91Èȱ¬

"But we don't back any one technical horse.We care about making our services available as widely as possible: for our audiences." - but still not on Android...

very nice

I'm glad you're supporting a range of devices. But please remember it's not just people with iPads who hate... erm, can't run Flash. Can the rest of us opensource / poor types get access to these streams?

#1. At 10:36pm on 27 May 2010, SeamusTheDog wrote:

"But we don't back any one technical horse.We care about making our services available as widely as possible: for our audiences." - but still not on Android...

"making our services available as widely as possible"

Have you bothered to ask why it's not on Android, rather than just (apparently) expecting it to be?

Personally I think the layout could be a bit more optimised for the iPad. The big screen mode shown works well for the likes of the PS3. For example on the PS3 it fills the screen, and big buttons compensate for the clunky use of the cursor via analog stick. The screenshot provided doesn't feel well optimised for the iPad I think.

By no means take this as an attack against the iPlayer, I commend the teams behind this and I think your work on VoD is astounding. I understand that a lot of changes have occurred on the backend, and that this was developed by a small team in a small amount of time. I hope there is more to come regarding iPlayer on iDevices! I'd like to see native apps, as they would fully leverage the features that the device provides. But maybe that's wishful thinking on my part!

Keep up the good work folks

Your audience… that doesn’t even own iPads yet? Boggling.

Could the 91Èȱ¬ please not refer to ‘HTML5’ as some magical non-Flash alternative that gifts each user pain-free video viewing pleasure you’re going to offer… because it doesn’t, not with Apple and Microsoft ignoring all over browsers’ video codec limitation.

Is the 91Èȱ¬ going to produce a HTML5 video Web‣M or Ogg Theora site for Firefox, Chrome, and Opera users that don’t have Flash?

"...iPad also works for PS3, Sony BluDisc players, Cello TVs... "

You should change that to "BluRay" players.

You see this is what's frustrating... you support these shiny new devices so you can grab headlines, but existing mature technologies such as Windows Media Centre are left wanting.

Are we ever going to get a Windows Media Centre iPlayer app? (Sky's already got it player on the Media Centre TV menu).

But surely you can already watch iPlayer on WIndows anyway ...

The iPad is a device designed partially for media consumption and which did not yet have any access to iPlayer. So it makes complete sense to make it available. And it's not like it's taken huge amounts of development - instead it seems largely to be based on an existing website.

Seriously, iPlayer for iPad is going to be awesome ... although I hope the top status bar/Safari address bar can be hidden from view somehow.

Kenichi/#9: If the iPad is anything like the iPhone/iPod Touch, video itself plays full screen (or at least has an option to).

"We care about making our services available as widely as possible: for our audiences."

So why isn't there an Android app?

Its great that the 91Èȱ¬ are supporting technologies other than Flash. I'd love to be able to use a HTML5 version of iPlayer, is there anyway of using it other than forking out for an iPad?
I haven't put flash on my computer for the same reason Steve Jobs hasn't put flash on iPads. So why do iPads get their own special version of iPlayer and I don't?

What are the criteria for iPlayer to support particular platforms? Back when it was only available for Windows, we were told that was because Windows has the most users. But that can't be the case for iPad - it isn't even released in the UK for another 8 hours. It would be nice if the 91Èȱ¬ were a bit more transparent about how platforms are picked for iPlayer support. Or better still, allow developers to create iPlayer clients for their own platforms rather than insisting that every iPlayer client is built by the 91Èȱ¬.

#4: Android apps were announced in Feb then questioned by the trust and cleared in April.

What I can't understand is why the iPad app appears before a single iPad is sold in the UK legitimately, whereas Android is outselling iPhone.

Surely its a no-brainer, given the Trust's clearance, to release an app for the fastest growing market.

I think it's great that you're supporting the iPad (I'm writing this on one now) but this doesn't seem like a particularly good iPad interface - it's just the big screen interface with an HTML5 player. I'd like to see a more tailored version which actually utilises the iPad's full resolution and plays video in full screen without the menu and address bar etc.

Nevertheless, a reasonable start but please continue to evolve the site to properly suit the iPad just like it has been for other devices.

I wonder if we can force a judicial review about the 91Èȱ¬ supporting the iPad before Android?

My system does not support Flash, but it does support HTML5 Video - so how come I still can't use iPlayer?

Kenichi Udagawa wrote:
"Seriously, iPlayer for iPad is going to be awesome ... although I hope the top status bar/Safari address bar can be hidden from view somehow."

Sorry Kenichi, it was awesome, not anymore.

Back in early April I was able to use the mobile version of iPlayer on the iPad. It worked beautifully, I could pinch videos to be fullscreen, and it had native playback/volume controls.

I made the mistake of mentioning this on a 91Èȱ¬ forum, and so they went to the trouble of explicitly disabling it for the iPad (it was just the iPhone site but looked great on an iPad).
/dna/mbiplayer/NF7331806?thread=7430065

Now it seems they have wasted the last 4 weeks to produce something that is far worse than what they had before! The 'Bigscreen' iPlayer is ironically a small window on the iPad when held vertically, it does not use native controls, and it cannot go fullscreen (always has the Safari header at the top).

Great... but it seems to have very very little content in it. Is that deliberate, or a just a short term thing?

Nick, why does the 91Èȱ¬ have to produce custom interfaces and media streams for each damn device?
Pick a platform, a codec, and an API, and say *come to us*.

By this time next year, 91Èȱ¬ should have a HTML5 site, WebM for streams and ondemand files, Flash as a fallback that will play said WebM data, and an API so that developers can produce their own applications to display your content or integrate it into their existing stack.
Yes, that may leave some out in the cold like Apple devices, but they’ve picked a system that’s not open to other choices beyond Apples, though it’s hardly as if other devices can’t get iPlayer either, XBOX360.

The current system of picking random devices you think the public will most be drooling over is… hardly transparent and mostly offensive to people still waiting for you to bring it to their 3 year old devices.

As for the 91Èȱ¬ Trust, why are they reviewing only smartphone apps, not portable devices? Are they reviewing the influence the 91Èȱ¬ is having on purchase-time decisions with respect to Apple products? Always seem 91Èȱ¬ has products for those devices before release…

Nick,

The 91Èȱ¬ does not need to work on "an iPlayer for Android" - you already have one: the iPlayer HTML5 video client. That will work just *fine* for Android, and many other platforms which the 91Èȱ¬ has not yet decided to support.

Why not just give people the option to access the HTML5 video version of the iPlayer site?

John Drinkwater: "pick a platform" <- for a value of platform == "openly specified and available", then hear hear on your comment.

no live content
no personal settings

maybe this'll come once the new beta moves over, but clumsy timing if so

For those of you wanting to use iPlayer on the iPad in full screen just add it to your home screen (click on the plus sign in Safari) and access it that way.

Kenichi

Yes I can watch iPlayer on Windows, but Media Centre, whilst based on the Windows Platform is not Windows. The whole point is to have a UI that can be seen from way back on the sofa and interactivity that can be controlled via the normal remote and not a mouse/keyboard.

The annoying thing is I don't think this would be hard for the iPlayer team to do. They wouldn't need to re-work a lot of stuff or even change the stream format - all we (the Media Centre community) are asking for is a front end in the same ilk as Sky have already done within Media Centre.

Paul Jakma / #23, yes, I did mean HTML, but didn’t want to be inflexible as there are other openly specified and available systems. … and I don’t mean Flash :)

Hi Guys, Sorry to say I have just been on iplayer on my ipad and its not working correctly. I don't seem to be able to navigate properly and have generally struggled. Do I need to change some settings my side or is there still some fundamental work to do on the "bigscreen" iplayer?

I think a lot of people with new ipads are going to be disappointed with the iPlayer. Having no easy way of accessing fullscreen, a search that prevents use of the touch keyboard and a lack of shows available (where's Doctor Who?!) isn't as great as I'd imagined it being.

I understand there are technical reasons but, in an ideal world, it'd be nice to have a cleaner interface, the option for HD shows and a full selection of programming. For some reason i can watch Doctor Who on my iPhone but not on the iPad, and with a much nicer interface to boot.

Ok, I'm not too sure about this - maybe someone can enlighten me. But surely if you just have an html5 video player in place of the regular video player that would do just fine for the iPad. Surely having the nine inch screen is big enough to view the iPlayer reasonable well and just changing from flash to html5 would suffice? You could then also offer html5 to computer users as well. Or am I missing something here? It seems to me that this would be a more future proof option?

I hate to say it guys, but basing the iPad version off the bigscreen interface was, in my humble opinion, a big mistake.

I've just tried out the new desktop beta version of the iplayer site on my iPad. It works great. Fantastic. Great use of screen space, great navigation, and it seems to be completely functional (including things like marking favourites) save for just one thing: it's insistence on using flash rather than html5 video tags for video means that the videos don't play. The site is usable either in portrait or landscape orientation - I have not encountered a single problem with it so far.

In contrast, the new iPad version of iplayer makes very poor use of screen space, when in full screen mode one cannot navigate backwards, making the site unusable when in plain Safari the address bar stays there whilst videos play, a making it unusable. New features like favourites are of course AWOL. I have yet to find anything that makes use of iPad gestures. Overall sadly it just doesn't work terribly well. It would have had a slightly better interface had it been based off the PS3 version of bigscreen, but sadly the less well featured Wii version is what we're presented with.

Seriously guys, how did it take 4 weeks to produce this? Given access to the bigscreen and iPhone code I could have knocked up what you have now in a day - at most two. I can only hope that the version released is a quick hack version and that the version with three more weeks work on it is coming soon.

At this point I'd rather be using the iPhone version of iPlayer on my iPad.

Ideally though I'd be using a version based on the proper desktop version.

Impressed by how quickly this was developed - hopefully live radio is on the way.

knack, what you’re missing is that HTML5 is a standard for web pages that doesn’t include what video format should be standard.

A little history:
Apple decided to use a format they have a license for, H.264.
Mozilla wont/cant license H.264 because it needs per-seat fees but they wouldn’t be able to let people share the resulting application with friends (no downstream license), so Firefox chose Ogg Theora.
Opera agrees with Mozilla that browsers cant have those restrictions (nor the Web be controlled by one organisation), so also chose Ogg Theora.
Google felt they should support H.264 (possibly to prevent people migrating to Safari), and also support Ogg Theora in Chrome.
Microsoft hasn’t actually got to HTML5 yet.
So that’s 3 browsers with Ogg Theora, 2 with H.264

(Google has released another option, Web‣M, and Chrome, Opera & Firefox have support in beta releases. It’s better in quality than Ogg Theora, YouTube supports it, it’s likely the best option for futureproofing)

So basically, that’s why saying ‘HTML5’ for h264 video is wrong.
And also why it’s really confusing to see the 91Èȱ¬ using H.264, actively harming the Web.

johndrinkwater: Google Chromium uses the FFmpeg library (bundled, or system supplied one - depends), so it supports pretty much everything. I /imagine/ Safari uses some Quicktime framework and so can support the same range of formats it supports (and you can install extra codecs into it).

Mozilla made the choice to directly incorporate specific format/codec support into their browser, rather than relying on a media framework/library. They did this for political reasons (it doesn't make technical sense), to try install Ogg/Theora as *the* web video format. They seem to have failed in this. Hopefully someone will fork Firefox and change it to use system frameworks, if they refuse to change their position (e.g. Linux distros likely will develop the patches, if no one else).

As you say, Google have since released the "WebM" format, royalty-free (at least, from Google in perpetuity, and of any other claims to date). This is the On2 VP8 codec, in a Matroska-subset container. It appears to be on a par with at least the base-line H.264 codec for quality/bit-rate - the only profile of H.264 that is widely supported. It already is supported in FFmpeg (and hence Chromium and other products), Mozilla will be supporting it in Firefox too. Adobe also will add support for it to Flash.

As for harming the web, I think using Flash is *far* more harmful than using H.264. There are *no* complete implementations of Flash, other than from Adobe. At least there are many independent implementations of HTML5 video and H.264, even if H.264 requires patent royalties (in some jurisdictions). Further, Flash does NOT support Ogg/Theora. And it will only ever support those codecs Adobe /choose/ to support (given that Adobe will always be able to stay ahead of 3rd party implementations).

I.e. give me HTML5 over Flash any day, even with H.264.

It's very sad to see the 91Èȱ¬ collaborating so eagerly to destroy the web by promoting proprietary technologies (in the very vain hope the latter somehow disrupts pirates). It's sad that the 91Èȱ¬ *has* open-standard implementations of its iPlayer, but does its best to ensure they are only available for the products of certain favoured vendors (e.g. Apple).

It is sad that many people whose devices support those open-standards, but not flash (e.g. Android), can not access 91Èȱ¬ iPlayer even though the 91Èȱ¬ *already* has the open-standards based player that would allow them access.

Instead, the 91Èȱ¬ *chooses* to *block* such devices from having access.

Thank you both johndrinkwater and Paul Jakma. I was aware of all the different video formats such as H.264, Ogg etc. What I didn't realise was that the use of HTML5 required the support of the video formats, if you get what I mean. In other words, I didn't realise it was so complicated to implement HTML5 and that was why it hasn't happened. I still think with the many formats the 91Èȱ¬ must use for iPlayer, having the HTML5 as another option wouldn't be that difficult to come up with!

Great but some shows don't seem to play? E.g. F1 Turkish Grand Prix. The qualifying plays ok but the race gives an error message - "the file could not be found". The programme also plays with no problem on my iPhone?

Knack,

HTML5 video is format/codec agnostic. It doesn't say anything about what is supported or should be used. Just like the HTML img tag doesn't say whether you should use GIF,PNG,etc.

It's not hard to implement HTML5 video either, browsers have default controls, and it doesn't take much effort to create your own custom controls. Indeed, its so easy the 91Èȱ¬ *already* have a HTML5 version of iPlayer. They just won't let any devices *except* certain Apple products have access to it!

If you want to verify this, change the user-agent string of your browser to the Apple iPad UA (developer.apple.com has it somewhere) and you'll get the HTML5 iPlayer interface. You'll get an error when you try play video though, because it appears the 91Èȱ¬ have gone *out of their way* to have the javascript of their HTML5 player try detect iPad devices and lock out all others.

It's a good job no web browsers have built-in debuggers for javascript...

Knack,

Oh, to answer an implicit question of yours: HTML5 video has a de facto "can assume supported" codec -> H.264. It's available on pretty much all platforms, including free software platforms. It has some patent royalty problems, however decoder for web media are royalty-free for about the next 5 years, from MPEG-LA at least. Well before that time period runs out, Googles' WebM format should have equally wide support (indeed, probably wider).

Course, if recent decision making at the 91Èȱ¬ is any guide, it will probably seek to continue to use the most encumbered and proprietary formats for its systems (except of course for 91Èȱ¬s' favoured Apple products).

Simply thank you :)

Has anyone used this on an iPad? The experience is horrible! Search is clumsy and cumbersome with no native keyboard input. The interface itself is tiny on the screen and it just feels very slow.

For now, at least the video plays - is this what the 91Èȱ¬ aimed for because as a bar, it's not very high.

Come on 91Èȱ¬. Show us how good this could be!

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

Glad there's a viewer, however treating the iPad like a phone is a little ridiculous. Any chance of an app which works like the 91Èȱ¬ iPlayer download manager for the PC? ie to allow us to download the files to watch when on the move (planes, trains, automobiles, etc) ?

Thanks

.

I really need to replicate the full-screen functionality (upon accessing from bookmark) in one of my sites which has been specially developed for use on the iPad. It is an online art gallery of digital art. Does anyone know how to achieve this?

Thanks to all of those involved in making the iPlayer on the iPad work, its great to use! Just one thing though, are there plans to enable Apple products such as the iPhone and iPad to be able the listen to live radio and watch live TV. It seems irrational that this service is not available on mobile devises but is on Desktops and laptops! If its a Flash problem maybe its time for the Beeb to modernise up to HTML5 just like CNN and many others have done

I notice that on the iPad that you can watch / hear it again, but not watch/listen live unlike my laptop. Am I or iPlayer missing something here? I'm trying to set up a full-blown media player for my 90 year old mum (who is a great devotee of the 91Èȱ¬), using the iPad witch is far more convenient than several TV remotes and radios strategically placed around the house for someone uneasy on her feet.

I love the iPad compatible iPlayer. Works like a dream.

However, when I click on, for example, football match highlights on the 91Èȱ¬ sport section, it doesn't launch the new player and complains that I don't have flash. Once out of Beta, will the player work on all video clips on the 91Èȱ¬ web sites?

What about the games on cBeebies too? Any plans to go HTML5 over there too?

Keep up the good work on what must be the best set of services on the web.

iPlayer is great. Thanks to the team behind it. However, I do not live in a city and so my broadband speed is very limited indeed. I therefore have to download from work to play later on my laptop. My question is - will I be able to download to play without interuptioon on my iPad? and if so, when? Thanks.

I've been using iPlayer on my iPad for a which now and it does the job, but it doesn't compare for quality with video from e.g. films from iTunes . It feels like its been done in a rush and from e above it sounds like there's no real commitment to making it better Here are some problems I have with it:

1 Most important is that the sound isn't synced properly with the picture. It seems to be about a third of a second out. This doesn't seem to be a problem with other video on the iPad. This makes watching people speaking very distracting. It seems a fundamental flaw.

2. Even used full screen, the time bar across the top is still there and this is distracting.

3. The slider to move forward and backward just doesn't work sometimes, and when it does it is not nearly sensitive enough to get to a particular point in a programme.

4. All the streamed versions of iPlayer I've used, including iPad, sooner or later hang in the middle of a programme, however fast the internet connection - I'm using an unusually fast 50 MB connection here. When it happens it often keeps on happening and requires the programme to be restarted and then locate where it was up to. A download solution as on desktop iplayer is needed not just to make it possible to watch when no internet connection is available, but to avoid this problem which must be at the 91Èȱ¬ end in it's ability to keep up with demand.

Hi i am in australia, i am trying to use the iplayer on my new ipad but it wont work??? how do you do this?

#post 50 Troyktech11

You won't be able to play TV shows as they are Region Locked to the UK - but the Radio section should work.

Cheers, daveac

Is iPlayer going to be made available via Apple TV? You can get YouTube, Flickr etc, why not 91Èȱ¬ iPlayer?

Is iPlayer support on iPad ever going to be done properly? The current implementation seems like an absolute bodge, calling it "Beta" is generous.
It's almost useless for me as it requires far more bandwidth than the standard browser or iPhone version, which exceeds my (by no means slow) ADSL capacity.

And there's no option to scale the quality down to help it. And the browser bar doesn't hide while it's playing.

Why not allow the iPhone version to be accessed by the iPad, as it apparently was to start with? This would solve all the problems.

"So, we concentrated immediately on creating a continuous rapid delivery process which could turnaround the most business value in the shortest period of time. Drawing from the Agile Manifesto, Lean concepts and a Kanban inspired framework, we developed a variation of a daily board which tracked dependencies, tasks and features in real time."

Blah blah blah. This says it all really. All buzzwords, no common sense. The bigscreen interface is dreadful as well.

Please fix it.

A quick look at the iPlayer app on iPad looks very good the only thing missing is the ability to stream from my iPad to Apple TV.

All this user's posts have been removed.Why?

All very nice, if you have an iPad. I have an iPhone4 and would like to stream video from an App on either device over AirPlay to an Apple TV 2.

So, when are you going to enabled AirPlay?

the new iPad version of iplayer makes very poor use of screen space, when in full screen mode one cannot navigate backwards, making the site unusable when in plain Safari the address bar stays there whilst videos play, a making it unusable. New features like favourites are of course AWOL I have yet to find anything that makes use of iPad gestures. Overall sadly it just doesn't work terribly well. It would have had a slightly better interface had it been based off the PS3 version of bigscreen, but sadly the less well featured Wii version is what we're presented with.

With the advent of iOS 4.3 will the 91Èȱ¬ be adding the code that will allow users to watch iPlayer on their AppleTVs as part of the 91Èȱ¬'s commitment to making iPlayer available on as wider range of devices as possible?
(And despite the tone of the comment I am pro-91Èȱ¬, but also pro-faster 91Èȱ¬ app development).

I've just realised that the iplayer app does not output video to the tv out function, only audio. This is on an iPad 1 iOS 4.3 by the way, using the Apple component cable. It used to work fine when iplayer was a web app via safari but not now it is a stand alone app. This is very frustrating as it's great to watch iplayer shows on my big tv from my iPad but now I can't any more. Other video out still works fine just not from iplayer. Any plans to fix this (please!)?