Monday, January 7, 2008

Free Cooking Shows


Sunday is "cooking show heaven" on PBS. The line-up changes every few months, but the shows (America's Test Kitchen, Mark Bittman, Lidia, Daisy, Jacques) are always highly educational (in a good way) and generally better than anything you can find on the Food Network.

Now the Library has a new service that will extend my Sunday cooking show viewing. MyLibraryDV is a free program, through the Library, that allows users to download and view a host of television programs and classic and independent films. Included among the TV programs are America's Test Kitchen, Michael Chiarello's Napa, and Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home. If you're into travel shows, your options are even greater with tons of episodes of Globe Trekker and Rick Steves' Europe.

To download the shows and movies, you need a New York Public Library account, and a computer that will run Windows Media Player. One essentially "checks out" up to ten programs at a time for one week. After the week the programs will disappear from your computer. The site's FAQ has more information.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a great idea! I love watching the old episodes of The French Chef; it was so much less glamorous (in a good way) than today's FN cooking shows. I think my favorite is the episode where Julia has all the chickens lined up for a chicken beauty pageant -- Miss Roaster, Miss Broiler and Miss Caponette!

Erin said...

I can't tell you how glad I am that you posted this. My local library system also subscribes to the service and I live in an are where the local pbs stations (yes plural) are all seriously lacking in cooking shows.

For anyone else not local to NY, google your library system (for me it is a county level thing) and "my library DV" and you should get links to your own local subscription.

Emily said...

Thanks for the tip on PBS Sundays! Don't know how I've missed it for so long...Really enjoying your blog :)

Beth Daniel Lindsay said...

My library DV sounds like such a great service, but I have a Mac and can't use it! Do you know if there are any plans to make the program Mac-compatible?

Anonymous said...

This is great info to know.