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October 17, 2007

video

BBC adding Mac support in a Flash

Posted Oct. 17, ’07, 9:02 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Video

BBC iPlayerThat stalwart of British broadcasting, the BBC, has finally announced plans for a Mac client for their new online iPlayer media service. Earlier in the year, the BBC asked users how important it was that the service be available on non-Microsoft systems. The results were pretty resounding, apparently, since later they said they would re-engineer their client for both Mac and Linux compatibility.

Now they’ve added a little more specificity, promising delivery of a Flash-based client by the end of the year. But those looking for feature parity with the Windows offering will be disappointed: the first version of the client will provide only support for streaming video, and not allow users to download video and keep it on their machines.

[Ashley Highfield, the BBC’s director of Future Media and Technology] said: “We need to get the streaming service up and look at the ratio of consumption between the services and then we need to look long and hard at whether we build a download service for Mac and Linux.”
Well, somebody needs to do it, Mr. Highfield. And if the BBC doesn’t throw their hat in the ring, then they’re just writing off a substantial minority of the population. Hardly serving the public interest then, are we?


2 Comments

Anonymous said:

It's worth noting that the BBC Trust has told the BBC that NOT providing a download service for Linux and the Mac is not an option. Do it for one platform and you have to do it for all. So I believe that's Ashley Highfield's decision has been made for him. Isn't that nice?

October 17, 2007 11:10 AM
Alasdair Macdonald said:

Thats fine. Deliver in flash and rip to local disk using FLVR. In fact ideal as we can then add to iTunes and onto iPod. I will start to feel like I am getting value for money from my $200+ license fee.

October 17, 2007 4:07 PM

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