The ABC's excellent iView service is clearly filling a need for Australians keen to access TV on their own schedule. In the first 24 hours following its launch, the service attracted 58,000 visitors, who downloaded 2.3 terabytes of content. Mind you, that amounts to just under 50MB each, which suggests that lots of people aren't doing much more than testing the service. But it's still a great start.

ABC iView (called Playback during its beta period) has now been opened up to all Australian Internet users, offering access to a fair chunk of the national broadcaster's output on full-screen streaming video across six channels. Unlike the Windows-only ABC Shop Download, the site is accessible on any browser supporting Flash (so Windows, Mac and Linux users all have options). There's plenty to keep you entertained: a rough calculation suggests there's already about 80 hours of programming on the service, the news channel will be updated on a daily basis, and the ABC has promised additional channels in the future. iView is free to access (via an Australian connection; the service is blocked overseas). As with all streaming media, you'll need to keep an eye on your download cap if you use the service extensively -- unless you're with iiNet, which is excluding iView from its quota.

While it added a handful of shows to iTunes recently, the ABC has a much wider selection of programming available on its ABC Shop Download site, which launched today. $2.95 gets you a seven day rental on a whole bunch of titles (there's 250 hours of programming on offer), and there's a handful of free taster episodes available as well. For now, the service is Windows-only, though ABC executives have said Macs will be supported in a future release.  [ABC Shop Download]

Plenty of companies and individuals have integrated Google's map systems into their site, but not many of us have the depth of material the ABC can boast. The national broadcaster has begun trialling a new service, ABC Earth, which currently includes access to news services (updated every five minutes) and a range of archival news material, accessible as a layer within the Google Earth client (no browser-only version yet). It'd be good to see this extended into other content -- how about location filming links for Summer Heights High?

ABC Earth

Yesterday the ABC announced a swag of new digital services including online TV channels and the addition of digital downloads to the ABC store - but unfortunately it has confirmed that ABC Shop video downloads will have DRM, and they'll be confined to the Windows Media Format.
While its downloadable audio books and music will be in Mp3 format, with no DRM attached, a PR person for the ABC has confirmed it's a different story for the ABC Shop's video downloads. Video will be in Windows Media format, playable either through the ABC's Media Player or in normal versions of Windows Media Player.
Video will also have DRM, she confirmed:

"The DRM license will vary according to what the customer purchases but for launch we are 'renting' download titles for a period of 7 days after which they will not be playable."

This is disappointing news - surely our national broadcaster should be aiming for accessibility, so why lock their downloads to Windows users only? Sorry Mac and Linux users, no love for you! And as for DRM - it might be understandable if the ABC had to use DRM  as part of licensing agreements with content producers, but if the it is using DRM on content it owns, that is a real shame.

Our national broadcaster the ABC has announced four new digital services today including an IPTV station called "ABC Playback" which will allow viewers to stream shows that were broadcast by the ABC in the previous week. It will also launch paid downloads from the ABC shop on 18 March.

The online service is in beta at the moment, showing three channels - ABC Catch-up, which will show a mix of popular and specialist shows which had been screened during the previous week on ABC1 or ABC2. ABC Real will show natural history programs and general documentaries, while there will also be an ABC Shop channel. An ABC news channel is also on the cards one the service goes live.

If you have an ADSL2+ broadband connection you can apply to join the beta here.

The ABC shop is also introducing a paid download service which will offer DVD, CD and download products for rent or purchase. These are accessed by an ABC Commercial integrated media player and download manager. It wasn't clear what format the downloads come in, if they're tied to any particular player or if they use DRM - hopefully we'll have more information from the ABC on that soon.

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The ABC has reset the numbering of its digital TV stations today - so if you have a  digital TV, set top box, PVR or DVB tuner card, you'll need to set your device to rescan for channels. The ABC says the tweak was done to make the channel numbering more logical for viewers.

The channel changes are as follows:









If you watch digital TV through a pay TV service, you shouldn't be affected by the change. More information is available from the ABC's website.

Thanks for the tip, John!

Our national broadcaster has added another string to its multimedia bow with the release of desktop gadget ABC Now, which is essentially a media player which lets you get ABC news headlines, radio streams, podcasts and TV highlights on your PC. You can also get weather updates.
One nice feature is the ability to create a Favourites menu. When you're browsing content in the "Find" section, each item has a "heart" icon and a "+" sign, which you just need to click to add to your Favourites list.
Cricket fans should note that "technical difficulties" mean they can't broadcast the cricket through ABC Now yet.
You'll need to be using either Real Player or Windows Media Player. Right now ABC now is Windows only, but they've promised a Mac version soon.
I've raved before about our national broadcaster's efforts to do multimedia broadcasting well, and ABC Now is a nice addition to their offerings. I'll need to do some experimenting to see if this standalone gadget can be incorporated into iGoogle or something similar. If you experiment, let us know how you get on in comments.
This new feature was spotted at APC.
 

Anyone paying attention out there in the productoblogosphere knows that every week, there's a new web application that helps you keep your to-do list. But which ones are you actually using to, you know, actually do things? After the jump, cast your vote for your favourite web-based to-do manager.

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