Take part in Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú iPlayer Day this Friday
This week marks the first anniversary of the 's soft launch. Since last December, a whopping 180 million programmes have been watched.
So the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Internet Blog is hosting a very special event.
This Friday, we'll be going behind the scenes to lift the lid on how Britain's most popular TV catch-up service works.
From 9am, we'll be posting at least every hour. You can look forward to video, guest posts, pictures, diagrams and anything we can lay our hands on as the day unfolds. We'll be talking to (and capturing) the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú people who play a part in the complex iPlayer process.
And, in the spirit of all things social media, we'd like to invite everyone to take part.
Are you watching iPlayer at home, at work or anywhere else? Take a picture, and add it to our special - we'll publish the best and most interesting on our site.
Twitter legions, let us know what you think of the iPlayer, its programmes and features, by tagging your posts . We'll be streaming them live on the blog. Twittering Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú staff will be taking part all day too.
We hope iPlayer Day will give everyone who uses the service a chance to feed back and discuss anything about it they wish. If you have any ideas you want to get off your chest, Friday really is the day to do it.
Twitter:
Follow us at @bbccouk. We'll be twittering live all day. Tag your posts with #iplayerday, and we'll find your comments.
Flickr:
Our iPlayer Day Flickr group can be found here: . You can upload your pictures directly to it and we'll stream them on the site!
Anything else:
There'll be lots of posts so you can leave comments on the blog - and if you've got ideas in advance leave a comment below.
Dave Lee is co-editor, Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Internet Blog.
Comment number 1.
At 8th Dec 2008, FishFingers wrote:Will the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú celebrate iPlayer day by making good on its promise to launch the Adobe AIR downloader by the end of the year?
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Comment number 2.
At 8th Dec 2008, Michael Walsh wrote:"Are you watching iPlayer at home, at work or anywhere else?"
I'll be abroad.
If some of the blog content is GeoIP restricted we will, yet again*, have the delicious irony of content on the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Internet Blog being denied to most of the Internet community.
*See:
/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/04/interesting_stuff_230408.html
/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/10/bbc_iplayer_your_queries_answe.html
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Comment number 3.
At 8th Dec 2008, Briantist wrote:It would be just lovely if the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú HD channel joined the iPlayer on its birthday!
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Comment number 4.
At 9th Dec 2008, kyletaylor812 wrote:Hopefully
The Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú could give us Mac user a very special Christmas present, Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú iPlayer Download to Macs.
And maybe something special too!
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Comment number 5.
At 9th Dec 2008, amillsmcewan wrote:I apologise in advance if this is a duplicate posting- it is just that this seems a better place to ask my quesiton...
I am struggling to get a clear answer to a question I raised with the iPlayer team and am hoping that someone reading this blog can help....
Here is the issue. I live in Canada and want to use iPlayer on an iPod Touch for live radio and "listen again." I can listen to the radio fine on iPlayer on a laptop.
The problem is that using the "old" bbc website requires RealPlayer that is not available on the iPod touch, while using the new iPlayer site for the iPodTouch is only available to UK IP addresses.
So, the UK restriction cannot be copyright related (because radio content is available in Canada via my PC) unless it is somehow related to some of the technolgy used in the iPod touch.
Radio access via PC works from outside the UK, access via iPod is UK only. Please could someone help me to understand why? Many thanks.
Alastair
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Comment number 6.
At 9th Dec 2008, fabiodebe wrote:I'm with @neiltc13 and @kyletaylor812...
Dear Santa, please give us a Mac version of the iPlayer and a desktop application too! Cheers!
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Comment number 7.
At 9th Dec 2008, Tiggs wrote:Xbox 360, please
Whatever the politics involved may be, please sort them out to allow the logical use of an Xbox360 connected to an HD-Ready TV to be a legal alternative to watching stuff over at the computer.
And, no, having to switch the computer on is not a viable option. For one, it assumes a use of Windows that not everybody has. For another, it's still less convenient than the alternative methods.
Currently iPlayer had three options for me:
1) Faff around with the computer. Either sitting at it, or reconnecting it to the TV. (too much hassle)
2) Bit Torrent it to a USB drive, plus in, natively view the resulting files. (not legal)
3) Don't bother watching Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú programs I've missed. (only remaining option)
Currently I take option 3.
But I'd love an option to (legally) watch stuff on the TV, from the armchair, where I do the rest of my TV/DVD/gaming activities. It's just sad that it seems like the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú has no interest in allowing to to do so.
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Comment number 8.
At 9th Dec 2008, FishFingers wrote:@TiggsPanther - get a PS3 - not only is there full Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú iPlayer support, but the console is quiet as a whisper too!
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Comment number 9.
At 9th Dec 2008, Tiggs wrote:@neiltc13
Not helpful comment.
I bought an Xbox 360 as the PS3 was, for me personally, overpriced and actually had less of the videogames available for it that I'm actually after.
And when it comes to iPlayer, the '360 natively supports WMV, MS DRM and expireing content. Other consoles being available does not make the '360 any less a no-brainer.
Plus, having an amp with a nice subwoofer, I barely notice the system sound.
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Comment number 10.
At 10th Dec 2008, womble88 wrote:Love the iPlayer but the major message I get from my own experiences, from talking to others and reading blogs like this is that it must be easier for people to watch iPlayer on their TV rather than their PC. For me this means making iPlayer available on Apple TV...
I realise this is a complex issue and that with so many different devices to try to be compatible with, and manufacturers/other companies having their own vested interests, it's a thankless task.
But please keep us up to date with which devices are being targeted - there was a mention of Apple TV compatibility in Januray by Ashley Highfield, and nothing since!
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Comment number 11.
At 11th Dec 2008, EggOnAStilt wrote:You have a message board too, how come nothing of this is mentioned over there?
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Comment number 12.
At 11th Dec 2008, Jon iPlayer Host wrote:Hello Egg, I hope to have an announcement on the board and a special section later today.
Jonathan
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Comment number 13.
At 11th Dec 2008, lambethsteve wrote:I would dearly like the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú to celebrate the success of iPlayer by honoring the promises made by both of those 'Microsoft' stalwarts Ashley Highfield and Erik Huggers, to provide a download service for the 10% of iPlayer users who use an Apple Mac computer. Just to restate the blindingly obvious Erik, we all pay our license fees too. You may feel that non-Windows users are second class citizens , but a promise is still a promise.
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Comment number 14.
At 11th Dec 2008, Jon iPlayer Host wrote:Hi lambethsteve,
Did you read this, it came out today
"This month, the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú will replace the download player with new cross-platform software that runs on the desktop, though using the Flash-based - and Windows- and Mac-compatible - Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) rather than Windows Media."
Jonathan
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Comment number 15.
At 12th Dec 2008, EggOnAStilt wrote:Why am I coming to a blog to read..........
an article from Mr Rose about iPlayer, on a questionable commercial reporting site, and nothing is posted or linked to this significant piece on iPlayer's own message boards?
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Comment number 16.
At 12th Dec 2008, Nick Reynolds wrote:Egg - I put a link to this article in the Internet blog's delicious on Wednesday evening so it was prominently displayed on the blog the following day.
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Comment number 17.
At 15th Dec 2008, willduo wrote:The Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú iPlayer is great. Like many however I wanted to view it on my TV rather than my Mac and now I can.
I am the fortunate owner of an iPhone which has an iPlayer site. If you have home wifi just navigate to the programme you want to watch and then plug the phone into the television using the Apple Component AV cable ( and then switch the TV to this input. It couldn't be simpler.
One gripe some iPlayer stuff is not available at the same time on the iPlayer mobile site but it gets there eventually.
Keep up the good work Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú!
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Comment number 18.
At 9th Sep 2009, felicioo wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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Comment number 19.
At 13th Sep 2009, U14134634 wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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Comment number 20.
At 13th Sep 2009, U14134634 wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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