The New iPlayer

A big day in the world of tech and TV today as we see the launch of the new look iPlayer. Having been a huge fan since the inception of the product many years ago now when it was called the IMP - I was a beta tester for this and couldn't imagine how much it would change my life.

Back then, there were features such as bookable downloads and series linking that have only now just been introduced. There were problems too mind, there was no live streaming and because so few people were involved in the testing the peer to peer download speeds were frankly appalling and it could take several hours to download a program.

As for the new incarnation, some of the new features are simply wonderful. The social media links will allow you to see what your friends have been watching and allow you to recommend programmes to your social circle. Some of the things mentioned in the blog haven't made their way onto the desktop version that I am currently using, despite it upgrading when I chose to opt into the beta. I really like the new homepage that allows you to very quickly access your favourite programmes and I very much welcome the re-introduction of bookable downloads. I have heard rumours that it may actually download the programmes before it is officially released so that you can watch it directly after it has been broadcast. If this does come about then I will be very happy. I am forever missing the first fifteen minutes or so of a programme so I usually decide to wait until after it has finished and download it on the iPlayer. I then usually end up waiting a couple of hours for some programmes to get transcoded and uploaded before I can watch them.

In this case, I am essentially using the iPlayer as a BBCX+1 channel and sometimes it just isn't quick enough for that. One of the reasons the BBC doesn't have any of these oh so popular +1 channels is because of the quality of the iPlayer. I suppose I can't really complain, it is by far the best on demand service of any broadcaster and no wonder Sky are so jealous of it when their Sky player pales into insignificance in comparison.