Stephen Withers
Thursday, 24 July 2008 10:40
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
The ABC is trying to get round this by working with ISPs to put its content on the 'unmetered' list. So far, iiNet is the only participant. In the meantime, there are various tools that can be used to capture Flash streams, but we'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to track them down.
iView uses a Flash-based player which may not be everyone's ideal, but at least it's available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The main menu page is a fairly hefty 2.3M (the bulk of that being the various XML files), and the episodes burn around 5M per minute. Clearly, this is not for people on 400M/month Internet plans. Oh, and the ABC recommends available bandwidth of at least 1.1Mbps for smooth playback.
The service presents six channels.
CatchUp offers a selection of previously broadcast episodes, largely from ABC programs (eg The Einstein Factor and Q&A) or shows originating in the UK (Doctor Who, The Bill).
News delivers the most recent ABC News full bulletin (as you'd expect!) plus news and current affairs programs including Foreign Correspondent and The 7.30 report.
Kazam! is the animation channel, currently delivering Galactik Football, Skyland and Storm Hawks.
If documentaries are your bag, try Docs. But be advised that the initial selection is heavy on wildlife.
Prefer the arts? iView has something for you too, so please
read on.
