BBC Brings iPlayer to iPhone, iPod Touch
14 March 2008The BBC has launched a version of its iPlayer video-on-demand service for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch.
The announcement marks the first time the service has been available on portable devices.
The BBC said that the iPhone and iPod touch are able to stream shows from the iPlayer Web site over Wi-Fi networks. The iPhone cannot stream BBC video over the cell network. Apparently, the EDGE mobile network used by the iPhone is too slow for streaming video.
The original iPlayer version, which is still in use, downloads TV shows to a user’s PC and allows them to watch the episodes within 30 days after the download. The BBC has certified it only to run on Microsoft Windows XP. However, many users say it also works well on the new Vista version of Windows. It does not, however, work on Macs or PCs that run Linux.
A new iPlayer version, launched around Christmas 2007, uses Adobe’s Flash technology to stream video to the viewer’s PC.
The iPlayer 2 works on Windows, Mac, Linux or other PCs that run Adobe Flash. Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch do not run Adobe Flash, which ruled out those devices until now.
When it announced the Flash version of the iPlayer, the BBC specifically said it had not yet committed to offering the download version of iPlayer to Mac and Linux users. BBC’s director of future media and technology Ashley Highfield said Beeb’s priority was to get the Flash version up and running.
Then, he said, the BBC would look at the usage ratios between the two - download and streaming. At that point, he said, the BBC would need to look long and hard at whether to build a download service for Macs and Linux PCs. It comes down to “cost per person and reach at the end of the day,” he said.
iPlayer on More Devices Soon
According to a BBC developer, the company is currently working on other versions of the iPlayer for “many more” devices.
Rose also said on the blog, “We started with iPhone because it is the device most optimized for high-quality video currently available.”
He added, “It displays the BBC iPlayer site and BBC programs nicely.”
The corporation has agreed to a deal with Wi-Fi hotspot company The Cloud to provide all BBC online services for free at its 7,500 hotspots.
A version of iPlayer for Virgin Media customers is expected later this month.
Flash?
The big question was how the BBC would get around the lack of support for Flash on the iPhone.
Anthony Rose said on the BBC Internet blog, “We’re not using the new Apple SDK, nor are we using the much-rumored Flash for iPhone (no, we haven’t seen it, either). Instead, we’re creating 516 Kbps streams (400 Kbps H.264 video, 116 Kbps AAC audio) that show off BBC programs brilliantly on an iPhone.”
The Cost Is in Producing High Quality Video
He continued, “There’s been a lot of press about the amount of money that the BBC spent developing iPlayer, but what most people don’t realize is that only a small fraction of the cost went into the parts that you see (ie, the Web site), with most of the cost going into the development of a high-quality content production backend that’s able to crank out 400 hours of content each week to the BBC’s high standards (frame-accurate in and out points; manual quality control; provision of subtitled and signed versions; guidance-labeling for stuff not suitable for children; rich metadata, etc.).
“That probably doesn’t sound too hard, but consider this: Every day, tapes for the programs that you see on TV (the pre-recorded ones, not live events) are retrieved from our secure archive facility, delivered to our play-out center at Red Bee Media, and sequenced for play-out to TV. As you’ve probably noticed, BBC One hardly ever goes down, so this system has been optimized over many years and is tightly run. Into that process we needed to add the transcoding of that content for our various iPlayer platforms, including PC iPlayer (eg the one available at www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer), TV iPlayer (available soon on Virgin Media), and now portable devices.”
Still Sounds Easy?
In the light of recent reports that Apple has been blamed by some for the delay in the availability of its iTunes movie rentals, it’s fitting to point out that even when Apple gets the rights to sell these movies, the process the studios have to go through to make them available to consumers can be grueling.
In a nutshell, this is what the BBC, along with other content providers, has to do to transcode its video:
- Every program needs to be transcoded in a Flash version (for PC streaming), a WMV version (Windows PC download), MPEG2 (TV set-top box), H.264 (Web browser) and, in the future, a variety of other formats.
- The BBC has a transcoding farm of over 50 rack-mount PCs, most of which are running dual quad-core Xeon CPUs.
- As content arrives off tape or off-air, it’s fed into the transcoding platform.
- Those input files are encoded at over 50 Mbps, which makes them huge - around 25GB per hour of incoming video.
- With eight BBC TV channels plus 18 regional news broadcasts, the BBC must deal with up to 24 simultaneous incoming programs, for a peak data rate of over 1 Gbps per second of incoming video.
- The BBC transcodes those source files into each supported output format. The various file formats take different amounts of time to transcode - it takes roughly twice as much CPU time to create a 1 Mbps WMV files as it takes to create a 500 Kbps Flash file, according to Rose.
- The transcoded files are then “pushed” to streaming and P2P download head-end servers, and rights management (i.e. content encryption) is applied as needed.
- Then program metadata is delivered into the BBC’s database.
- As soon as both metadata and the first of the available media files for a given program have been received and are automatically confirmed by the system, then that program becomes available in the BBC iPlayer.
That’s nine steps.
BBC’s Internet Efforts Win Praise
The BBC’s efforts have won kudos from long time watchers of TV networks and their Web strategies.
“BBC is so far ahead of any TV network in the world when it comes to implementing an Internet strategy and made-for-the-Net is an anvil we’ve been pounding for years,” says Rider Research senior analyst Charles Hall.
Just the other day, the BBC also launched a new version of bbc.co.uk for mobile devices. The new version emulates the new appearance of the online version of bbc.co.uk.
The new design is said to offer a consistent user experience with easier navigation. New content on the site includes a new section for BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat with up-to-date entertainment headlines and pictures.
BBC controller of mobile Matthew Postgate said, “The refresh of our mobile browser service comes at a critical moment in the development of mobile in the UK. It is the first step to transforming bbc.co.uk on mobile into a much richer and more engaging experience. In the coming months, our mobile proposition will develop significantly, and include coverage of the summer’s biggest sport events including Euro 2008, the Beijing Olympics and Wimbledon.”
The launch of the refreshed mobile service will be supported by a four-week marketing campaign that will target football (i.e. soccer) fans across the UK with a number of TV, outdoor and ambient initiatives.
In-ground media and ad-vans at a number of football matches will urge fans to text “Football” to 81010 for a link to the BBC football site. At selected football grounds, Bluetooth technology is being used to send fans a link to the site.
The television trailer will run on BBC channels starting March 17.
The BBC’s mobile browser service attracts 2.7 million unique users per month, making it the No. 1 mobile site in the UK, according to Nielsen Mobile, an increase of one million year-on-year (59%).
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