BBC Iplayer - Unofficial PS3 Solution

April 13, 2008 · Filed Under Internet, PS3, Television, Websites · Comment 
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With the BBC Iplayer now officially released for Apples Iplayer and more recently the Nintendo’s Wii console, people have been wondering…why is it not out for the PS3 or 360? surely it wouldnt be too much trouble to make at least the web based Iplayer compatible for those browsers right?

Well a programmer has created a PS3 browser compatible site www.ps3iplayer.com

“It’s mainly a demonstration of how easily the BBC could support the PS3 with their Wii version. This does nothing more than mask your PS3’s user-agent string and makes half a dozen changes to make the JavaScript and CSS function correctly on the PS3. It only took a day to produce, so come on BBC - how about implementing this properly?’”

It isn’t the application solution, personally I prefer the web based solution any way as you don’t have to wait ages for downloads, eating up your bandwidth for something which will just expire in a week or whatever anyway.

So visit www.ps3iplayer.com on your PS3 to check it out ;)

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BBC Iplayer - Compatibility improving

February 7, 2008 · Filed Under Internet, Television · Comment 
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dramaiplayer.jpgThe BBC is to launch a mac compatible version of its iplayer download before the end of the year, but until then mac users can make use of the flash alternative to the downloadable iplayer software(which does not require registration) which can be found at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/ *this version is compatible on most operating systems*

The quality of the flash videos may not be as good as the downloads you’d get using the software, but it isn’t half bad. it is certainly a better solution as it is much faster, so on a good broadband connection there is generally no waiting involved.

- Previously iplayer was only available as a download, which involves that kontiki software running in the background, eating up bandwidth by sharing the videos you have downloaded with other users.

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BBC iPlayer Beta Review

August 3, 2007 · Filed Under Internet, Television · Comment 

bbc1.jpgWell today we received an invitation e-mail for the BBC’s iPlayer beta, this included a difficult to remember user name and password which I had to write down. Once logged in to the service, after a few attempts at trying to use the login again on a second login box, I found that I was required to register my own secondary user name and password! this was not too clear so it was rather annoying.

I eventually managed to log in to the service, so I checked out what was on offer and I am pretty pleased; BBC programmes like Doctor Who, Hyperdrive, Coast, Blue Peter…whatever has been showing on TV over the last 7 days.

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So I attempted to download an episode of Doctor Who, but being a Firefox user I was not allowed to do it, so I had to switch over to the dreaded Internet Explorer eek! once on the Iplayer site in internet explorer I was then prompted to download the Iplayer Setup program, OK that seemed fair enough, once installed it gave me the BBC iPlayer library, a program which sits in your task bar (yay another thing on my task bar!!), which will allow you to watch the progress of the videos you are downloading.

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In addition to the BBC iPlayer library there was something else, the Kontiki Kservice.exe and Khost.exe processes were installed, this includes a peer 2 peer client embedded, meaning people will be downloading the programs you downloaded from your pc, taking your bandwidth! (this makes sense for the BBC not having everyone downloading the content from just their servers, putting a strain on the system-the P2P effectively creates a big network of many users computers to download from) but for many users including myself this isn’t great. I am familiar with the Kontiki processes as I already have them running on a PC from Sky by broadband(or Sky Anywhere as I believe it is now called), while the processes were running I found that I experienced significantly slow web browsing, due to the P2P gobbling up my bandwidth, so whenever I start up that computer these days I immediately end those processes.

Any way back to the programmes, I guess you’ll be wondering how much space you will need, well a 30 min episode of hyperdrive came to 149mb, a 45 minute episode of doctor who is 193mb, and an hour long episode of coast is 399mb, it seems that programmes are being distributed with different bit rates (quality).

Currently the iPlayer is in beta stages and will only support Windows XP, hopefully when it releases properly to the public it will be compatible with other operating systems.

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BBC on demand service - Coming 27th July

June 27, 2007 · Filed Under Internet, Television · 1 Comment 

bbciplayer.jpgToday BBC announced that it will be launching it’s iplayer video on demand service next month on the 27th of July. The iplayer will be available for free and will contain over 400 hours of content a week, the BBC have indicated that the majority of its content will be available, including popular TV shows such as Doctor Who and the Apprentice.

Like other video on demand services such as Sky Anywhere, there are limitations:

- The programs will be downloadable 7 days after they become available and will remain on the computer for a maximum of 30 days, after which point the program removes itself.

- The service will only be available to the UK.

When it launches the iplayer will be found at www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer

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