A very reliable BBC source told me today that Ashley Highfield (the head of the BBC's new media division) plans to launch a specially built iPhone/iPod touch portal for iPlayer "within weeks".
I would have to assume that this means the streaming iPlayer service rather than the download one, as if they'd been given access to the timed expiry of Fairplay within that time period an iPlayer for Mac desktops would be coming at the same time (which isn't mentioned at all, so doesn't appear to be the case).
However, the streaming service currently uses Flash. It is possible they're going to start streaming in Quicktime, but I really, really doubt it (the BBC are using Flash Media Server 3 because it uses a transmission protocol that hasn't been reverse engineered yet, and Adobe are doing a lot of work on Flash's DRM for the BBC to make those streams impossible (or at least sufficiently difficult) to capture - Quicktime doesn't really have any of that).Unless there's some form of proprietry portal coming just for iPhone users, ala YouTube, that's invisible to the rest of the internet.
The other possibility is that the BBC have been told by Apple as part of the iTunes negotiations that the iPlayer will have Flash very shortly...
No idea if this means the recently rebranded radio player as well. Sorry. Wouldn't have thought so, though they are supposed to be getting much more unified in terms of formats, so it will probably happen eventually.
Phazer
I would have to assume that this means the streaming iPlayer service rather than the download one, as if they'd been given access to the timed expiry of Fairplay within that time period an iPlayer for Mac desktops would be coming at the same time (which isn't mentioned at all, so doesn't appear to be the case).
However, the streaming service currently uses Flash. It is possible they're going to start streaming in Quicktime, but I really, really doubt it (the BBC are using Flash Media Server 3 because it uses a transmission protocol that hasn't been reverse engineered yet, and Adobe are doing a lot of work on Flash's DRM for the BBC to make those streams impossible (or at least sufficiently difficult) to capture - Quicktime doesn't really have any of that).Unless there's some form of proprietry portal coming just for iPhone users, ala YouTube, that's invisible to the rest of the internet.
The other possibility is that the BBC have been told by Apple as part of the iTunes negotiations that the iPlayer will have Flash very shortly...
No idea if this means the recently rebranded radio player as well. Sorry. Wouldn't have thought so, though they are supposed to be getting much more unified in terms of formats, so it will probably happen eventually.
Phazer
