Media on trial - BBC

had to wait for further e-mails to approve my application.

Having had to clear out my C drive to download it, I finally managed to
access Dance Xtra (one of my favourite programmes) at 230 MB (jeez,
that's a big file) and played it on a small screen, but when I tried to
upgrade to full screen so I could sit back and enjoy some classic TV on
my laptop, up popped an error sign and the iPlayer crashed. After trying
again I was bombarded by "delivery service error" even on the Help
option.

Running an entertainment site, I'm used to watching video all day long
in many different formats. But what really pisses me off is that an
establishment like the BBC can't get this right. After spending fortunes
of public money on a system that is not even a revolution in video
sharing, it has still come up with an average player. I can't help
thinking that it has gone to market too quickly and will lose too many
advocates, merely for the sake of a bit of PR.

Trying to look like it is keeping pace with technology and failing is a
massive mistake.

I appreciate that the BBC needs to offer the public free online access
to past TV programmes, but why is it not ironing out bugs in alpha
testing? Invite a bunch of geeks from tech forums to test it first
before going out to the public and pretending it's beta. Motivating the
public to spend precious time signing up, downloading and code-cracking
is asking a lot. The barriers to entry must be removed or people will
not make that jump.

This is a poor effort in comparison with a similar application, such as
Joost, and very disappointing. For my next rant: over to ITV.com.

Review by Richard Spalding, managing director, Kontraband.