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The Corporation will officially take the beta wrapping off the service on the same day as the country unwraps its presents, raising questions about how many BBC technical staff will be on-hand should the service be deluged with teething problems.

Technical glitches marred the beta launch of the iPlayer, with users complaining of DRM licensing faults, broken links and lengthy waits for programmes to download.

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(Click here for full details). To date, the iPlayer's support messageboard has more than 3,400 different threads related to "technical issues" alone.

A BBC spokesperson couldn't confirm whether the technical support team will be fully staffed on Christmas Day, but says the BBC "is confident it will be OK."

"From our point of view, it's all about the content available on the platform," the spokesperson says. "The Christmas schedules are the richest time of year for TV programming."

The iPlayer launch has been surrounded by controversy. The player still doesn't support Macs or Linux PCs (Vista support was added recently), and earlier this year the Corporation was forced to admit it hugely underestimated the number of Linux users visiting its websites.