BBC iPlayer
 

Anyone signed up for this joke?

Complete waste of time. I know it's a beta release, but it's embarrasingly rubbish.

Keeps asking me to login when I'm already logged in, and then doesn't accept my login details.

I got accepted in the early beta trials, same problems with logins. Also kept making me download the application again and again.

Gave up on it

Part of the joke is the BBC deciding to use MS's DRM, which means that you must be running at least windows media player 10, which is XP/Vista only, thus you're cutting out Mac/Linux users. There is some meeting between the BBC and some committee about this issue soon, hopefully something will happen to allow things to be more platform independent. I don't have a problem with DRM if it's something that is platform agnostic, which MS's DRM isn't.

Yep, it is a pile of crap at the mo but then that is the whole point of a closed beta test - we are the guinea pigs and should be giving feedback to the developers as to what does and does not work!!!!

IIRC it is due to be on general release at the end of this month which it is far from ready for - it probably needs another six months worth of development -and that pink logo is sooooo ghey :eek:

Once it is sorted it will be an easy way to watch the BBC. Wherever I travel I always tune into BBC World to keep up to date, to also be able to download programmes to watch on the laptop anywhere in the world will be brill!

It has to work as it is the way forward for broadcasting. TV as we know it will, at some stage, probably cease to exist!

I use Zattoo to watch the BBC on my Mac, how is this different?

Why not just get Sky+/Tivo and a SlingBox? You'll be able to watch any (not just bbc tripe) of your favourite TV anywhere in the world on any platform.

Well I'm happily watching 4OD content (same DRM) on my Xbox+XBMC. The DRM stuff is easily bypassed by existing tools on the web. Be surprised if there arent Linux/Mac versions.

Got a TiVo (250gb + TiVoweb)
Got a Slingbox

Still wanting to try new things :)

As Marcus mentions - it's the tie in to Microsoft that surprises me. The BBC has a great web / multimedia development team (I've done some security testing work with them in the past) and when you consider they have built one of the best and most popular websites in the world using open source products (no MS products at all in the BBC website), the decision to use the limiting MS software is very surprising.

I know Im being picky but :

BBC - Jobs - Jobs Home runs on Server 2003 IIS

;)

Yeah ok - it's the main bbc.co.uk site that is done without MS products - certainly the last time I spoke to them that was the case. Not so much from a security point-of-view (although there are considerable benefits), but from a development cost angle - it's a lot more expensive to use MS.

I was only jesting with you Chris :)

I bet it was pretty interesting working with them.