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Sep
15

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iPlayer pick: Finding a solution

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My iPlayer pick for this week – I say week but they normally either come daily for a week or once a month – is a double pick as I have two shows I’ve really enjoyed – one is even available in podcast form and both are radio.

The first of my picks features the dulcet tones of Derek Fowlds (aka Bernard Woolley) in a three part documentary series originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1997 but repeated on BBC 7.

It’s called How to beat Sir Humphrey and features Derek Fowlds reprising his Yes Minister role as Bernard Woolley reading a guide to the Civil Service as written by one of the original Yes, Minister creators, Antony Jay.

In the first part Anthony Jay explores public protest and even on to action committees in his guide to beating bureaucracy and officialdom.

Part two is HERE and Part three is HERE.

My second part is at the same time similar and completely opposite – it’s presented by someone that has always annoyed me as a broadcaster in the past and my first BBC Radio 5 Live pick – it’s the Christian O’Connell Solution.

I’ve already said he annoys me, I’ve never been able to stand more than a few minutes of his style before – but it’s either the guests, the format or something about BBC Radio 5 Live that matures and makes presenters more interesting.

The premise of the show is that Christian is joined by a panel of guests who then set about setting the world to rights and coming up with usually over simplified solutions to a number of issues.

The first show featured Bob Mills (I first saw him on Sky1 hosting Games World), David Tennant (no introduction needed) and Kirsten O’Brien (CBBC presenter who described the presenters at CBBC as gay, childless or don’t like kids).

It was available as a podcast so didn’t require any effort in getting it and was easy to skip if I didn’t like it – but I found myself enjoying it and wanting more after it was finished – so yeah, a surprise hit for me.

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Jan
20

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iPlayer Pick: 20 January

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Inspired by the brilliant Watchification, the Telegraph iPlayer Pick of the Day and the Radio Times Downloads index I’ve decided to post my own iPlayer picks.

PNG version of this image
Image via Wikipedia

I don’t really get to watch much in the way of linear television to be honest – I’m either reading a book, catching up on DVDs, listening to audiobooks & podcasts or reading/writing blogs.

So the iPlayer is my saviour – that and (when it works) ITV Player. It is how I watch more or less ALL of my television. Sometimes I find shows I want to watch by catching the end or half of them in the kitchen while eating dinner – something I find them on iPlayer itself and other times I find them through the pick links I posted above.

So I’m posting my first pick link for you – I caught half of this yesterday while eating dinner and watched the rest over lunch today on the iPlayer.

It is the Panorama special on the USA health care system. I really enjoyed Michael Moore‘s Sicko but it was a little (ok a lot) one sided. A great piece of entertainment and a good piece of journalism when preeching to the choir BUT lacking slightly in balance.

This piece from the BBC at least tries to look at both sides of the story.

You can watch it on the iPlayer HERE.

Barack Obama takes over as US President with a promise to dramatically change America and make it a fairer place. He is inheriting the worst economic crisis in almost a century, and a country so unequal that 23,000 people die every year because they cannot afford basic healthcare.

To close the gap between rich and poor Obama will have to take on the might of the corporate world, which wields enormous influence in Washington. Can he change the world’s most powerful country, and should he?

Embed code generated using my PIP code tool – probably won’t work as it was a quick and dirty bit of code to make my life a little easier.

This service may also fail at any moment due to code changes on the BBC iPlayer site.

Speaking of technology, social media and the BBC – Panorama is actually a pretty good example of how to do it.

The age old, but ever brilliant BBC documentary strand – now presented by the tall one himself, Jeremy Vine, has blogs from its reporters, makes use of Twitter and of Delicious.

You can watch parts of or the whole of each weeks show and every show is available on the iPlayer for a year – unlike the seven days other shows are up for.

The only problem with the Panorama use of Delicious is that they use it to link to themselves and their own stories instead of the better use of linking to ideas and research.

What I’d like to see is for them to set a date/show title tag and then post delicious links to the google searches researchers made while working on the story, links to websites of organisations mentioned in the story etc…

It would be nice to see them reply more on Twitter as well. Instead of using it to say ‘look this is what we’re doing’ they should be engaging in conversation, speaking to their followers and generally making the story a discussion instead of just using Twitter (a social network) as a place to sell their wares.

But that’s another post altogether – in fact one created already by the BBC Internet Blog.

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Dec
29

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Introducing Christmas Special

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I mentioned a week or so ago that I was planning a Christmas special of my Jersey new music show – well I did it, I recorded it, I filled out the compliance form, it was broadcast and now it is on the iPlayer.



Here is the playlist

Christian Jegard – Walking in the Air
Black Stats – Bright Lights
Joe Richardson – Frosty The Snowman
Seven Story Down – Ring Out Wild Bells
Rivers – Take Me Home
Valentines – Don’t Get Me Arrested For Christmas
Will Robinson – Christmas Wishlist
Kevin Pallot – Do They Know It’s Christmas
The Music Room – Mad Christmas Mix
Lafaro – Feel Good Hit of Christmas
Hedley Le Maistre – Lost in St Mary

Dec
22

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Move over iTunes

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Every evening my wife and I sit together in the living room to watch television – but we rarely ever watch the same show at the same time.

Instead my wife sits on the sofa to catch up on the soaps she’s recorded with Sky+ and I sit at my desk (right next to the sofa) to watch whatever I feel like at that moment on the iPlayer.

But this suits us perfectly – she gets to watch her soaps, I get to watch Charlie Brooker and we then meet in the middle with the amazingly brilliant Outnumbered (god is that show scarily realistic).

Outnumbered

But what’s this got to do with iTunes I hear you screaming – well I’ll tell you – in a minute. First I want to explain some of the ways I get my visual media fix while avoiding the strange world of Weatherford and Walfield.

Obviously there is the iPlayer (when I can get a decent enough internet connection to watch the streams – I don’t like downloading using the p2p client or even having it on my computer as it is a massive resource and bandwidth hog).

Then there is the other British broadcasters websites (Channel 4, ITV Player, Five) and even the Sky Player but they all have one thing or another wrong with them – none of them work as easily and seamlessly as the iPlayer – but at least they exist.

Sky Player

All bar the iPlayer require either the Windows Media Player plugin or the Silverlight plugin – now Silverlight will allow play on pretty much any platform but I find it is a dog to install and not as slick as Flash.

Demand Five

And now, with the launch of the new iPlayer Desktop app – that lets you download in Adobe Air/flash format straight to your desktop (with no P2P in sight) it has got even better.

If I’m going to rank Britains six big broadcasters in order of the usefulness and quality of their online video offerings it would go like this:

BBC iPlayer
ITV Player
Sky Player
Channel4
Demand Five

ITV is only JUST above Channel 4 – because of the silverlight option which is narrowly better than Windows Media – Sky is there because of the ease of use of their Live TV streams and some of the interesting innovations.

ITV Player

But they drop down below ITV purely on the grounds that there isn’t enough Free content on the platform – they get a big bonus for Live Streaming but lose out because of a lack of free on demand streams.

But again that isn’t really the point of the post. I’ve outlined how I watch live streaming video (I also occasionally use Side Reel VERY occasionally when there is nothing on one of the British broadcasters and will buy the odd show from iTunes where I’ve missed the seven day deadline and it isn’t series linked.

START READING FROM HERE TO AVOID RAMBLE PAIN

But for now lets move on to the iPlayer Desktop – the main reason I started writing this rambling shambles of a blog post.

iPlayer Body

Basically there is an all new version of the BBC Download Manager (if you’re a BBC Labs user that is) that drops p2p, drops Windows Media and moves to the ever increasingly brilliant (whatever Linux nuts might think) Adobe AIR platform.

At the moment the iPlayer Desktop is just that – a download manager. You select a show on the iPlayer, tell it to download to desktop, it puts it in a list and you click on it to watch it – simple.

But future versions of the application could get much more exciting. A future version could allow you to download radio podcasts, stream live TV and Radio (straight from within the application) and even allow you to find the content within the Desktop itself.

In fact that is the thing I’m most looking forward to – if I could just full screen the iPlayer Desktop and use it as a full environment to download, stream and do everything I need with the BBCs on demand content – then I could build a computer with the iPlayer Desktop running full screen and connect it to the TV.

I could then use it as a separate AV Channel on the TV and tune into it when there is nothing on Sky+ or when I get a chance to use the TV for a change.

As the new Desktop app has a series booking/scheduling coming soon (the ability to request every episode of a series downloaded directly when it becomes available) this would become even more useful.

I could just leave it running in the background, subscribe the shows I want and then dip in/out whenever I feel like it.

AND if the series booking was associated with a BBC login instead of with the application itself I could book shows from work and have them there when I got home that evening.

Obviously I could already do the streaming part with the iPlayer but there is something extra special associated with having an application full screened designed to do nothing but that.

After all – that’s why iTunes is so successful.

It would also be nice, at some point in the future when the BBC can negotiate a deal with Apple to allow them to use Apple DRM on files, to be able to sync with iTunes/iPod/iPhone/Apple TV throught the iPlayer Desktop – but we can dream.

Dec
9

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My mug on the iPlayer

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So much has happened during my blog post drought that I’m not even going to attempt to catch up on them all and share my thoughts.

Ryan Morrison - BBC Jersey Introducing

Instead I’ll pick one thing (even if it does happen to be about me) and write a few words on that instead – easier that way.

But first the excuse. The last few weeks have been some of the busiest I’ve ever had at work – long days, late nights and even more work from home. I’ve had three elections to cover, have been working alone (doing the work of two people) amongst many other things.

But that’s all calming down now and I can start to settle down a bit and do a little more blogging.

I’m probably not going to write about the all new BBC Radio index – however nice it looks. I probably won’t mention the addition of an Australian version to topgear.com or even the re-branding of ITV on demand to ITV Player with a very familiar looking logo.

What I probably will talk about at some point is the BBC Trusts views on BBC Worldwide, sharing iPlayer technology with other media companies and iPlayer day this Friday.

But first an iPlayer post a bit closer to home for me. Here is an embeded file from iPlayer to kick things off.


That is my show on BBC Radio Jersey – BBC Jersey Introducing. It has a /programmes section to go with it as well (even if the /microsite redirect doesn’t work yet).

But this post isn’t actually about the show itself (however much my ego would like it to be), no this is about BBC Local Radio coming to the iPlayer.

BBC JerseyThere are about 50 local radio stations that were previously available through the old BBC Radio Player system with about 40 hours worth of audio each.

This has now left the Radio Player and moved into the embeded (although not flash until next year) world of the iPlayer.

iPlayer

More or less overnight an additional 2000 odd hours of programming per week was added to the iPlayer interface and in turn to the /programmes database and some of it is actually pretty good.

The only real problem at the moment is the lack of flash and the fact that BBC Local shows don’t appear in search or in catagories – but that’s all going to be fixed in time.

There is a wider /programmes issue I’ve thought of though – as more BBC networks (local, national, tv and radio) move to use /programmes as their show database – more people are going to find shows through that than through the iPlayer.

This is fine – a great idea – but what I’d really like to see is the Listen link on a radio show in /programmes replaced with an audio version of the iPlayer player – like the one avaialble for TV.

Instead of popping up a box for me to listen to the show let me tune in right there on the /programmes page with a pop-up link over the top (like exists on the iPlayer itself).

iPlayer local radio

Also – I know this would be difficult to do in any clean way – but it would be nice for the Local Radio link under Listen Live in the pop-up to stay within the pop-up – maybe launch a map based page within the player or something – opening a parent window doesn’t work particularly welll to be honest.

But other than that – WAHEEY I have my own page on what is without a doubt the best online broadcasting system on the planet – sod Hulu – iPlayer all the way.

Oh and I sent an e-mail to Phill and Phils Perfect Ten this week so let see if I get a mention – that’s the other thing I’ll write about – going it alone in pod form for well known acts.

Oct
8

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Taking the iPlayer with you

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I’m a REALLY big fan of the iPlayer but there are a few things I’d like to see added and was preparing a post called ‘things I’d like added to the iPlayer’.

But the news that a ‘Download for Media Players‘ option has been added to certain iPlayer shows trumped that and caused me to write this post instead.

The story is basically that, as long as you’re using Windows, have a Portable Device capable of playing Windows Media DRM files – then you can click a button next to an iPlayer video and download it straight away.

When its downloaded you just click play and then stop and then transfer it to your media player.

This is brilliant and something long lacking from the otherwise brilliant iPlayer service – unfortunately in its current form it’s about as much use as a turnip in a CD player.

Actually thats a lie – its useful in that it means I can download an iPlayer video without having to piss about with the stupid Download Manager and P2P (something my ISP seems to hate – my net connection grinds to a halt anytime I try to bit torrent or do any form of P2P stuff).

BBC iPlayer

BBC iPlayer

But in terms of transferring it to my media player – I have the same type of portable media player as about 80% of all people with a portable media player – an iPod, specifically an iPod Nano.

And iPods won’t/don’t play Windows Media Files. The reason the BBC have them as Windows Media files is because they have to contain time limited DRM (whether you agree with this or not it’s a fact that – for the iPlayer to continue to operate – DRM has to be in place).

Apple produced a DRM system of its own that now has a time limit facility – it can expire the file after a set amount of time (currently two days for rented movies).

So, in theory the BBC could also offer an iPod friendly version of these downloads. Unfortunately they can’t because Apple won’t license the iPod DRM – if they would licence it we’d be able to put the files on our iPods, iPhones and Apple TVs.

Here’s what Anthony Rose said on the BBC Internet Blog post about it “Unfortunately, Apple keeps its DRM technology close to its chest and has so far not licensed that technology to third parties.

“This means that as of today, it’s not technically possible for us to make rights-protected BBC iPlayer programmes available for download from the bbc.co.uk/iplayer website in a format compatible with Apple devices.

“That’s a major missing piece for us and a disappointment for Apple device owners, so please know that this has our full attention.”

So I think we need to start a ‘free the DRM’ campaign to try and convince Apple to let the BBC wrap their iPlayer files in a format that can be played on Apple devices.

Otherwise I’m going to consider a Zune or Walkman for my next media player – after all a new iPod WAS on my agenda and its not like iTunes (other than for podcasts) is THAT important anymore.

But I do have a question for the BBC Radio guys – why aren’t the radio shows available for portable download as well? Being able to transfer any BBC Radio Show would be a MASSIVELY useful tool – they’re not even available for download yet.

Surely wrapped in DRM you can get clearance – even if only for the speech based shows.

I know I can get some shows through podcasts but not everything – I want to be able to download (even heavily DRMd) shows like Just a Minute and the Afternoon Play to my portable device (hopefully the iPod eventually – see above) and listen like I would to a podcast – in my time, my terms and my way.

Jul
16

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Writing reviews of TV

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Bonekickers on BBC One Do you read reviews of television shows before/after they’ve been on air? Either to find out what they’re going to be like or whether others agreed with you? Do you go to the pros or the enthusiasts?
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Jun
25

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All New iPlayer

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The BBC iPlayer and the BBC iPlayer Radio have joined together in a love embrace that sees the two share a single interface.
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Jun
13

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Monsters, TV and NASA

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Picture the scene – hundreds of geeks armed with laptops in one of the icons of British media technology, a couple of monsters, a full broadcast TV station to play with and NASA.

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