The BBC has finally pulled it’s finger out and made their iPlayer view-on-demand system work on Linux and Mac platforms. The iPlayer streaming service is now available via web-browser using the Adobe Flash plugin. The download service is not available as it has apparently still not been possible to port Verisign’s proprietary, DRM encumbered Kontiki software to other platforms.

Apparently, releasing a flash-based version will not be enough to appease the BBC Trust on cross-platform availability either.

The streaming iPlayer requires the latest flash version which is a minor version of Flash 9.x (9.0.115.0). The iPlayer will run with earlier flash 9.x versions but the full-screen mode is disabled. Apparently, users were formerly required to register before using iPlayer but when I went to try it, I was given direct access. The experience was somewhat underwhelming. The bitrate was obviously lower than required to maintain the quality and the frame rate felt like 15fps. That said, this is probably the best the BBC can do at the moment as services such as iPlayer require a huge amount of processing power and bandwidth due to the potential userbase.

The personal gripe that I had is probably more of a problem with the BBC in general rather than iPlayer itself. Despite the large iPlayer catalogue, there seems to be very little worth watching. I’m sure it appeals to the lowest common denominator (whoever he may be) but I’m left puzzled by what the modern BBC regard as ‘entertainment’.