Pic of the day: iPlayer on the Wii
Post categories: iPlayer
| 16:10 UK time, Wednesday, 18 November 2009
David Artiss, writing on his blog :
Last night, or rather at midnight, the 91Èȱ¬ iPlayer channel was released for the Nintendo Wii.
The iPlayer has been usable in the past using the Opera-powered browser channel, but has been of limited quality and, well, not very easy to use. Now we have a very specific channel just for iPlayer. And it's been a long time coming - the 91Èȱ¬ have been talking about it for a year and a half.
However, I can only assume they've spent this time on development and testing because the end result is superb...
Earlier this week on the blog Rahul Chakkara, Controller TV platforms previewed some screens of the upgraded iPlayer on the Wii. The service went live last night and we're starting to see and hear what you think about it. So far, like above, they've mostly been positive as have the comments on Rahul's post. One of this blog's commenters Andrew Oakley has written a neat summary of features in his post . But if you are having problems then do check out the iPlayer messageboards.
It looks like a good job all round so many thanks to everyone concerned and keep the feedback rolling in.
Paul Murphy is the Editor of the Internet blog.
- Picture at the top of the post is taken by and is from his Flickr set , .
- Robert Andrews'
Comment number 1.
At 18th Nov 2009, clujexile wrote:Any chance of getting 91Èȱ¬ Radio Ulster added to it?
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Comment number 2.
At 18th Nov 2009, Mr Maff wrote:Watched two episodes of In the Night Garden with my kids earlier.
Fantastic!
Leaves my laptop free for me.
Thank you 91Èȱ¬.
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Comment number 3.
At 18th Nov 2009, Hastings wrote:Just watched a couple of progs on the new iPlayer for the Wii. About time that was sorted properly.
Unfortunately the sound is about 1 frame out of sync to the picture.
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Comment number 4.
At 18th Nov 2009, Gewitty wrote:Installed it this afternoon. Absolutely brilliant. The original browser-based version was pretty clunky and never worked well in full-screen mode. This release provides full-screen pictures at near SD quality. And that's over a faulty broadband line (currently limited to 1.8Mb).
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Comment number 5.
At 19th Nov 2009, _Ewan_ wrote:It's pretty good. It does seem to still suffer from the usual 91Èȱ¬ bizarreness of not pre-buffering the video at all, so any contention on the line immediately causes problems, but otherwise, it's good.
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Comment number 6.
At 19th Nov 2009, fgaughan wrote:How about adding subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing?
This was possible on a xbox from a team of volunteers so what's the 91Èȱ¬ excuse this time?
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Comment number 7.
At 19th Nov 2009, Doonytime wrote:Installed it last night, and was very impressed with the usability, and, more importantly, the picture quality. Considering this is over a wireless connection, the picture and sound were in sync and there were no buffering issues.
However, it was 11pm.
How will it be during the day, when there is more contention on the line? Time will tell.
Thanks 91Èȱ¬, for once again innovating, and bringing iPlayer to a bigger audience.
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Comment number 8.
At 19th Nov 2009, dartiss wrote:I'd like to thank Paul for mentioning my site and my review.
However, I wonder if he's seen the updated I added last night. The contention issues that some of the other commentators are mentioning appears to be an issue - I couldn't get through a half hour show last night without 6 pauses due to bandwidth issues. Earlier in the day my wife tried another show and it completely failed after 20 minutes due to the same problem.
My wireless router is right next to my Wii and we get a good speed.
I wonder if the lack of buffering (due to a lack of storage space on the Wii) is going to be a problem.
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Comment number 9.
At 19th Nov 2009, Simon Davenport wrote:@ No. 3
One frame out of sync? Are you superman?
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Comment number 10.
At 19th Nov 2009, Dan Sumption wrote:@fgaughan - the reason for the lack of subtitles is that, unlike the video stream, subtitles for a programme are loaded and stored as a single file. Unfortunately the Wii's does not have enough memory to store this file for all but the shortest of programmes.
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Comment number 11.
At 19th Nov 2009, dartiss wrote:@Dan Sumption.
According to a response added to my blog, this is not the reason for the subtitles issue. Apparantely the subtitle files are relatively small and it's the processing of them that's causing the problems.
I'll admit to not quite getting that, considering that the iPlayer video is being handled by dedicates Wii video hardware - just what is the processor doing??
I too had sound syncing issue yesterday - not sure it's just a frame, but certainly enough to be noticeable and annoying.
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Comment number 12.
At 20th Nov 2009, Matthew wrote:Might be useful, but I just gave it a go and the video quality seems below that of a VHS video. Sound quality was just fine, though!
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Comment number 13.
At 21st Nov 2009, fgaughan wrote:@ Dan Sumption
Why can't they stream embedded subtitles on web like they do now without downloading the programme?
I find it very frustrating having to harp on at the 91Èȱ¬ to include subtitles when it all first started on PC.
The problem they come out was ludicrous and finally over a year later subtitles was included.. is it going to be the same thing here?
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Comment number 14.
At 22nd Nov 2009, lee welton wrote:dartiss how did you get the 91Èȱ¬ to find you? I'm always writing lots of articles (ok not very good ones lol) about what's going on in the world of TV and even though I publish them before most of the news sites the 91Èȱ¬ gives them its related news links :(. Google picks up my [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator] stories quickly and some even get into the top parts of the google news site. Obviously not every one of them will but would be nice to get one every now and then when I manage to be quick on a new or developing story.
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At 11th Jul 2010, devidvilla001 wrote:I totally love this article. I think you could write some other things to make your blog more complete.
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