Download quest getting easier

Those of you with video-capable iPods and PlayStation portables can get excited. South Pacific Pictures, which makes the children's sci-fi drama Maddigan's Quest, have made the first episode available for download. That's a first in New Zealand, and it's free.

In the United States, popular shows such as Desperate Housewives and Lost are available to US viewers at the equivalent of about NZ$3 an episode.

But New Zealand has been a little restricted in downloading media.

The closest iTunes store is in Australia and there are restrictions on buying music and videos.

Until now, the only videos we could legally download were viral TV advertisements and homemade videos.

Lucky for us then, that video downloads are starting to mirror what happened a couple of years back with music.

When the American band Wilco was between record labels they put their album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot online for fans to download.

The viral marketing that followed made it a huge success.

Britain's Channel 4 has put episodes of The IT Crowd, a comedy from the producers of Father Ted, on Google's new video.google.com site, in a similar way.

South Pacific Pictures managing director Jane Millichip says offering Maddigan's Quest online builds awareness of the TV series.

TVNZ and TV3 are keeping up with the play, offering stories from Close Up and Campbell Live as streaming content on their websites.

Maddigan's Quest can be viewed as streaming video from the TV3 site (www.tv3.co.nz), downloaded from the Maddigan's Quest website or through iTunes Australia, where you can also download podcasts of the show's making-of segments.

To download the Maddigan's Quest podcast, first download and install the iTunes software.

Go to the Australian store, select Podcasts, then select the Movies/TV category.

Scroll through the alphabetical list to find the title, and press the wee arrow next to it. A full list of all related podcasts will load. When you're doing this, your computer should have plenty of free space on the hard drive and a fast broadband connection.

You don't need a portable media player to watch podcasts - you can watch them on your computer.

If you have a Sony PSP, you can buy software through Sony to put video into the right format for your player.

Take care that you don't exceed your internet account data cap or you'll find it an expensive exercise.

Happy hunting.