Ordinary Gweilo

Hey, look, another article about BitTorrent and UK Nova and all that Shaky type of stuff.  It all sounds great:

One site, UK Nova, specialises in providing TV programmes to those who can’t get them because they are outside the UK. It started as an informal way for a small gang of expat EastEnders addicts to get their daily fix and now, a year later, has a global community of 30,000 people swapping all sorts of new and vintage programming – from Jamie Oliver to Are You Being Served?.

Roger, one of the site’s moderators – a British expat living in Germany – stresses that they are providing a service to people who simply can’t get these programmes – and they are keen not to do anything to damage the broadcasters’ commercial interests. They automatically remove anything that is released on DVD, for example. "If there was a legal service that allowed us to do this," he says, "we’d happily pay for it."

Well, so would I.  I pay for BBC Prime (which is rubbish, basically) and I buy BBC DVDs, but there are many shows that never seem to make it either on to DVD or on to any channels available here.

Yes, DVDs.  I bought the DVD of Spooks (series one), and discovered that somebody has been all creative and decided that the menu system needed to be ‘clever’.  Oh no it doesn’t.  When I put a DVD into the player, all I expect to see is a menu with a few basic options (Play All/Select Episode/Subtitles & Language/Extras).  I do NOT want to have to endure someone’s idea of a funny or ‘appropriate’ introduction and then have to guess which button to press to watch the damn DVD.      

Oh yes, and it’s loaded with "extras", but doesn’t have subtitles!  Genius.

Nothing to do with the DVD, but the acting is appallingly wooden – with a few honourable exceptions (step forward, Hugh Laurie).  Once the action gets underway this isn’t a problem, but when they are trying to set the scene it is painful to watch. 

According to Spike over at Hongkie Town you can now buy (in Shenzen, naturally) boxed sets of TV shows that haven’t even been released.  They download episodes from the Internet and then create their own packaging.  And I bet they don’t have stoopid interactive menus.

Back to UK Nova and BitTorrent, and I can’t help feeling that I’m missing out on something (maybe a large fine and time in prison…).  Other Hong Kong bloggers seem to be happily downloading all sorts of stuff, but my attempts have not been very successful.  I’ve got no idea how to join UK Nova, or whether Suprnova is the same thing (or worth paying for).  It seems that I’m just not geeky technically competent enough:

If you have a broadband connection and can set it all up (and you need to be reasonably technically competent to do so), you can download an album in an hour; an hour’s worth of TV in a couple of hours; and a movie overnight.  A quick word of caution here: first, downloading copyright material is illegal. Second, setting it up is quite fiddly.

As I have said before, I’d happily pay for a service that allowed me to watch or download TV shows easily and legally.  It seems that the BBC is testing a service that allows viewers to watch anything from the past week’s programmes, but I assume that it will only be available in the UK.  I know there are issues with the rights, but it must be technically possible. 

Perhaps I just have to be patient.  Or more geeky.