BBC I Player - Development

Development

In the same way as the BBC has a role in making sure there is a healthy TV ecosystem, the BBC should be playing the same sort of role in the digital sector. It's part of why we have a license fee.

“ ” Ralph Rivera, BBC Director of future media in March 2012

At various times during its development, iPlayer was known as the Integrated Media Player (iMP), Interactive Media Player, and MyBBCPlayer.

The original iPlayer service was launched in October 2005, undergoing a five month long trial by five thousand broadband users until 28 February 2006. The iPlayer was heavily criticised for delay in its launch, rebranding, and cost to BBC licence-fee payers, because no finished product had been released after four years of development. A new, improved iPlayer service then had another very limited user trial which began on 15 November 2006.

The iPlayer received the approval of the BBC Trust on 30 April 2007, and an open beta for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 was launched at midnight on 27 July 2007, where it was announced that only a fixed number of people would be able to sign up for the service, with a controlled increase in users over the summer.

The BBC has also been criticised for saying that the iPlayer would 'launch' on 27 July 2007, when what was on offer was simply an extension of the beta to an open beta, admitting more users in a controlled manner. This was done reportedly to allow British ISPs and the BBC to gauge the effect of the iPlayer traffic on the Internet within the UK.

The open beta incorporated a media player, an electronic programme guide (EPG) and specially designed download client, and allowed the download of BBC Television content by computers assigned to a United Kingdom-based IP address, for use up to thirty days after broadcast. However, it was available only to users of Windows XP.

This was a controversial decision by the BBC, which led to a petition against the decision being posted on 10 Downing Street's e-petition website. The petition reached 16,082 signatures on 20 August 2007. The response from the Government was:

... the Trust noted the strong public demand for the service to be available on a variety of operating systems. The BBC Trust made it a condition of approval for the BBC's on-demand services that the iPlayer is available to users of a range of operating systems, and has given a commitment that it will ensure that the BBC meets this demand as soon as possible. They will measure the BBC's progress on this every six months and publish the findings.

On 16 October 2007, the BBC announced a strategic relationship with Adobe, that would bring a limited, streaming-only version of the iPlayer to Mac and Linux users, and Windows users who cannot or do not wish to use the iPlayer download service, such as Windows 9x users. The streaming service was launched on 13 December 2007. Most programmes can be viewed for up to seven days after broadcast, unlike the thirty days provided by the download service.

Since January 2008, iPlayer has supported Mozilla Firefox under the Microsoft Windows platform for downloading content.

Before the iPlayer had even launched, it was announced that the BBC, alongside ITV and Channel 4, were intending to launch a new video on demand platform, provisionally named Kangaroo. It was intended that Kangaroo would complement the video on demand services that these channels were already offering, including the iPlayer, by making programmes available once their "catch up" period expires. The Kangaroo project was eventually abandoned after being blocked by the Competition Commission early in 2009.

Following a deal between the BBC and cable television provider Virgin Media, the iPlayer service was made available through the provider's on-demand service. The cable service launched on 30 April 2008, and keeps the look and feel of the BBC iPlayer program.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the BBC revealed that as of 8 April 2008 the iPlayer had so far cost £6 million to develop.

On 23 August 2008, a new feature, Series Stacking, was announced. This feature started being rolled out on 13 September 2008, and allowed viewers to watch previous programmes from selected series until the series has ended, with a limit of up to thirteen weeks after first broadcast. Not all programmes will form part of the stack, however. The BBC Trust permitted 15% of content to be offered as part of the stacking service; soaps, news bulletins and review-based programmes will not be stacked, nor programmes containing material of a legal nature, such as Crimewatch.

On 19 December 2008, the BBC released, as part of the iPlayer Labs feature, iPlayer Desktop for Mac OS X and Linux operating systems. This moved the download service away from the previous P2P based distribution model and onto an HTTP download model.

On 20 April 2009, the BBC incorporated high-definition streams and downloads of some content on the iPlayer. There are plans to roll out the HD streams to devices such as the Virgin Set Top Box, but no date has yet been set. An iPlayer application for the PlayStation 3 was announced by Sony in August 2009 and was released on 1 September 2009 along with the Firmware 3.0 update to coincide with the launch of the slimline PlayStation 3.

Another version of iPlayer was released in late 2009 as a 'channel' for the Nintendo Wii. This shows only low definition videos of BBC shows up to seven days after their release on television.

On 28 July 2011, BBC Worldwide released an international version of the iPlayer.