On Wed, Aug 01, 2007 at 04:26:21AM +0100, Christopher Woods wrote: > The quality was abysmal though, and RealVideo? Urgh. > > The simile employed in the DbD article is a little inaccurate, the more I > think about it; the BBC's choice of MS-based systems for its iPlayer > platform is more like their choice to broadcast in PAL - more or less an > international industry standard,
Not really. Any company could make TVs that implemented the PAL standard. With the iPlayer they are tying themselves to one particular company's product. But it isn't just that which is a problem - by tying themselves to a single OS they may well distort the market in computer OSes themselves. > Having Windows installed on most of the computers around the world makes it > a good starting point for common ground, Well firstly the BBC should be considering the market in the UK not computers around the world. iPlayer is a domestic product AFAIK. Secondly, on launch it seems that the iPlayer does not work for Vista. Microsoft's latest and greatest version of Windows. Many of the people with new computers aren't able to use iPlayer at the moment. Yes, I know this is going to be fixed, but it does give rise to what does happen when MS upgrades Windows. Will similar periods of not-working occur? Thirdly, the above shows no foresight at all. What about a few years time when you might want your set-top box to interface with the iPlayer server as well as taking the normal OTA transmissions? What about future usage on mobile devices? > (EXTREMELY) minority OSes? I mean, come on, hands up who here on the list > uses Linux as their primary OS. Me! -- Andy Leighton => [EMAIL PROTECTED] "The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials" - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
