By Andy McCue, 30 October 2007 11:12
NEWS
The BBC has hit back at criticisms from the Mac and open source communities over the iPlayer only being available for Microsoft's Windows XP platform.
The BBC launched the iPlayer in July this year for the Windows XP platform, leading to criticism from Mac and Linux users.
But in an exclusive interview with silicon.com the BBC's head of Future Media and Technology unit, Ashley Highfield, said the criticism has been unfair.
He said: "It would be understandable if we'd only ever intended to launch an XP-only iPlayer but that was never the plan. When we launch services we will always try to get to the largest part of that universe. The PC universe is the largest part of that. It was just the starting point."
A streaming version of the iPlayer will be available for Mac and Linux users by Christmas. The BBC, however, is still unable to commit to a download version for those platforms - although Highfield believes this will happen during 2008.
Highfield said: "The point is that I'm not going to be able to commit to it until we've got our sticky mitts on it, tried it, tested it, worked out the cost implications. I do believe we will be able to and I'm pretty certain at some point during 2008 we will have one."
Highfield himself has been seen brandishing a brand-new iPod Touch but says he doesn't follow any one platform or manufacturer's "philosophy".
He said: "I am a deep lover of Macs. I have had one in the past. I got the iPod Touch in New York before they were here. I use a Sony Vaio on a day-to-day basis. I don't have a particular philosophy of manufacturers or solutions. I have a media centre sitting in front of me with the television above it and on it I have both the iTunes library and my Zune library. I have affinity with stuff that's just really well built, well designed and works well - not any particular manufacturer."
The ease of use of the iPod Touch is something Highfield would like to emulate in the iPlayer. "I think the iPod Touch is a beautiful piece of design. If everything could have that intuitiveness of use... and certainly in terms of the BBC iPlayer I aspire to it being that easy to use," he said.
In the interview Highfield also talks about the future of DRM and 'BBC 3.0'.
Comments
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1. Graham Coles
Of course they were intending to launch an XP only player, since the proposed version for linux and macs is just a quickly hacked streaming version and not the full player. I notice in the interview they didn't mention when the full player would work on these systems, so it seems entirely fair to accept it isn't going to happen, and was never planned to.
I don't see why non-XP users should have to put up with partial functionalilty, and if as it seems that was their intention all along then it seems only fair to drop the licence fee and make this second rate company pay for its own mistakes.
Since they are entirely funded by taxpayers money they have a duty to provide the same functionality, not just an inconvenient streaming version. Otherwise, let them compete properly without the government funding them with our money.
2. Charles Wood
There are two things that bother me about this: 1) our web stats (and they are probably typical) say 97.5% of users are PC users on IE6+. 2% of the rest are on old versions of 98 etc...the rest are on macs and Linux etc. A very TINY number of people with BIG mouths.
Should the BBC be pandering to this elite using Macs and wasting huge amounts of time and public money to resolve this is. I personally think they should not. Now lets use that electronic voting system to decide...not a chance it will be some secure smart ass director how makes the decision for all of us (and he can afford a Mac).
Secondly the whole issue of the BBC leading this bothers me. At the moment they are screwing up HD like they have already screwed up digital (just watch the Saturday dance stuff to see it at it's worst!!) Recorde in HD f**ked by the transmission systems. They are about to try and persuade the world to use a new codec for the internet. Why? WMV works REALLY well, why waste the time and money on yet another standard, we have one in MPEG4.
Then look at history: PAL was brilliant in concept and scope. MPEG has many failings...and the BBC computer...well really, who has one in use ten years on?
The evidence is they should not be leading change here.
Now look at Channel 4s already working system.
3. Graham Coles
I'm surprised to hear that mpeg has many failings. Obviously this is why--unlike wmv which is plagued with different versions and incompatibilities--mpeg-1 was chosen for Video CD, mpeg-2 was used for DVD and mpeg-4 & mpeg-4 advanced (H.264) has been chosen for HD-DVD, Blu-Ray and broadcasting.
Clearly they should have used Microsofts DRM ridden, won't play on anything thats not Microsoft WMV format.
I've always wondered why windows media PCs were advertised as being able to burn DVDs and send them to someone else who can only play them on another windows media computer was supposed to be a good idea. Clearly being able to burn a PROPER dvd and send it to anyone with a PC, mac, linux box or a DVD player (which outsells windows by many times) is a daft idea.
Oh, forgot to mention that as Microsoft have "sold" 88 million copies of Vista, that's another 88 million people who can't use the BBC player as I understand it doesn't work on Linux, Macs or Vista.
And windows doesn't have a 97%+ market saturation, explorer market share is below 80% (probably a high estimate as a lot of browsers use ie as their user-agent for compatibility) and macs alone now have about 5-6% share, never mind linux.
Take away the new vista users and you might end up with public money funding a system for 60% of users.
This is not what I pay my licence fee for, and now it appears they want even more of our money and will be resorting to more repeats, doubtless all with stupid 'press the red-button' prompts and idiot logos plastered all over the programme.
Time for the BBC to call it a day, I think. They had their chance an blew it.