BBC criticizes Sony, Microsoft's approach to streaming video on consoles
Why does the hardly-home-theater styled Wii have BBC's iPlayer, and not the much more media player-focused Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3? A note from a BBC employees blog details the troubles of getting things set up with Sony and Microsoft (although with a little tweaking, a PS3 owner has already set up PS3iPlayer.com to give the console iPlayer access) officially, since "they want control of the look, the feel and the experience". Sure BBC's iPlayer is Flash-based (and not the good 1080p Flash either) but their issues could indicate how difficult it will be for other interested parties like Netflix to gain access to the walled garden.[Via Joystiq]
Filed under: Media streamers, Internet, BBC HD
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
DrXym @ Apr 11th 2008 7:55AM
Let me get this straight - the BBC in its infinite wisdom uses a bunch of proprietary and broken mechanisms to deliver content, but it's the 360 and PS3's fault that those broken mechanisms don't work? Right...
As it happens, the PS3 can quite happily play back the MP4 content that the BBC exposes for the iPod. You have to rip it by hand to circumvent the server side user agent checks, and move it from a Quicktime to MP4 container but once you do that the content plays just fine.
It should be straightforward to enable the PS3 to access content through its browser - add the PS3 user agent string to the list of permitted browsers and deliver content in a .MP4 container. Now that wasn't hard to do was it?
This is more or less how they support the iPod now except they use a .mov container. I bet the iPod supports MP4 containers too so there is no reason even to have .mov for iPod and .mp4 for the PS3. Just move everything to .mp4 and they can serve all devices.
Maybe the BBC should question why they are making it so hard for people to download shows. Do they really think there is a massive market for the latest edition of Eastenders or Songs of Praise? They should just do a deal with Vuze / Azureus to deliver their content through bittorrent and be done with it.