Coincidence?
I think not.
Captain Picard has no hair. Voldemort has no hair. You be the judge.
BBC iPlayer
I’ve been using the BBC iPlayer for a few hours now. For those not in the know, the BBC iPlayer is a content distribution platform for BBC programming.
In non-technical language, it’s a download client for BBC TV shows.
While nothing new (you’ve been able to download TV from the internet for quite a while), it does have the advantage of being legal (which one of my housemates from last year knows plenty about).
It’s based on the Kontiki platform, which is amongst others, also the basis for 4od. While both do pretty much the same thing, the BBC’s offering is a lot more polished, despite only being in the beta phase. Unlike 4od, the Kontiki client is used only for downloads, not for watching the video, or browsing for them.
While the BBC site blocks Vista users from downloading, it does work fine on Windows Vista. Downloading the program from an XP machine and transferring it was problem free, and the whole program seems to work flawlessly, unlike 4od, which while it is based on the same platform, it suffers from multiple issues.
Playing is done through Windows Media Player (though you can watch them inside the client if you are insane), and browing is done through Internet Explorer, which has the handy advantage of allowing you to bookmark favourite shows so you don’t need to hunt for them every time.
It is lacking a few shows, Heroes is not on there, and for a service for use by over 16s, there are an awful lot of childrens shows.
One fault it shares with the 4od client is the speed of its downloads. On my 4 megabit connection, I should have completed a download in less than an hour, but after an hour and a half, it has only completed 20%.
Out of all the TV on demand services I have tried (4od, Joost!, iPlayer, Vuze), iPlayer is probably the best in terms of content. In terms of speed, Joost! is by far the fastest, video, where possible, is streamed straight to the client. It also has the advantage of officially being supported on Windows Vista, and on Mac OS X.
The iPlayer service is still accepting signups, so why not give it a try?
Marketing Dept. of the Year
Someone at Abby has really earned their keep this week.
From next month, Abby will no longer adminster bank charges to those who go overdrawn.
Instead, an “instant overdraft” will be set up, which incurs an “Instant Overdraft Setup Fee”, which, coincidently, works out to be almost the same cost as a bank charge.
Sheer genius.
