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Archive: iplayer

If it wasn’t the Beeb’s, would iPlayer be dead by now?

1 August 2007 02:12

Categories: Blogging, Current affairs, Entertainment, Internet, Radio, Technology, Television

Well it looks as though the BBC iPlayer is turning out to be the biggest of damp squibs. I have previously looked forward to the iPlayer on this blog, while at the same time being exasperated by the bureaucracy that seemed to surround it.

A couple of months back, this report appeared in The Guardian and it sounded like it was almost time to give up on waiting for the iPlayer to arrive.

The first announcement of a groundbreaking download service for the BBC came four years ago. Back then it was called the Interactive Media Player, and was one of a number of ambitious projects to push the BBC into the future.

Since then iPlayer has been officially announced at least three times, rebranded twice, trialled several times and seen more than £3m invested in its development. Even then, it was only two weeks ago that the BBC Trust officially sanctioned it.

At last, iPlayer was unveiled to the public this week. I visited the website to register my interest — only to find that I couldn’t. Seemingly, my computer is too new for iPlayer.

To add insult to injury, even if you are not committing the heinous crime of using Vista rather than XP, iPlayer forces you to use Internet Exploder! For many, this is like being asked to insert nails into your eyeballs.

Put it this way. If anyone else had the chutzpah to release software like this, it would have already received a death by flaming from bloggers and Diggers. Perhaps it already has.

I mean, just look at it. You can’t use it on a Mac. You can’t use it on Linux. You can’t even use it on the latest version of Windows. And even if you are lucky enough to be using the correct operating system, you have to be using the right browser.

Even then, this sort of thing happens. Reports of the iPlayer’s shakiness are widespread. Even The Guardian‘s tech boffins apparently found it difficult to get working.

As though to top it off, iPlayer uses discredited DRM-based software to lock the programmes off. That is just the icing on the cake. Even the music industry is starting to give up on DRM.

Let’s face it. iPlayer has been in development for three or four years. It is still in the situation where it dictates which operating systems and browsers you can use. And even then it’s still really flaky.

My guess is that if a service such as, say, Joost launched like this, it would have never recovered from all of the negative publicity. It makes me wonder how the BBC dropped the ball so badly. Their Radio Player is a similar idea but without the pictures, and it works really well (current “severe technical problems” aside). So how come iPlayer is such a botched job?

5 comments

More iPlayer insanity

31 January 2007 19:41

Categories: Current affairs, Entertainment, Internet, Music, Radio, Technology, Television

Good news — the BBC Trust has thrown its weight behind iPlayer. But every silver lining has a cloud, as Ryan Morrison points out.

The iPlayer that has been given the go-ahead will have a few changes to what has been proposed before. The changes are quite minor really. Infact, one of them — about taking a platform-independent approach — is very good indeed. But there is still the odd moment where I have to slap my palm on my forehead and ask, “WHY?”

Genres included in non-DRM audio downloads: Audio-books and classical music should be excluded from the non-DRM downloads.

In other words, audio books and classical music — two very worthy genres that ring the right public service bells — will be locked up and more difficult to access than other genres. So if the next generation grows up with absolutely no taste in books or classical music, you’ll know what’s to blame.

The public value to be created is not, in the Trust’s view, sufficient to justify the potential market impact of allowing downloads of these genres.

This is horseshit. This is about the greedy commercial music industry maximising its profits; not about maximising public value. When the BBC offered all of Beethoven’s symphonies for free download, it was a massive success and everybody loved it — apart from those greedy bastards who want to lock music away unless you pay their high prices. Because the music industry reacted so violently against it, the BBC has promised never to do anything similar again — despite the fact that it was a huge success. The same is now happening to iPlayer.

1 comment

The greatest argument in favour of the license fee

24 January 2007 20:32

Categories: Current affairs, Entertainment, Internet, Politics, Radio, Technology, Television

Yesterday Ofcom criticised the BBC’s hugely promising project to get its content online and accessible on demand for free. According to Ofcom, project like BBC iPlayer “would not be in the long-term public interest”. Not too long ago a similar attack was made against the BBC’s use of podcasts.

This is the BBC using modern technology to make content more available to everybody. These are programmes that have already been paid for, being made available to more people in a much more convenient format. You would be able to watch or listen to programmes whenever it suits you. Unquestionably, license fee payers would be getting more value for money.

But apparently, the BBC doing great things like this hurts the commercial sector. I think not! Does the BBC’s iPlayer prevent ITV from creating their own similar service? Hardly. In fact, Channel 4 are already out of the blocks with their 4oD service.

The fact that more commercial broadcasters haven’t taken the same step, though, is rather telling. The problem with commercial broadcasters is that they all just roll around moaning about the license fee instead of actually thinking about what the audience wants. As the boss of (commerical) Radio Pembrokeshire said last year,

…If only other small commercial stations would stop whining about the [BBC] and offer engaging content, like us, then the commercial sector would be in less of a sorry state.

The commercial broadcasters churn out their samey middle-of-the-road rubbish and refuse to take advantage of the new technology that threatens the very existence of television as we know it. The BBC, meanwhile, is taking all of the innovative steps that are dragging the mainstream media into the 21st century.

If the commercial sector is in trouble, they ought to take a good look at themselves rather than just pointing at the BBC. As things stand, the greatest argument in favour of the license fee is not the quality of the BBC. It is the shoddy state of commercial broadcasters, with their utter disregard for viewers.

Meanwhile, Ofcom should be embarrassed. To criticise the BBC’s ambitions to drag television into the modern world and benefit viewers as a whole makes them just look completely out of touch, particularly as they claim that such a scheme would not be in the public interest!

All the while, Ofcom turn a blind eye to — if not positively encourage — phone-in quiz shows that pollute commercial television stations. These are genuine dangers to the public interest. They don’t serve the viewers one iota (apart from the relatively decent Quizmania, which has been axed), and they downright swindle the poor people who phone in.

See also Ryan Morrison’s post. Meanwhile, Mike Power puts it more succinctly.

6 comments