NRK (Norsk rikskringkasting, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation) has one unbelievably huge website. Hidden somewhere on it is NRK Nett TV. Yes, that’s streaming net-TV. They seem to put nearly all of their broadcasts online for anyone to watch, even going back several months as far as I can tell. Some other national broadcasting corporations, such as the BBC, started doing similar things, but almost always with the caveat that you have to be within their nation’s borders to watch the content. Not so at NRK, there are no restrictions here.
This is a great tool especially if you’re stark raving mad, like me, and want to improve your Norwegian. NRK can’t even imagine what a fantastic present this is for the language learner.
Unfortunately, they use the closed, proprietary WMV format for their files. It would be better with a free format such as Ogg Theora or XviD. But all is not lost, it’s not a problem for mplayer to play the stuff, you can even make a copy (via the -dumpstream option) to your own drive. Whether this is legal, both the playing of WMV and the dumping of the stream, depends on your jurisdiction, of course.
