currybetdotnet iPlayer archive

Measuring the iPlayer impact on broadband usage
There was an interesting piece on the new-look online Guardian yesterday about how the better than expected take-up of the streaming version of the iPlayer was putting undue strain on Britain's broadband infrastructure - "What is the true market impact of the BBCi iPlayer?" Steve Hewlett points out some flaws with the original market impact assesment as part of the regulatory process for approving the iPlayer - the Public Value Test - because it did not rigorously enough examine the...

Read the full post - Published February 12, 2008 in BBC, The Guardian, iPlayer

Top Gear the second most popular downloaded TV show on BitTorrent
Yesterday TorrentFreak published an end of year round-up of Top 10 Most Pirated Movies and TV Shows of 2007. Nestling in amongst the usual suspect at #2 in the TV chart was the BBC's Top Gear. Top 10 TV downloads - Most popular episode on Mininova 1. Heroes (2,439,154) 2. Top Gear (1,217,923) 3. Battlestar Galactica (706,209) 4. Lost (705,724) 5. Prison Break (608,487) 6. Desperate Housewives (457,805) 7. 24 (524,303) 8. Family Guy (522,839) 9. Dexter (435,670) 10. Scrubs...

Read the full post - Published January 2, 2008 in BBC, Doctor Who, Television, iPlayer

Busting the BBC's 600 Linux users myth
It seems my ex-boss Ashley Highfield dropped a bit of a clanger this week with a claim that amongst BBC.co.uk's 17 million or so users, 5% of them use Macs, but only about 400 to 600 users run Linux. The Linux community has been spluttering with outrage at the low figure given, and there is already a group on Facebook with the aim of collecting more than 600 members who run Linux and visit the BBC website to prove the...

Read the full post - Published November 2, 2007 in BBC, Linux, Popular, iPlayer

My Sony and BBC Wikipedia editing shame
There has been quite a fuss this week about edits made to Wikipedia from within the BBC. Changing George Walker Bush to George Wanker Bush using a BBC IP address is pretty damn stupid, but writing an article accusing other organisations of manipulating Wikipedia in a bad way, without first checking whether you had your own IP address related skeletons in the closet was even sillier. The story feeds wonderfully into the paranoia of those who believe the BBC is...

Read the full post - Published August 20, 2007 in BBC, Sony, Web, iPlayer

Using the BBC iPlayer outside of the UK
Sorry - this article doesn't explain how to use the iPlayer from outside the UK, it is about what happens when the BBC thinks you are outside the UK. There are, though, some suggestions in the comments for overseas users. I was hoping this week to be able to write a piece about how the BBC's iPlayer beta performed when I took it out of the country on my laptop. I was all geared up for it, and had defined...

Read the full post - Published August 10, 2007 in BBC, iPlayer

Why doesn't the BBC iPlayer system tray icon use native Windows UI elements?
Well, it's been mostly iPlayer this and iPlayer that around here recently, and today is no different - and this time I have a bit of a user experience gripe. The iPlayer library software does something that really annoys me on Windows machines - not taking advantage fully of the common native UI elements. One of the reasons that any OS like Windows or a Mac OS has a standard set of UI elements is so that they can...

Read the full post - Published August 7, 2007 in Accessibility, BBC, Microsoft, Usability, iPlayer

5 quick usability wins for the BBC iPlayer beta trial installation process
Having spent two of the last three weeks sitting very near to the iPlayer development team in the BBC's Future Media and Technology department in White City, I'm aware that there is no shortage of people telling them what they ought to have done with the product. And that is both outside and inside the BBC. From the Open Source Consortium's 'rip it up and use video codec DIRAC instead' vote, to Guardian journalists patiently explaining to commentators on their...

Read the full post - Published August 6, 2007 in Application design, BBC, Product review, Television, Usability, iPlayer

BBC iPlayer search plugin for Internet Explorer and Firefox, and an iPlayer Google Toolbar button
  BBC iPlayer  [Add this search to your browser]   BBC iPlayer custom Google Toolbar button  [Add this button to your Google Toolbar] Today I've added an OpenSearch plugin and Google Toolbar button for the BBC's iPlayer to the list of plugins and widgets you can download from this site. Since both the OpenSearch standard and the Google Toolbar standard are cross-platform, it means that this iPlayer search plugin should work in Internet Explorer 7 and above, and in Firefox 2 and above....

Read the full post - Published August 2, 2007 in BBC, Google, Search, iPlayer

Sense of humour failure as my iPlayer comment is re-written by The Telegraph
Over the last couple of months I've been very impressed with the development of The Telegraph's site, particularly their user engagement and blogging. I've signed up to the My Telegraph service, and was just actually going to set up my My Telegraph space properly today, when all that good work by the paper so far came to a shuddering halt. When I logged into my page I saw a list of my recent comments on The Telegraph site. At the...

Read the full post - Published July 30, 2007 in BBC, Daily Telegraph, iPlayer

ITV advertise using the keyword 'iPlayer' on Google and Yahoo!
Well, here's one amusing thing that I didn't predict about the day of the BBC's iPlayer software launch. Early yesterday morning, ITV - or someone making mischief on their behalf - were buying up keywords on Google and Yahoo! related to the BBC iPlayer, to trumpet their own streaming on demand service. Boasting that there was no software to download, there seemed to be two or three variations of the advert, which stopped appearing around lunchtime. Some BBC properties, like...

Read the full post - Published July 28, 2007 in BBC, Google, Yahoo, iPlayer

BBC iPlayer launch: The first 14 days

Published July 17, 2007 in BBC, DRM, Linux, Popular, iPlayer

Free the BBC from the same old tired DRM debate

Published June 13, 2007 in BBC, DRM, Linux, Media, Microsoft, Popular, Radio, Television, Web, iPlayer

Peter from Spalding is not impressed by the BBC Trust's iPlayer approval

Published April 30, 2007 in BBC, Daily Mail, Media, Newspapers, Television, iPlayer

The depressing DRM debates on the BBC's backstage.bbc.co.uk mailing list

Published March 6, 2007 in Apple, BBC, DRM, Linux, Microsoft, iPlayer

OFCOM and the BBC Trust do not appear to have heard of games

Published February 7, 2007 in BBC, Media, OFCOM, iPlayer

Can we really quantify how much 'free' TV downloads distort the value of the market?

Published February 6, 2007 in BBC, Media, OFCOM, iPlayer

The BBC's definition of "stackable series" in the iPlayer doesn't make commercial sense to me

Published February 5, 2007 in BBC, OFCOM, iPlayer

The BBC iPlayer's odd bookmarking restriction

Published February 2, 2007 in BBC, OFCOM, iPlayer