BBC iPlayer now available via Red Button

[jem]

Just noticed that the BBC iPlayer has become available from the red button on BBC1 (and presumably the other BBC channels as well). Had a quick look at it, not too bad, reasonably speedy at least on a V+, menu structure is OK but not brilliant, unfortunately picture quality at least on the few programmes I've skimmed through leaves a lot to be desired. Very blocky with obvious compression artifacts.

I've only ever downloaded programmes from iPlayer and played them directly on my TV from a PC, so I can't say how the quality compares to streaming from the BBC site.

Still it's well worth a look.

[mikey]

I cant get into it at the moment. "There is a problem loading the BBC iPlayer service" or stuck on "please wait".
Must be very busy!

[punky]

Working great here.

Quality is easily as good as live BBC. Much better than the VM's on demand. Nice interface, quite fast too. You can still skip, etc. If only all channels had it. Presumably the BBC iPlayer traffic is kept separate from your broadband traffic allowance.

Very impressed

[daveetwo]

Working fine here in hampshire.Looks good

[the-cable-guy]

yeah its here in Sheffield aswell like.

[chickendippers]

So what's happened to the BBC programs in the normal catch up TV section? Is it still there?

[Horace]

Yummy transparent menus and accurate cuts to the program with an intro like C4OD unlike the roughly timed catch up. The search works very nicely too.

From what I've read elsewhere, I-player will be part of the catch-up menus in future so I'd imagine they'll remove BBC content from there, for the time being tho' catch-up BBC is still available. This is supposed to be a soft-launch, probably to iron out any bugs before it goes prime-time.

[chickendippers]

I hope they don't remove BBC content from the regular catch up menus, it would be highly inconvenient to be forced to load up a seperate menu just for BBC programming.

[Horace]

I-Player uses the same systems as Catch-up so it'd be no different except with prettier menus and a search and with more reliable content (1 hour after transmission). As I said, this is a soft-launch via the red-button. Complete integration into the catch-up menu system is planned.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/

[grabbi]

Originally Posted by Gavin

Working great here.

Quality is easily as good as live BBC. Much better than the VM's on demand. Nice interface, quite fast too. You can still skip, etc. If only all channels had it. Presumably the BBC iPlayer traffic is kept separate from your broadband traffic allowance.

Very impressed

+1!

[Nikesh]

Just tried it out and I'm impressed. Pretty quick and I like the transparent windows. Also, I find the list easier to navigate through. Nice one!

[OLD BOY]

Yes, it's quite impressive and looks good. I particularly like the search facility, whereby you can type in the name of the programme you are looking for with your remote control.

More programmes than before on there, too.

[BBKing]

Presumably the BBC iPlayer traffic is kept separate from your broadband traffic allowance.

Yes, the content comes down through the TV frequencies, outside the IP streams.

Worked fine here, if a bit slow on my non-V+ SA STB. Once you anticipate the lag and work out how to sort the menus it's a bit better, but the viewing experience itself (last week's HIGNFY) was fine. Can see this getting a lot of use, it's a killer app.

[sherer]

damn if only my red button worked :-(

need to call VM to get that sorted so will do so tonight and hopefully I can start to use iplayer.

What i on there at the moment ? Is there a listing anywhere ?

[punky]

I presume its the same as the Interweb BBC iPlayer content. The good thing about iPlayer over Catch Up is it has more content, including the less popular shows like Eggheads.