BBC iPlayer To Launch In July
The BBC’s on-demand broadband TV service, iPlayer, is launching on 27 July, it was announced today by Ashley Highfield, the BBC’s director of future media & technology.
Once viewers have accessed BBC iPlayer at bbc.co.uk/iPlayer and have downloaded a programme, they will have up to 30 days in which to watch it. Once watched, the programme file deletes itself.
Later this year, the iPlayer will become widely accessible across bbc.co.uk, as well as via links from YouTube and a number of other potential distribution partners (subject to the BBC Trust’s new syndication policy and management’s guidelines).
Users will be able to watch promotional clips of programmes, and link back to BBC iPlayer on bbc.co.uk, enabling them to download the full programme.
The BBC is in discussion with a wide range of potential distribution partners, including MSN, telegraph.co.uk, AOL, Tiscali, Yahoo!, MySpace, Blinkx and Bebo.
Highfield said: “BBC iPlayer is a free catch-up service for UK licence fee payers. Your favourite programmes from all the BBC’s network TV channels will be available to download over the internet, and watch on your PC without advertising for up to a week after transmission.”
Jana Bennett, director of BBC Vision, said: “This is a significant moment, as it heralds a new era when viewers will have the freedom to watch programmes from the BBC’s linear TV channels when they want.
“It’s a revolutionary service which offers audiences more value, because from now on they never have to miss out on their favourite programmes – or those that they didn’t previously have the opportunity to try.”
The iPlayer is currently in closed environment testing amongst some 15,000 people. It will go live to the general public in open Beta on 27 July before a full marketing launch in the autumn.
In time, extra features will be added to BBC iPlayer, such as streaming on-demand (allowing users to watch a programme straight away), series stacking (which allows users to download episodes from selected series retrospectively) and the highly successful BBC Radio Player.
At launch, the iPlayer will include a display settings toolkit for the hard-of-vision and sign language for the hard-of-hearing; subtitles and audio description will be rolled out in the coming months.
The iPlayer was given final approval by the BBC Trust in April, although with some modifications to the original proposals (see BBC Trust Gives iPlayer Final Approval).
Last week’s Broadcast Live conference saw Stacey Anklam, head of product management at Red Bee Media, one of the development partners on the iPlayer project, discuss some of the challenges facing VoD (see VoD Under Discussion At Broadcast Conference).
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