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BBC iPlayer
by bettyboop2002
BBC iPlayer is a feature on the BBC website which allows you to access TV programmes that you have missed. You can also listen to radio programmes you might have missed or listen to the radio stations live on the iPlayer website and it's all free.
You can visit the website and watch or listen to programmes using many devices ... which can access the internet including mobile phones, games consoles, TV's, computers and tablets.
You can either browse recently added or most popular programmes on the website. If you know what you are looking for you can either find it by clicking on the categories (including news, sport, weather, drama, documentaries and childrens) or use the search box to look for the title of the programme you are looking for.
Some programmes are available to watch or listen to very soon after they have first been broadcast and others may take a few hours to be able to watch on iPlayer. Each programme is only available for about a week to view online, but you can download them to your device which means they will be available for 30 days. There is a good choice of programmes to watch on iPlayer, but some BBC programmes won't be available on iPlayer because of viewing rights.
There are many BBC channels you can watch programmes for including BBC 1,2,3&4, CBBC, BBC news, BBC parliament and BBC Alba. HD channels are also available for those with compatible devices.
When watching a programme you can adjust the volume, pause it and move a slider to any time you wish so if you only wanted to watch a certain segment of a show you can do this with ease without having to watch the whole thing. You can also watch the shows in a window or a full screen.
I have used iPlayer a few times now, I find it fast to find and load the programme that I want to watch and find it good. Sometimes there is a small amount of buffering, this depends on your connection, I find it good at home, but a bit slower when using wifi in certain places.
I don't use iPlayer that often, only when I have forgotten to record something which will not be repeated. With various websites and catch up services available these days I wouldn't say that this is any better than others. It is only available in the UK, so if you feel the urgent need to use your hotel wifi in Spain to catch up on Eastenders for example, the chances ar you will be told it is not available in your area. Also, as the programmes are only available for a week if you are away on holiday it may not still be there to watch when you get back.
BBC Iplayer is a useful app but with most set top boxes having a recording ability and increasing popularity of remote recording I don't think it will be needed for much longer.
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BBC iPlayer
by catrocks03
Me and my boyfriend are actually cancelling our Sky subscription this week as we've realised we don't watch TV- live TV that is. Our Xbox has BBC iPlayer, 4od, Channel 5 catch up, Netflix and Youtube. Anything we want to watch we can watch via these programmes on our Xbox. This is useful for my 20 month old too, he has a few programmes ... he loves- rather than tuning in when theyre on TV I can just select them from BBC iPlayer.
BBC iPlayer has a few platforms- I use the online version- www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer and also as I mentioned the Xbox version.
On both platforms the main colour scheme is black, pink and white. The layout is somewhat different in comparison- it is suited to the device you'll be using to browse this- a mouse or a controller.
You can select programmes in a few ways:
- Search bar
- Browse through the Featured or Most Popular categories
- Through a genre selection
- Via an A-Z list (online version)
- Via choosing which BBC channel it was aired on.
Some programmes you can watch via the online version as they are being aired (they do say you need a TV license to do this although they can't check this.)
You can't yet watch programmes live on Xbox. I find programmes tend to appear 30-60 minutes after they've finished airing, occasionally a tad longer.
Not everything is shown on BBC iPlayer- films and non BBC programmes (e.g American Dad) won't be shown.
If you have slow internet you may also suffer with buffering. If you're using BBC iPlayer on a computer you can get around the buffering problem by downloading iPlayer Desktop on your computer and can then download programmes from the iPlayer website. You'll then be able to watch them once they're downloaded on your computer.
BBC iPlayer means I never have to worry about missing any of my favourite TV programmes (Eastenders in particular) and Tyler can watch Something Special (a favourite of his) at any time of day. You can pause, rewind and forward programmes. If you stop watching a programme halfway through then come back to it they remember the point you were at.
A great (and free) service!
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Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 11
by boredindunoon
From Cyberlink comes "the ultimate universal media player" in the form of PowerDVD 11, designed and developed to be able to playback anything from movies and videos to music and photographs anyway you like while giving you a huge array of options to do so. Sadly it fails from the outset...
I avoided reviewing ... "Cyberlink PowerDVD 11 Ultra" for several months in the hope that if I kept using the software I might grow to like it or find some redeeming feature. However I find that I really do have to agree with the majority of reviewers you find online. it's below average and comes with many problems.
To start with, I encounter an intermittent error when playing back Blu-ray discs, every now and again the software would close itself without warning and the movie alongside. Reinstalling made no difference, nor did any update or patch. I emailed Cyberlink's technical support and after four days I received a brief message from them telling to ensure my computer meets the minimum system requirements (for the record it easily surpasses them). The most annoying thing about this is that when I reopen the disc it doesn't resume from the last moment watched, instead you have to load though the copyright notices and menus first.
PowerDVD 11 Ultra takes far too long to load (much longer than Windows media player or any other media player I've used) and the software seems more concerned about loading adverts and random stuff from websites than actually doing what its designed to do.
The interface is not what it used to be, and is less user friendly (it took me a while just to work out how to select a source). There's no simple way to do anything with this version when most people just want to play a movie.
I feel Cyberlink has lost its way. Previous versions of this software were very note-worthy and provided users a powerful movie suite. If it wasn't broke why try and fix it.
I don't understand what could justify the cost of the package when it doesn't do a great deal more than cheaper (and more stable) packages. It's fat, slow and lazy - all the things you don't want.
Sadly for the moment I would have to advise avoiding PowerDVD 11, I can only hope version 12 improves on things massively.
The system requirements are several pages long, therefore I have simplified them below
- Microsoft Windows 7, Vista and XP (Service Pack 3)
- Blu-ray Drive (for Blu-ray playback) or DVD Drive (for DVD playback)
- ATI Radeon HD 2400 or NVIDIA Geforce 8800GT or above (with lastest drivers)
- 2 Gb RAM (Vista and Windows 7) 1 Gb (Windows XP)
- 300MB Hard Drive Space
(I'm a reviewer on Amazon, and some my reviews are copied from there to dooyoo. Please feel free to check out my Amazon profile under my real name of Mr Andrew M Kerr.)
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