Because every video-on-demand service needs an unauthorised blog

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Reaper free on 4oD

I've been watching Reaper on 4oD and it's pretty fine. It reminds me of Buffy crossed with Clerks (which isn't surprising as Clerks director Kevin Smith directed the first Ep). The other thing I like is that our hero Sam's sidekick, Bert "Sock" Wysocki (played by Tyler Labine) resembles quite spookily my old (but long time no see) friend Gideon.

Got 4oD? Watch Reaper here!
Not Got 4oD? Get 4oD here!

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Semi-exclusive Skins clip

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Full-house: the Holy Grail of VOD

OK, I just made up that stuff about a full-house (where you have all of the peak-time shows from the service's parent channel, in our case Channel 4, on VOD) being the Holy Grail of VOD but it's not actually far from the truth. The point being that the user, not totally up with the rights and compliance complexity involved in putting a TV show into an on-demand environment, comes to expect everything carried on your channel to be there. So looking at the schedule stripe across the bottom of the above screenshot reveals that all of the peak-time programmes are available to watch. (Admittedly you would need to know that the paler blue colour and the fact that they have synopses on rollover designates that they are on the service, by hey, nobody and no VOD service is perfect). Not only that, the night before last and tonight have all the peak-time shows available too. Now, I just need to sort out the customers asking about The Simpsons and Friends.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Rambo: Cookalong Live(ish) - better than real TV

If you missed the live Cookalong with Gordon last week you can relive the joy with 4oD. The items you'll need can be found here. In many ways while the live cookalong was fun to watch and had the excitement that only live TV has (trust me I worked on Blue Peter before it was dirty and still live) the ability to pause and study the recipes rather than racing to catch up also has its benefits.

Friday, January 4, 2008

Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack on 4oD

Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack, the all new cleaned up non-racist version of this old favourite has started. You can see the whole of the launch show (all 90 minutes of it!) on 4oD or get the news and clips on Channel4.com.

Early coverage of the revamped show on The Sun's website is very positive with their BB columnist writing:

I was sick and tired of BB after Jade Goody’s antics last year.
But Matt’s choice of lumbering Scot John to do his bidding had me laughing aloud.
So that’s the next three weeks’ telly viewing sorted then.


Personally I'm looking forward to the Chapman brothers taking on the celebrity role as I've always enjoyed their antics.

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Feeling Shameless: another day another dollar

It's a new year so just to reiterate for all our new visitors: If you haven't already installed the 4oD application which lets you watch 100s of hours of new and old Channel 4 programming on your PC all for free you can get it from here.

For the rest of you old skoolers here's some of the highlights on 4oD today, just open the 4oD app and have a browse:

All of the first 4 series of Shameless plus the latest episode of the new series
The Look Good Naked Specials
My Fake Baby
Murderers on the Dancefloor (about the making of the classic YouTube Thriller video. No, not the Jacko one, the one made by the 1,500 inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in the Philippines)
Hollyoaks
Deal of No Deal
Big Fat Quiz of the Year
and the first episode of series 2 of FX's Brotherhood