BBC dishes out fanboi-only telly downloads ahead of ITV plans
Fandroids will have to wait for Doctor Who offline
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The BBC's mobile iPlayer app will now let users download content for watching later – provided they have an Apple device of course.
Lucky fanbois can nab last night's episode of EastEnders or the latest Doctor Who for perusal at their leisure for up to 30 days, though once they've started watching they only have a week to finish.
Fandroids can expect to see the service on their Droid devices in that vaguest of time periods, "soon".
Beeb fans will be able to download multiple programmes to watch once they're out of Wi-Fi or 3G range as the broadcaster seeks to tap into the millions using their tablets and phones to access the iPlayer.
In its early days, iPlayer offered time-limited downloads intended for viewing on full-fat computers rather than mobile devices, as many home internet connections weren't adequate to the task of carrying video. As time has gone by, streaming has become the norm even for mobile kit - but of course you can't stream if you don't have a WiFi or 3G-or-better mobile signal.
“With mobile downloads for BBC iPlayer, you can now load up your mobile phone or tablet with hours and hours of BBC television programmes, then watch them on the road, on the tube, on a plane, without worrying about having an internet connection or running up a mobile data bill," Daniel Danker, GM of programmes and on-demand for the BBC, enthused.
The Beeb's foray into downloadable services is pretty timely considering rival broadcaster ITV said at the start of July that it was planning to release popular old dramas like Inspector Morse and Brideshead Revisited for download, priced at around 99p an episode. ®
COMMENTS
Re: "Soon" ?
Agree ... but don't the BBC already have to fix iPlayer for Android never mind any issues of downloading ... as Adobe won't allow flash to be installed on any new devices then the BBC's line of "we support Android as it has flash, but have to do special case software for iDevices that don't" has suddenly evaporated. Interesting to see if the BBC Governors will allow the BBC to continue to provide such a degree of special support to one manufacturer.
i™
Is there any connection between the BBC's player being called "iPlayer" (with that capitalisation) and the corporation's bias toward Apple products? Even their news service fawns all over Apple announcements, launches and speeches.
It just strikes me that were some small developer to have created a media player at the same time as the BBC and called it "iPlayer", they'd almost certainly have been swatted by Apple's lawyers. Yet the BBC use the name with no problems. Is there some kind of understanding between them?
iPlayer doesn't even sound like a BBC name, and isn't an interactive service. So why wasn't it called the "bbcPlay", "Watch Again" or something?
I'm really not bashing Apple, I'm honestly asking why the BBC are so biased toward Apple. They're currently investigating Chris Evans's radio show because he gave the current Prime Minister a lot of friendly air time a couple of weeks ago, and this looks like bias to many. And we all know what they're like at mentioning brand names too much, yet it seems Apple have a special dispensation, and can be plugged without limit.
The same goes for certain social networking sites, which over the last couple of years have been plugged endlessly, with many radio presenters being 'encouraged' to open an account if they haven't done so already. If a Radio 1 presenter opened a MySpace account today and started plugging it on air, they would without question be spoken to by the Controller and told not to mention it again. Because it's not the 'correct' site.
That is not impartiality.
Re: i™
PAL is the standard in Britain and it's the British Broadcasting Corporation.
I think saying they are biased toward PAL is like saying that London transport is biased to driving on the left.
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