Too many players

I’ve blogged about this before but thought it worthy of another entry - mainly because new versions of most of the files I was talking about have been released and the BBC iPlayer is a little bit closer.

What am I talking about? Video players - or more specifically software for downloading legal video files.

Right now on my computer I have Joost (no I don’t have any more invites), Vuze, Democracy, iTunes (although not much use in the UK) and 4OD from Channel 4.

Democracy is a great source of the user created stuff and video podcasts, Vuze has that and some really cool HD content (as well as some good paid stuff for those outside the UK), iTunes has the big name US shows (again if you’re in the US), Joost has the slightly bigger budget, smaller TV station style content and 4OD has pretty much everything Channel 4 puts out.

So right now I already have five players and I need them all to get a full rounded set of content - that doesn’t include the online services and the UK broadcaster services yet to launch.

The BBC is launching the MUCH talked about iPlayer soon - a service that, as well as download software will also be the brand used for all audio/video on bbc.co.uk - so I’ll need a sixth if I want BBC content.

Then ITV is planning a system if you’re interested in ITV stuff - and they are starting to produce more shows I want to watch - including Kingdom with Stephen Fry - so I’ll need a seventh player for ITV content.

Then if I want some of the American stuff it looks like I’ll need the SKY player as I doubt iTunes will be selling US shows in the UK - SKY will buy the download rights - unless Branson launches a Virgin Player first.

So it could be, before the years out - if I want to have a full rounded set of video content on my computer, web services aside, I will need to have around 10 pieces of software installed - most of which will run at startup and kill system resources.

I understand that broadcasters want to go it alone, launch their own service, set their own price and not have a middle man but the advantage of a middle man is that I only have to have one piece of software installed.

One of the things I’ve noticed with Vuze is that it gives you links to specific shows, and I’m sure if I looked hard enough an RSS feed as well.

This is what I want ALL the players to offer - an RSS feed. That way someone could build an application or website that pulled feeds from all the different services together into a simple, easy to use interface so that I could tell it my favourite shows, have it pull them up and then let me click on it to launch the relevant player.

I don’t want to have 10 players open to find one or two shows (especially if I don’t know who holds the rights to the show).

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