BBC’s on-demand Web TV service ‘iPlayer’ to debut on July 27
On Wednesday, BBC announced that it will be launching its on-demand web television service dubbed ‘iPlayer’ on July 27, which is exactly a month later from today. BBC further added that at present it is in the process of striking some deals with its distribution partners including MSN, Telegraph.co.uk, AOL, Tiscali, Yahoo, MySpace, Blinkx and Bebo.
BBC’s forthcoming on-demand web television service will make it possible for broadband viewers to watch programmes up to 30 days that have been downloaded for free within a week of transmission. The programmes sans advertising, will automatically delete once they are viewed. British users will be able to download BBC fare from www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer seven days after transmission to view on their PCs.
Speaking about the latest initiative, Ashley Highfield, director of the BBC’s future media and technology division said, “Developing a version for Apple Macs and Microsoft Vista is absolutely on our critical path.”
At present iPlayer is in its testing phase, wherein 15,000 people are testing the product, which will move to a live testing platform on July 27 before a full marketing launch later in the year.
Streaming-on-demand that will enable users to watch a programme directly and also allow them to download episodes from selected series retrospectively, are the forthcoming services to be included.
The BBC said in a statement that the on-demand service would become more widely available across the www.bbc.co.uk Web site as well as Google’s YouTube and mobile services.
The BBC’s service is funded by money raised from the television licence fee used to fund the broadcaster. At launch, the service will operate only on Windows PCs, but a version for Mac users could be on its way by fall. BBC’s iPlayer on-demand service would become more widely available across the www.bbc.co.uk Web site as well as Google’s and also on YouTube and mobile services.
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