Why the BBC's iPlayer is a Multi-Million Pound Disaster

AnotherDaveB writes "As part of 'Beeb Week', The Register discusses the 'multi-million pound failure' that is the iPlayer. 'When the iPlayer was commissioned in 2003, it was just one baffling part of an ambitious £130m effort to digitise the Corporation's broadcasting and archive infrastructure. It's an often lamented fact that the BBC wiped hundreds of 1960s episodes of its era-defining music show Top of the Pops, including early Beatles performances, and many other popular programmes ... The iPlayer was envisaged as the flagship internet 'delivery platform'. It would dole out this national treasure to us in a controlled manner, it was promised, and fire a revolution in how Big TV works online. For better or worse it's finally set to be delivered with accompanying marketing blitz this Christmas - more than four years after it was first announced.'"

if only

[oliverthered]

If only they had spent those 4 years getting Dream [google.co.uk] working so that they weren't tied to Windows.

It beggars belief...

[DrXym]

... how they could screw this up so bad.

I really don't understand what the hell possessed them to lash together Windows Media Player, IE, ActiveX and some proprietary P2P downloader. It doesn't even work on Windows properly. Just using a different version of Windows, IE or WMP from the ones requires will break the software.

They could have produced something akin to Azureus 3 - a channel listings and downloader application written in Java that more or less ran anywhere. They could wrap a native control for video playback on Windows and let other systems launch with default system player for the content. Let users decide how long they want to keep content and which player / device to use to watch it on. If the BBC were paranoid about the massive market for bootleg episodes of Eastenders, they could even watermark the content to the user who exported it and prosecute them as appropriate. It means users can do what they like with data for their own personal use and the BBC is not burdened with DRM issues or supporting issues with all the versions of WMP, IE & Windows in existence.

Meanwhile over on ITV.com

[Rogerborg]

I can watch swathes of (DRMd) content running in Windows Media Player inside my browser, with nothing further to install. Total cost to ITV - the DRM key. Time to market: 0 days.

Still, I'm sure a lot of consultants got some very nice expenses-lunches out of designing the iPlayer.

No mention of associated licensing costs

[BristolCream]

While the article covers off the development and infrastructure costs for iPlayer (stated at 4.5 million), it makes no mention of video royalty fees, which I understand to be around 7.8 million mark.

~$260 MILLION??

[lobosrul]

Can someone explain how this program cost them roughly 260 million USD? Seems like one of the biggest wastes of money in history. All of their recent programming was already digitizes, how else could it have been broadcast on freeview? All they needed were a few "geeks" to re-encode them to a higher compression tech (xvid or x264). Here's how you can make your money back. Sell your back catalog to people not in the UK. I really like a lot of programs on BBC (& ITV and a few Channel 4 shows). I'd gladly pay $1/hour for older programs and $2/hour for anything less than one year old. Heres the catch though. I demand something thats at least nearly DVD quality (720x576 2mbs x264 would be nice), and I demand to be able to play it on any device of my choosing, so no DRM. Or (wink wink nudge nudge) DRM that is easy to strip.

Re:Fucking whiners.

[LingNoi]

Seriously Slashdot, FUCK OFF already. The very fact that this system exists is worthwhile.

Based on what? People will keep using bit torrent and ignore this piece of crap.

Meanwhile 4.5m pounds that could have been spent on digitising important historical footage has been wasted on executive lunches and meetings.

Think you can develop something better? THEN FUCKING DO IT.

OK. First cancel the iPlayer and raise more funds to Digitise the remaining old footage. At the same time we should be looking at backing up that data at a separate site.

When we have digitised all that footage which is rotting away right now then we can think about wasting money on crap like the iPlayer to make it available, but since the copyrights would have expired they might as well just put it on youtube or bittorrent it.

Re:Value for money?

[Serious Callers Only]

Given the limitations, you'd be better off buying a DVR (really quite cheap nowadays) and just recording shows on that - at least they don't disappear after some arbitrary time limit, you can move them to your computer, and your bandwidth isn't chewed up by the P2P application. I'm disappointed the BBC has used our money to pay for such a pointless service, and on top of that it's paying a known monopolist for the privilege of serving only a proportion of the population.

They could have used this opportunity to drive the transition from TV to Internet broadcasting, but instead they're trying to make the Internet into Television. There are already many avenues for selling their content online, and they should be focussing on that, rather than trying to broadcast over the internet.

PS Re the histrionics in the article - you shouldn't expect better of a rag like the register, it's very close to the tabloids in style - not news but entertainment.

Re:Fucking whiners.

[Anonymous Coward]

TWAT! Give us back our FUCKING money and then we'll FUCK OFF. This is a PUBLIC broadcaster. It should all be open source - free access for all and no it isn't better than nothing since it IS nothing, inaccessible, useless, nothing.

Sack the wanker from Microsoft!

executive perks

[pbhj]

AC >>> "Hey, the executive who agreed the deal may be working for the BBC today, but he won't be next year!"

I think you're being overly optimistic. The executive may be working for the BBC today but he's also looking after his mate from Oxford who owns the production company he just booked for next season and hearing a pitch from his own^H^H^H wife's company for a lucrative deal ... allegedly.