Documentary/Film downloads

When I got a hdmi monitor and got rid of tv, my son bought me a Raspberry pi to download movies/documentaries on and watch them in full hdmi colour. I know linux, I'm set up on Debian wheezy, and need to do a 'proof of concept download & text him.

Given that I'm not into rape, carnage, spiritism, filthy language, or other people's sex lives, and that "Action" movies leave me with PTSD, what's out there? What can I download? I do watch documentaries, squeaky clean comedies, and I'll pay. Any suggestions?

[jamesh]

When I got a hdmi monitor and got rid of tv, my son bought me a Raspberry pi to download movies/documentaries on and watch them in full hdmi colour. I know linux, I'm set up on Debian wheezy, and need to do a 'proof of concept download & text him.

Given that I'm not into rape, carnage, spiritism, filthy language, or other people's sex lives, and that "Action" movies leave me with PTSD, what's out there? What can I download? I do watch documentaries, squeaky clean comedies, and I'll pay. Any suggestions?

I think all you are left with is Pixar movies and Minecraft parodies on YouTube...

And RomComs.

You could try BBC iPlayer stuff. Lots of documentaries available if in the UK.

If you're in Canada, the CBC ( http://www.cbc.ca ) has a decent archive section, and, of course, the National Film Board of Canada ( http://www.nfb.ca ) is an excellent choice.

In the UK, one can spent a long time here (and this is why a premium VPN account is handy):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/index.shtml

I use this site for documentary viewing on my PC. They may not work with the Pi as they appear to be flash on youtube

http://documentaryheaven.com/

Thanks a lot everyone. I'm in Ireland. BBC and ITV kick me out of their players. It's a very intelligent algorithm and I've tried faking browser headers, but to no avail. But I never heard of the other ones.
And yes, I agree, the exclusions I listed cut me out of the mainstream movies and everything from Hollywood, and are at one end of the spectrum.

If you don't mind paying a bit, I'd recommend you investigate a premium VPN service which will give you access to content around the world. (I'm not sure if they work on the RPi, but on Windows, Mac and x86 Linux they certainly do). These tunnel your internet through a server in the country of your choice, giving you an ip address in that country so that it looks like you reside in that country. I've used several in the past and can confirm that you can access iPlayer and other UK video streaming sites, as well as US networks, Hulu etc.

(There are other benefits to using a VPN which I won't go into them here. Your investigation will uncover these.)

I currently use https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/ which works very well and is quite inexpensive at $39.95 annually. (I am not affiliated with them in any way other than being a subscriber.)

They currently have gigabit servers in the following locations and you have access to them all:

United States (US VPN)
us-midwest.privateinternetaccess.com
us-east.privateinternetaccess.com
us-west.privateinternetaccess.com
us-texas.privateinternetaccess.com
us-denver.privateinternetaccess.com
us-california.privateinternetaccess.com
us-florida.privateinternetaccess.com

Canada (CA VPN)
ca.privateinternetaccess.com
ca-toronto.privateinternetaccess.com

United Kingdom (UK VPN)
uk-london.privateinternetaccess.com
uk-southampton.privateinternetaccess.com

Switzerland (Swiss VPN)
swiss.privateinternetaccess.com

Netherlands (NL VPN)
nl.privateinternetaccess.com

Sweden (SE VPN)
sweden.privateinternetaccess.com

France (FR VPN)
france.privateinternetaccess.com

Germany (DE VPN)
germany.privateinternetaccess.com

Romania (RO VPN)
ro.privateinternetaccess.com

Of course, there are many other similar services so here's a list you can investigate:

http://www.vpn-providers.net/

IMO, it's money well spent. My wife and I haven't had paid TV for 2 years now and really haven't missed it since we went the VPN route.