Rich Fiscus
16 Oct 2007 15:47
After comments suggesting that there might not be support for any operating system besides Windows for the BBC's iPlayer service, BBC Director of Future Media and Tehnology Ashley Highfield was overruled by the BBC Trust.
A spokesman for the regulatory body noted "We required platform neutrality across downloads, Streaming and cable," referring to the conditions under which the iPlayer program was initially approved. He added "We would expect BBC management to come back to us if they are planning any changes to iPlayer."
On Monday, Highfield 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," adding "It comes down to cost per person and reach at the end of the day."
The iPlayer, which is designed to eventually allow everyone who pays television license fees to download BBC programs and keep them for as long as a month, has been criticized since it's public beta began earlier this year because it only runs on computers running Windows. Open source advocates, and even Macintosh users, have complained that former Microsoft executives now working on the iPlayer have specifically catered to Windows users at the expense of everyone else.
The problem, according to the BBC, is DRM. While they require it for all iPlayer downloads, their DRM solution only works on Windows right now. Although this was expressed in the original iPlayer proposal, which stated that the development team couldn't commit to a specific date to have non-Windows DRM in place. The BBC Trust response at the time said "catch-up television over the internet should become platform neutral within a reasonable time Frame."
In a related announcement, Adobe Systems announced that the iPlayer will be using their Flash software to add streaming capabilities to the downloads available already. This should ensure that at least streaming will be available for Macintosh and Linux users.
Source: BBC News