Geek Fun: Download Favorite NBC Programs for Free
A couple of weeks ago we showed you how to Stealthfully Watch Television at Work , and today we continue the TV theme with NBC Direct beta which allows you to download, subscribe, and stream favorite NBC programs.
The first thing you need to do if you haven't already is create a My NBC account which is NBC's social networking site, also still in beta.
After installation is complete you will be asked to sign into your account before going to the NBC Rewind videos page.
NBC Direct launches your default browser (Firefox & Internet Explorer are officially supported) to the site where you can choose which show and episode you want to check out. Then just click on "Download Episode" located on the screen. The video will download in FLV format and HD quality is available to start viewing about halfway through the download.
You can also watch an episode online while organizing your downloads, subscriptions, and preferences. This menu is available by clicking the download tab on the left side of the screen.
The files are DRM protected and can only be played on the PC originally downloaded from. I tried to go into the directory where the videos are stored and play them with VLC and it doesn't work. You will have to watch the episode with NBC Direct. After downloading a video to watch later, you will find it again by launching NBC Direct and going into your library. You will also notice that there is an expiration date on the episodes so you will want to watch them before then.
NBC Direct makes it easier to watch episodes of programming a lot more efficient than streaming them one at a time. Hopefully they will include a separate desktop player / organizer in the future as development progresses. It would also be nice if the programs were not DRM protected, but being able to watch episodes of The Office on your PC at your leisure is pretty cool.
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Windows only &(^$&*(!$&^@!^&(#%@*(&#^!@*($!!
*sigh*
You don't need Window's to play the videos. You could probably get it working through Crossovers IE7 or Crossovers FF.
http://www.codeweavers.com/
Great app for OS X and Linux.
Any Word if this is USA only?
nice concept but you can always watch streamed or uploaded shows thru various sites and they are not DRM-locked.
yea i jus found miro but not sure if it will get shows form nbc etc…i like ov guide as300
well,i get every thing from there…but still handy to know mystic! ty…im lovin this sight…might add it as home!
How about ABC and CBS. The wife wants to watch her favorite sods when we are in Germany.
I have a silly question that I'm having trouble finding the answer to. WHERE are the videos for NBC direct stored? They don't seem to be in any of the likely places (NBC program folder, "My Documents", or "My Videos"). You said you tried to play the videos directly, so you seem to have located them…
OK, Windows search (as usual) was no help. Using FastFind I finally found that the files are stored in this directory on my WinXP machine: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\NBC Direct\video\[myusername]\NBC Direct Videos. Not an unlikely place, but I've gotten so used to the way other P2P applications do it that I did not think to look there.
Now I'm uninstalling the software because it majorly slowed my connection (even when dropping upload to minimal), and because I found navigation using the mandatory web interface to be horribly buggy, like not being able to delete the files I've watched, or to tell how far along they are on their downloads. I'm curious to see whether downloads are removed when I uninstall.