Year, it is new, although I so rarely watch ITV, I didn't notice it until you mentioned it.
From what I understand, you don't need to sign up to watch shows less than 7 days old. But ITV have recently began an archive store, where they plan to charge money to watch older shows in their archive.
They may have recent content still for free, but if you choose to watch later that 7 days, they want you to sign in. This is likely to be a way to encourage people to rent other shows.
4oD have been forcing people to sign in as well for older content, though they don't have a paid rental scheme yet like ITV.
Is it good or bad? Of course, we would all like to have everything ITV and 4oD have in their archives available for free, but to be honest, they are commercial outfits and they need to make money somehow.
I personally think the rates ITV charges are a little too high, actually quite high when you consider how poor quality the ITV streams are in comparison to BBC or even 4oD. I'd rather have a Netflix or Hulu solution where archived material is available from a set monthly subscription, but time will tell if their model makes money or not. I guess they would have to have a much larger selection available before a subscription model is viable, and would people really subscribe to just one channel?
The ITVplayer is a complete and utter joke. ITV have no idea how to run it, it fails more times than any of the other players on the web. They should invest in getting some decent IT people in to fix the problems and update the system.
Comments
From what I understand, you don't need to sign up to watch shows less than 7 days old. But ITV have recently began an archive store, where they plan to charge money to watch older shows in their archive.
They may have recent content still for free, but if you choose to watch later that 7 days, they want you to sign in. This is likely to be a way to encourage people to rent other shows.
4oD have been forcing people to sign in as well for older content, though they don't have a paid rental scheme yet like ITV.
Is it good or bad? Of course, we would all like to have everything ITV and 4oD have in their archives available for free, but to be honest, they are commercial outfits and they need to make money somehow.
I personally think the rates ITV charges are a little too high, actually quite high when you consider how poor quality the ITV streams are in comparison to BBC or even 4oD. I'd rather have a Netflix or Hulu solution where archived material is available from a set monthly subscription, but time will tell if their model makes money or not. I guess they would have to have a much larger selection available before a subscription model is viable, and would people really subscribe to just one channel?
"Benidorm" and "Downton Abbey"
Ok, if you think so. Never seen Benidorm to be honest, but the reviews are not that good and Downton Abbey, I saw two episodes and that was enough.