The need to download

Photo of Broken Television by Kevin Steele (Flickr)

I have a confession to make, although it’s more of a statement of fact that everyone could probably have already have guessed than an actual confession - a bit like a really camp guy coming out to his parents only for them to say “yeah we kind of guessed”.

Anyway, the confession is that I’m a television addict. Hello I’m Ryan and I’m a TV addict. I love TV and will watch almost anything just for the sake of watching it - everything from Hannah Montana on Disney to Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain on BBC TWO - it’s all good.

But it’s not so good because I keep missing it all. I always seem to need to be doing something else while the shows I REALLY want to see are on television.

The vast majority of shows I watch are now on my computer - either sitting in front of the computer or on my TV through the TV out card on my computer.

The only show I watch live on TV is Doctor Who and I didn’t even get to do that this week - I couldn’t watch it live because my three year old wouldn’t go to bed and he can’t watch Doctor Who because the one time we let him he refused to sleep for a week because of ‘monsters’.

So I set the DVD to record to watch it later - something I do quiet a lot - the record not the watch - who actually gets around to watching something you’ve recorded.

Anyway the DVD failed and when I tried to play it I was informed in big letters that it was blank. This is despite the fact that I clearly saw the bright red circle around the record button and was told on screen its recording.

I didn’t want to miss Doctor Who, I love the show it’s the only ‘appointment to watch’ I actually have in a week so I downloaded it. In the absense of a player from the BBC I visited my friendly local Pirate Bay and two hour later was watching the episode.

It would have been 45 minutes if the first download didn’t turn out to be a nasty trojan that sent the five anti-spyware products on my computer into a frenzy of activity.

Going Straight

Which is why we need legitimate ways of download shows from the broadcasters - or at very least a way to stream them.

I’ve been using 4OD from Channel 4 since late last year when it was still in beta and there were very few free shows - now pretty much every show is free for the first week and is available as a download or a stream.

I rarely watch anything ON Channel 4 but I watch loads on 4OD - both free and pay for stuff - just because it’s so easy and I spend more time on my computer than in front of my TV anyway.

Which is why I can’t wait for the iPlayer to get off its arse and launch. I want to be able to do the same with the BBC shows as I currently do with the Channel 4 ones. I’m always seeing things on the various BBC channels that I want to watch but am either busy when their on or can’t be bothered to sit on the sofa.

In fact I’m more likely to watch some old B-Movie on Joost than a carefully crafted BBC show on my TV - just because it’s on the computer and I can do other things at the same time - if I want to.

My computer is really my entertainment hub - it’s wired up to my surround sound stereo system, it’s wired up to the TV and has a TV card coming into it with cable - it gets radio from around the world and now has a mass of TV channels, shows and clips to boot.

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