The Guardian rescently published an article that’s a really interesting development in the IPTV world in the UK. It seems that other broadcasters outside of the Beeb are looking at using the iPlayer to distribute their own programming, Channel 4 and ITV being the biggest players. This is fantastic news really for everyone, outside the UK too, at some point I think we’ll see a “world service” type offering where you can pay to get content outside the UK. That’s to Ryan Carson for the tip via twitter.
Gizmodo however are reporting that the above has been quashed (not sure how true that really is) but that there is an open platform comming…an open platform called iPlayer?
This tip off came from Em2 on twitter, you can sign up for iPlayer Labs which allows you to access the cutting edge features of iPlayer, quite cool. Oh yeah and apparently there are more complete series being added from the archive. Very nice.
Over on the BBC Backstage blog they’re celebrating the fact that streaming through iPlayer is one year old, they’ve got a flickr group up where they want people to post pics of people using iPlayer….that makes me thing we need to get pictures in there of The Digital Lifestyle members watching iPlayer in Media Center!
Posted by Simon May, follow me on Twitter or if you like email me
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that will be a nice plug in service for media center bbc iplayer even channel 4od and 5 on demand
The BBC made two announcements to do with this earlier this week.
1. They are looking at opening the iPlayer up to other UK Public Service Broadcasters.
2. They are looking at developing an IPTV system (i.e. for the TV screen not the PC screen) – again open to UK PSBs using an open standard I believe.
Both of these could be good news for HTPC types.