ill TV

As anyone knows, the first thing to do when ill is break out the TV and watch mindless crap, it keeps us all going though the bleh times.

Alas I lack a TV Licence so I thought ‘fuck it, time for a bit of internet TV!’ (I’ve checked the laws on this, I’m allowed to watch things like the iPlayer without a licence as long as I don’t watch live stuff…I don’t get it…but yeah). So, after watching some BBC for a while I thought it was time for a new site, now I haven’t really tried 4oD yet and everything on Sky’s streaming site seems to be pay to view (no shock from the bastard that is Murdock) so seeing as no downloads or money was needed I gave ITV’s “ITV Player” a try. My opinion? Well…

The website is horridly designed with almost no kind of timeline system running to show what shows are coming soon or what shows have just played. The top promoted shows on the site seem to span their soaps and a few less than high quality programs. And in general their ‘white with black bits’ theme hit back at BBC iPlayer’s ‘black with white bits’ theme is ugly and feels badly designed (apparently no one told their designers about negative space in art class).

Now onto the shows. Now ITV has never been known for the best show reel, I mean they have been humping the corps of I’m A Celeb for years now but until you see them listed like they are on the site you don’t realise just how bad their selection is. I mean considering these guys run 5 channels (ITV 1 to 4 and the CITV Channel) there isn’t enough content I could find to fill one channel with a weeks worth of programs. There is also a total lack of a news show which annoys me as I quite like the ITV News (and have had to resort to watching it on my iPhone instead). The quality of the shows is also horrid with one show I just watched, Celebrity Juice, feeling like it was from a late night Channel 4 production ment to just fill time between the late night porno and the early morning kids shows, I’d have more fun looking at telly text screens.

Finally there is the issue of advertising. Now I know ITV makes its money from this, I know on TV you’d get TV adverts, and I can accept them being in the web versions too, but they can’t seem to find the buyers for the view time meaning I was shown the same Orange advert every break and a few times 2 times a break (and when your watching something that’s 2 hours long that’s 8 times you see the Advert with no means of skipping it). Also unlike the TV counterparts these adverts are badly chopped into the shows causing really inappropriate stopping points in plots or action. I know people may say ‘ah but that’s the price of viewing without a licence’ but as much as I could accept that for the BBC who make almost all their funding off the licence payer (and the rest off phone scams) ITV make their cash from their adverts not seeing a penny of the licence money. Also I wouldn’t complain about these adverts, or their badly cut in positions, or the repetition of them, if it wasn’t for the fact the video quality is vastly below a YouTube HQ standard (where I’m not bombarded with unskippable adverts), the web design is horrid and bad to navigate for me, let alone someone who’s not computer literate, and the production quality of the shows seems to have slipped since way back when.

I guess it should have been expected from a company who think the best way to entertain people on the weekend is to OD them on Ant and Dec, all I can say is unless they have a show you REALLY wanna watch on there, stick with the iPlayer, or give 4oD a try, but ITV Player really isn’t worth the hassle.