Posted on by billthomuk

I was so excited… for at least 30 seconds

Five has launched its download service, and you can get episodes of CSI before they are broadcast. I’m not a great fan, but my daughter is, so I thought I’d check it out as a surprise for her.

And what do we find at http://download.five.tv/systemrequirements/? We find the following…

To use Five Download you need ensure that your computer is set up
correctly with the right software and a broadband connection. Please
follow these system requirements.

Country

Five Download is only available in the United Kingdom
Operating system

You need Microsoft Windows XP or 2000
Web browser

You need Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0
Active X
ActiveX must be enabled in your web browser
Cookies

Cookies must be enabled in your web browser
Javascript

Javascript must be enabled in your web browser
Media Player

Users of Windows XP must use Windows Media Player 10. Users of Windows 2000 must use Windows Media Player 9

Connection Speed

You need a broadband connection of at least 500kbps

System Clock

You need to set the clock on your computer to the correct UK time, time zone and date

So here I am, on my Mac, using Firefox, trying to avoid the security disaster that is ActiveX. I think I’ll wait for the DVD. Or perhaps check out BitTorrent.

Blogged with Flock

6 Replies to “I was so excited… for at least 30 seconds”

  1. Has anyone managed to get Channel 4’s live simulcast thing to work? I haven’t.

    Supposedly Channel 4 are launching their on-demand service before the end of the year.

    No sign of the promised films on the UK Itunes Music Store yet either – I wonder if there ever will be any.

    Even the much talked about BBC iplayer sounds like it wraps everything in hideous layers of DRM (its also Windows Media only I believe) and during the trial there was apparently no way of turning the P2P functions off, so it used large amounts of (upstream) bandwidth.

    Frankly I’d rather continue to rent all my DVDs from Amazon (£1.99 for a physical DVD rental seems better than Five’s offer where you pay £2.50 for a 14-day expiring, DRM wrapped, lower quality version of a 30 minute show).

    Strange how technology seems to move backwards at times…

  2. I’ve just been reading all about designing websites with disabled users in mind. Something I have to be considering in my web design by law.

    Surely in your case this is discrimination too? Can we attack DRM on the basis of discrimination?

  4. It can be fustrating for us Mac users as we are left out of one innovation or another. I’m thinking here of Google’s poor Safari support in Blogger and their office suite.

    Is one allowed to pirate/share [the distinction being priracy is for your pecuniary advantage] something if it is not available to you? e.g. an out-of-print book, a deleted seven-inch single or indeed, a downloadable item that isn’t cross-platform compatible. I think this a good rule-of-thumb.

  5. You say you are on a Mac using Firefox, yet your entry ends with “Blogged with Flock.”

    About the annoyance; most of theit target audience meets the criterion so in their minds they don’t need to cater for the 3-5% (according to W3C) of internet users on Macs.

  6. It’s true – I’m a browser tart… I’ve been using Flock to blog with because it works so smoothly, though Firefox is still my main browser and I also use Safari. Hell, I even launched IE on my PowerBook last week to reach a M$ site that wouldn’t work with anything else 🙂

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