BBC puts shows online
The British not only have superior television (in general) but now they can watch it online too.
The BBC launched a new on-demand service called iPlayer on Friday that lets people download from the Internet shows like "EastEnders" and "Planet Earth" that they may have missed on the telly that week. The shows represent as much as 70 percent of the BBC programming, about 400 hours of programs, according to Reuters.
Unfortunately, the free service is only available to people in Britain and on computers running Microsoft XP.
You would think that with a name like "iPlayer" the service would work with Apple products! Apparently, the "I" stands for "interactive," The Wall Street Journal discovered.
Mac and Linux users are already protesting. More than 10,000 people have signed a petition urging the BBC to allow non-Windows machines to use the service.
Once viewed, the downloaded shows are automatically deleted after 30 days and technology prevents people from making copies of them.
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor.
