The BBC launched their iPlayer service today in beta allowing users to download content that has aired on the network during the past 7 days and watch it for up to 30 days after that. And while as the demo below is kind of cool, why is this needed?

BBC iPlayer from mauee and Vimeo.

Television is still a better viewing experience than the computer. Users can view all the content available through iPlayer and more on demand with a DVR. Once it’s available internationally that will add some value but who knows when that will be? And how many people overseas will really watch?

This project began as the integrated Media Player (iMP) in 2003 at which time it was an innovative idea, especially so because of it’s early use of P2P. But after a 9 month “Public Value Test” and years of waiting they are just now releasing an outdated platform that as far as I can see doesn’t have much demand.

Only time will tell if enough people are willing to go to the difficulty of downloading and viewing BBC content on the computer screen, but as the format of BBC’s own promo (in a 256×144, 34k bitrate windows media video) shows, they’re still way behind when it comes to online video.

UPDATE: They also have this demo for higher bandwidth users at 224k.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 1:09 pm and is filed under P2P, Video Portals, WebTV, rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.