BBC iDon’t-Player-very-well
August 14th, 2007
There’s been some talk recently of the BBC iPlayer service, which allows you to watch BBC TV programming on demand.
There has also been a lot of outcry as using this service seems to be difficult indeed.
The current requirements are as follows:
Windows XP operating system *
Minimum 500Mb (RAM) memory
Internet Explorer 6 browser (or later)
Windows Media Player 10 (or later)
A video and sound card capable of playing high quality streamed or downloaded programmes
JavaScript, ActiveX and Cookies are all enabled
A high speed broadband internet connection
The first problems. XP - What about all those new PC owners with Vista? How exactly can’t it Vista support it when it should be backwards compatible?
IE6 - Firefox is a much better browser, and a large amount of people are using it nowadays.
Then there’s the Mac and Linux users. No supported way of running it. Why? The main reason is probably because it runs on Peer-to-peer networking (much like Limewire or Kazaa). So that means a desktop client, which means background services, which would need to be written from the ground up. There are a number of problems with this. Firstly, the lack of cross platform support. Surely if I’m a License payer I should be able to access these services without having to spend money on either a) a new windows PC (or should I say old as I need XP), or b) some sort of vitualisation method like Parallels, VMWare, or Virtual PC for non-intel Macs. Thats awful.
My question is this. Why, if they couldn’t do cross playform at beta launch, couldn’t they do a non-OS specific method? ABC.com offer all of their TV shows (well most) online, the next day, via the website, on most browsers, supplied using Flash. This means any OS, any time, no background services using up your bandwidth to transfer or receive files. Its just there to watch. I don’t see whats so bad about that?
Or even better, like Azureus, a Java application that will run on most systems?
I don’t see why they didn’t choose a better system for delivery really. If they’re only offering on-demand TV rental (don’t think they have shows for purchase yet. see later) why can’t it just be flash based?
Now of course this isn’t just the BBC. Channel 4’s 4oD service which seems to run the same P2P framework, is also single platform. They all use the same network, WMP encoded video files, which I’m not a fan of (having tried the 4oD service a bit)
The other problems is the lack of shows anyway. You can’t get the latest hot thing on the BBC, Heroes (already shown on Sci-Fi on Sky/Cable and in the USA) at all. You ca get the Heroes behind-the-scenes show, but not the real thing. They need to offer the best stuff to get it to be popular and work better (since its P2P).
The last point to make. There is a way to get around some of these problems, at least the half the platform specific stuff.
iTunes.
They offer TV in the US to purchase, the day after they’ve aired, they’re yours to keep, no background download services taking up your bandwidth, and they’re then at least available to a larger share of the population.
So thats my thoughts. Of course, rumors are that there are iTunes TV announcements Coming Soon so maybe we’ll see the Beeb and CH4 get on board then.
Now, alternatives. I’ve had a quick look at the BBC iPlayer forums and some points made about alternatives. There are obviously less than legal methods, the most popular being BitTorrents. Now, with this, you’ll probably get better quality, its still P2P in a sort, although it only runs when your applicaiton is running (be it BitTorret, BitComet, Azureus, or Transmisson or xTorrent for Mac) so keeps your bandwidth usage down. Its also better quality usually. Someone also complained about the horrible torrent sites, and banners and popups. Well, this isn’t 1999. It’s not like Jennifer Saunders on that Barclaycard advert. I use www.torrentz.com as a search engine, to find the file, then click one link to the torrent site, like Mininova, BTmon, or snarf-it, then one click to download. And if adverts are REALLY that difficult to stand, try something like TVShows for Mac OS X, or TED for Windows. Both of these will easily download torrents for your new TV shows regularly, without you seeing much, and start them downloading easily.
Its really not difficult to fund alternatives to some of this stuff. So please, BBC and Channel 4, wake up.
Tags: bbc, iplayer, torrents, ted, tvshows, macosx, bbctv, ondemand
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