大象传媒

More on 4....

• By Paul Crichton
• 4 Jan 07, 02:31 PM

I was watching 大象传媒鈥檚 comedy The Thick of It last night. In it, a shadow minister was moaning that with all the changes going on in his party, he felt like the village idiot, as if he were unable to set the video or to brush his teeth properly. 鈥淵ou鈥檝e still got a video?鈥� asked his aide incredulously.

We noted the launch of Channel 4鈥檚 Video on Demand service, last month, which further sounds the death knell for such archaic bits of hardware. Now we鈥檝e had the chance to look at it in more detail.

4oD offers you the chance to download much of Channel 4鈥檚 content. Some things aren鈥檛 available 鈥� like The Simpsons 鈥� but most home-grown content like Spaced and Starkey鈥檚 Monarchy is, as well as some decent movies, like the classic Withnail & I. Some content is free, and some of it you can rent or buy.

4oD is still in its beta testing stage, but to get to the programmes, you need to download their software. You then pick from the content available, register, pay for it if required and download the programme.

In terms of accessibility, I had some trouble getting round the interface using my screen reader. I didn鈥檛 always get links that made sense. Finding specific programmes also presented problems, but there is a search function that seemed to work OK. Using the keyboard for navigation also had issues, for example I kept getting stuck at the 4oD logo, and couldn鈥檛 tab past it.

As for the programmes, I鈥檝e only had the chance to take a look at a couple. They are played on Microsoft鈥檚 Media Player. Neither of the programmes I looked at had closed captioning, and I couldn鈥檛 see anything provided with audio description.

I have to say, that I really hope they can make some improvements on the accessibility front and with 4oD still in beta testing, they may be working on this already.

I downloaded and watched the first episode of Spaced which I鈥檝e never seen before. I鈥檓 looking forward to watching Drop the Dead Donkey for the first time in ages. It really made my day to find these programmes, so shouldn鈥檛 everyone get to have their day made as well?

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