All4, in my opinion, is unusable, because of the poor picture and sound quality, but for most for the unskippable ad. breaks. In one episode of the third series of Professor T SWMBO and I timed a break that lasted over five minutes. C4 must realise this, because they are trialling All4+, the subscription version of All4, which is ad. break free. I only use All4 as a last resort, as in the case of being able to watch the second and third series of Professor T (absolutely brilliant, BTW) because I couldn’t find it elsewhere. There’s a lot of stuff under the Walter Presents banner that we’d love to watch, but certainly won’t be bothering whilst All4 remains the unpleasant mess that it is.
Thinking about Britbox, to my mind, it would be better if it replaced the various catch-up services already in play, offering two levels of service: free, you get ad. breaks, subscribe and you don’t. It also needs to offer the ability to binge on series yet to be broadcast, and it it needs to offer HD picture quality (at a minimum) and multi-channel audio, where available. Obviously, that would depend on the content, but if the BBC can offer this to its linear broadcasts (Batiste being an example), then Britbox should deliver it too.
What I suspect that we’ll get is something that at best offers iPlayer like picture quality, stereo audio, ad. breaks, and a hefty subscription fee to boot. I really want to be proved wrong here, but if I were a betting man I’d be reasonably confident that my money was safe.
Clem