NBC has relaunched its NBC Direct video download service. Honestly, ever since Hulu launched, I haven't thought much about NBC Direct, which I first covered back in 2007. There aren't any videos available from NBC Direct that you can't find on Hulu, and the clunky DRM and download application make NBC Direct much more difficult to use than the web based player.

Still, NBC Direct has two advantages over Hulu or other online video sites:

1. You can watch videos while you're not connected to the internet
2. Videos are available in high definition

There are a few caveats: The NBC Direct player is Windows only. Question number 1 in the FAQ is whether there are plans for a Mac version. NBC's answer? Use Boot Camp to install WIndows on your Mac. And while the videos you download look like normal FLV Flash video files, NBC uses DRM which means that videos will stop playing at some date in the future. And you can only watch videos on the computer you used to download them.

The downloads are pretty speedy. NBC uses peer to peer technology which you can off if you're willing to deal with "standard quality" videos instead of the "high quality" versions that are available to P2P users.
[via NewTeeVee]