Could things get any worse for the BBC iPlayer?
August 17, 2007 Posted by Matt in : Bristol , trackback
After four years of troubled beta testing for the BBC iPlayer, the Beeb could be forgiven for thinking that the situation could not get any worse. It now has: the techies are grumbling at ever lengthening bug lists and the ISPs are wading in regarding the BBC iPlayer’s insatiable appetite for bandwidth. However, if the BBC keeps a clear head and focuses on content rather than whizzy forms of delivery, I am sure that quality content will keep the BBC iPlayer on everyone’s desktop.
The BBC iPlayer’s latest controversy is with the main internet service providers regarding the huge web resources the player needs. The BBC iPlayer uses peer-to-peer technology, which allows bits of content to be downloaded from other users, at speeds of up to 300M-bytes of data per hour! My feeling is that this sort of bandwidth should be fine for a limited audience. Besides if we are already consuming a fair whack of bandwidth for YouTube, iTunes, Facebook, Bebo and MySpace, surely the ISPs can’t blame the BBC iPlayer on its own, as the sole threat to bandwidth infrastructure?
If you stand back and think about the situation, this is not so much an IT oversight for yet another poorly executed public sector IT project, more of an extremely jumpy cable and internet service provider market, trying to protect their own online content. The cable and TV giants Virgin and Sky have their own “on demand” TV services that are competition. It seems that the big media giants are banging their chests to try and put off the BBC from entering web TV.
Yes, there have been teething problems, which I will leave the web designers and IT professionals to analyse, but I will reiterate that despite these issues 120,000 people have already downloaded the player and this is with a really small catalogue of content!
Now here comes the real threat from the BBC. To dominate online communications, as I always tell our clients, the popularity of blogs, podcasts and videocasts comes down to quality of content, pure and simple.
Compared to Sky and Virgin who have superior delivery infrastructure, i.e. they are also ISPs, the BBC is the 500lb gorilla in the room in comparison when competing on content for online TV. The Beeb’s back catalogue and quality of programming is second to none, worldwide.
Following a recent speech from Ashley Highfield, Director of New Media & Technology at the BBC, it seems that their long term strategy will be to incorporate the Open Archive project into the BBC iPlayer. The Open Archive Project is the BBC plan to make its archive of all audio-visual content available to the public for viewing and research purposes on a trial basis started in March 2007, with the aim of providing a full service from Spring 2008.
Imagine the response from Joe Public if you could download (using the BBC iPlayer) the entire series of Walking with Dinosaurs, East Enders or Casualty? Clearly even antique buffs will find every Antiques road show ever filmed, as a hugely valuable resource. The possibilities and appeal are endless. Especially if the BBC can sort out copyright issues and distribute the player to a worldwide audience, not just the UK that it is now! I am sure that the growing expert community would gladly pay for access to BBC content online!
Clearly the end game is looking strong for the Beeb, but as there are so many problems with the player this may take some time…. For the record the Montage team tried to get the player going and had so many various problems and snags regarding MS Media player upgrades, virus and firewall software settings that we gave up! The library interface looks great and there is loads of great content on there already, just a shame it’s a real pain to get to it…….
Comments»
I downloaded the iPlayer 3 days ago, and then 3 programmes. No problems at all. But yes, it does seem a bit over-designed.
I downloaded the iPlayer Beta a couple of days ago only to find that it doesn't work at all with Vista- surprising.
Hi,
Saw this interesting blog regarding the Edinburgh TV-un-festival
http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/news/
Amongst others the VP of Google talks about the Internet TV revolution and the future of internet TV and how in Japan whole programmes can be downloaded in 10-15 seconds.
Obviously wasn't using the iplayer then….:-)
Matt
I agree with your analysis.
Isn't the ultimate logic of where this is heading that the BBC needs to become an Internet Service Provider and that eventually the license fee becomes a payment for online services and content?