Forums Forums Enthusiast Forums A - Z Gadgets & Tech BBC Launches iPlayer

Ive just registered my details for the trial, they will contact me at a later stage if I am eligable for the trial.

Eventually the service will be made available to everyone though. Can't wait to get me hands on it, it will mean an end to UK Nova for me probably, depends how good it is.

BBC News Report

Wooo I just got me login details and I have to say it looks pretty good so far.

Gonna have a good play tonight see what the service is like etc..

Shall report back!

Well... it seems it aint liking Windows Media Player 9 - its a common issue on the private user forums. Im upgrading to 10 and hoping it works, i desperatly dont want to go to 11, not least because its poo, but also because Sky Anytime doesnt like it!

I think its still in beta, and don't work with vista and mac
i heard on the radio that they had been downloading eastenders for 3 hrs, but in all fairness they say its in beta and is expected to be panned out soon. And it will then be the fastest of its kind.

Too busy to register, awaiting feedback

Well I finally got it to install, its using WMP 10 thank god lol!

Ive just noticed, its running the same p2p software as Sky Anytime (Kontiki), which as I run Sky Anytime, I can say is extremely low resource usage, which is a good thing.

Yeah it dont work in Linux either, I been running Ubuntu for the last few days, but jumped out of it today to run this. Tried it in Firefox and Opera in Ubuntu before and it basically told me to bugger off and go elsewhere lmao!

Im downloading a program now, its coming down the old pipe at about 2.8Mbps, which isnt bad. Dont forget its p2p and there are only 15,000 users allowed to use it atm, so things will be slowish to begin with. For instance, is 1000 people suddenly jump on to download Eastenders at the same time, then its going to run bog slow. The best time to do it would be a good couple of hours afterwards.

Bugwise, it doesnt like WMP9, its a known bug in the iPlayer forums, I think this may be more to do with DRM rather then a bug.

One thing I havent managed to find as yet is any sort of bandwidth throttling. So in essence, the program is given 100% of my upload speed, although I use NetLimiter for internet traffic shaping and this will throttle it in the same way, I would like to see this built into the final release.

It can work in Vista, but you need to be a code magician to enable it to do so. There is a couple of people running it in Vista, but the BBC dont support it as yet officially, so its certainly not recommended.

It is still in BETA and will be for at least a good few months, but what they have already seems very good. There are small bugs, but to be honest, its more because they have to make its availability wider before it can move out of BETA.

It has a very similar feel to Sky Anytime, only this should have millions of more users, so the speeds should be even greater, and of course the big advantage is its full of BBC content as opposed to just Sky content.

You can download tv programmes from the last 7 days and you are licensed to keep them on your hard drive for 30 days thereafter.

The video I downloaded before is just over 1000Kbps, so the quality is very good.

Having said that though, the overall download speed was in the 2.5Mbps average region, which don't get me wrong, is very good, but if I had downloaded the same video off UK Nova an hour or two after the initial seeding, it would have been coming down at about 7Mbps and the video/audio quality would have been similar, if not better on some programmes (it depends on who the capper is).

So im not fully converted yet. But its deffo a good thing to have! Things like Coast, Doctor Who etc, either dont become available on UK Nova, or when they do, become available for short period of time, due to arrangements with the BBC and the rules of the site regarding DVD releases and the like.

With BBC iPlayer, every popular BBC produced programme will be available to download, without restriction, and once the amount of users increases and Kontiki is running on more users computers, the speeds will probably exceed that of UK Nova.

Wooooo just started downloading the real hustle, missed it last night and forgot to Sky+ it lol, and its coming down at 4.8Mbps, which is pretty good imho.

Im liking the iPlayer web interface for finding the programmes, some things you dont even realise were on or you had missed, but the web interface is so well working and so visually appealing that you can find your fave programmes with ease.

Also, on the iPlayer console itself, its very good in that you can allocate a certain amount of space to your download library, and then its like having a PVR, whereby it lets you know the percentage used, how many hours you will have left etc...

WOW! Ive just downloaded Panorama from last night, it was 156MB and took less then 5 minutes, it came down at 7.86Mbps, the fastest ive ever even seen my connection go!!

I'm just too busy to try it out

i know that feelin dude !

Lol, tbh if you dont have the time its a good thing. I have been going through all the crap on offer, and ive downloaded 11 shows already since yesterday, im tending to find loads of stuff that I never even knew was on rather then what ive missed.

Dunno when the hell am expecting to watch it all mind, my Sky+ is almost full too so that needs emptying, with all this nice weather of late, im not spending enough time indoors to watch it all!

So in a way its actually a bad thing lmao! Will be good when the weather is poo though I suppose!

lmao

Registered last night.
Details arrived today.
You can not run this under FF only IE 7

Problems but resolved.
If you have ever used 4oD Ch4's service it wont allow you to
download? Not sure why. But i found this fix and it now works.

After a bit of hunting around found a knotiki folder in documents and settings/ALL USERS/application data (which contains a db file that must do something).
Thought what the hell and deleted this file, and returned to the iplayer and it now works Downloading has begun.

I'm pleased to say after much frustration im now downloading Blue Peter..

I like the way you can que the programs for download.
So i have a few of them lined up

Blue Peter Monday
Blue Peter Tuesday
Blue Peter Wednesday
Blue Peter Thursday
Blue Peter Friday


lol only kidding.

I'm liking this player / system even more now?

Well after you have downloaded the program of your choice
its only when you want to watch it for the first time
that the 7 day timer kicks in.

So you could have content sitting there for months
before you watch it

I'm going to stock up in the night lol