some of the same series as Seesaw, there are some different episodes from Seesaw on there. Video quality isn’t quite as good, and the video player is a bit smaller, but there’s an impressive range of things on MSN that aren’t available elsewhere, and it’s all free.
Of course, individual channels have their own online players as well – BBC, ITV, STV, Channel 4, S4C and Channel 5 all have their own players with free content. But there’s already a multi-channel pay tv and movies provider – BlinkBox – that has lots of things unavailable elsewhere (Rainbow is the best-seller in the TV category – go Zippy!). Then there’s the subscription-based players, such as Sky Player, TalkTalk TV and Virgin, all are tied to either satellite, cable or ISP services, although not necessarily all of the content requires a paid-for subscription.
But what annoys me is that I’ve been doing this for ages and not really realised. Once again, one of my favourite websites has been streaming video for years and I’ve not even thought about it. Of course, it’s the wonderful Internet Archive – they have 1,691 items of Classic TV (some are single episodes, some adverts, and some entire series), 1,780 feature films and so on. I haven’t counted YouTube in this survey, as YouTube doesn’t really work in the same way – it doesn’t concentrate on deals with studios / channels / production companies like the above, but it has one or two.
So what’s the angle? Well, maybe it’s time someone created a search aggregator for these sites. Find what you want to watch, and watch it at the cheapest price available. Google, Microsoft, ixQuick – are you listening out there guys?
Tags: BBC, blinkbox, channel4, channel5, iplayer, itv, msn, rainbow, s4c, seesaw, stc, talktalk, tv, virgin, zippy