Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú

Archives for December 2011

Things to Do Mobile: Design

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Oliver Rich | 16:00 UK time, Thursday, 29 December 2011

screenshot

Things To Do mobile

Hi, I’m Oliver Rich, Senior Designer for Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Future Media UX&D. I’ve led the art direction on Things To Do desktop and mobile over the last year. Since our launch of Things To Do ("TTD") on the desktop we have now designed, developed and implemented the first of many mobile releases for TTD.

Just fire up your mobile device’s browser, visit and a slim-line version of the desktop experience is served straight to your smartphone or feature phone.

TTD mobile is one of the first mobile sites to use our new Global Experience Language (GEL) for mobile; a set of design patterns with which we build Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú experiences.

Thanks to designer Stephen Robertson, the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú UX&D team now has a core set of patterns to start mobile website designs from, many of which were shaped by TTD requirements. And with our new focus on four screens for GEL (TV, Desktop, Mobile, Tablet), these are a great foundation on which to improve and build.

Because - as Product Manager Ziad Dajani blogged - TTD aims to tell audiences about activities near them, run by the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú and our partners, a mobile presentation is an even more essential part of the location-based offer.

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What's On Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Red Button 24th December - 8th January

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Tess Foster Tess Foster | 06:00 UK time, Saturday, 24 December 2011

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Bleak Old Shop of Stuff

In a remarkable and audacious experiment, The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff is the first television programme in over one hundred and seventeen years to be made using traditional Victorian television making techniques. Honestly!

Bleak Old Shop of Stuff

On the Red Button we'll show you how the relatively fearless cast and crew coped with steam cameras, on-set urchins and the occasional behind-the-scenes cholera outbreak.

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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

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Ian McDonald Ian McDonald | 11:07 UK time, Friday, 23 December 2011

Christmas tinsel on the wall by the the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Weather website team

Christmas is coming and so Nick and I will take a break.

If you can pull yourself away from the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú's Christmas TV, and you're read all the blog posts relating to any gadgets Santa left under your tree, here are some stories you might have missed:

  • Wired UK's feature on
  • Finally, a couple of things to look forward to in 2012: from Geeky Gadgets and .

Ian McDonald is the Content Producer, Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Internet Blog

Being a "closed for Christmas" notice, this post is closed for comments.

Strictly Come Dancing Final 3D Trial (#2)

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Andy Quested Andy Quested | 16:30 UK time, Monday, 19 December 2011

It all happened and the tapes are currently being processed for iPlayer and should be available by late this afternoon. Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú R&D has just finishedi encoding the programme before it goes over to the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú iPlayer team.

How to find it

Here are the details of how to find the Strictly Come Dancing Final in 3D on iPlayer:

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Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú TV Programme Pages: new design

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Dan Taylor Dan Taylor | 14:00 UK time, Monday, 19 December 2011

screenshot of website

Frozen Planet programme page

Just over four years ago, we launched bbc.co.uk/programmes to provide a permanent, addressable page for every episode of every programme the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú broadcasts across radio and television.

The pages were pretty basic at launch - both visually,Ìýand in the information they offered. Since 2007 they've continued to evolve, growing into an increasingly rich resource. There are now pages for over a million episodes, which together attract over three million unique UK browsers each week.

Over the past few months we've been rolling out a new design to our TV programmes pages, in line with the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú's new Global Experience Language. The aim is to do a better job of surfacing the content they offer and to make it easier for users to find their way around.

Every programme now has an Episode guide on the horizontal navigation bar. The goal is a glanceable guide to every series and episode,Ìýhighlighting episodes available on Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú iPlayer as well as upcoming broadcast dates.

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What's On Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Red Button 17th - 25th December

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Iain Hoare Iain Hoare | 06:00 UK time, Saturday, 17 December 2011

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Take That

One of the most anticipated reunions in pop history took place this summer when the five original members of Take That came together for the Progress Live tour.

Press the Red Button to see Howard Donald, Gary Barlow, Jason Orange, Mark Owen and Robbie Williams play to a capacity crowd at the City of Manchester stadium.

Credit Hamish Brown

This film includes extraordinary glimpses into backstage life with the band.

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Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú iPlayer: Designing the iPhone app

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Chris Elphick | 18:13 UK time, Friday, 16 December 2011

Hand holding iPhone running iPlayer

Chris's hand, holding an iPhone running the iPlayer app his team designed

Hello, my name is Chris Elphick and I'm the Senior Designer leading the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú iPlayer iPhone App project. Earlier this week saw the debut release of the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú iPlayer App for iPhone and iPod Touch. In this post, I'd like to give you a brief overview of the thinking that went into the design.

Background

As Executive Product Manager David Madden explained in his blog post more and more people are choosing to watch television programmes or listen to the radio on their mobile. In fact a staggering 16.5 million programmes were watched on mobile this October 2011 alone. A large proportion of those mobile views were on iPhone.

This significant user demand provided an opportunity to create an improved user experience more appropriate to the iPhone as well as introduce enhanced features and interactions to our audiences.

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Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Weather update: making detailed weather more visible on maps

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Peter Deslandes Peter Deslandes | 16:20 UK time, Thursday, 15 December 2011

Screenshots of two weather maps, with and without major cities labelled.

Location labels on maps can be turned off to expose detailed weather patterns

The Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Weather website was recently relaunched after a public beta. Senior Designer Mel Seyer has explained the UX journey and Jeremy Tarling has described some elements of the new technical architecture.

Last week I blogged about how we added colour to some of the temperatures on the site.

I'm pleased to say that we have been able to make one more change in time for Christmas: users can now turn the map labels off should they want to have a clearer view of the weather patterns. This certainly helps when looking at the whole country, where more information is shown in a smaller space and the labels can get in the way.

Amongst other work, we will continue to make ongoing improvements covering features like maps and saving favourite locations. We also begin work on a new mobile site in the New Year, so there is more to come on that.

Peter Deslandes is Head of Product, Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Weather

Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Weather: changes to technical architecture

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Jeremy Tarling | 17:00 UK time, Wednesday, 14 December 2011

The Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Weather website has recently been relaunched after a public beta. Peter Deslandes has blogged about the public beta and response, and Mel Seyer has explained the UX journey.


The technical architecture for the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Weather site in a simplfied diagram

The technical architecture for the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Weather site in a simplfied diagram

I work as a Technical Architect with the Weather team, and this post talks about some of the changes we've made to the architecture of the site to ensure the new site stays reliable, performant and able to scale to the traffic levels that Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Weather attracts

Weather as a service

The previous version of the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Weather website ran on a dedicated two-tier architecture, with business and presentation logic wrapped up in a PHP front-end that communicated directly with a MySQL database. These machines sat behind the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú News Apache mod_cache head-end servers, providing the scaling necessary for Weather traffic spikes.

For the new site we've moved to a three-tier architecture, keeping presentation logic in a PHP front-end but moving business logic and DB access down to a Java/Spring mid-tier service layer that presents HTTPS APIs back to the PHP front-end for data reads, and to the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Weather Centre's data ingest system for writes.

This move is part of the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú's wider strategy to move to a (SOA) to increase cross-product interoperability and data reuse. The diagram at top left gives an idea of how the tiers relate to each other in Weather's case (in practice this arrangement is replicated over two data centres)

The mid-tier REST API makes data available to the presentation layer as , providing separate feeds for different page components. We set different Cache-control:max-age headers for different feeds according to how frequently the data is updated, and combine this with to make subsequent requests more lightweight when the feed's max-age has been reached.

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Changes to Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Radio online

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Chris Kimber Chris Kimber | 12:05 UK time, Monday, 12 December 2011

Screen grab of new Asian Network homepage, with several features marking the anniversary of the independence of Bangladesh.

The Asian Network and 5Live Sports Extra now have new homepages

Since my last post in November we have released several new elements to the main Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Radio homepage and this blog post will briefly explain what is new, and how we are starting to build the new radio and music product.

If you've already given feedback, thank you. We know that changes to a site can be disruptive but we are reading all your comments and looking to continuously improve the way that we bring you the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú's radio and music online.

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Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú iPlayer: iPhone app and 3G streaming across all mobile networks

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David Madden | 12:00 UK time, Monday, 12 December 2011

Dr Who playing on iPlayer on iPhone

iPlayer on iPhone

More and more people are choosing to watch their favourite television programmes or listen to the radio on their mobile phone or tablet.

There have been record figures for Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú iPlayer on mobile with 1.5 million installs on the Apple iPad and 1.2 million installs on Android devices since we launched the apps in February 2011.

In October 2011 alone 16.5 million programmes were watched on mobile devices and tablets, up by 129% from this time last year.

We want to make it a better and easier experience to catch up on your favourite programmes wherever you are and, today, we’re launching a Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú iPlayer app for the iPhone and iPod touch, and introducing 3G streaming across all mobile networks.

Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú iPlayer iPhone app

The Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú iPlayer app for the iPhone and iPod touch puts all of the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú’s national television channels and radio networks in your pocket. You can now watch live television channels and listen to live radio stations wherever you are.

The app is available to download in the Apple App Store now and is compatible with iPod touch or iPhone 3GS and above, running iOS4.3 and above.

We have developed a neat live channel switcher so you can easily flick between channels just like on your TV or radio. If you want to see what else is on right now just tap on the ‘Live Channels’ button while you watch. So, if I’m watching Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú One on my phone and want to see what’s on Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Two, I just tap on ‘Live Channels’ to switch over. It’s an easy way to see what’s on now and flip over.

The app is compatible with Apple AirPlay. If you are running iOS5, you can connect your iPhone or iPod touch to Apple TV and watch your favourite programme on your television.

You can listen to any of the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú’s national radio stations in the app. To make this easier, we have enabled background audio so you can do other things on your phone, like check mail or surf the web, while listening to your favourite Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú radio station.

3G streaming

We have worked closely with the network operators to introduce 3G streaming and create a great mobile experience so you can watch your favourite TV programme wherever you are or listen to the radio when you are out and about.

3G streaming is enabled in the iPhone and iPad apps and will shortly be coming to the mobile web version of Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú iPlayer for all (go to bbc.co.uk/iplayer in your phone’s web browser).

Note that devices older than iPhone 3GS and iPhones and iPod touches that continue to access the mobile web version, will remain a Wi-Fi only service.

We have also done a lot of work to improve the playback experience on portable devices and have rolled out HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) video infrastructure for the apps, which uses adaptive bitrate technologies.

This enables us to detect the strength of your Wi-Fi or 3G connection and serve the appropriate video quality. If you have low internet signal strength then the video stream will adapt down to suit your connection speed; if you move onto a stronger signal then the video stream will automatically improve in quality. The idea is to give you the best possible experience wherever you are.

Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú iPlayer iPad app

The Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú iPlayer app for the iPad also receives an update, with iPad users also benefiting from 3G streaming and AirPlay.

Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú iPlayer Android app

We have also been working on the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú iPlayer Android app. We have got a bit more work to do to improve the video playback experience and add 3G streaming and we will be releasing an update to the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú iPlayer Android app in the new year. For the time being the Android app will carry on working with Wi-Fi connection only.

This is the first release of the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú iPlayer app for iPhones and iPod touches and it will, of course, evolve and improve as we refine the interface and add features.

The team would really welcome your comments and feedback on the app. When we Tweet about iPlayer we use a #bbciplayer hashtag so if you would like to use this too that would be great.

I am always keen to know what you think and would love to hear from you.

David Madden is Executive Product Manager for Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú iPlayer on mobile

What's On Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Red Button 10th - 18th December

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Iain Hoare Iain Hoare | 06:00 UK time, Saturday, 10 December 2011

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Coldplay in Concert

Coldplay return to the snug and intimate Dingwalls venue in Camden for an access all areas gig, performed exclusively for Radio 2 in Concert.

The band first played Dingwalls on the 25th of May 1998 - in a show to raise funds for their debut public release, the Safety EP.

Coldplay

Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Radio 2 brings Coldplay back to this tiny venue to play classic tracks and songs from their new album Mylo Xyloto.

Watch gig highlights on Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Red Button from Thursday 15th December.

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Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Weather update: adding colour to temperatures

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Peter Deslandes Peter Deslandes | 16:30 UK time, Friday, 9 December 2011

Screengrab from updated Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Weather site, showing coloured temperatures

Colours added to temperatures on the new Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Weather site

A few weeks ago my colleague Liz Howell talked about how we came to launch the new Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Weather site.

Since it went live we have been continuing to read and digest user feedback. One of the biggest requests has been to restore the temperature colours in the forecast, so we made a change earlier this week to add colour to some of the temperatures along similar lines to the old site.

This actually seems to address two separate issues: some users have told us they don't so much read the temperature numbers as absorb the colour, while others have mentioned how nice it is to just have some more colour on the page.

Looking ahead, many users have commented on how the place names on the maps obscure too much of the weather graphics and how it would be good to be able to turn them off. We are working on that feature now.

Following that, we are working on the priority of various other changes including improvements to saving locations, making the maps load more smoothly and introducing a proper interactive map. The maps work in particular is technically challenging but we continue to listen to what is important to our users and will continue to deliver the improvements that we are being asked for.

Peter Deslandes is Head of Product, Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Weather

Strictly Come Dancing Final 3D Trial

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Andy Quested Andy Quested | 18:00 UK time, Thursday, 8 December 2011

It's been a while since the Wimbledon 3D trials and with Christmas coming (too quickly) we have another chance to trial some more 3D.

Last year we did a studio based 3D test. It was a special Strictly Come Dancing sequence for Children in Need - actually it was the second time Children in Need tried 3D as I mentioned in my "What is 3D blog".

The 2010 trial was such a success we are continuing our 3D trials with the Strictly Come Dancing final from Blackpool!

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New "About the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú" website

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Ian McDonald Ian McDonald | 10:34 UK time, Monday, 5 December 2011

Today, colleagues have begun to bring the various websites about what the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú does, including the About the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú blog, together into one site. Ian Hunter - Managing Editor, Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Online - has blogged about it there:

The task we set ourselves here was to improve the quality and coherence of the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú's corporate online presence, and at the same time to make it much more cost effective.

When we analysed the sites we found they fitted within five broad categories. The new About the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú, therefore, has five sections. They share a single design and navigation pattern ...

Ian McDonald is the Content Producer, Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Internet Blog

What's On Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Red Button 3rd - 11th December

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Iain Hoare Iain Hoare | 06:00 UK time, Saturday, 3 December 2011

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One Man and His Dog

Four National Teams - England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales - compete to be crowned 2011 Champions in the Young Handlers, the Brace and the Singles rounds.

The Young Handlers, all of whom are under the age of 18, take to the field first, setting the pace and the standard for the rest of the competition.

Next up is the Brace, one man has two dogs and ten sheep to control around the demanding Balmoral Castle course.

And finally the Singles round, one man, one dog but with two flocks of sheep. This round decides the ultimate winning team of One Man and His Dog 2011.

Matt Baker

Matt Baker presents the 35th One Man and His Dog Championships

Red Button has complete coverage of this year's competition.

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Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Homepage: your feedback (#2)

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James Thornett James Thornett | 18:30 UK time, Friday, 2 December 2011

Thank you for all your feedback on the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Homepage redesign. There have been a lot of comments on my blog post from Wednesday and lots of you have also sent emails and completed .

Most of the comments on the Internet Blog have been critical of the new design, with many requests to bring the old homepage back, so I wanted to explain again why we have made these changes.

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5 Interesting Stories from November

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Ian McDonald Ian McDonald | 16:25 UK time, Friday, 2 December 2011

B/W: Man in suit stands in front of map of Britain.

Bert Foord of the Metereological Office presents the weather in 1969

1. Wed 9th Nov: Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Trust drafts new syndication policy

Under the previous syndication policy decided in 2007, the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Trust had directed that if Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú TV shows appear on somebody else's platform - such as the cable TV box in your living room - then the content should still be wrapped up in a Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú presentation. (Unlike say, radio shows, which you can download to your MP3 player as a podcast.)

The draft policy announce on November 9th (a revision to a provisional policy announced in January) still makes this the default:

... these principles will usually be best served by offering would-be partners direct access to the full range of Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú content, via their platform or device, within a Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú environment. This currently means a standard Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú product, such as the iPlayer, delivered over the internet, but the principles set out in this policy apply equally to any future syndication products.

But makes space for exceptions:

23. Circumstances may occasionally arise, however, that justify special arrangements that depart from this model.

Journalists such as interpreted this as a way through which Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Programmes could appear within Sky's own on-demand service and third-party streaming websites.

The Guardian's :

BSkyB has wanted the freedom to potentially take individual shows, not an all-or-nothing iPlayer service from the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú, as well as the ability to allow customers to access the corporation's programming through its own services such as Sky Anytime+.

:

It may also mean that some Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú content makes its way to third party streaming services like Netflix and LoveFilm.

2. Thu 17th Nov: The Daleks of NorthLab

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