A guide to online media
The Internet today is made up of so much more than just emails and text filled web pages, it has become a hotbed of multimedia activity.
If you feel like watching a film, catching up on TV shows you’ve missed, listening to the radio or the latest album of your favourite artist, it can all be done with the click of a mouse.
PC Site® brings you the ultimate online media guide to fill you in on what, where and how to get the best entertainment out of the Internet.
With artists speaking out worldwide against the theft of their work through illegal downloads and file sharing isn’t it about time we explored the fairer and more legitimate ways of accessing our favourite music?
Downloads
With the emergence of the MP3 player, the age of buying expensive CD’s seems to have come to an end. Most music, both new releases and the classics, are available to download for a much smaller fee than the price of a CD.
All you have to do is visit sites such as amazon.com or play.com select the song or album you wish to download and click buy. With some sites and certain tracks you will even have the option to try before you buy with a ‘preview’ or ‘listen’ button.
For all you iPod users you will have access to downloads on iTunes which will need to be installed on your Mac or PC.
Streaming
Napster is a service that provides you with unlimited streaming for a monthly subscription fee. If you wish to sign up for one month it will cost you only £5 and you will get 5 free MP3s to keep. For a three month subscription you will get 15 free MP3s and unlimited streaming for £15.
Applications like Spotify.com and Last.fm both allow you to stream music straight from the internet for no cost at all. It’s like listening to the radio but with your own personal selection of tracks. The down side to Spotify is that there are adverts played in-between your tracks.
You can however pay 99p for a 24 hour day pass, which is ad-free, or pay a monthly subscription of £9.99 for no ads at all. You can also purchase music from this site but you will need to download and install Spotify first, then sit back and enjoy instant, simple and easy listening.
Last.fm is a site that provides free music of all genres as well as photo galleries and facts about the artists. Visitors can watch videos and tune in to radio stations and once they have created their own profile they can tag these as well as their favourite tracks and playlists.
The only catch to this is its Free On-Demand policy which only lets you play certain tracks three times, after that you will only be allowed to access a 30 second playback. This doesn’t affect the radio stations.
Radio
Radio has always been a popular medium and now it is available online. The BBC is a renowned radio source and when you visit their site bbc.co.uk/radio you will see that that is no lack of choice. You can access radio 1, 1X, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, A, Nations and Local and World Service.
If you prefer more commercial radio then a good site to visit is radiostations.co.uk where you will find links to all the DAB Digital radio stations available online. This service is free and easy and lets you enjoy all your favourite radio shows and music from the convenience of your PC.
The invention of the iPlayer has revolutionised how we watch TV. Now we need not worry about rushing home after work to catch our favourite soap or setting the recorder for the programme you’ll miss; you can simply watch them online.
BBC iPlayer allows you to catch up on the last seven days of BBC TV and radio, including the following channels: BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three, BBC Four, CBBC, CBeebies, BBC News, BBC Parliament, BBC HD and BBC Alba.
You do not need a TV licence to watch these programmes if you watch them after they have already been broadcast. The services are streamed from the site but you can also download programmes by installing the BBC iPlayer Desktop. There is a thorough guide to help you with this on the BBC site.
Channel 4 have a similar application called 4oD on which you can watch the last month’s worth of TV for free. This service includes programmes on Channel4, E4, 4Music and More4.
ITV also have their ITV Player which streams TV shows from ITV1, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4, ITV HD and CITV from the last 30 days, again, for no cost at all.
A trip to blockbuster isn’t necessarily the way to go if you want to watch a movie; now you can just turn on your computer and download one.
Findanyfilm.com is a site run by the UK Film Council which is a great way of finding legitimate film downloads. You simply type in the film you seek and if it comes up click download and it will take you to a page displaying possible retailers with a link to their site.
There are several sites that can be found online which offer movie downloads, and some may require you to create an account, but the most popular sites in the UK for movie downloads are iTunes and Lovefilm.com. iTunes offer a wide selection of films including those in HD, and you can watch these on your computer, iPhone, iPod or Apple TV.
To access this service you must have an iTunes account and many videos require the latest version of QuickTime but the software is compatible with Mac and Windows.
Lovefilms.com has over 2,000 full length films TV episodes, documentaries and shorts, and you can watch them in either VHS quality or DVD quality. On this site if you chose to buy rather than renting a film, LoveFilm will also send you a DVD copy for you to keep.
The only down sides to this site are the fact that the software is not compatible with Macs and it does not offer an HD option.
Images by shankar, shiv, lowjumpingfrog
Written by Rosie Khdir
Rosie is a technology journalist who covers all the latest technology news, product releases and emerging social media and computing trends for PC Site.
Tue, Nov 10, 2009