Today the BBC announced on the news that they will release the on-demand iPlayer so licence payers can watch programmes up to 7 days after broadcast free of charge on their PC Unfortunately my demographic of non-ethnic, male professional, IT aware meant I couldn’t take part in the iPlayer trials, but now the beta will be available to everyone on July 27th. Like 4OD and Sky Anytime before the iPlayer will only support Windows XP SP2 as an OS, so my Vista Home Media Center still can’t participate in any of the current on-demand services available to me. The ITV version is coming soon, but I’m not sure what their criteria will be.
There is a darker side to this though, as both Sky Anytime and 4OD silently install Kontiki P2P service so that your PC now becomes a distributed server for other users. There’s nothing inherently wrong with P2P as a technology, but you are giving up bandwidth to act as an unpaid server for Sky or Channel 4, and doing so without being told or compensated. You also have no control over how much bandwidth you contribute and when its used. I will be looking into how I can take control of my bandwidth when I have time and will post my results. Not sure what technology the iPlayer service will employ.
