Thursday, April 10, 2008

Couple of BBC iPlayer stories

BBC and ISPs clash over iPlayer
ISPs say the on-demand TV service is putting strain on their networks, which need to be upgraded to cope.
This is so rich - ISPs moaning about the fact that they have sold themselves short. Now the Beeb pay Akamai (and other peering partners, I'm sure) for every gigabit of iPlayer data that leaves White City and then I pay my ISP for my 4meg uncapped connection - currently £25 per month which I don't resent. The ISPs have peering arrangements with backbone providers so that they don't actually pay for aggregate bandwidth between those higher echelons of the internet. What it comes down to is that they have sold people on faster-than-they-are-willing-to-provide connectivity and now they have to stand by those promises.


BBC announces Nintendo Wii deal
The video download and streaming service that lets people catch up with BBC programmes will soon be a channel on the hugely popular game console.
Wow - what a fantastic coming-together of technology. You could have yourself an iPlayer set-top box for £180 (aside from the huge fun you get from the Wii) - that is the kind of things that will mean that video-on-demand will really penetrate and I'm thankful that it's the Beeb. After all they made DVB-T a reality in this country (ITV couldn't/wouldn't sustain OnDigital) and if this keeps Murdoch out of the space then so much the better.

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