Reviews of BBC's iPlayer program have been mixed. The service offers U.K. residents access to television programming through a downloadable player that can queue up shows, and grab entire seasons at a time. Most of the criticism has been toward its staunch DRM and lack of Mac and Linux compatibility, which will be changing shortly. Yesterday, the BBC announced it's chosen to move to Adobe's Flash platform to deliver its video content on the iPlayer, taking the service from Windows-only to a Web-based platform.
Windows XP users will still be able to use the iPlayer software to download the shows ahead of time, but my guess is that those wanting one less thing to clutter up their desktops will make the move to a browser bookmark instead.
The news comes in tandem with another partnership announced yesterday with broadband service The Cloud, which operates 7,500 Wi-Fi hot spots in the U.K. The company will be giving users of BBC's various Web services free Wi-Fi at all their locations. Users won't be able to surf any old site for free without signing up for the company's pay-as-you go and unlimited plans, but they'll be able to watch iPlayer programming and peruse BBC.co.uk freely.
This is a wise move on the part of the BBC. The iPlayer project was originally created as a response to piracy of video content. However, the closed and limited system hindered some users from getting their hands on content easily, which is one of the many reasons people choose to pirate content in the first place. Similar efforts by content providers in the United States have proven successful, although piracy remains rampant. Initiatives like YouTube's antipiracy protection program (announced yesterday) are trying to keep that content off the Web, but technologies like Bittorrent and other P2P platforms continue to improve speed and safety for users who want to swap files with one another.
BBC will launch the new and improved iPlayer service "by the end of the year." It will remain limited to U.K. residents, even in its online form.
The BBC's recently launched iPlayer, which allows eligible U.K. residents to download episodes of shows they missed on the telly, seems to be a magnet for complaints lately.
The BBC launched its iPlayer service in beta mode last month.
(Credit: BBC)The Windows-XP only online service has already peeved Mac, Linux and Windows Vista users who can't, at least for the moment, get direct access (BBC has promised an upgrade this fall) and drawn protests over its use of Microsoft-produced digital-rights management technology.
The latest brouhaha is reminiscent of the Net neutrality debate that has raged here in the States. That controversy surrounds whether broadband operators ought to be able to charge content and application makers extra fees to deliver their content, particularly when it has the potential to consume loads of bandwidth.
In this case, major Internet service providers like Tiscali UK and Carphone Warehouse are reportedly threatening to restrict their users' downloading practices unless BBC foots part of the bill for shuttling the large files, the Financial Times reports.
A Tiscali representative told the newspaper that the new BBC service will undoubtedly clog its networks because it operates on a peer-to-peer network. Unless the ISP and BBC can come up with a "cost-sharing" arrangement, Tiscali will be forced to manage its networks by degrading the service of users who attempt to download large files at peak hours, FT reported. Tiscali is also reportedly considering creating a "two-tiered" system in which it would charge more to customers with higher-bandwidth appetites.
BT, another leading provider has been named in the reports as a "concerned" ISP, too. But a spokesman later denied being part of the extra-fee-seeking gang. In an interview with The Register that ran Monday afternoon, the company's chief press officer was quoted as saying, "We're not up in arms about iPlayer, we're not complaining to the BBC or discussing it with them."
A BBC spokesperson quoted in the service's own story was mum about the conflict, except to say, "We are in regular discussions with the ISP's and together are monitoring the costs associated with video on-demand."
But if the other concerned ISPs get their way, one has to wonder if the BBC's U.K. viewers will see a rise in the price of the license they already must pay to access the network on their traditional TV sets.
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.
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