So...
No 64bit Linux then? What with the Flash Player for 64 bit Linux still not available. Of course this does mean I'm able to get some work done as I can't go to You Tube at work.
Flash-based iPlayer is go
UK Linux and Mac fanboys can afford to turn a lighter shade of puce today, as the BBC has opened the shutters on the Flash-based version of iPlayer, its seven day TV catch-up service. It's also set to prove popular with Windows users who don't want the hassle of the buggy, DRM-locked download iPlayer. The service has been …
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Thursday 13th December 2007 15:24 GMT Anthony
shorter version
"we reckon it'll prove a lot more popular than the download client, which is an unfortunately clumsy and anachronistic front end for [the] BBC"
Yeah it's still just some old bollocks from Aunty tho isn't it. I can get all that on normal P2P and UK Sattelite channels. Really, my days of installing extra stuff I don't need.. over. Embed stuff in webpages already, I don't want more proprietary rubbish clogging my hard drive, Windows is enough.
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Thursday 13th December 2007 15:54 GMT Tim
Knickers in a twist
Hence the Paris icon.
God knows what the fuss is all about. What's wrong with a VCR or whatever the hell the digital equivalent is called today.
I'd much rather the BBC spent their money on developing programmes (sorry, 'content') than this sort of thing. If people want to time-shift it then they can go out and buy a proper shiny box.
@64 bit Simon: Never happy eh? That's probably because you're trying to watch TV while sitting on a hard chair in your office while the rest of us are curled up on a nice warm couch with a woman and a beer. You can keep yer spare 32 bits - hope they keep you warm at night.
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Thursday 13th December 2007 15:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
@Mark
A Windoze user accusing Mac users of being techo-illiterate.
Best laugh I've had all week - it obviously takes technical genius to use Lord Gates overpriced, insecure, bloated, buggy, DRM embuggered P.O.S.
The Bill G icon already has the horns (and your money, sucker) - the penguin icon is slowly growing teeth.
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Thursday 13th December 2007 16:07 GMT Ian Ferguson
As long as it's not RealPlayer
I wish BBC News online would catch up with the rest of the world and drop RealPlayer / WMP in favour of Flash-based embedded video. I don't think I've watched a video on their website... well, ever; not for lack of trying.
Perhaps they'll tie it in with the embedded iPlayer. That would be luvverly.
Oh and I really hope this will stop the linux fanboys whining. The BBC were originally just trying something new, and trying to keep it simple while they worked the kinks out; it's only because of a concerted FUD campaign by slashdot types that they've been forced to push the whole thing through before they even know what they'll use it for. Although I'd love to download BBC content to my Mac, I'd rather they did some beta testing and break a few Windows PCs first...
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Thursday 13th December 2007 16:34 GMT A J Stiles
@Simon, AC
Simon -- I haven't tried it yet, but the latest GNASH is supposed to work with YouTube (although I usually use youtube-dl and play the downloaded .flv files with ffplay).
Back in the days, I used to make a hobby of brazenly asking Macromedia for the Flash player Source Code everytime I registered myself a new domain -- and I damn nearly got it, once! Not sure how that would go down since the Adobe takeover, though.
You ought to be able to watch iPlayer from outside the UK, by arranging for someone in the UK to set you up a proxy server. They may have to hack the Source Code so it doesn't send an X-Forwarded-For: header (or sends a false one) and they will need a fast outbound connection.
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Thursday 13th December 2007 16:54 GMT Mage
Sorry, this programme is only available to play in the UK (Why?)
Indeed since I receive all the BBC programs from Satellite, Radio Devon on MW and R4LW on LW, in sunny Limerick.
The *REST* of my family lives in UK. My IT Sister could of course open an VPN for me.
But I have a 320G Byte Dual tuner Sat PVR, so if i program it properly I'd never need the inferior online versions.
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Thursday 13th December 2007 17:12 GMT frank denton
It's more than good enough for me
I've just tried the full screen Flash (on a laptop over WiFi) and it's more than good enough quality for me.
Does this mean I can get rid of my barely used TV and not need to pay a licence fee? As I understand the law, the TV licence fee is for reception of over the air broadcast transmissions, so streamed data to my PC doesn't count?
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Thursday 13th December 2007 17:12 GMT Edward Rose
Whiney fanboys?
I thought the complaint was that the BBC was encouraging the more adventurous of the world to break the law. DRM and proprietry software hasn't stopped people from accessing software before. Ask RIAA et al.
*nix users all hippies? Someone better warn this chap that we are starting to take on the disguise of regular folk now who don't know are arse from our elbow. You never know, you may be living next door to one of these terrorists!
Oh, and 'no' I don't pay for a license, but apparently I owe them £135 for a service I don't use. Slightly confused there.
Still once this has matured I may well start watching TV again.
Oh well, off home now as my elbows aching from sitting down all day.
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Thursday 13th December 2007 17:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
@Mark (again)
Ohh, but I don't stop laughing while I'm recompiling my kernel(s).
1) Because I don't have to - I can download a prebuilt one if I'm feeling lazy.
2) Because I ~can~ rebuild my kernel if, when and how I want to - unlike M$ sufferers who use what they are told to by Mr G. (yes, a dollar-sign instead of an 'S'; my humour knows no bounds!)
3) Because the money I save not buying overpriced software and the time not wasted trying to work out why it's not working properly, removing viruses from it, cleaning up the mess it's made of my harddrives or otherwise just swearing at it can be spent on beer and loose women.
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Thursday 13th December 2007 17:22 GMT Michael Sheils
Seemed great
I was quite happy with this while testing it out watch Have I Got News For You when it suddenly stopped and said "There has been a problem, please start again". In order to get rid of the message I had to refresh the entire page which reset the player and it didn't even remember how much it had previously downloaded.
Hope they get it stable soon as it's a hell of alot better solution than that POS they brought out earlier.
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Thursday 13th December 2007 17:47 GMT John Bailey
Works fine on Fedora 8
No problem with it working on Linux. I can see this being way more popular than the iPlayer thingy. Good thing too. Nobody in their right mind is going to use this to replace a proper video recorder or PVR, but for occaisional things like when you forget to set something to record, it could be useful. The penguin is victorious.
The full screen video quality isn't that great, but was it expected to be? This way you don't have to download more crud to run in the background and make things even more unstable.
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Thursday 13th December 2007 17:47 GMT James Le Cuirot
Nice!
I've only tried it briefly but it works nicely here! I use 64-bit Opera and there are tricks to get the 32-bit Flash working. I suspect they'll make it work automatically soon. As for 64-bit Firefox, just install nspluginwrapper (not ndiswrapper, that's for wireless!) as suggested. Anyway, nice job, Beeb. Not sure I'll use this much myself though because I have MythTV and a DVB-S card.
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Thursday 13th December 2007 20:47 GMT Tim
Wii
Answer is... no.
The Wii uses Flash 7 which is very old. It's a problem with a lot of other Flash sites. Apparently Nintendo and Opera are stuck because the newer versions require some SDK from Adobe which isn't available for the Wii, or something like that. So blame Adobe.
Though if you have a Wii, you surely have a TV to watch BBC shows on anyway (and presumably a video recorder of some sort) ;-)
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Thursday 13th December 2007 21:04 GMT Stephen Pegrum
Excellent
Using Ubuntu 7.10.
(Had to upgrade to a newer version of flash before full screen would work - same version for both Windows and Linux!)
Just caught up with the last episode of Top Gear - Brilliant. Brilliant.
Who needs windows now?!
I just wish the Beeb hadn't wasted license player's money on the other thing.....
spegru
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Thursday 13th December 2007 22:36 GMT Sleeping Dragon
At long last...
Yeah, I'm on Linux, I tried it, it works. Not bad either. For a beta it's pretty smooth and by the time they've ironed out a few wrinkles it might even add up to a half-decent player. If you're trying to view from outside the UK, use Opera and look for the proxy Widget. You should find a proxy there in the UK to run through.
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Thursday 13th December 2007 22:55 GMT Danny Thompson
Excellent!
It works just fine, a nice delivery. And what they should have done in the first place. So, congrats to the Beeb for getting it right, the second time round.
The cynicism about the BBC Licence fee is well justified. The requirement for one is quite clear. You need a BBC Licence if you have any equipment capable of receiving TV transmissions. There is no restriction on how those transmissions are made. Thus, unless you are living the life of a hermit with zero display technology, the chances are near 100% that you will need a TV licence.
Cynicism fully justified then.
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Thursday 13th December 2007 23:13 GMT Juhani Vehvilainen
@ Mark & Stu (yes, I'm talking to you)
The two of you sound like people who feel hurt by the "I'm a Mac - I'm a PC" ads or something similar, maybe an unfair and nasty remark about your computers made by a *nix hippie that you obviously couldn't really respond to because you're rocket and not computer scientists (hence the unfairness). If it's about the Apple ads: I believe they were actually just meant to be funny but if you believe that Steve did them because he wanted to make you feel bad then I agree, that's not nice at all. People should not make people feel bad. It's just not done. (And the internets should finally adopt the irony and humour tags. But I digress.)
As one of the guys with a job so embarrassing that it actually takes a computer to complete - or to get started - not just make it easier or faster (so no, it's not accounting, marketing, administration or cool stuff like that) I typically don't find myself spending my time with tools of the Windows ilk. It seems they're simply not intended to be used for those kind of purposes. Because of that I feel a bit guilty here by some kind of association. So will you please accept my apology for any wrongdoing committed by the hippie computer scientist acquaintance or SteveJ or whoever it was who hurt your feelings. It should never have happened. It's _completely_ ok to use Windows and be happy with it and feel sympathetic towards the great businessmen who made it happen! You should _not_ feel inferior because of that. Maybe it is exactly the right tool for the job you're using it for. Or maybe you just don't care that much, after all you have lives and families and families and families to attend to etc. Either way, you don't have to feel bad about it. Let go of the inferiority and be free!
I hope this helps.
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Thursday 13th December 2007 23:17 GMT Shun F
Thanks, dude!
Quote: "use Opera and look for the proxy Widget." Thank you for allowing me to circumvent BBC controls. I am sure that the BBC content-control police will thank you too, personally, using many fast-moving blunt objects. That is, if you are in the UK, and they can locate you.
I was surprised that this change even happened, considering the rather small minority of Linux users anywhere, quite frankly. I surmise that they went about this decision in the following way.
1. Roll out iPlayer, win32 version. Mac and Linux fanbois complain (ignore). iPlayer beta testers complain (what's this?) iPlayer loads unnecessary bloatware, trackers, cookies, etc. Oh, do we have a problem then?
2. Let's see what other people are doing...Youtube? Ah, interesting, iTMS (hmm, not much potential there, but we'll keep it on the back burner). Pornotube, Youporn, etc...hey! looks like we have a winner. Clean it up a little...deploy.
Now, wait for the whiners to come up with a new song....doesn't work on 64-bit Linux you say? (ignore)
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Friday 14th December 2007 05:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
@ Simon Proctor
There's this 64-bit ELF to 32-bit ELF Mozilla plugin wrapper somewhere. I forgot what's it called. Google it up.
In other news, nope, doesn't work for people outside the UK. And they have Arthur, too.
Thank you so much, BBC! I was so close to getting my much needed Arthur fix, and I would have gone back to a normal geek instead of a blunt, frustrated one if I have had the fix. I hope you're happy that I still can't get my Arthur and am on the verge of snapping.
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Friday 14th December 2007 05:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
Flash is high-end
The other thing to keep in mind is that even using the latest encoding tools and the latest Flash player, full-screen embedded Flash video is really for "high-end" systems, i.e. kit that's been bought in the last two years and has a good amount of RAM. If you're using an old iBook it's not going to look very good -- for those users, Real offers a much better picture. If you're MLB.com or somebody, you don't have to worry about this kind of thing, but the Beeb has an obligation to reach the lowest reasonable baseline spec with an acceptable quality picture.
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Friday 14th December 2007 05:38 GMT yeah, right.
@ Vivadas
Just tried their sydneyfood.tv feed, seems to work fine under MacOSX with Firefox. It looks like it's some sort of Java app, but I could be wrong.
Only issue is it abusing the CPU when you close it. Closing the calling website tab seemed to fix that.
So thumbs up to Vivadas for creating what seems to be a useful multiplatform app. Now if only larger companies with larger budgets (like the BBC) could follow their lead.
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Friday 14th December 2007 05:38 GMT James
Error messages
When playing videos The iplayer often shows me a message saying
"Some thing went wrong
There seems to be a problem playing this video - please try again"
Does anyone else get this?? I am using Mac OS X tiger. On my mates (XP and tried it on Vista) laptop(s) it says something like this video cannot be played here. Some Beta bugs??
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Friday 14th December 2007 05:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Flash wasn't ready yet
Like all things iPlayer, this has been gestating a long time. You folks may have noticed that the BBC uses Flash very, very sparingly across all their sites. This is mainly because Flash uses a lot of CPU and takes longer to encode. Sites like YouTube have pretty awful-looking video to compensate for these drawbacks, but it was felt that YouTube quality isn't good enough for BBC programming.
The new version of Flash has H.264 and is more efficient, making Flash a viable choice for something of this scale.
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Friday 14th December 2007 12:58 GMT Steve Green
Streaming vs downloading
What Chris Williams's original article slagging off the download version of the iPlayer ignored, and what has proven to be the case now it's launched, is that the picture and audio quality of the streaming version are miles worse than on the download version, and there's the issue of the stream buffering which is obviously not an issue for downloaded files - I've just tried watching a few minutes of a streamed programme and it buffered about 10 times in the first 3 minutes.
If you look at if from the point of view of how much bandwidth the BBC needs to provide these services, the streaming version uses unicast distribution, so they've got to distribute the streams in parallel, whereas on the P2P download service the users are doing most of the distribution for them, so the quality will always be better on the P2P download service than it will be on streaming, and HD content should be provided via downloads long before it'll be available on the streaming version.
The original article also suggested that the P2P service was basically a complete waste of time, and that they'd have been better to bypass downloading to PCs altogether and go straight to a set-top box version, but I'd have thought that a set-top box version would just contain pretty much the same P2P software that's used for the PC version just put inside a set-top box, so the P2P version is hardly a waste of time.
Another thing with P2P is that the more users there are the quicker the download times should be, so that'll improve as more people sign up to it, and at off-peak times I've seen 30-minute programmes download in 5 minutes - and speeds should increase over time due to broadband connection speeds going up as well.
I'm all for slagging off the BBC for taking years to develop the iPlayer and spending a small country's GDP on it and not porting it to Mac or Linux, but some of the criticisms of the download version just seem like indiscritimate mud chucking for the sake of it.
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Friday 14th December 2007 13:28 GMT Chris Williams
Re: Streaming vs downloading
Firstly, I personally haven't had any buffering problems on the streaming iPlayer via a normal ADSL.
Secondly, I wasn't indulging in mud chuck for the sake of it in that piece.
By accounts from my sources at the BBC and Bobbie Johnson at the Guardian (http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/12/12/bbc_starts_iplayer_streaming_service.html), the download iPlayer has only a few thousand regular users, despite the BBC's figures that hundreds of thousands have installed it. It's an unnecessary hassle and is going to be at best a niche product.
And like I wrote, if people are really after quality, they'll use BitTorrent or a PVR, and watch it on a TV. For a "catch-up" service for PCs and mobile devices, streaming makes more sense. I wasn't ignoring the quality issue, just trying to explain that for the vast majority of the people who pay for and use the BBC's online services, its not a top concern, as evidenced by the popularity of YouTube.
Finally, while the current web implementation of streaming is indeed unicast, the set-top box version is likely to involve some sort of multicast, which the BBC is working with ISPs on now. There's some more about that here: http://support.bbc.co.uk/multicast/
If the BBC is, as you seem to think, planning on putting Kontiki in set-top boxes, then they're crazier than any of us feared.
- Chris
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Friday 14th December 2007 14:55 GMT Steve Green
Re: Streaming vs downloading
I'll answer each point in turn:
I tried an iPlayer stream yesterday and it buffered a bit, and as I said, I tried it this morning and it buffered about 10 times in the first 3 minutes - and it then stopped saying there was some problem and to try again. But these might be initial teething troubles anyway.
Okay, I'll take it back that you were mud chucking for the sake of it, but I stil think you're downplaying the value of the P2P version of the iPlayer.
The actual number of people actively using the iPlayer isn't much of an issue at the moment, IMO. If in a year's time and only a few thousand people are using the download version then you'd have grounds to say that it's a waste of time, but I doubt that will be the case. You could just as well use the same argument as you did to be sceptical about Bittorrent, because no doubt there's some X to 1 ratio of how many have downloaded it and how many actually regularly use it.
On the "if you want quality" issue, yes, people should always use a PVR first, but I use the iPlayer for when I've forgotten to or wasn't able to record a programme.
Downloading on Bittorrent is, IME, very, very slow compared to downloading programmes on the iPlayer. On the iPlayer there will be a single file for each programme, whereas on Bittorrent there would be many different recompressed recordings of a programme. For example, 1 user starts recording at 8.29, another starts a few seconds later and so on, and they're different files altogether. On the iPlayer it is far more likely that there will be a lot more sources with the file you're looking for compared to on Bittorrent, hence the download speeds are far quicker. And this should improve dramatically over time as more people install the iPlayer, whereas lots of people have already installed Bittorrent clients.
Quality doesn't matter on YouTube because they're very short clips, but I don't think I'm alone in not wanting to watch TV programmes with cr&p picture and audio quality.
Multicast is a technology for the distribution of live streams, so it cannot be used for on-demand programmes on a catch-up service.
Fair point about Kontiki being dreadful, but I'm sure that a lot of the work they've done for the PC download version can be re-used for a set-top box version.
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Friday 14th December 2007 15:17 GMT Daniel Snowden
Not working properly
Tried using it last night to watch "watchdog" - Sometimes cut out part way through and the timeshifting control didn't work (annoying when you are halfway through and need to reload)
I expect this is probably a temporary problem. Other than that it's a good service (much better than that kontiki based crud)
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Friday 14th December 2007 16:05 GMT Stephen B Streater
Freedom vs Liberty
So the deal is that Liberty is the rights the state gives to you. This is typical of the non-democratic model where the state has all the rights, and might from time to time let you have some.
Freedom is the rights that you intrinsically have - and you might give up some rights to the state. It's approaching the issue from the other side.
So with the iPlayer, they decided only Microsoft customers could watch the videos. Now they have added Adobe customers to the list.
When was the last time the BBC decided who you had to buy your TV off?
Anyway, I've updated my video on the subject. You don't need Microsoft or Adobe to watch this video.
http://clesh.com/videos/view/BBCiPlay-1197646800.can/
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Saturday 15th December 2007 17:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
well done BBC, now no one will use it
Well this is irritating.
So because a minority of people couldn't use the p2p client, they replaced it with a flash player that means everyone can join in. Shame that its much much much lower quality and has on first attempts to use it an atrocious buffer problem.
Assuming the buffer problems go away, I still won't contemplate watching such low quality streams, and I doubt I'm that far removed from the average user.
If they must insist on this flash nonsense to shut up the microsoft-is-evil crew, why can't they do it in ADDITION to the p2p client, not instead of, as is the case with the content I currently want to veiw.
This is a classic case of ruining a perfectly good idea trying to keep everyone happy, and it will die as a result.
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Sunday 16th December 2007 07:00 GMT John
brilliant on mac
Was just watching Armstrong and Millar via Opera on my MacBook. Quality is fantastic compared to Youtube and it came down almost realtime on my 1MB DSL connection, with just a minor blip at about 9 minutes in. I expect it'll get a lot slower once it gets popular, but that probably won't be too high a price to pay for an otherwise good service. They're probably kicking themselves for spending so much time and money on the full iPlayer app.
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Monday 17th December 2007 03:36 GMT Walter Brown
RE: @Mark
you wrote the perfect interchangeable comment:
/Quote:
A Windoze user accusing Mac users of being techo-illiterate.
Best laugh I've had all week - it obviously takes technical genius to use Lord Gates overpriced, insecure, bloated, buggy, DRM embuggered P.O.S.
/End Quote
A Mac-Olite user accusing Windows users of being techo-illiterate.
Best laugh I've had all week - it obviously takes technical genius to use Lord Steves overpriced, insecure, bloated, buggy, DRM embuggered P.O.S.
Remember oh poor Mac-Olite (aka iFanboi), it is you who stands convicted of being a brainwashed follower of an evangelistic cult!
Lets break this down point by point:
Overpriced - Mac costs far more than PCs and when you compare total cost of ownership, Mac is much more expensive when you factor in the lack of software available, limited choices in hardware and upgrades.
Insecure - must i point you to all of the El Reg articles referencing Mac security holes, including pron downloading trojans? having pointed out that Macs are also susceptible to viruses i would also like to draw your attention to the absolute lack of virus protection for macs
Bloated - http://lipidity.com/apple/cleaning-apps-mac-os-x/
It would seem Mac is a little bloated too, probably from all that hot air the Steve blows up its users asses...
Buggy - Please... search El Reg for the many stories of the famed OS X BSOD, it common knowledge that Macs have plenty of bugs, like trying to eject a CD and having to reboot up to 30 times just to get the disc out, all the while fearing you've lost everything on the computer! Macs are no more stable than PCs, and if you consider Macs will work only on a tightly controlled set of hardware, Microsoft wins the battle given its wide range of hardware it has to support.
DRM embuggered P.O.S. - Remember, it was apple whom brought DRM to the mainstream, can you say iTunes... I dare you to try to use iTunes songs on anything but an iPod...
So go on, oh brainwashed hypocrite of the IT world, grab yourself a Budlight, you've earned it!
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
