BBC looks to court online viewers with media player

By Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service, 07/27/07

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The BBC has released a public beta of its own software application for watching video online, hoping to engage younger people who are consuming more of their content over the Internet.

Other British broadcasters have released video players, but the BBC -- which has been trying to transform itself amid falling viewer numbers -- hopes to attract users by making its vast programming archives available globally.

Called the iPlayer, the software lets people search for and download BBC programs and then watch them later within a certain time limit, a concept called on-demand viewing. Later, the BBC will allow people to watch streamed programs in real time as they are shown on television.

The service won't just be for the U.K. BBC Worldwide, the BBC's commercial branch, hopes to launch a commercial version of the iPlayer next year in the United States and Australia. Overseas users will have to pay to watch ad-free BBC content, or choose to view content with advertisements for free.

"We obviously want to replicate the service around the world because there's a huge following for BBC content," a BBC spokeswoman said Friday. "It makes sense for us to focus on English-speaking countries first."

As structured now, the iPlayer lets U.K. residents watch some programs that aired during the previous week for free and without advertising. After users download a program, they have 30 days to watch it before the program deletes itself. Once users begin watching a program, they can start and stop it or watch as many times as they want for a week before the program deletes itself.

The iPlayer presently works only with Microsoft's Windows XP OS, which has ignited criticisms that the BBC spent taxpayer money to support just a single vendor and a certain number of users. Users must also have Microsoft Windows Media Player Version 10 or later.

The Open Source Consortium, an 80-member group dedicated to open source software, has complained to British regulators as well as the BBC Trust over the iPlayer's operating system limitations, saying it excludes about 25% of computer users.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.

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