Nik lives in Essex, UK and works in London as the editor of MacUser magazine. The posts and comments on this site do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions of values of his employers.
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The BBC launched the iPlayer today. After months of user testing (or non-testing in my case, since I was sent a beta test invite some months back but have yet to take it up), it reckons it’s ready to go. Roll-out will be carefully managed, and ramped so that progressively more applicants gain to the service over time.
It’s already been well publicised (and well debated and well criticised) that the system needs Windows XP to run. Open-source advocates, Mac users, Microsoft critics and Vista users have bemoaned the fact that for the moment they’re all locked out, despite being license fee payers, and the BBC has promised to include one and all just as soon as it can.
But what about those of us who have no licence at all? I don’t have a TV in the house to which I’m moving, which annoys the fee collectors no end, to the extent that they sent out investigators to bang on my door and check I wasn’t lying.
They went away disappointed.
So if the iPlayer blocks access to viewers outside the UK, who can’t possibly have a licence, should it also block access to me? Am I any different to an Australian, who can listen to BBC radio, but shouldn’t really be watching BBC TV?
Maybe.
But what I’d rather see is a levelling of the playing field, whereby anyone, anywhere in the world can buy a licence and watch TV through the iPlayer. It would provide a massive, welcome boost to the BBC’s coffers, which could be ploughed back into programmes like Coast, How We Built Britain and The Proms.
Programmes like these would the iPlayer an invaluable asset in an online world otherwise dominated by the 30-second frippery of YouTube.
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