BBC iPlayer review

It's taken four years of development, two substantial betas and had more "public tests" than a Mastermind champion. BBC's keenly anticipated iPlayer is finally with us, albeit in a "limited sign-up" beta.

When the iPlayer was first announced in 2003, the concept of a peer-to-peer broadband service that allowed you to catch up on the past week's television programming was innovative. Since then, a throng of similar services has been launched from broadcasters such as Sky, Channel 4 and new entrants Joost. So, having lost its novelty value, the iPlayer needed to raise the bar for such services. Sadly, and almost criminally given the millions spent on the project, it's knocked the bar clean off.

Given the BBC's impressive record for website design, the first thing that strikes you is the poor iPlayer interface. The first betas of two years ago were immaculately designed, self-contained applications, from which you could select which programmes to download and play back your shows. Now, the iPlayer has been inexplicably torn into two parts: the iPlayer Library, which stores downloads on your PC, and the online show guide, from which you select your downloads. Each, ridiculously, needs a separate login.

Both are designed in a lurid black and pink interface that boasts all the elegance of a breeze block, with the show guide particularly woeful. Programmes can be selected either by broadcast date or genre. Choose comedy, for example, and you're presented with a grid of shows to choose from but, if Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps has been shown ten times that week on BBC3, each episode is displayed separately on the grid. The frequency with which shows are duplicated also exposes how thin the selection of downloads is. Broadcasting rights issues mean several popular shows such as Friday Night with Jonathan Ross and virtually all sport are omitted. And even if you can find your favourite show, you can't program the iPlayer to record every show in the series.

Having selected a show, you're occasionally confronted with a message telling you it isn't available after all. If you do find a working programme, it can take hours to then download even a single 30-minute episode. On an 8Mb/sec connection, the fastest we've managed to get an entire episode of Mock the Week is 32 minutes; the worst is three-and-a-half hours. And perversely for a peer-to-peer service, download speeds appear to be deteriorating as more people join the service. We've also experienced problems with the DRM, with error messages appearing post-download to say that we haven't got the correct licence to play a show.

Watching shows is, thankfully, largely pleasurable. Picture quality has a bit-rate that varies between 400-700Kb/sec - way short of DVD quality, but just about detailed enough to watch full screen on a laptop. Shows can be kept for 30 days after broadcast, and you have a week to rewatch shows from the date you first watched them.

Despite its problems, we've become regular users of the iPlayer. But that's more a reflection on the quality of BBC programming than the software. The iPlayer was the perfect chance for the BBC to establish a world-leading interactive service that could stem the decline of television viewers. Instead, it's produced a bug-ridden, slow and ultimately disappointing product that we don't expect to change substantially from this beta version. And worst of all, the Beeb's done it with your money.

Author: Barry Collins