3 Step Guide on How to stream Demand 5 on linux (and windows and Mac too)

I like to watch the Mentalist, and my PVR is a bit flaky, which means that I need to fall back on Demand 5 to watch it when I miss it. If you have tried this you’ll know that it is a much maligned video on demand service offered by Channel 5 in the UK. There’s a reason for this, there’s too much going on with their page because it is badly developed. They’ve certainly not designed with the user need in mind like GDS are getting the UK government to do.

So inspired by this post http://blog.strictly-software.com/2011/08/overcoming-performance-problems.html and after reading lots of other posts telling me I needed to install hal and stuff I came up with the following three steps to get Demand 5 working:

Install Firefox
Flash Block
Ad Killer

1. Install Firefox

I tried it with both Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, but Chrome has some issues with flash, and Google appear to be cracking down on some of the plugins that you can install that will possibly limit how you can block flash components and ads. After all Google is making lots of money on advertising, whereas Mozilla isn’t.

2. Flash Block

Firefox has a native plugin called ‘Flash Block’ which by default stops any of the components on the page from running flash unless you click on them. This means that you can limit the load on your browser and CPU to only that necessary for the video that you want to run. That way you get a much smoother performance and almost no flicker.

3. Ad Killer

Again, another Firefox plugin. I’m not clear that this one is absolutely necessary, but it can’t really do much harm. Again the general idea is that it is limiting what is displayed on the page, cutting down on load.

Before I did this, I was getting a paused video when I tried to run Demand 5. Once I did it, I got to watch the Mentalist. Although I’m a linux user I’m pretty sure that this will also help people running windows and macs.

Do let me know if this works for you. If it doesn’t work for you then there might be other things that are needed, and if you let me know I’ll update the post. I’d especially like to know if you use Windows or a Mac.