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With the constant headlines about strife and turmoil at TVNZ, you could be forgiven for thinking it miraculous that anything our state broadcaster produces even makes it to the screen.
But amid the chaos of personality clashes and redundancies, pay scandals and lawsuits, some TVNZ staffers have actually
been chipping away on worthy projects.
In particular, the software developers, some of whom came out of the now defunct NZoom website, have built a pretty good video-on-demand platform to deliver programmes to viewers via the internet. It is called TVNZ Ondemand.
It's nothing revolutionary. Most major broadcasters around the world are doing this. But it's significant for a couple of reasons. One, it gives TVNZ a good platform to offer up free video feeds of old archive material. At the moment they've made a big feature of the old NZBC news report on the Wahine ferry disaster. It's a great historical document and I hope there's much more to come.
Second, it means that those of us unwilling to conform to TVNZ's broadcasting schedules can download and watch the odd programme at our convenience. If you've missed Fair Go or Piha Rescue, they're available free to watch online as streaming feeds, while dramas like Shortland Street can be downloaded for a fee - $2 for a half-hour show, $4 for a full hour.
A lot of people will baulk at paying to watch a programme that has already been on free-to-air TV. Most would rather record it, and that would be the sensible option.
But we're busy these days and there's a lot of TV out there. I can really see the appeal in downloading an episode of a series and watching it on my laptop during lunch or in bed.
The premium side of TVNZ's offering will really only gain any traction when it adds popular overseas shows like Desperate Housewives.
A service with such mass appeal will only have relevance if it works properly. My early use suggests TVNZ Ondemand is a pretty good system. The website itself, which acts as your programming guide, is well designed, allowing you to search categories of shows, an A to Z of everything available, classic archive material and a weekly recap of popular shows.
Streaming a free programme such as Close Up involves little more than clicking on a media player built into the website. After an obligatory 30-second advert, the programme will then play without the rest of the ads.
How good a video streaming experience you have will depend on the broadband connection you have. Don't even bother if you're on dial-up. On my Xtra Go Large connection, which delivers a connection speed of around 1Mbps (megabits per second) the feed is good, surprisingly so.
Expanded to full screen, the video is crisp and stutters only occasionally. It will also be interesting to see how the service performs when hundreds of people are connecting at once.
Downloading premium content is also straightforward. You set up an account and use your credit card to purchase Playpoints - $10 for 20 playpoints up to $100 for 200 points.
You then click on the programme you want to download and it will tell you how many playpoints it will cost you. Rude Awakenings (45 minutes without adverts), costs 8 playpoints or $4. The .wmv video file is around 485MB (megabytes) in size so will take some time to download.
The data download will contribute to your monthly internet data cap, so be careful. How long exactly it takes to download will again depend on the speed of your connection and what else you are doing on the internet at the same time. The website gives you a useful speed meter which estimates the download time.
Rude Awakenings took 58 minutes to download at a speed of 1.1Mbps, while a 200MB episode of Shortland Street downloaded in 15 minutes.
A download manager tells you the progress of the download and then lets you launch the file, which can be played in Windows Media Player version 9 or above. Other players aren't supported because TVNZ has gone with the copyright protection system Microsoft has developed.
Before the file can be played, a pop-up box prompts you to enter your account name and password and your account will be debited for the cost of the download.
An annoying glitch with Windows Media Player version 11 means your first attempt to play a downloaded file won't work, unless you've played copyright-protected content in Media Player before. I hadn't, so I had to download a Media Player update and try again. TVNZ say's it is a "Microsoft bug".
The downloaded video can be played as many times as you want for up to seven days from the time of purchase.
