No glitches in OverDrive, Recorded Books
RELATED ARTICLES
August 20, 2007
Freaky Family Guy and Dirt
...
More
August 17, 2007
1408 DVD
I feel as though I've written this before, so forgive me if you've already read it on this blog. 1408More
August 16, 2007
Captivity DVD
...
More
August 15, 2007
Poltergeist 25th Anniversary DVD
The cast of Brothers & Sisters celebrated the series’ first season DVD release at Disney’s Sept. 10 event at the San Antonio Winery in Los Angeles.
To celebrate Docurama’s Air Guitar Nation, Borders in Long Beach, Calif., hosted an in-store appearance by the film’s star, Björn Türoque (aka Dan Crane).
American Idol Bo Bice sang the Blades of Glory anthem at DreamWorks and Paramount’s DVD launch event in Venice Beach, Calif.
» VIEW ALL GALLERIES
» VIEW FEATURED GALLERY
ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR...
LIBRARY DVD GUIDE: We review two library video download systems
By Buzz McClain -- Video Business, 8/30/2007
AUG. 30 | Cleveland Public Library collections manager Cynthia Orr says she’s not aware of common complaints by patrons who download video content via the OverDrive system. After using the service, as well as testing Recorded Books’ system, I can come up with only one quibble: There’s no signal that the download is complete. Then again, I may have missed it.
The downloadable videos streamed effortlessly to my laptop, and the content from both services was seamless and artifact-free both visually and aurally.
Libraries set quantity limitations and durations for video downloads. Some libraries let patrons check out up to 10 at a time for two weeks, while others limit checkouts to a few titles for as short as a day. Seven days seems to be typical.
OverDrive, based in Cleveland, and Recorded Books, based in Prince Frederick, Md., set us up with temporary accounts to try their streaming systems. In both cases, users need to install the proprietary software that allows their hard drive—laptop, PC or PDA—to accomplish the download. And in both cases, the installations were glitch free.
The 1993 70-minute music instructional program The Guitar of Brian Setzer from the OverDrive Media Console took about eight minutes (I think—I checked back every few minutes) via my cable modem onto my laptop. The image of the VHS-to-digital transfer was fine and flowed without interruption. Setzer’s guitar plucking was clear and loud on my digital peripheral speakers.
From Recorded Books’ My LibraryDV, I chose Julia Child’s Kitchen Wisdom, an 86-minute retrospective, and again, the download was as clear as a DVD. I have no idea how fast it downloaded; with the progressive download feature, I began watching the incomplete download just a few minutes after it was initiated.
Both films vanished from my hard drive on schedule, which may lead to another quibble: If the loan period expires while you are watching the movie, does the film vanish from your hard drive before the final credits?
“That’s a good question,” Recorded Books VP Brian Downing says. “Yes, it probably would.”
