BBC iPlayer Gets Green Light May 1, 2007

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BBC overlord, the BBC Trust, has given the green light for the Beeb’s planned on-demand TV service. The proposed iPlayer service will allow us viewers to catch up on top BBC shows online for up to seven days after they were originally shown on the TV. It launches later this year.

You’ll be able to watch shows streamed over the Net – depending on the speed of your link – while others will be downloadable and can be stored on your PC for up to 30 days. The iPlayer service has been designed to run on Windows-based PCs with a big fat snub to Apple Mac users – even after stealing the ‘i’ for the service name.

The Trust has asked the BBC to rectify the matter within a ‘reasonable time frame’, but don't hold your breath. It’s not only Apple users getting the brush-off though, but arty-types too, since the Trust is not allowing classical recordings or book readings to be downloaded via iPlayer.

The iPlayer service is certainly going to be useful but, for me, the most important aspect was that this was the first proposed service to go through a public evaluation process, or Public Value Test (PVT), to test public response. In iPlayer’s case, a massive 10,500 people and organisations responded, most of them favourably.

It just goes to show that sometimes, just sometimes, that if enough of us want something we can get it.-Comrade Martin ‘Lenin’ Lynch

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