[Kojak]

I’d be interested to know how many pay for either of those. Surely it can’t be more than a couple of thousand.

I had it for a month, then cancelled as soon as I realised that you still have to sit through ads for anything that wasn't made for Channel 4! Kind of defeats the object, really.

[VMPhil]

I did it for a month in order to watch the original versions of Paul Merton: The Series after getting the DVD on release only to find he’d decided to cut out a load of sketches.

[Critique]

I pay for both All4+ and ITV Hub+ intermittently as it’s so much nicer (and ‘normal’ in the world of streaming) to watch without interruption.

I’ve been watching The West Wing of late though and it’s one of the series that still has ads (or as the continuity announcer says in the pre-roll announcement, ‘commercial messages’) even if you pay the subscription. I think the only other time I’d encountered this previously was with the pre-Channel 4 series of Taskmaster.

On a side note, the ads when you have All4+ have been strange in my experiences - in both instances I’ve only ever been served ads for Channel 4 when watching these shows. Occasionally the ads are for an upcoming show, but for the most part they are advertising something else that’s available to watch on All4, which seems a strange sell when I’ve already got the subscription! At some point during my run of West Wing watching, the ads (and pre-roll announcement) stopped appearing when watching on Apple TV, but they still play if I cast the show from my phone or watch online. I assume it’s a bug so I haven’t been rushing to report it to them!

[London Lite]

I've just resubbed to ITV Hub+ after it was upgraded to HD before it relaunches as ITVX in the next couple of weeks and like Critique, it's simply a much nicer streaming experience to watch programming without commercial interruption.

I would have done it much earlier, but ITV Hub until earlier this week was a sub-par SD experience, while Amazon Channels offered the ITV catch-up service in HD, but the navigation is still a horrible experience. So now that the ITV Hub apps have been upgraded to HD, with their user friendly UI, I've paid for it.

ITVX will be a more SVoD looking UI with much more programming than currently on Hub, so their AVoD and SVoD plans look great for those who don't want to pay and those who'd rather skip ads and gain extra programming.

All4 as I mentioned I've subbed for a while now, Again, it's a much easier way to access C4 archive shows and means I can watch all three series of Derry Girls without commercials.

[Ash101]

Agree - I’m subbed to All4+ at the moment as I’d been away for 2 weeks and there was a fair amount I wanted to catchup up there. Plus a few comedies I missed earlier this year, so it just makes it nicer to stream stuff without the ads.

I believe for both All4+ and ITV Hub+, any shows “with ads” are purely for licencing reasons - so it’s usually imports but the ad is never more than 1 “channel promo”.

Isn’t it something to do with the US broadcasters not wanting to give the whole show away (if recorded off the service) with no interruption? It’s why Family Guy was never on iPlayer

[London Lite]

I believe for both All4+ and ITV Hub+, any shows “with ads” are purely for licencing reasons - so it’s usually imports but the ad is never more than 1 “channel promo”.

Isn’t it something to do with the US broadcasters not wanting to give the whole show away (if recorded off the service) with no interruption? It’s why Family Guy was never on iPlayer

I wouldn't be surprised if the reason for Family Guy/American Dad being 720p on the Hub is down to rights restrictions as well, although you can stream them on ITV2 HD in 1080p.

[TIGHazard]

Agree - I’m subbed to All4+ at the moment as I’d been away for 2 weeks and there was a fair amount I wanted to catchup up there. Plus a few comedies I missed earlier this year, so it just makes it nicer to stream stuff without the ads.

I believe for both All4+ and ITV Hub+, any shows “with ads” are purely for licencing reasons - so it’s usually imports but the ad is never more than 1 “channel promo”.

Isn’t it something to do with the US broadcasters not wanting to give the whole show away (if recorded off the service) with no interruption? It’s why Family Guy was never on iPlayer

I never quite understood that. When BBC Three moved online, Fox sold it to ITV because "iPlayer wasn't secure"

recombu.com 

Untitled

  Source: recombu.com

Fox is understood to be concerned that iPlayer does not have enough security to stop users capturing shows so they can be kept for later viewing, or shared online

But the funny thing is... neither does ITV Hub (or did, I should say). Of course everything was in SD so that's probably a reason why they didn't care.

However ITVX will be using the same security measures that the major streamers like Prime, Disney+ and also All4 and My5 use - Widevine.

[cable]

Agree - I’m subbed to All4+ at the moment as I’d been away for 2 weeks and there was a fair amount I wanted to catchup up there. Plus a few comedies I missed earlier this year, so it just makes it nicer to stream stuff without the ads.

I believe for both All4+ and ITV Hub+, any shows “with ads” are purely for licencing reasons - so it’s usually imports but the ad is never more than 1 “channel promo”.

Isn’t it something to do with the US broadcasters not wanting to give the whole show away (if recorded off the service) with no interruption? It’s why Family Guy was never on iPlayer

I never quite understood that. When BBC Three moved online, Fox sold it to ITV because "iPlayer wasn't secure"

recombu.com 

Fox is understood to be concerned that iPlayer does not have enough security to stop users capturing shows so they can be kept for later viewing, or shared online

But the funny thing is... neither does ITV Hub (or did, I should say). Of course everything was in SD so that's probably a reason why they didn't care.

However ITVX will be using the same security measures that the major streamers like Prime, Disney+ and also All4 and My5 use - Widevine.

I recall it has something to do with the fact you could download BBC iPlayer programmes (www.bbc.co.uk ). Arguably, if you could strip DRM from the files, you could easily share it online in high quality. You can also still use screen video capture in Mac (command+shift+5) to record iPlayer. On ITV Hub you get a black box.

BBC iPlayer - BBC iPlayer Downloads app
Try out the new BBC iPlayer Downloads. Downloading allows you to enjoy your favo…
  Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Also back then, forums.digitalspy.com  - seems there were projects that could do this relatively easily.

DRM Removal — Digital Spy
Anyone know of free software that works and removes DRm from videos? (Such as iP…
  Source: forums.digitalspy.com

[Neil Jones]

Yes, iPlayer in its original incarnation was a download format that played locally (similar to Sky+), before it became the traditional streaming model a couple of years later.

Its not difficult to strip DRM from anything if you really wanted to, especially these days, but to come back to Family Guy, it would have cost the BBC too much money just to have it as part of the online format of BBC Three, especially as the channel was severely cut budget wise at the same time, so it had to go. And it ended up with ITV.

Of course other BBC Three shows upped sticks and moved as well, so FG wasn't the only example of that, though it was interesting to note the BBC/BBC Three pulled out all the stops to paint the impression on Facebook and Twitter and the like that they were going to keep Family Guy around in some form... until ITV2 started airing it and then they changed their tune.

[SunburntRock89]

I never quite understood that. When BBC Three moved online, Fox sold it to ITV because "iPlayer wasn't secure"

recombu.com 


But the funny thing is... neither does ITV Hub (or did, I should say). Of course everything was in SD so that's probably a reason why they didn't care.

However ITVX will be using the same security measures that the major streamers like Prime, Disney+ and also All4 and My5 use - Widevine.

I recall it has something to do with the fact you could download BBC iPlayer programmes (www.bbc.co.uk ). Arguably, if you could strip DRM from the files, you could easily share it online in high quality. You can also still use screen video capture in Mac (command+shift+5) to record iPlayer. On ITV Hub you get a black box.

Also back then, forums.digitalspy.com  - seems there were projects that could do this relatively easily.

It's still reasonably trivial to download stuff from iPlayer (using the aptly named get_iplayer). The max you can get is 720p though.

I really like iPlayer as a platform but find it hard to deal with the 720p maximum on pretty much all devices.
You can stream 4K content on about 4 devices and the BBC decides exactly which devices are allowed.

I bought a Fire Stick 4k expecting to be able to view stuff in 4k, turns out they had some sort of an issue with it which they blaimed Amazon for about 3 years ago. You still can't watch in 4k all these years later. The issue they described was super minor too.

Did some resarch with a friend and it appears they have specific certificates installed on every 4k compatible device to protect the streaming endpoints.