4oD enhancements
We’ve followed up the 24th June release with more new functionality on 4oD this morning. Notable highlights are:
Re-sizable pop-out player
Now you can choose between 4 different sizes of player – from mini to full-screen. Select an icon or drag the browser window.
Video Finder on every video brand page
We’ve had some feedback about the demise of the drop-down, which used to be a feature of the previous 4oD catch-up site, but would now be much too long! So once you’ve watched a programme, the Video Finder – now in the RH column of every video page – lets you easily find more programmes to watch. Meantime we’re also working on a simple list of everything on 4oD.
Video promo panel
Video brand pages now contain a promo panel at the top, showcasing the most recent episode for programmes available in catch-up, and the last episode for archive-only programmes.
4oD promo panel
If you don’t mouseover the promo panel at the top of the 4oD landing page you can watch it refresh automatically and display each of the sets of programmes being promoted.
Music
Some of our programmes will include music information at the episode level. Look at the episode specific pages for this information. Word of warning though – not all programmes will have music information. Here’s an example of it in action.
News and Articles
There’s improved navigation here – if you select to browse certain types of articles, e.g. features, interviews, etc., the box on the right-hand side will highlight the type, and this will also be appended to the title on the page.
Ads
There are also more sophisticated advertising formats available. I know that is probably of less interest to you, but it’s how the 4oD service is funded.
You’ve been letting Jen know which programmes you’d like to see on the service; please keep sharing your thoughts.
Comments
July 15, 2009
Looking better. Could still do with an easy way of browsing content by category (drama, film, comedy etc.) I know they’re tagged, but there seems to be no direct link to these tags off the home page.
July 15, 2009
You mentioned ad formats and ad serving. What’s new?
July 15, 2009
Had an issue in IE6 today. After selecting the tiny screen format, there was no way to get back to the normal res. No buttons and the window wasn’t resizable.
July 15, 2009
Loving the pop-out window with resizable window. The best bit is that the video fits the flash player properly in the pop-out window (still getting black bars around the video on the normal page).
One small thing though, maybe you should have the ‘Find out more’ link in the pop-up window open in a new page rather than in the existing pop-up window. At the moment you click the ‘Find out more’ link, the show is stopped, and you get the shows website in a window that’s too small, with no navigation/bookmark bars.
Also, what about making it so when a advert is playing, you can click on it to be taken to the website for that company (in a new window).
One last thing, PLEASE add a ‘email me when available’ function in the next release so I can get a email when a episode of a new show becomes available.
e.g. Subject: The new episode of 8 Out Of 10 Cats (Series 6 Episode 6) is now available on 4OD.
July 15, 2009
New pop out window… Yeah great, only I can’t bloody see it because 4oD is no longer available in my “area”. Brilliant, how very BBC iPlayer of you channel 4… That was the good thing about 4oD before, you could get it in the Irish Republic where you couldn’t with the iPLayer. Not happy
July 16, 2009
I’m amazed that you can install such complicated functionality as 4od must require and yet fail to build a simple information architecture around it to let people find content to watch.
There are only two ways of finding content to watch off the 4od homepage (apart from the banner which only lists popular shows):
1) search
2) An a-z list of programs
Why on earth don’t you have categories? I really want to watch some comedy, but currently there’s no way of finding all the comedy shows that you have on offer. Not from the homepage anyway. After a bit of digging I find that you do indeed have category pages, e.g.:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/tags/comedy
But the problem with this is that it displays all shows whether they’re on 4od or not. This makes certain categories very hard to navigate:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/tags/film
Do you have any films on 4od? I have no idea and I can’t be bothered to find out.
Every time I visit iplayer i can find something I want to watch because it’s categorised so well and you can select between the different formats (TV and radio) so easily. The technical functionality of the site seems sound from my brief usage but I’m not going to use the service very much as I have no idea what shows you have on offer.
Hopefully you can get that sorted very easily, you have all the necessary components!!
Tom
July 16, 2009
“Also, what about making it so when a advert is playing, you can click on it to be taken to the website for that company (in a new window).”
Just worked out that this already happens, but I think i’ve noticed a bug with it. If you watch a show in the pop-out window, and increase the size of the video to the biggest option, the clickable area is only the size of the regular video size from the top left of the window (so you end up with a backward L shape on the right and bottom side of the video where there is no link).
It might also be good to let people know they can click on the ad’s. Somekind of bottom-third on the ad along the lines of ‘Click here to visit the McCoy’s website’ maybe?
Also, is there any need for the stop button on the flash player? I can understand having the play/pause button, but if someone doesn’t want to watch a show anymore, surely they’ll just close the pop-out window or navigate away from the show’s page? It might be a idea to remove it as i’ve hit the stop button a few times (meaning to hit pause), then had to start the show from beginning, after watching all the ad’s again.
July 16, 2009
@Nathan. Thanks once again for your feedback and suggestions. We’re aware of one or two bugs in the pop-out player including this one. Funnily enough, there’s new functionality in the player to allow advertisers to customise the text under the ad where it says “Advertisement” but they’ve not started to use it just yet …
@Tom. As you say, we do have Categories but, for the reason you’ve cited, we’ve decided not to use them as a navigational device on the 4oD page. Perhaps this is a mistake; it’s a close call. Meantime we’re working on a simple list just of things that are on 4oD and Categories will be a part of that. You’re right: it’s not difficult to do; we’ve just not finished it yet. We believe it’s better to be out there and getting feedback (and lots and lots of programme views) than tinkering away trying for perfection. Always more to do!
I expect you’ll wonder why not do a single Programmes list and filter it according to 4oD / Subtitles / A-Z / Recency and so on. We may do at some stage but there are reasons we are where we are.
BTW no we don’t have any Films on 4oD.
July 16, 2009
@Emerald Bile We do hope to make the content available in the Irish Republic at some stage (and I’m not just saying that). In the meantime: very sorry.
The reason the service is suspended is that some of the content on 4OD only has rights to be shown in the UK and we don’t currently have the systems that can filter out just that content from ROI. The remedy is either to block all of the content from any IP Address that is from outside of the UK or else to remove content from the system entirely.
July 16, 2009
Well its about time you organised your site, it used to put me off, because it was so hard to find stuff.
July 19, 2009
The control bar (play button, time etc) doesn’t show atall when 4oD is used in Firefox, but shows fine in IE.
July 20, 2009
Why no E.R series 15 yet???
July 21, 2009
I’m afraid I’m not all all impressed with the ‘new’ 4oD or some of your reasons behind the changes to the service. A large proportion of broadband customers in this country (like me) have lousy bandwidth which means we struggle to get anywhere near 1meg let alone the level you need for iPlayer or the 4oD playback. In short, I won’t be bothering to watch stuttering and freezing programmes on it at all. Like many others – and I don’t believe one of your bloggers assertions that ‘only a tiny percentage’ of people downloaded programs for later viewing – I found the old download service the perfect answer for mobile viewing. Saying you can’t do what the BBC do and provide WMV downloads as well is just tosh. You have the mechanism in place – it was the old one you were using on 4oD! All you need is to put the links on the page. I’m not even bothered if I have to pay for the content – as long as the price is sensible. C’mon Channel 4, use the technology properly instead of taking retrograde steps (and trying to merely ape the BBC).
July 21, 2009
@Pete – Downloading really did constitute only a very small percentage of viewing on the old App. From memory it was around 4% of viewing. That’s not to say that it wasn’t very useful for people (including me) who used it of course. Sadly you’re not quite right when you say we need only link to the old download service to make it work again.
I assure you that he invevitable trade-offs in product specification are made with the utmost care and consideration. Although the absence of downloads is regrettable (and not the only thing we would *like* to be able to offer, trust me), many more people are using 4oD now than ever have before due to the accessibility of Flash and the relative simplicity of streaming.
Thanks for your comment though. Noted.
July 22, 2009
I work in web design, and am rarely moved to post comments to be honest, but I am so disappointed and frustrated with the move from the 4OD service I had to write. You took a lovely, elegant service that was a joy to watch and made the iplayer look seriously clunky, and wrecked it. The new site is packed so full of add on content you can’t find the programmes!!! I spent twenty minutes and still could not find the actual programme I wanted to watch. I used 4OD a lot – and had stopped appointment to view TV watching almost entirely. It really is true that less is more….:-(((
July 23, 2009
@Angela – sorry to hear you’re disappointed. Usage of the new product far surpasses the old Application but certainly, as with practically every web site, it’s not perfect. We’re working on improvements all the time.
What was the programme you were looking for? Probably the simplest way to find it would be to go to “Programmes” and use the A to Z. If it’s not in there, it’s not on the site.
Here’s a link: http://www.channel4.com/programmes .
July 23, 2009
Thanks Richard for your response to my recent post, but nothing you say there addresses my main assertion that many people like me still have pretty useless broadband connections and the new Flash based is just providing a far less than satisfactory viewing experience. I could write a book on the deficiences of Flash from a consumers point of view and the obvious reasons why content providers such as yourselves and the BBC favour it – namely for commercial reasons as much as anything else. I neglected to mention in the last post that I too design web sites (and teach web design). I am reluctant to use Flash on my sites for the simple reason that the player is not installed on as many PC’s world wide as people would like to claim. I am happy to claim that you could walk into many educational establishments in this country for example and not find the player on their PC’s. Ask them why. I have also had direct experience of Windows PC’s refusing to update Flash to the latest version (unless Windows was completely reinstalled) etc., etc. The list of my Flash gripes could fill a book. Linux? I run a couple of installations and there is another book there detailing the potential issues! Note Angela’s post just after mine. I don’t think I am alone. I’ll sign off with my final comment that I hope C4 and others are listening and further ‘improvements’ to the PC users’ experience will eventually restore the best parts of the ‘old’ service in the fullness of time
July 23, 2009
@Pete You’re *definitely* not alone and I don’t deny that in picking one technology over another there will always be trade-offs involved and disappointment for some people. The old 4oD App excluded everyone using a Mac (and Linux), for example.
As I mentioned before, far more people are watching far more programmes than ever have before. To that extent, the decision to go with Flash and away from the old App was a good one.
But yes. We are listening (that’s really what the blog’s for). As a commercially funded Broadcaster (unlike the BBC), we have to choose very carefully what we invest in but I genuinely share with you the hope that we will eventually be able to meet everyone’s needs.
July 23, 2009
Using 4OD on my mini notebook, when selecting for viewing a program with restricted content, the approval screen is not scrollable, hence you cannot get to the I agree check box.
July 24, 2009
@Robert – thanks for leaving your comment. We are looking into this…..
July 25, 2009
I don’t understand why there are no films available on 4OD any longer. It was a good service, especially for those of us who don’t want a ‘box’ as part of our living room furniture. Very disappointed that this is no longer a service
Yet you still have the tease on the Channel 4 website, advertising the films being broadcast on Film4…
July 26, 2009
Hello,
I’m experiencing a problem with the new online version of 4OD; when I go to play a video it simply says ‘loading’ with the revolving icon and that’s it – nothing else happens.
I’ve scoured the internet via google to see if anyone else has experienced this problem and if there are any solutions but have failed to find anything that resolves my specific problem.
I’ve checked my internet settings, javascript, upgraded flash, upgraded IE and Firefox and still nothing. It’s very frustrating. Is this problem something you guys are aware of?
Are there any solutions?
I would really like some help with this.
Many thanks in advance.
July 26, 2009
@Lee – Can you try going to this url please:
http://realmedia.channel4.com/RealMedia/ads/adstream_sx.ads/test.channel4.com/adtest/123456@x96
You should see a small black and white image of the 4oD logo. Just want to check that you can establish a connection to the ad server correctly. If not, perhaps you’ve got an adblocker or IP shield running? (something like PeerGuardian or HotSpot shield).
July 27, 2009
@Robert – to work around this, zoom out in your browser (CTRL -) and you’ll then be able to see the tick box and accept. You may find the video is off-centre if you don’t zoom back in again but it plays perfectly well on my Asus netbook.
July 27, 2009
Hi Richard,
Thanks for the link – as you suspected, it didn’t load. So the problem must be to do with my adblocking software/hosts file.
Do you have any suggestions of how to make the appropriate changes? I use Spybot Search and Destroy to protect my PC from ads and update my Hosts file monthly via http://msmvps.com
Regards
Lee
July 27, 2009
@Lee. You need to ensure that realmedia.channel4.com is allowed / not blocked.
Short of turning Spybot off, you should be able to do this via the Spybot configuration menu.
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/faq/14.html
July 27, 2009
Has Channnel 4 never heard the comment ” if it aint broke dont fix it”? if so why oh why have you destroyed 4od? a good service that did what it said on the tin — and no longer does!
i for one will no longer use it until you resolved the problems you have pointlesly created
July 29, 2009
I just tried the new 4OD service and it actually quite rocks a little bit guys.
It’s how you should have done it in the first place instead of the nasty Windows only crapware.
This how online television is meant to be! Well done channel 4!
July 29, 2009
The new service is actually basically useless to me, yes wow you can live stream on it which you could do before anyway but now you can’t download anything. I used to use this to download things to watch on the train but now I guess I’ll have to rely on the bbc to get something to watch. Also my connection is not fast enough to stream this live content so I’m left waiting for something to buffer which seems to take about 4 times as long as the program. Plus If I miss something and want to go back this also causes problems. It would be helpful if you gave even an option of a lower quality live stream as at least then the users with slower connections could get something from this “new” service.
July 29, 2009
New service actually couldn’t be much worse, how come the adverts manage to play without having to wait for them to load but as soon as the program starts it stalls and says ‘loading content’ in the bottom corner. Following that the program then continued to stop and start loading content, I tried pausing and leaving it for a while hoping it would download a bit ahead of where I was in the program but the new service doesn’t do that, I gave up watching the program halfway through after it had taken me about an hour to watch fifteen minutes worth of a program, but I did manage to watch a minutes worth of advertising uninterrupted. Why can’t you use a different program to play the videos, one that loads ahead (the old 4od did), or let us download the programs (the old 4od did).
July 29, 2009
@Tony Hi. Thanks. We really appreciate your encouragement.
@Jamie – The download discussion has been had quite a bit already on this blog so very quickly: We realise it’s annoying for people who want to download who now can’t. I used to do it myself and watch programmes on the train. But you and I were very much in the minority (<4% of all programmes were viewed in this way).
@adam . Sorry you’re having trouble streaming the programmes. If you contact support they will try to help you out [ http://bit.ly/kzc8Z ]. The answer to your question (why can’t we do progressive download in Flash) is that it makes it too easy to make local copies and thereby pinch the programmes. Since we (Channel 4) don”t actually own the programmes we show, it would be irresponsible of us to let that happen.
July 29, 2009
@Richard – Thanks for your reply, I’ll try your suggestion, but in regards to progressive downloading If somebody wanted to make a copy of a show that badly they could just record it off the tv to a dvd, allowing progressive downloading of a show would be no more irresponsible than letting people watch your tv channel.
July 29, 2009
@adam I can’t fault your logic but programme makers expect us to protect their content from being copied when made available on demand.
July 31, 2009
In response to everybody moaning that they cant download shows anymore and are experiencing slow streams of shows, Its not channel 4’s fault. Stop complaining about something that is pretty awesome and of course, free. I tell you what is Channel 4’s fault though…..STILL not having Gamesmaster on 4oD! Come on guys, sort it out!
August 4, 2009
4oD doesn’t work on Mac at all here.
Tried it out on a Vista laptop running firefox and it seems to work fine, but not on my mac at all either with firefox or safari.
I tried several programmes and none of them in the 4oD “programmes” section would play.
After clicking on the “play” icon, the bar at the bottom of the player reads “loading content” and hangs indefinitely, while the browser attempts to connect to “realmedia.channel4.com.”
Here are the stats in case this is a specific issue:
Macbook Pro version 1, revision 1
Mac OS 10.4.11
Firefox 3.0.12
Safari 3.0.4
Shockwave Flash 10.0 r22
Java Embedding Plugin 0.9.6.4
Quicktime Plugin 7.6
Virgin Cable Broadband
Doesn’t need resolution or anything… I’m fine with it on a pc, just thought I’d bring it up since ch.4 seemed to make such a big deal of the online content going “mac friendly.”
Thanks!
August 5, 2009
I believe I understand why 4oD does not work well with Macs. Its because Macs suck. But something that doesn’t suck is Games Master. Where is it???????????
August 9, 2009
hi, my computer (not a mac) wont play anything on 4od website, it just says loading and has black screen and nothing ever happens.
@Richard,- but it does load the 4od icon on http://realmedia.channel4.com/RealMedia/ads/adstream_sx.ads/test.channel4.com/adtest/123456@x96
Any suggestions?
Thanks
August 10, 2009
When i try to watch something it says loading but then the loading symbol freezes and nothing happens – old 4oD used to work so what could it be? I clicked on the link from previous convo n i do get the 4oD symbol.
If i click on a programme with Guidance – before i can even get to the click play – i select 18 or older but then nothing happens – on regular programmes they say loading but then freeze. Please help me, the new site looks great and im missing out!!
August 11, 2009
To adam and rachael, lots of people are having the same problem (including myself) it is a problem with 4OD set up on various different ISP’s but the problem remains a mystery. If it is a programme youre desperate to watch keep refreshing your page and keep trying as it does tend to load correctly eventually.
Theyre supposed to be fixing the problem but they still do not know what the problem is last I heard…
August 11, 2009
Same problem, stalling on Loading Content and can see the 40d logo as mentioned up the thread and it looks to stall on realmedia.channel4.com in the status bar
well annoyed – any fix out yet ?
August 11, 2009
Me and my boyfriend used to watch the 4OD a lot. It was a brilliant service which allowed us to view loads of programs without any bother at all, even if the program was old (think we watched one from 1989 on a prison!)
And then it all went wrong, because 4OD changed to this rubbish! For starters you advertise programs in your list, which it turns out you can’t watch, which is pretty frustrating as I’m sure loads of other people have commented on. So by the time you actually find a program to watch, you feel so frustrated that you just want the program to run smootly…..and then all that happens is the program takes forever to load, and if it does load it keeps freezing and by the time you get to through the advert (which can sometimes take more than 5 minutes) you’re ready to just give up and turn off 4OD.
We have tried watching the “new” 4OD on both a windows XP computer and a windows vista computer and both have the same problems. Its not out broadband as we have checked numerous times and the upload and download speeds are perfect.
You Tube vidoes of a higher quality stream perfectly on both computers!!!
Please can you just bring back the old 4OD, it seriously was a million times better than this.
August 14, 2009
Alison, seems you are making changes to 4oD and hope you can help with this as I can’t watch anything in archive.
I watch it on a netbook so the screen is smaller. I can watch the present episode but in archive it will take me to the restricted area to choose to tick between free and PIN. I cannot view and tick free as it is at the bottom of the screen with no facility to scroll up and down. I don’t want to use PIN first because it never accept my PIN and I don’t need to with no children accessing the laptop. So basically I can only watch episodes from the same week and would also need to remember to do it so not to miss it which defects the object of this program.
Please tell me you can fix this!
Thanks
August 14, 2009
I cannot believe that channel 4 is actually calling this an improvement. This service has now become completely useless to me. With the old 4od I was able to download the programs and watch them fluidly. However, now, due to the fact that I don’t have a very high speed Internet connection, it has become impossible for me to enjoy the programs. I can’t believe that you can just isolate people due to the fact that more people stream than download. This is not a step forward, it’s a step back.
August 14, 2009
Oh just read the same and replied to Robert to try zooming out, will do now.
August 15, 2009
I also have a problem when using 4oD. When I use the search engine and start to type “Games Master” I find that it isnt there. I then cry into my pillow for 6 hours and after wiping away the tears I try again.
August 15, 2009
Hi im sorry to say but the old style was the best if it aint broke dont fix it … the videos dont play …. ive been trying to watch ugly betty since wednesday night and it loads then shows all the adverts at the start then the program just doesnt show or play ….ive been on 2 laptops and 3 dif pcs at friends houses and my own and they just dont load properly …….. its also near next to impossible to find what you want its not as easy as you make out at least with the old format you could see all the free programs available instead you have to go hunting for it …i think ppl should have the option of still using the old format
thats what i think any way 4on demand you need to sort out the tech issues and pronto
August 16, 2009
The downloading option absolutely needs to be restored. These changes are supposed to be so Mac users aren’t disadvantaged, but now the many more affected by slower broadband speeds can’t use the service, and have to look elsewhere should they want a download they can actually watch without it breaking up every few seconds.
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