iPlayer and on demand online

There is a story on The Register at the moment about the Venice project, a new streaming video service from the team behind Kazaa and Skype.

It all sounds very nice, very pretty and fairly useful. However, unless they want major lawsuits it will be just like every other tame video app service (Democracy and Zudeo).

I’m not saying these applications are a bad thing, they do a really good job of bringing top quality indie programming together and making it easier to find - but for people looking for mass media programming, the big budget stuff from the big studios - they don’t quite cut it (and probably won’t for a long time without a finance method).

Interestingly the BBC does seem to be noticing something in the Zudeo platform. They will be launching a channel on the platform with a series of classic shows including Fawlty Towers and Red Dwarf.

Even that though will be on a pay per play basis and heavily covered with DRM.

The Register article talks about the BBC iPlayer and how it seems to be lagging behind because its about to go into another trial.

This is wrong, or at least its wrong as far as I understand. The iPlayer will still be launching to the general public in the first quarter of 2007, the iPlayer in its original format with BBC programming available to download for free.

However there will be an extra element of the iPlayer, the BBC Archive element that will let you download thousands of hours of BBC Archive programming for free - that will go into another limited trial, not the whole iPlayer.

Last thing I heard almost everyone in BBC New Media is working flat out on the iPlayer to get it ready for launch in the new year. Apparently nearly every aspect of audio/video on bbc.co.uk and through the iPlayer app will be inside the iPlayer branding.

This will include the current news/sport players and the BBC Radio Player.

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