I’m going to admit to something but you can’t tell anybody. For years I’ve been saying that I hate all American sitcoms – they just don’t get comedy (with the exception of The Office US which is a British creation anyway). But that isn’t the revelation.

What I’m going to tell you is that … well I actually like an American sitcom – it’s brilliantly funny, really clever, sweetly geeky and full of ‘references’ that make me smile.

It’s not overly and painfully scripted like some US comedies can be and it has a brain.

You may even have already spotted it – I started writing this post after the pilot episode aired but got sidetracked – well we’re now about six episodes into the UK broadcast schedule and I still love it – so decided now was the time to stand up and tell you all that I love the ‘Big Bang Theory‘.

It’s basically a show about two flats – on one side you have a couple of geeky/nerdy theoretical physicists who’ve lived there a while and on the other side you have the hot blond girl who’s just moved in.

From the description it doesn’t sound great – before watching it I pictured the girl laughing and making fun of the guys and the guys doing insanely stupid, stereotypical comic geek things – I was wrong.

The girl lets US the audience laugh at the geeks (or in my case feel sorry for them / remember those times myself / agree with a lot of what they’re talking about) and actually you get the feeling she really likes them herself – even if she has no idea what they’re saying.





The show uses a number of British sitcom tricks like regular background sub-plot points and due to there being geeky characters – very sarcastic dialogue.

I have good feelings about the rest of the series and really hope it continues to live up to the early brilliance.

In fact I think it’s a testament to how much I like the series that, despite the US broadcast being about five episodes ahead of ours – I still haven’t given in to downloading it – instead preferring to wait for the high quality broadcast version on Channel 4.

The other thing brilliant about the series is that it has a top quality, sung theme tune from a known band – the tune is called Big Bang Theory and is by the Bare Naked Ladies (yes I’ve downloaded it from iTunes).





You can legally download it for £1.89 per episode from the iTunes store or you could probably get it from 4OD as a rental although I haven’t got 4OD installed anymore so I don’t know for sure.

It’s probably a post in its own right but the reason I no longer have 4OD installed is because the iPlayer and ITV.com have shown me that a better model is the web stream model over the separate app download model so until Channel 4 move online I’m leaving them alone – I used to pay to rent a fair bit as well.

Great post by Gareth McLean over on his Guardian TV Blog asking if the Massive American Studio Sitcom is dead (like Friends).

TV programmes have been available to buy from the iTunes store in the UK for a while now – but until a few weeks ago there was so little on there worth buying (nothing of note made in the UK) that I never bothered to look at it.





Fortunately a few weeks ago the BBC became the first British broadcaster to sell their shows through iTunes – it was about five or six shows at first but that has since increased and now it’s acting as a sort of ‘long term catchup’ service with key BBC shows being put on the store eight days after broadcast.

Now a second British broadcaster has joined the BBC – Channel 4 have a number of iconic shows like Spaced, Black Books, Peep Show, Teachers and Shameless on the iTunes Store alongside the documentary strand, Monachy and the teen drama Skins.

This isn’t the first time Channel 4 have sold their shows online – you’ve been able to buy episodes of all of the above shows on the 4OD player for the past year or more – but that is a only a short term rental model.

You pay 49p and you can keep it for 30 days (or seven days after the first play). This is basically a pay for extension of the existing free catch-up service.

Now I can pay £1.89 per episode or £7.99 per series and keep it forever – I can even put it on my iPod (if it wasn’t for the fact that the video file is so bloody huge!).

I’ve spoken about the picture quality and size before when I wrote about the BBC joining the platform so I won’t go into that again – except to say that it looks great.

What excites me the most is major UK Broadcasters stepping outside of their own platforms – those platforms have become purely catch-up services with no pretence at being long term purchase solutions (god I sound like a sales wanker – sorry!).

I wonder, now that iTunes is starting to prove itself as a UK video platform whether Kangaroo will still go ahead?

I, and I’m sure everybody else with a Apple podcaster account have just received a series of Tips on making my Video Podcast more usable on the new Apple TV.

I don’t have a video podcast – yet – but for those of you that are thinking of launching one but have never signed up a podcast with iTunes – here they are:

Greetings from the iTunes Podcasting Team:

The Apple TV “Take Two” software upgrade has been released, making it easier than ever for people to enjoy your podcasts wherever there is a TV. A whole new audience will understand the benefits of podcasts as soon as they experience them this way.

Recommendations to help you create the best possible experience for users:

1. Apple TV viewers are immediately aware of video quality. If you encode your video podcast at 320×240, we strongly encourage you to increase the resolution to 640×480 or 640×360 (depending on the aspect ratio of your source files). When encoded well, video podcasts at this resolution look great on Apple TV and still play on iPhone and video-compatible iPods. To ensure compatibility, we recommend that you encode using QuickTime’s “Movie to iPod” preset or Compressor’s “Apple > Apple Devices > H.264 for iPod video and iPhone 640×480″ preset.

2. When you perform the final encode on your video, enable fast starting. Most recent versions of QuickTime enable this setting automatically. But it’s easy to undo the setting by making changes to the file after the encode. If you do make a change after the encode, be sure to “Save As” again.

3. Apple TV displays a large version of the podcast art (the file referenced in the tag). We recommend that you use a 600×600 square JPG or PNG file.

4. Several new introductory video tutorials have been developed for iTunes, including one for podcasts. If your web site offers how-to information for new podcast users, please consider linking to it.

For those hosting podcasts on their own servers, consider the following recommendations:

5. To reduce wait times, iTunes and Apple TV use byte-range requests in some circumstances. For example, Apple TV 2.0 employs this functionality when the user accesses the podcast directly over the Internet. We recommend hosting episode files on HTTP/1.1 servers that correctly support the HTTP byte-range request specification.

6. Please ensure that your HTTP servers return the correct MIME types in the Content-Type header. Failing to do so can create errors. A list of MIME types can be found in the iTunes podcast technical spec.

What inspires me most about this is how seriously Apple are taking video podcasts and how much they’re putting them right up there with TV shows on their new broadcast platform.

When you’ve got things like the brilliant MacBreak with Leo Laporte or a whole host of shows from Revision 3 or even Britains own Channel Flip (Wil Harris) – who needs traditional TV?

Here’s something from Channel Flip





Here is something from Revision 3





Add to all of that, and more that I didn’t mention, the prospect of BBC shows you can pay to download and in future BBC shows you can rent for free as well as a whole host of other TV shows and movies – Apple TV is looking like a good platform.

The post was a follow up to one he made asking users for tips on how to get content from his PC to the television – so he could watch downloads on the big screen. The follow up post was a response to comments on the original – but also included a small throwaway line in the middle.

He was talking about the AppleTV and its improvements and how this could be the idea solution for getting downloaded video content on to a TV without having to mess about with wires and software.

He then went on to say that “This, coupled with Apple’s (long anticipated) move to a rental model, means that we can look to getting BBC iPlayer onto this platform too, as we should be able to use the rental functionality to allow our programmes to be downloaded, free, but retained for a time window, and then erased, as our rightsholders currently insist.”

Exciting stuff and as the rental model also works on Desktop and laptop machines – it could be a way for the BBC to offer iPlayer downloads for the Mac as well as Windows – I wonder whether this would be through a BBC iPlayer section of iTunes or whether the Beeb would be able to get permission to use Fairplay Rental on iPlayer files.

These are all great concepts, giving me the chance to watch almost any show broadcast on that channel for up to a week after broadcast – I’ve used the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 offerings quite a lot – mainly when I forget to Sky+ something or when my wife already has two shows lined up for that time.

But these solutions are never really going to hit mainstream – ok so they’re getting really good numbers – more than a million viewers since Christmas watching around 3.5 million shows – but that doesn’t mean it will hit mainstream.

I’ve spoken to a number of people who have said they’ll never use the iPlayer because they don’t want to sit in front of a small screen watching TV when they’ve got a big screen in their living room for doing that on.

I know a number of people that HAVE already used the service – mainly people bored in an office needing a lunchtime fix – after all it is pretty easy to use – select a show and press play! But I think there are more people out there that would like to use a catch-up service but can’t get their head around it.

These people might have WiFi at home (after all most ISPs offer it as a default set-up option now) but don’t have the computer skills to get the streaming services working OR don’t want to watch on a small screen.

Enter the set-top-box idea.

Basically for the iPlayer and all related products to reach mass appeal it needs to be as easy to use as Freeview or Sky+ – it really needs to be on a set-top-box that plugs into the scart socket of the TV and just works when you turn it on.

But I don’t think for a second the BBC, ITV or any broadcaster should think about building their own box – but if BBC, ITV and Channel 4 released an SDK or similar for their catch-up services to hardware manufacturers it would mean we could start to see boxes with iPlayer streaming built in.

On such box is the newly revamped Apple TV – it would fit the bill (even if it is a bit costly) as it already plays streamed video from You Tube, lets you download directly from the iTunes store and has podcast download support.

An iPlayer menu on the Apple TV could give you access to the iPlayer streaming service, could eventually include the iPlayer download service (maybe with Fairplay DRM) and give you access to all the BBC audio podcasts (and video podcasts when they re-launch them).

To me this would be the real missing link – it would mean I could comfortably sit on the sofa and watch anything from the iPlayer without having to get up to my computer and click on a new video everytime one finishes (I already have video from my computer displayed on the TV but it isn’t ideal).

It’s also probably the only thing that would cause me to spend £200 on the device. But it doesn’t have to be limited to the Apple TV – there’s no reason why the XBox 360 shouldn’t support iPlayer streaming or any other third party device that might come out in future.

In fact there’s no reason why a Freeview box manufacturer couldn’t add WiFi and build in an on-demand menu.