BBC iPlayer now for Mac and Linux

This is great news. In an effort to discourage piracy the BBC has released its iPlayer in a Mac OSX and Linux friend Flash version.

For those of you know don't know the BBC is essentially a public service broadcaster funded by a licence fee. Such a licence is required to operate a broadcast television receiver within the UK. The cost of a television licence is set by the government and enforced by the criminal law. You pay the fee for NO commercials or political influence and it answers only to its viewers and listeners!

The iPlayer is an online Flash player that gives users the chance to catch up on your favourite programs from the past week, in my case the season finale of Spooks :) There is of course digital rights management security embedded so the content will be automatically deleted from your computer once it hits expiry date. But I see that as fair as they are offering it for free and no doubt they will want to make a revenue from DVD sales etc.

Posted: 19-Dec-2007

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Comments

Er.. no it hasn't. The iPlayer is still only for Windows. Why are you pretending otherwise??

#1 nev
06/Jan/08 3:00 PM

Er... yes it does:

http://iplayersupport.external.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/b...

but only the flash online player.

#2 Pete
11/Jan/08 12:55 AM

Er, no it doesn't as that link confrims

#3 ley
13/Jan/08 9:32 AM

From the linked webpage:

"Streaming works on any computer that can run the latest version of Flash and all programmes available to download should also be available to stream as Click to Play, although technical issues may occasionally mean that this is not the case."

I have just watched an item from the iPlayer on my mac and so can confirm that it is possible. Its true that you cannot download and store an item for viewing later but you can watch the flash versions without any problems at all.

The iPlayer is not just the downloadable software, it encompasses the flash viewer as well.

#4 Pete
16/Jan/08 1:05 PM

Yes it does but there isn't info on it here. This page isn't correct though as makes it sound official. There is an official beta I hear but the best is solution that works seems to be using wine (and have wmp and ie6 installed with wine, yes yes you wouldn't want them installed but before the childish arguing starts Iplayer does so don't waste your time posting about it since I have used linux since '96 and need no convincing how wmp and ie suck).

http://bbciplayerlinux.sourceforge.net/index.php/M...

#5 anon
24/Sep/08 4:53 PM