BBC To Create 'Catch-Up TV Player'

grouchal writes "The BBC Trust (a semi independent regulator) has just approved the BBC's efforts to launch iPlayer (no new info on this link yet). This means that UK residents can watch broadcast BBC programs out of sync with the broadcast schedule by up to 30 days for free. The iPlayer will launch for the PC but is expected on Media Center, Xbox 360 devices in the near future. The approval also included some constraints." This would really have made my life a lot simpler when my tivo died a couple of weeks ago.

Not UK resident

[pubjames]

If anyone from the BBC is reading this, as a non-UK resident I would be happy to pay the annual licence fee if I could get access to the UK BBC channels.

If you could make it work with my Apple TV, even better!

Re:Linux?

[byolinux]

They'll never make a GNU/Linux version of the iPlayer. Never ever ever.

At best, someone might be able to get their proprietary player running under Wine.

We should tell the BBC this is unacceptable - http://www.bbc.co.uk/feedback/ [bbc.co.uk]

Re:UK Resident

[Anonymous Coward]

And what are you going to enter for the TV license# ?

BBC could make it big(ger)

[nightsweat]

Let non-UKians pay for a TV license and get access to all the online services. £135.50/year to get access to all of BBC programming and that massive back catalog? I'd certainly consider it.

Re:OS X as well...

[crush]

I don't get the BBC at all. They make a lot of noise about how they can't release some material in some formats because it would create competition for private industry, but then they prop up the largest monopolist in software world. They also waste massively stupid amounts of bandwidth by broadcasting their archived material in e.g. RealPlayer format instead of something more compact like OggVorbis or even MP3 (take a listen to their BBC7 [bbc.co.uk] radio station), there's no need to broadcast that material in that high a quality. It makes it wasteful for most people to listen online and it creates exactly what they say they want to avoid: a very high quality digital copy that competes with commercial vendors (e.g. of books on CD).