If there is one thing this country can be proud of it’s our trouncing of Germany in two World Wars and One World Cup, but if there are two, it surly must be the BBC.
Public service broadcasting anywhere else is considered a joke, and quite rightly too. PBS in the States with it endless telethons and ‘arts’ programming only gets an audience because of it 70’s re-runs of BBC sitcoms and period dramas.
But in the UK we are lucky, we are provided with quality programming 24 hours a day (even celebrity fad programming is better than its American counterpart). But in my opinion greatest side effect of this is ITV and other commercial stations have to try harder, giving us some of the greatest local, national and international news in the world.
Thats enough of my love letter to the beeb. On to the iPlayer.
Over the holidays I spent some quality time with the BBC iPlayer (beta), catching up with Dr Who before the Christmas day spacial.
I’m not blow away my the technology, who would be? It’s simply YouTube – what I was impressed with was the quality and execution. And for a beta they haven’t skimped. Dr Who, Extras and Catherine Tate were all available almost immediately (although I did have problem for the first 12 hours when trying to watch Extras).
Reports on the Register (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/15/iplayer_streaming_ratio/) this week show it’s curtains for the bizarre P2P desktop experiment. And about time too, with no Mac or Linux support the Flash player option was always going to be a winner.
In the UK there is only one real competitor for the iPlayer, Channel 4’s 4OD (4 On Demand). It took me 45 minutes to get it to work – having to figure out cryptic error messages about DRM upgrades and installing Windows Media Player upgrades. The experience was less than enjoyable and you are required to re-login after each program the search is clumsy and ill-conceived.
All in all the BBC has a winner on its hands and Channel 4 a sill born. Thats not to say the BBC is perfect, it has its faults and the functionality is limited, but more of that next time.