I’ve written before that the CBC should be offering more downloadable TV and Radio, so I was pleased to see that the 5th Estate website has quietly started posting some great documentaries for viewing in their entirety.
True, you can’t save the docs and watch them later. True, not all programs are on offer. And true, they are low quality. But in its favour, it is truly on demand. Click it and watch it, not click it, download it for 8 hours, and watch it.
One doc on offer that is consistently popular with the bittorrent crowd is The Unauthorized Biography of Dick Cheney, although truth be told, the community’s download is better.
4 Comments
You are continuing to do a fine job here.
(Tea still awaits, at your convenience)
Ditto to the comment by “barnacles”; I had no idea the docs were there either.
Further to Justin’s comment, it’s also good to see that Radio’s “experimental” Ogg Vorbis audio streaming is still up and running.
For the record, “you can’t save the docs and watch them later” isn’t entirely true: I’m downloading the Quicktime version of the Cheney doc right now, direct from an URL on the CBC site. Admittedly I had to go to the “Media” tab in Firefox’s “Page Info” dialog, but it didn’t take more than a few seconds. The Windows Media version is just as easy to discover.
Obviously it’s not something that J. Random Viewer’s going to know how to do, but it’s pretty straightforward. And for what it’s worth—even if it’s just an oversight—kudos to the CBC for not making it difficult to find and download the files.
The fifth has been doing this for awhile, and what’s really impressive is that they are using Quicktime and Windows Media. Grandted, they should be using .mp4 but, at least it’s not Real Player. I’ve noticed that alot of the CBC streams are available only in Real Media and that war has long been over – Real Media lost (kindof like Netscape and MIE).
Excellent, Ouimet, thanks for the headsup. I’ve wanted to see the Dick Cheney documentary for a while.