After seeing 4 on Demand advertised all over the UK I decided to it a try and see how it all works/performs.

Well the first thing I had to do was visit the 4 on Demand site and install the 4od application and guess what that’s exactly what we did.

4 On Demand Website = http://www.channel4.com/4od/

There are five specific conditions that the 4od website subscribers must meet before they can receive the 4od application download. Conditions that must be met are below.

Subscribers Must

* Live in the UK or Eire
* Have a Windows XP PC
* Internet Explorer 5.5 or over
* Windows Media Player 10 or over
* A broadband connection

Now as you can see the site only accepts Internet Explorer Browsers and what did I do? Correct, turned up to the party wearing FireFox this is always a big let down for me on sites with the budget of CH4 (Browser compatibility guys) anyway, lets fire up Internet Explorer and get on with things.

On reaching the site with IE6 I could now download the application and begin my 4od experience.

Install

Install of the 4od applications is pretty straight forward you can choose to Save or Run As at download, I chose the run as option. Everything about the install is recognizable and the same as most software applications you will install. It’s simply a matter of following the on screen instructions until complete.

Once the install is complete and you start the 40d application you will get a window very similar in look to a web page. Now we know this isn’t a simple webpage but a smartly dressed P2P application and truth be told it isn’t half bad look wise for the purpose it has to serve.

Navigation is easy all the main category links are at the top of the page clicking on a category like film takes you to films just like you would expect. One gripe is that the category navigation from a subcategory back to a main is rather confusing and needs some more work. It is useable but could be better.

Worst of all is what the text appears like in the left hand side of the site in categories and content files. It’s like 89 and on the net all over again with poorly designed and presented sites.

On looking through the categories you will also notice there is a Free category, this is the only category containing content that doesn’t have a monetary charge to it. All other content is chargeable and expires after one month or 48hrs after first watching.

Some of the content prices are below.

* Episode of desperate housewives £0.99
* Film Rental – Memento - £1.99

The system basically works and feels like a web based bittorrent client when you download media, progress bars, ETA of download, time to expiration of file, etc are all covered in the download system. Speeds are also pretty respectable up there with the best torrents for tv, games, movies.

When files have downloaded they are stored on you hardrive and you also upload to other users in the 4od network.

P2PViNE Summary

Channel 4’s 4od (4 On Demand) will be just what some have been waiting for so they can catch up on missed or old episodes and it works quite well but is still under developed and buggy. It does exactly what it says on the tin (Sometimes) but in general it works and isn’t too PC intensive when running as a background service.

The major downsides for us here at P2PViNE are the fact the shows expire after a period of time and a good XViD from the release groups are superiorly encoded quality wise.

Overall we have seen nothing from 4od that will change a savvy users choice of where they are going to get the latest version of Lost from in the UK.

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Tags | 4 on demand, 4od, review