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The BBC begins its ambitious project to allow Britons to download programmes from the broadcaster's vast archive tomorrow, but moves are afoot locally to replicate the model on a smaller scale.
In development since 2003, the BBC's iPlayer software will let people download popular BBC shows seven days after they have been broadcast. Microsoft's digital rights management software will be applied to the downloads so they can't be copied and spread about the internet. The use of Microsoft's DRM and the fact that the iPlayer only works on Windows computers for the moment has ruffled feathers in Britain.
But iPlayer is nonetheless a pretty revolutionary idea and will be even more effective when planned tie-ups with internet companies allow BBC episodes to be viewed directly through websites like YouTube.
Our own state broadcaster has already dipped its toe in the video-on-demand space with tvnzondemand, a relatively user-friendly download service that employs the same Microsoft anti-piracy measures and allows, for a fee, episodes of TVNZ drama series to be downloaded to your hard drive, where they can be viewed for up to a week.
Archive footage from the TVNZ vaults can also be streamed on the website, but there's a move under way both here and in Australia to put film and TV shows that form our heritage online, independently of broadcasters.
In Sydney last week, I watched as Australia's Communications Minister, Helen Coonan, launched the A$2.4 million Australian Screen Online portal, an Australian Film Commission project that is putting Australian films and TV programmes, documentaries and old newsreel footage from the national archives on the web for free video streaming from anywhere in the world. Broadcasters the ABC and SBS are also chipping in with content.
Film is well represented, from heartwarming pig tale Babe to Peter Weir's masterpiece Gallipoli, and there's a treasure trove of documentary footage stretching back 100 years.
The platform itself is good - the clips generally stream smoothly though can only be viewed in a small window. You have to download the small mpeg4-coded clips and open them in a media player to view them full screen.
Australian Screen Online's usefulness is hampered by its intended use as an educational resource in schools and universities and the fact that only short clips of each film or TV programme can be viewed.
Our own screen funding body NZ on Air is planning something similar to the Australians, but from what I've been told, its aims are much more ambitious. In essence, NZ on Air plans to build a website which will host New Zealand film and TV content supplied by local producers, many of whom receiving funding from NZ on Air to make their programmes.
The website is expected to allow for user generated content in the form of Wikipedia type articles about the content that is presented, allowing people to add their thoughts about films and TV shows and contribute to factual articles about them.
Because the content will be streamed over the internet rather than downloaded, many of the headaches around digital rights management are removed.
In theory then, you'll be able to view a video stream of Lee Tamahori's Once Were Warriors or the hit Gibson Group TV drama series The Insider's Guide to Happiness, online, for free.
In principle, that's the aim of the Government's digital content strategy, which is seeking to unlock the vast resource of content sitting in archives by using digital technologies and the power of the internet.
The NZ on Air portal has already received an allocation of funding and is likely to be launched following the Government's Digital Summit scheduled for late November.
Questions remain as to whether our under-powered broadband network will be able to do justice to what NZ on Air has to offer.
No one wants to wait for a stuttering video stream to buffer and load, whether it's a YouTube mash up or a National Archive newsreel from the 1940s.
But executed well, the NZ on Air portal has the potential to put a wealth of content online, much of which was made with the help of taxpayer dollars and deserves a wider airing.
