The poor mans Sky Plus. (BBC iPlayer)

Member Name: I-tried-this

Product:	BBC iPlayer
Date:	21/08/08 (697 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very easy to follow and watch what you want (-within the BBC reason)

Disadvantages: The bbc reason- many programmes are not able to be watched and there are one or two techincal issues

I started using the BBCi player around 8 months ago when I realised I could still carry on watching Eastenders and not have to spend my evenings inside the entire evening as a result.

BBCi player is basically a site which is linked to the BBC website where you download a player (for free) and then can watch most programmes that have been on BBC1, 2, 3 and 4, CBeebies, news channel, BBC parliament, and all its radio stations. (Radio1, 2, 3, 4, 5live, 5extra, 6music, BBC7, BBC Asian Network, and BBC World Service along with the local radio which includes everything from BBC Ulster and BBC Wales through to BBC Solent, BBC London and BBC Scotland). Its fairly straight forward, being that if I can use it, anyone can! You simply find what you want to watch by title of the programme and click on the picture beside it, that brings up a big screen picture of the programme, click again and your away, programme plays. You can watch the past 7 days in any week, for example, Thursday 2am to the following Thursday 2am, it depends what day and time your clicking on.

You can also enlarge the picture so it fits the screen of your computer monitor or clip the outer edges of the page so you can have it on when your also flicking through e bay and dooyou- just remember to also make those pages smaller or you cant see the programme at the same time!

I think its main competitor, aside from the Sky Plus box is Channel 4's 4OD (4 on demand) player where you also download a player for free and can watch whatever you want from the past 7 days. I haven't checked 4 lately but it used to be 30 days, this I think changed- but this is a BBC iplayer review, not a 4OD review so I'll stop there!. In comparison, it is easier to find what you want, you can type in what you want, but unlike 4OD, you can actually go to the channel your looking for, and then click on the day your looking through and a full list of the entire day will come up- no delay, no pause, its immediate. And very easy to see- the writing is slightly on the small side but its readable. You also get a short line of explaination as to what the show is about. Also, its quick and easy to flick between channels.

Its speed depends a little on your computer system speed, mine is not a top top computer (Dell Dimendsion C521, 2 years old) and I rarely wait at all for a programme to load, speed really isnt an issue. (It is on 4OD though...)

Sound depends on how great your speakers are, sound/noise are fine, as if it was on TV, no problems at all.

My only worry is the download limit- if its on the low side, I read recently that just by watching a weeks worth of Eastenders (around 2 hours of shows) in a month you can exceed a download limit of 8. Mine is 40 so I am not too worried, some download linits are unlimited, its best to check first as you could get a nasty shock when the bill comes in- companies have a really horrible way of chargeing over the odds once you exceed the limit.

But- and there's always a but! There are a few irritations I have with the iplayer: first of all there's the spoilers: its worse then accidentally reading heat magazine of inside soap! (my mother reads these I do not!!). If for example, there's a cliff hanger in Eastenders, where the cliff hanger is something along the lines of "will she find out?" you can bet your bank account that you'll she 'she' slapping the person whose hiding the secret from her on the image for the episode your about to watch. Really kills any anticipation, every time.

Also, they did have a revamp a few months ago. They didn't think to pre-warn anyone, they just went out of action for a few days. Great, this means I missed programmes I wouldn't have been able to see when it all started up again as I tend to save up and watch them all in one go. I missed the previous weeks I was intending to watch. Not fair!

And another thing- though they are getting better at this, if you do choose to do something else while watching your chosen programme, you do get the programme stopping and starting. Sometimes its better then others. At worst it stops fully and you get a little dotted circle (like the salt timer you get on Windows, its for saying -'wait, I'm working on it...' only it works on it for a very log time and you end up realising its not doing anything but looking pretty and you start the programme again. On the plus side, you can fiddle with the timer underneath the programme which will tell you how long the programme is and how far you are into it- as long as your past the initial BBC introduction page. Just slide it along and you can normally find where you were before.

But other similar irritations are when the programme itself does that digital freeze thing, where you can still hear the sound OK, but you cant watch the picture, its frozen. This can happen quite a bit on a regular TV, especially if you have an indoor aerial but its not to the same extent as the BBC iplayer, sometimes its fine- and it does seem to have gotten better these last few weeks, the freezes lasting a second or two rather then 10 to 20, but I wont be holding my breath on that.

I also dislike that you cant watch EVERY programme again. Some are just 'not available', some you can understand, like the BBC news- basically as it tends to be on all the time, why would you even want to watch a past episode. Some are disappointing, most films you cannot watch again :( This is unfair I think, they should do something with that- what if the programme was available to watch for just 24 hours afterwards insted of the full week? That would sort most of us who cant afford a sky plus thingy or don't have a DVD recorder and annoyingly miss the first 20 minutes of the film due to London Transport. There are some that cannot be accounted for: episodes that maybe haven't been repeated on BBC3 yet perhaps? Who knows, but there are quite a few that are not able to be watched for whatever reason. And no real reason is given.

If you have any queries with the iplayer, you can either join a discussion group- except its not open 24 hours, its shut after around 8pm. Irritating again if you've come home from work, its 11pm and you think you'll watch this evenings episode of Holby City only to find its not playing right. You go to the discussion board, discussion board closed. Irritating. You can contact BBC iplayer themselves- though this has got harder to contact them, you really have to search for that. I found it once after the site changed, but haven't been able to since- though I did try very hard! The saving grace for that is that they do get back to you- within 48 hours for me in my past questions. But I haven't been able to find out how to ask another question so I am unable to really comment on that- it may be better, it may be worse. I think the fact I cant send them an email or on-line query says more on that issue then any reply.


I would recommend the BBC iplayer to anyone, but not if you have a sky plus box. I have never tried or tested a sky plus box, but I bet it records EVERY programme you want to watch WITHOUT any digital freezes!

Summary: A great way to catch up on your missed weekly programmes- just watch your download limit!

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