Among the interesting news on using Flash (which I presume replaces RealPlayer) for streaming, and free content access on Cloud wifi hotspots, was this snippet:
bq. “But Mr Highfield said the BBC had not committed to offering the iPlayer to Mac and Linux users who want to download and keep content on their machines for a limited period.
bq. He said: ‘We need to get the streaming service up and look at the ratio of consumption between the services and then we need to look long and hard at whether we build a download service for Mac and Linux”
This is the BBC, and they’re not the real world, in a good way – every UK household is forced to be a ‘customer’ and Mac and Linux users pay their ‘customer costs’ aka the licence fee like everyone else.
We’re not talking about making stuff available in some obscure format, just the 3 dominant desktop OS’s that will ensure almost all UK computer owners are reached by the iPlayer download service.
The BBC have a duty of care to provide services to reach 99.99% of the population for whatever technical medium they choose to deliver content in.
UPDATE: There’s a good (as always) debate on the GeekUp list – concluding this is all about DRM and the lack of a cross platform DRM solution that will lock and protect content. It’s a fair point (in terms of highlighting the lack of a solution on Mac/Linux), but the BBC don’t seem to talk about this aspect of the iPlayer service much – I think they should. It’s also spurious; if they want, they can develop or outsource their won – I’m sure Adobe would love to build a DRM’d Mac iPlayer in AIR for example.
I know many households (mine, most of my friends, my parents,) that are Mac only – I can’t believe they don’t make up a significant minority of licence fee paying audience, not to mention the smaller, but important population of Linux users.
I could understand the delay/approach if this was rolling out a whole hardware infrastructure, like DAB, but this is software and the associated support services; wtf is the problem?
I’m a big advocate of the licence fee, but this issue really, really makes me annoyed.
Partly, I guess, because I don’t consume much, if any, BBC media via TV anymore :-) It’s podcasts, radio and the web – I don’t have to be a second class citizen in those mediums, and I shouldn’t be when it comes to iPlayer.