Small room for improvement (BBC iPlayer)

Member Name: davomrmac

Product:	BBC iPlayer
Date:	04/10/08 (68 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good quality picture, easy to search

Disadvantages: No queueing up of programmes

It took a long time for the BBC to give in to public demand and release their iPlayer for the Mac. When they did I rejoiced and used the service a lot. I also found that it worked on my iPhone. The service had a rocky start though. The powers that be kept disabling it on the iPhone (and other portable devices I think), then it was back on again. Then recently it underwent an overhaul and since then, things are looking good.

For those that have not used the service yet, in its simplest form it allows you to watch BBC programmes on your computer. The intuitive layout of the site is presented with an easy 'search' box at the top. A row of scrollable TV and radio highlights, yesterday and today listings, as well as most popular. There are also tabbed buttons toward the top of the screen. From hear you can click for specific channels, radio stations, categories or an AtoZ listing. Of course, unless you are simply browsing for something to watch, the quickest method is to watch.

Select a programme to watch and you get a good size screen to click play on. The compression is pretty good, which results in a nice crisp and clear picture. You can also opt to watch in high quality, which is great if you have a fast internet connection. You can also 'share' to send a link to a friend, go full screen or even click to get the programme to display in a separate pop-out window. So a pretty good experience.

All in all I am pretty impressed, it certainly solves a problem if you have missed something and/or forgotten to record it. My wish for the future is that it introduces a scheduling feature, so you can queue up programmes in a playlist. Even better would be the BBC creating a desktop player application in something like Adobe Air, now that would be awesome.

Summary: Although there is room for some improvement, iPlayer is great

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