Developers Press BBC to Bring iPlayer to Apple TV by Building Their Own Proof of Concept App

[2457282]

The only thing that I fear is that the App store for the ATV will be filled with independent apps for independent "channels" like youtube. I dread the thought of 1000 app channels on the ATV dedicated to cats.

Aside from that, I am very excited for broadcasters to put their stuff on the ATV.

 

[John Mcgregor]

They should go subscription then, funny how reluctant they are to give people a choice instead of forcing everyone.

The problem with the telly tax is you have to pay it even if you don't consume any of the product, if you only want to watch the non-BBC channels, you still have to fund them (and their excesses)

I'd rather they funded themselves by subscription, a licence fee when they were the only game in town was tolerable, nowadays, with hundreds of channels, it's ridiculous.

I know, but at least the content is worth it. Yes it is a trouble for some people since it is illogical to pay for something you don't use.

 

[iGeek2014]

Wait, these Brits literally have to pay a TV tax. They should be able to watch programming on every and any device they want. I can't see any logical reason why BBC would NOT be developing an app.

We have to pay the TV Licence if we're to watch it live (as posted above). I no longer own a television as I watch "on demand" these days. However the way things are going I can see it being amended so you have to purchase a licence regardless of how and when you consume television.

I understand that the British pay for the BBC through their television tax, and do not expect that they would give their American cousins access to iPlayer without charge, but surely there must be some way to make it a pay service. I would love greater access to British television.

I guess it's the same in most countries where some programmes are extremely outstanding and make for compelling viewing... Just be thankful you're not subjected to "The Only Way is Essex" or the likes of Katie Hopkins!

 

[Keane16]

iPlayer is the only reason I still need Flash. It freezes every few minutes.

Until Apple TV supports all the national broadcasters, it will never take off in the UK.

It's the same with Apple Music. The UK has a serious radio presence dominated by the BBC and regional stations. The fact that Apple Music does nothing to accommodate this demonstrates what a different world the UK is compared to America. I suspect that Apple knows this, and have given up even trying to compete.

Please no. Apple Music does enough. There are a plethora of apps for radio in the UK (TuneIn is my fav). These apps just need to get on board with iOS 9's search APIs to allow access to the content from Spotlight. No need to add further baggage to the already bulging Apple Music UI.

===============

Back to the article, I wouldn't trust a lot of companies Twitter feeds. So much misinformation.

 

[phillipcaudell]

One thing I noticed is the speed of playback... I wonder if that was edited or really fast due to some other reasons? That seemed impressive.

Or maybe I have a lame connection here and just expect everyone else gets a 5-10 second buffer lag before playback?

Hey, one of the developers here.

No editing: it really is that fast! The stream will start off low quality and quickly ramp up to full 1080 quality. We've also skipped out the idents which the website adds at the start of each video, which slows things down.

 

[simonb76]

"Most impressively, the duo planned, coded, and completed the app in under nine hours at the "Hack to the Future" event in Bournemouth over the weekend."

Someone needs to sign these two guys up into their R&D group.

 

[tech3475]

I'd be surprised if it doesn't happen, only reason not to right now might be because it's a relatively new platform which needs a dev kit.

 

[mikejobson]

I believe this sketch from the BBC's comedy about themselves, W1A, sums it up.... I know people who work for the beeb and they say it's not far from the truth....

 

[rkRusty]

9 hours. Talented **********ers.

 

[oneMadRssn]

To me this exemplifies that developers are more excited about the ATV app store than Roku, FireTV, nVidia Shield, GoogleTV, and all the others. That will be the root of ATVs success, I hope.

When was the last time any of those platforms enjoyed this kind of enthusiasm?

 

[Bevz]

I believe this sketch from the BBC's comedy about themselves, W1A, sums it up.... I know people who work for the beeb and they say it's not far from the truth....

ha! Yes, this pretty much sums it up. They may get around to it at some stage, but they'll have to assign at least 2 or 3 project managers, have about 10 meetings, 6 presentations and an away day, and that's just the planning! Then they will spend a month deciding what to put in the job advert to employ a coding team or sort out all the paperwork getting the tea boy seconded to the position. Meanwhile, a few fellas at a hack party did it in 9 hours just for the crack of it LOL

 

[caliban10]

"Allegedly", it's 1 product manager (ex-developer) in the iplayer team who hates Apple.

 

[atrevers]

I understand that the British pay for the BBC through their television tax, and do not expect that they would give their American cousins access to iPlayer without charge, but surely there must be some way to make it a pay service. I would love greater access to British television.

The Director General, Tony Hall, announced last month that they'd be launching an OTT subscription service in the USA: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-10/20/bbc-iplayer-vpn-access.

the developers seem not to understand the issues in streaming and the resultant addressable market, or maybe they understand fully and are just trying to garner publicity with this stunt

much bbc content is only licensed for the UK. agreements with other broadcasters, rights holders etc. severely limit what can be distributed to other countries, even some bbc free to air content is not available on iplayer in UK for just these reasons, much 'bbc' content is either owned or restricted by other parties, even inclusion of stock photos in backdrops in 'bbc' programmes can limit distribution outside the UK

iplayer is already available on mass market set top boxes (youview for instance), and smart tv units for the UK market, that's almost the entire addressable market

no idea what % of UK households have apple tv but no other stb/stv able to access iplayer, but i'd bet it isn't a big number

unless/until the bbc can resolve how to gain rights to stream globally and collect the revenue to cover associated licensing costs, which i suspect will be around the time hell freezes over, it'd be a very poor use of resources to spend time/money on an app with such limited market

See above - a subscription model for international markets is on it's way. Additionally, the developers could well be fully aware of the fact that the streams themselves won't work outside the UK, so whilst the interface may work, the streaming wouldn't. Therefore, no rights issues arise as a result of this development effort. That's in addition to the fact that it's a proof of concept and not a commercial product.

As an aside, I love how Americans refer to *the* BBC as "BBC"!

 

[mikejobson]

"Allegedly", it's 1 product manager (ex-developer) in the iplayer team who hates Apple.

This is probably not far off the truth. I would imagine there is some of those over at Barclays too with their reluctance to get cracking with Apple Pay.

 

[Plutonius]

As an aside, I love how Americans refer to *the* BBC as "BBC"!

I also enjoy the differences in language such as "colour" vs "color" or "boot" vs "trunk" .

 

[mikejobson]

I also enjoy the differences in language such as "colour" vs "color" or "boot" vs "trunk" .

ALUMINIUM .

 

[MonkeySee....]

I just don't understand why the UK Apple TV does not support BBC iPlayer, 4OD etc.

You can get these on the Sky+ HD box when its connected to the interweb. I can only assume Apple still have a bee in their bonnet that BBC used the "i" in iPlayer.

 

[danckwerts]

It is worth paying for, not like in Denmark. Pure garbage at 250 GBP a year.

I've been enjoying the Danish series The Protectors on Amazon Prime. Seems quite good to me.

 

[Hustler1337]

I won't be getting the new ATV until all the catch up services are available. It's a minimum requirement in the UK.

Agreed. Without such apps there's little reason to get the new Apple TV instead of using the old one for iTunes and the PS4 for everything else.

The TVCatchup app would be fantastic (that's an app that streams terrestrial digital channels live)!

So you're buying the Apple TV for features that are available elsewhere and don't necessarily require an Apple TV? You can get all the catchup services on many Smart TVs, HTPCs such as the Amazon Fire TV, NVIDEA Shield, the 'old' Apple TV etc. The Now TV box has all the catchup services and can be had for £14.99 or less.

I agree, there's little reason to get the Apple TV, unless you've invested a lot of money on iTunes content. Personally, I think there are much better HTPCs available on the market right now.

 

[Googlyhead]

The BBC does often take a while with these things. It's like Flash on the desktop version of iPlayer!! Get rid of it!!

The BBC's digital side defies understanding at times. Instead of essentially an accessible media server, they would lock everything into propietry systems if they could get away with it.
They tried this with the early digital radio; going for the worst possible option of RealPlayer, making it even more locked down, and sticking with it through the prolonged death throes.

 

[2457244]

I can't believe it took Apple 5 years to come up with this version of the new Apple TV.

It's so freaking basic but at the same time also very powerful and could be useful to so many people just because everybody in the TV industry has been sleeping for the last 20 years or so..

 

[kolax]

Sick of apps. All I want is a unified interface for all TV shows and movies. Not endless apps, menus and sources. The BBC attempt will be poor, as their IT team is on a crippled budget (partly because of failed projects which are more down to crappy management than talent).

 

[paulgarb]

The BBC will never produce an Apple TV app for iPlayer - yes there are iPad & iPhone apps but compare the number of of those devices sold to the paltry few ATVs. I hope I'm proved wrong but I doubt I will be.

 

[bobbba]

"Allegedly", it's 1 product manager (ex-developer) in the iplayer team who hates Apple.

Given that iPlayer supports the iPhone, iPad and Mac and that they have done for many years I'm not convinced...

 

[0098386]

Wait, these Brits literally have to pay a TV tax. They should be able to watch programming on every and any device they want. I can't see any logical reason why BBC would NOT be developing an app.

We pay a license fee to watch live TV. You don't need a license fee if you watch iPlayer's non-live services (so 10-30 minutes after a show has aired). Rendering iPlayer a free service of sorts if you never load up the live feed.