BBC ‘iPlayer’ Gets Green Light

Just over 10 days ago we brought you news of the BBC’s intention to open a large (very large, really) archive of audio and video of past and present productions, though at the time the project was still said to be in an experimentation phase; only several thousand were reported to be testing the service for quality and general viability. Now (yesterday, to be accurate) the company has officially given the project, dubbed iPlayer, the green light.

Some figures in our past piece published on the subject were a bit off, which we’ll be happy to point out at this point. As to a release date, one has yet to be provided by the BBC; “later this year” is the most specific a quote as you’ll get at present. Also, the number of testers was estimated at 20,000. In reality, the figure recorded for the latest press release on the future Web service is 10,500, though the BBC counted both individuals and organizations as part of the trial.

While iPlayer will expand with time, the BBC’s primary goal for the service is to provide online viewers an opportunity to download current programming within a seven-day slot. Downloaded programs can be stored for viewing for up to 30 days, however.

The BBC Trust, the group orchestrating this latest move by the company, has stated that recently broadcast dramas, comedies, etc, would only comprise roughly 15% of the content available through iPlayer, with the rest being archival material that would be treated with far more lax restrictions, if any.

The company intends to deploy the iPlayer to PCs running Microsoft Windows only at first, though they will “ensure that the iPlayer computer application can run on different systems – such as Apple Macs – within ‘a reasonable time frame.’”  Further elaboration on the subject by BBC Future Media boss Ashley Highfield, as mentioned in the BBC International News article published yesterday, brought up talk of more compatibility with more end-user solutions as well. Among them: cable television set-top boxes and Freeview clients.

The conditions placed on a portion of iPlayer content were to be expected. It simply wouldn’t be like the BBC to drop convention and dole out unlimited downloads without time limits and the like. Overall, this looks like a step in the right direction, and as far as pricing is concerned, free will be music to our ears. (Though we have yet to hear anything of that sort.)