NBC has been talking about launching a free TV show download service for the past few months and they have finally delivered. “NBC Direct“, which is currently in beta, allows US customers to download the latest episodes of shows like the Bionic Woman, 30 Rock, Life, The Office, Friday Night Light and more. The service works fine, but there are a few problems I noticed right off the bat. First off, Firefox is not compatible with the service at all which will be a major turnoff for at least few million potential users. Second problem is that NBC requires you to download and install their own proprietary media player/show-manager before you can use the service. It only takes a few minutes to get up and running, but still, do I really want yet another media player to deal with on my machine?

Once you have the NBC Direct player installed, you can manage and download the latest shows directly from the player which makes the process relatively simple. Just click the show you want to watch and wait a few minutes while it downloads. On a high speed connection, 30 Rock took only 4 minutes to download completely. After your video download is complete, you have 48 hour viewing period once you begin watching it. Video quality is decent in it’s original size, but don’t even try watch it in full screen mode. Keep in mind that NBC makes their money from advertisements and this service is chalked full of sponsors within the videos and the player itself. After playing around with the service for a day or so, I probably will not stick with it but I can see how it could be appealing to users that are constantly on the run, or for those that use their PC as their primary source of entertainment. To get started, head over to NBC.com/Video.