Goodbye BBC iPlayer, hello TVCatchup
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Update March 6th 2008: I’ve come across another streaming video site, more akin to YouTube than TV catchup, but carrying many full versions rather than just 10 minute snippets. quicksilverscreen.com has a wide varieties of films and documentaries. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a search facility but there are alphabetical lists for each category. Here’s the list for documentaries and here films.
Update February 14th 2008: The TVCatchup website is offline. For those who never got a chance to try it, bad luck. It was excellent. Clear and simple controls - Easy to understand and use - worked on any platform or browser - didn’t gobble up your bandwidth. So now we simply sit back and wait for the BBC/Microsoft iPlayer to hit the DRM buffers then watch the emergence of something uncannily similar to TVCatchup. It’ll probably be called ‘BBCFinallyCaughtUp.com”
February 9th 2008. As I wrote my item on the shortcomings and annoyances of the BBC iPlayer back in September 2007, already a new service was launching, allowing people to view programmes after they have been broadcast. The difference between TVCatchup.com and the BBC iPlayer is that TVCatchup is cross platform, DRM free, and covers all ‘free to view’ channels, not just the BBC.
TVCatchup.com is a free, TV programme recording website which is exploits a legal provision (The TV companies would say a loophole) in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 allowing the recording for private or domestic use of programmes for later viewing.
“The making for private and domestic use of a recording of a broadcast or cable programme solely for the purpose of enabling it to be viewed or listened to at a more convenient time does not infringe any copyright in the broadcast or cable programme or in any work included in it.”
TVCatchup will record programmes on your behalf and allow you to watch them later. You cannot watch them as they are being broadcast.
The site has a clear programme guide and a one click selection of programmes. Users are given 10Gb of storage. Programmes can be watched any number of times and are stored for a maximum of 60 days. The interface and usage are intuitive, the videos of good quality at 640 pixels wide. You will need a 1Mb broadband connection to view programmes without pausing for buffering, but that shouldn’t be a problem for most people. I haven’t found a way of saving the programmes yet, but I’m sure there are some. Maybe someone will let me know of how to do it.
Like Napster, which was closed down by a short sighted music industry which then spent years trying to reproduce the concept, TVCatchup will probably be closed down by the BBC and others, but re-emerge under the control of the TV industry big hitters in the future.
TVCatchup Player Screen
TVCatchup Programme Guide and Selector Screen
TVCatchup Saved Recordings Screen
Other articles on TVCatchup.com
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