User talk:Ramseykt

BBC iPlayer is an internet television, P2P, and cable television service, developed by the BBC to extend its former RealPlayer-based "Radio Player" and other streamed video clip content. BBC iPlayer left Beta and went live on 25 December 2007. On 25 June 2008, a new-look iPlayer was launched, originally as a beta-test version alongside the earlier version. The site tagline is "Catch up on the last 7 days of BBC TV & Radio", reflecting that programmes are made unavailable on iPlayer after this time (with some exceptions). The BBC state on their website this is due to copyright reasons; however programmes are removed from iPlayer regardless of whether they have in fact been funded partly or entirely by public money.

Original Authors: BBC

Developer(s): BBC

Initial Release: 25 December 2007

Stable Release: 2.23.18182

Operating system: Windows (XP, Vista, 7), Mac OS X, Linus, I-Phone and I-Pod Touch (beta), Symbian S60 (beta), Wii (beta), Virgin Media (streaming only), Freesat (beta), Play station 3 (beta)

Available in: English, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic

Development Status: Active beta

Type: Television & Radio Catch-up

Website: BBC IPlayer

Development During its development, iPlayer has been formerly known as Integrated Media Player (iMP), Interactive Media Player, and MyBBCPlayer.) The original iPlayer service was launched in October 2005, undergoing a five month long trial of five thousand broadband users until 28 February 2006. The iPlayer came under criticism for the delay in launch, rebranding and cost to BBC license-fee payers, as no finished product had been released after four years of development. A new, improved iPlayer service then had another very limited user trial which began on 15 November 2006. The iPlayer received the approval of the BBC Trust on 30 April 2007, and an open beta for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 was launched at midnight on 27 July 2007, where it was announced that only a fixed number of people would be able to sign up for the service, with a controlled increase in users over the summer. The BBC has also been criticised for saying that the iPlayer would 'launch' on the 27 July 2007, when what was on offer was simply an extension of the beta to an open beta, admitting more users in a controlled manner.[10] This was done reportedly to allow British ISPs and the BBC to gauge the effect of the iPlayer traffic on the Internet within the UK. The open beta incorporated a media player, an electronic programme guide (EPG) and specially designed download client, and allowed the download of TV content by computers assigned to a United Kingdom-based IP address, for use up to thirty days after broadcast. However, it was available only to users of Windows XP. This was a controversial decision by the BBC, which led to a petition being posted on 10 Downing Street's e-petition website. The petition reached 16,082 signatures on 20 August 2007. The response from the Government was: ... the Trust noted the strong public demand for the service to be available on a variety of operating systems. The BBC Trust made it a condition of approval for the BBC's on-demand services that the iPlayer is available to users of a range of operating systems, and has given a commitment that it will ensure that the BBC meets this demand as soon as possible. They will measure the BBC's progress on this every six months and publish the findings. On 16 October 2007, the BBC announced a strategic relationship with Adobe, that would bring a limited, streaming-only version of the iPlayer to Mac and Linux users, as well as Windows users who cannot or do not wish to use the iPlayer download service. The streaming service was launched on 13 December 2007. Most programmes can be viewed for up to seven days after broadcast, unlike the thirty days provided by the download service. Since January 2008 iPlayer has supported Mozilla Firefox under the Microsoft Windows platform for downloading content. Before the iPlayer had even launched, it was announced that the BBC, alongside ITV and Channel 4, were intending to launch a new video on demand platform, provisionally named Kangaroo. It was intended that Kangaroo would complement the video on demand services that these channels were already offering, including the iPlayer, by making programmes available once their "catch up" period expires. The Kangaroo project was eventually abandoned after being blocked by the Competition Commission in early 2009. Following a deal between the BBC and cable television provider Virgin Media, the iPlayer service was made available through the provider's on-demand service. The cable service launched on 30 April 2008, and keeps the look and feel of the BBC iPlayer program. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the BBC stated that the iPlayer cost £6 million to develop up to 8 April 2008. On 23 August 2008, a new feature, Series Stacking, was announced. This feature started being rolled out on 13 September 2008, and allows viewers to watch previous programmes from selected series until the series has ended, with a limit of up to thirteen weeks after first broadcast. Not all programmes will form part of the stack, however. The BBC Trust has permitted 15% of content to be offered as part of the stacking service; soaps, news bulletins and review-based programmes will not be stacked, as well as programmes containing material of a legal nature, such as Crime watch. On 19 December 2008, the BBC released, as part of the iPlayer Labs feature, iPlayer Desktop for Mac and Linux operating systems. This moved the download service away from the previous P2P based distribution model and onto an HTTP download model. On 20 April 2009, the BBC incorporated high-definition streams and downloads of some content on the iPlayer. There are plans to roll out the HD streams to devices such as the Virgin Set Top Box, but no date has yet been set. A BBC iPlayer application for the PlayStation 3 was announced by Sony in August 2009 and was released on the 1 September 2009 along with the Firmware 3.0 update to coincide with the launch of the slim line PlayStation 3. Another version of iPlayer was released in late 2009 as a 'channel' for the Nintendo Wii. This shows only low definition videos of BBC shows up to 7 days after their release on Television.

 Online streaming service

A screenshot of the old version of BBC iPlayer streaming page for television programmer, The BBC's streaming version of iPlayer, which makes use of Adobe Flash software, was launched on 13 December 2007. The BBC made use of the Christmas period to trumpet the new service with the tagline 'Making the unmissable... unmissable', and the service came out of beta on the 25 December 2007. Also, seasonal specials were followed routinely throughout the Christmas week with plugs for iPlayer. The streaming version of iPlayer offers replays of programmes broadcast on all BBC TV channels during the last seven days. Programmes are available from all national BBC television channels as well as BBC Wales programmes shown on S4C. Due to licensing agreements, international and some privately-produced shows or movies are not available on iPlayer.

'''Television platforms Virgin Media''' On 30 April 2008 the iPlayer service was fed directly to Virgin Media's 3.4m digital cable TV customers as part of the company's video-on-demand service. Pressing the 'red button' while watching a BBC channel on TV will bring up the iPlayer service without the user having to access the web. On 29 May 2008 Virgin Media successfully integrated iPlayer with the Virgin Media electronic programme guide. The majority of BBC shows are now listed alongside other VOD content in Virgin's Catch Up TV section as well as through the red button whilst viewing a BBC channel. There will be no charge for watching BBC shows through the iPlayer on Virgin Media. As of 21 July 2008, iPlayer on Virgin Media had received 10.5 million views since its official launch on 1 June 2008. On 26 September 2008 it was revealed that one third of all iPlayer programme views were accessed through Virgin Media. On 1 May 2009, the BBC and Virgin Media announced the launch of HD content via BBC iPlayer on Virgin Media's TV platform, including Robin Hood, Friday Night with Jonathan Ross and Later... with Jools Holland. Games consoles

BBC iPlayer as displayed by the Nintendo Wii During March 2008 an unofficial Python script was released to allow original Xbox's running XBMC to access the BBC iPlayer. On 9 April 2008 the BBC iPlayer was made available to stream video content on the Wii video game console via the Internet Channel. This was enabled by a recoding of the iPlayer to use Flash 7 rather than Flash 9. However, the Autumn 2009 update to the Wii's Internet Channel resulted in the iPlayer no longer working on updated consoles. A BBC iPlayer in the form of a dedicated Wii channel was launched on the 18th November 2009. The BBC iPlayer Channel is free to download from the Wii Shop Channel; the service is only available to UK residents. After the Wii content launch, iPlayer was not officially accessible at the standard iPlayer website through the PlayStation 3 browser. An unofficial hack was created a week after the Wii content launch, which combined Javascript, CSS and user-agent masking to mimic the Wii's Internet Channel browser, in turn allowing PlayStation 3 owners to access the iPlayer by visiting the unofficial website through its browser. Whilst the BBC were "impressed", they remarked that it was not "the best possible iPlayer proposition for that console", and that, as the PS3 is on their roadmap, they would be "investigating the optimal video profile and browser proposition" for it in due course. From December 2008, the PlayStation 3 was officially supported directly through the iPlayer website. An official iPlayer application widget was provided in the PS3 System Software 3.0 released on 1 September 2009. However, this is merely a URL link to the iPlayer site, despite this the PS3 now accounts for 6% of all iPlayer traffic, making it the third most popular platform used to access the service behind personal computers (85%) and mobile phones/ipods (7%). A deal between the BBC and Microsoft has still been unable to be reached because Microsoft’s strategy of charging for all content on its Xbox Live platform is incompatible with the BBC’s public service remit. Microsoft wants to ensure that only those paying for Xbox Live Gold accounts can access its additional content services. The BBC cannot charge the British public for access to the iPlayer as it is already included in the licence fee.

BT Vision On 27 May 2008, BT began to charge BT Vision customers £3 per month for watching BBC Replay, a cut down version of iPlayer offering a more limited 30 hours of BBC programming per week. A spokesman for BT said that its customers had only previously been able to view BBC on-demand content because of "technical issues". A BBC spokeswoman said: "In line with other TV platforms where BBC programmes are made available on demand, the BBC requires that all public service content should be accessible via the lowest cost subscription tier. In this case, it is BT Replay." From 1 April 2009, the Replay package was included in all of BT Vision's Value Packs but remains available as a separate, £2.93 per month, package to non-subscribers. Freesat On 2 November 2009, it was announced that a beta release of BBC iPlayer for Freesat will be released on 7 December 2009 to a limited number of Freesat viewers. On 21 December 2009, iPlayer was made available on a soft launch to Freesat viewers with Humax Foxsat HD receivers only, with an official release on 11 January 2010. It is the final beta version of iPlayer, available via the red button on interactive page 7001. On 20 January 2010, Sony released software update 1.630SA to enable BBC iPlayer on all of their Freesat integrated televisions. On 25 March 2010, iPlayer was added to TechniSat receivers, with an update for Harvard International receivers released on 31 March. However, the Harvard upgrade will not be available on early model standard definition Freesat receivers sold under the Bush, Goodmans and Grundig brands. Harvard International is therefore offering a replacement high definition receiver to anyone affected. Panasonic aim to add iPlayer to all of its devices by October 2010. Other manufacturers will be added as and when they have carried out the initial testing with the BBCi Tech Team. Freeview On 4 May 2009, the managing director of Freeview, Ilse Howling, announced that plans for the roll-out of the BBC iPlayer on Freeview are ahead of schedule, with expectations that iPlayer-enabled Freeview boxes will be available later in 2009, this slipped to 2010.

Televisions In December 2009, Cello Electronics released the Marks & Spencer branded iViewer TV. The television is internet enabled, allowing for the viewing of online content including the BBC iPlayer, which has its own physical button on the remote, although BBC iPlayer HD won’t be available until 2010. On 11 January 2010, the BBC announced that BBC iPlayer will be built directly into TVs that will be widely available in the UK within months. Samsung Electronics became the first major manufacturer to officially announce that its televisions will be updated to include full access to the iPlayer through their Internet@TV service.

Mobile platforms iPhone and iPod Touch

BBC iPlayer 2.0 beta as displayed by the iPhone On 7 March 2008, a beta version for Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch was released. The version marked the first time the service became available on portable devices, allowing streaming over a wi-fi connection. The EDGE connectivity on the iPhone, however, is not supported, as it is too slow for streaming video. An exploit was soon discovered in this tailored content for the iPhone allowing users to bypass the DRM, download the files and play them on alternative devices. The BBC closed this hack on 13 March 2008. Through the month of June 2008 the ongoing battle followed a tit for tat progress. A Ruby exploit was followed by the BBC introducing XOR encryption on parts of the downloaded files if a genuine iPhone was not detected. The BBC introduced specially crafted web bugs, referrer checks and download chunk limits, such that only devices exhibiting this behaviour, i.e. a genuine iPhone handset, would be able to stream the video content. A cycle of updates and reverse engineering has followed such that all the various streams, both for the iPhone and flash streaming service, are now able to be downloaded without the need for decryption or DRM circumvention. This has been made possible by various software which can effectively simulate a RTMP flash client or and an iPhone. Overseas availability The fact that BBC TV productions are paid for by the UK television licence fee, as well as rights agreements with third parties, mean that BBC iPlayer TV programmes are only accessible from IP addresses allocated to UK-based entities. However most radio programmes can be accessed universally, with the exception of programmes, such as certain sports broadcasts, which are affected by rights issues.

Nokia N96 phone On 18 September 2008, the BBC announced that a version will become available to the Nokia N96 mobile phone as a download service to allow viewers to watch programmes even when they are out of reach of Wifi or 3G networks. The launch date was set of 1 October 2008. Shortly after on 9 September 2008, even before the BBC Nokia N96 download service had gone live, a method for independently downloading and playing the iPlayer N96 3GP stream on other mobiles, Linux and MacOS was published. Additional mobile devices iPlayer was updated to include streaming radio and television as well as extended to a variety of handsets in early December 2008 including the Samsung Omnia, Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1, Sony Ericsson C905, Sony Ericsson W995 and the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. There is also an unofficial but functional application for the Google Android platform called beebPlayer. TV licence A television licence is not required to view programmes on the iPlayer after they have been broadcast. The exception lies with the 'Watch Live' simulcast option, which is accessible through and played on the iPlayer site, where eight of the BBC's channels are broadcast at virtually the same time as on television and hence a valid TV licence is required. Humour In 2009, the BBC's April Fools' joke was a press release announcing the availability of the iPlayer on a specialised toaster, supposedly for users to watch breakfast television. The volume slide control on the iPlayer goes up to eleven instead of stopping at ten, as a reference to the cult satirical film Spinal Tap.