BBC iPlayer 2 Goes to Live Beta
June 25th, 2008 Posted in Flash, GeneralThe all new version of The BBC iPlayer goes to public beta tomorrow (Thursday 26th June), featuring many website usabiliy improvements, and the new version of the BBC’s EMP ( Embedded Media Player – which I am on the team for 
) some of the new functionality includes live TV and Radio streams over FMS3, support for the “more like this” iPlayer functionality and loads more…
Interestingly the source for the EMP is all one highly comfigurable SWF of around 200k that configures and scales itself for all TV and Radio format possiblilties (which is a lot, take it from me). Its currently still implemented in AS2 mainly so we can support the WII in Flash Player 7. However starting developement soon will be a FP9 AS3 version that will be maintained along side the AS2 one until further notice. Watch this space.
Congrats to the media guardian for being the first to respond to the press release, see the full article below:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jun/25/bbc.television1
2 Responses to “BBC iPlayer 2 Goes to Live Beta”
By mike d on Jun 25, 2008
How about you get your team to fix the noob mistakes in pretty much ALL flash on the bbc site – detecting player version incorrectly. If you have player version 10 beta, you get an idiot error saying your flash player isn’t up to date. I’d expect better on code basics considering the bbc website spend of £74 million, of which millions are over budget and coming from the public’s pockets to fund incompetent developers. And while I’m at it, here’s hoping the imbecile tech support for the bbc website (who I reported this to ages ago and got a stock reply to ‘upgrade my browser’) all get the chop and save a million or so of wasted tax payers money. Tech support that can’t actually support and don’t know their arse from their elbow? Sack them all!
By mattjpoole on Jun 26, 2008
Hi Mike,
Thanks for your comments.
I can only realy speak for the EMP team. Though as with all large corporations things can move very slowly – there is no single standard for implementing flash across the BBC worldwide its up to individual teams largly – in fact the EMP has won an award purely on the fact that its gotten so much adoption throughout the BBC.
The issue with Flash Player 10 has been discussed in the BBC flash community (which is as strong and committed as the rest of the flash community) as far as I know though it may not be supported until it gets released. I can only recommend you uninstall the BETA in at least one browser while you browse the BBC site.
In the mean time I’ll see if we are able to support Flash 10 Beta for the EMP – though dont hold you breath.
One final point: my views are very definately my own and do not represent the BBC in anyway unless specifically stated.