Something is moving at last. I've been saying a lot in this blog that with faster broadband connections and we've had for a while the technology for watching movies on the net. But there is hardly anything to watch for us poor Europeans. Yes there are lots of full movies that can be streamed in the many video sharing communities that imitate YouTube but I'm talking about legal content at a reasonable price. By reasonable price I mean either a monthly subscription that allows you to watch as many movies as you like or a pay as you go system which has to be considerably cheaper than renting a DVD from a shop.
Channel 4 is launching this new on demand service. And these are my first impressions. I've just downloaded and installed the software that goes with it. Everything works fine but the choice of things to see is still very limited. Plenty of Merchant/Ivory movies, Withnail and I basically all the Channel 4 productions such as Mona Lisa and that's it. TV wise well the usual culprits, Jamie Oliver, Wife Swaps a few fairly interesting documentaries but nothing that makes me go WOW I need to rent that now. There are a few thing that can be downloaded for free while TV programs are 99p each to rent for 48 hours and movies are £1.99.
I suppose I have to patient, there is this problem with rights and soon or later they will wake up and realise they have to provide a legal way to distribute movies and TV programs over the net just like the music industry had to realise a few years back.
