Anyone who has had a discussion with me about my TV habits in the past six months will probably have heard me mention the BBC iPlayer. I signed up for a beta account the day they announced it back in the summer and was lucky enough to get immediate approval to start using it.
For me, ‘On Demand’ has been the most important advancement in the television watching experience for a very long time. I understand the hype, but have not yet really engaged with HD, digital recorders or services like Sky+ - I’m spending less and less time actually sat in front of a TV to watch programmes.
This is probably partially down to my lifestyle - the computer is always to hand and in most ways it delivers my DVD/video-watching experience in a far smoother way, and I’m not limited to when I watch what. Even when I do use the TV, Virgin’s Catch Up TV service is a regular player, and although I’m unsure why there are two extra & identical channels dedicated to just Virgin content, I tend to hit the big blue button (on the old Telewest remote) and browse through around a week’s worth of content.
The main problem I find with accessing On Demand content on the TV is speed. I’m used to zipping through menus at lightening speeds, and having to wait for slower-than-56k-modem-speeds for just a textual menu to load drives me up the wall. However, when you get there, the experience of watching something you missed two days ago rather than having to sit through forty minutes of some other drivel to wait a repeat to start, still wows me.
When I started using the iPlayer beta back in the summer, I was still using Windows mainly, and so it didn’t matter that I needed to download most of the programmes in big lumps (using the Beeb’s own peer-to-peer network). However, I knew that one day before the end of the year I was going to switch over to Mac, and with no sign of when support would be coming, it looked like I’d have to run the service on a virtual machine for a few months. In actual fact, no sooner had I installed Windows, I found BBC had suddenly made some of their programming available through embedded Flash players, but I still had to download some of the content.
It turns out it was just the beginning of a wider roll-out, and now everything (as far as I am aware) is available as a embedded video. Initially, I was a little skeptical about the quality - in the first week or two there were a few instances where the playback went down mid-way through a programme, but this seems to have been ironed out. I did wonder if the quality had suffered because of the streaming nature of the system, but after using the new Flash-based media for about a month, I can’t say I’ve really been bothered and the problems have become less frequent. It’s not like you’re having to watch it at a measly YouTube quality anyway (and I think that will remain a benchmark of TV-streaming for a long while).
The interface of the system has seen some changes since the beta launch of the pink and black iPlayer. I was initially concerned by the reliance on JavaScript in the interface, and had occasionally hit bugs which prevented me from getting what I wanted without having to refresh the page. The desktop application twinned with a web application approach that was used for the peer-to-peer element was a little bulky I felt, but no I don’t have to concern myself with that, the process has become far more lightweight and nimble than most video-delivery services; the BBC being lucky that it doesn’t have to include anything but the content, unlike feature-packed, advert-ridden, social-video-networks.
I can’t really fault the immediate benefit of a multi-platform, Flash-based, seven-day service, except that perhaps I’d like it to include programming from other networks. According to reports, plans are in the pipeline. I’m always disappointed to find Channel 4 doesn’t supply their content in a wholly Mac-friendly manner (try live streaming of Channel 4 or the 4oD service), but I know that we are still in the early stages of development of these media repositories, and further down the line it we will hopefully see more providers offering their content in the way the BBC is now doing. After watching iPlayer content in this new way, I would definitely advocate that this is the way forward with the medium. Those who still want to download (as long as they have a copy of Windows), still can.
And maybe one day we will see whole series back-catalogues being made available through these services. 4oD have a pretty good pay-for system for this already, but the BBC would have to provide the service for free.
The BBC’s listen-again and on-demand radio operations have also been poured very recently into the iPlayer mould, although the change is superficial at the moment. RealPlayer is still required to access any of the content, but I’m sure they will eventually take the lead from Channel 4 who have been pioneering a Flash-based system with custom playlists of programmes so you can create seamless radio experiences for yourself. Still in beta, Channel 4 plans to launch a number of new digital radio stations in the next year or so, but their beta channel (4Radio) is already available in this way.
Overall, the impact of the BBC’s iPlayer on my television watching habits over the past six months has been significant, and whilst I enjoyed 4oD as the first in it’s field I really don’t want the hassle of firing up Windows everytime I want to watch Grand Designs - I’d rather go and use Catch Up TV on the box. Online for mainstream television, the BBC iPlayer now leads the way.
(p.s. Anyone who knows a good way to control the iPlayer using an Apple remote and is reading this… I’d be very interested to know!)