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February 7, 2008

video

Downloadable BBC iPlayer coming soon

Posted Feb. 7, ’08, 12:01 PM PT by Dan Pourhadi
Category | Video

iplayer1.jpgLots of fuss over the BBC’s iPlayer and its incompatibility with Macs in the US because of “rights management” and all the craziness that entails. iPlayer works with Windows, and back in December they announced that a flash version of iPlayer was available, but only to users in the UK — still leaving many in the dark.

Well, there’s light on the horizon: the BBC today posted an article on their site announcing a downloadable iPlayer for the Mac, which should be available by the end of 2008.

Why the delay?

He wrote: “Were we to choose to not develop any systems or services until they could be received by every single individual licence-fee payer, our capacity for development and innovation - in the interest of serving those who fund our services - would be severely limited.”

Well…I guess that makes sense. That doesn’t mean I’m going to be patient about it. I can’t wait to watch…whatever it is on BBC that everyone is so desperate to watch. I’m sure it’s great.


3 Comments

James "License Payer" Carey said:

Not to be too precious about it, but I hope you can't watch anything on it Dan, because you don't pay a licence fee. It costs £135.50 a year to receive full colour BBC television broadcasting, and if worldwide audiences are to become privy to that for free, I and many other limeys will be pretty upset I'm sure.

Ignore that if you do pay the fee, of course.

February 7, 2008 12:28 PM
sip said:

"Well, there’s light on the horizon: the BBC today posted an article on their site announcing a downloadable iPlayer for the Mac, which should be available by the end of 2008."

2008 has only just started and the end of 2008 is still too long to wait for something that should have been released at the same time as the Windows version.

February 7, 2008 2:00 PM
Kelmon said:

"I can’t wait to watch…whatever it is on BBC that everyone is so desperate to watch."

Unfortunately, you might as well give up on that idea now since the service won't work on networks outside the UK, or even those networks in the UK that aren't recognised as such. This is a bummer since I'm a UK citizen and get BBC One and BBC Two on the local cable service in Belgium but can't access the service either. However, as James notes, since I'm not currently paying my license fee I can't really complain, although I presume that Telenet is paying something for the channels that I can get and I'm paying them.

February 7, 2008 11:48 PM

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