Here’s a list of some of the BBCs’ most favoured devices for internet TV (iTV?), for which the BBC will open the gate to its non-flash, HTML5 based version of iPlayer:
- Sony PS3
- Sony BluDisc
- Cello TV
- Apple iPad
- (soon) Selected Windows CE devices
Notable devices/platforms not on this list:
- Google Android
- And all other HTML5 compliant devices
If you own such a device, then tough for you – even though the HTML5 iPlayer would work fine on such devices if it weren’t for the fact that the BBC have gone out of their way to bar those devices from it! Particularly tough for you if your device does not support Flash (e.g. Android). Best of all, the BBC straight-facedly claim:
“But we don’t back any one technical horse. We care about making our services available as widely as possible: for our audiences.”
This is highly misleading. For this goal clearly is utterly subservient to the BBCs’ greater goal of tightly controlling access to iPlayer, and denying iPlayer as much as possible to platforms which the BBC feels it can not control, as we know from FOI requests – referred to as “authentication” there, generally. This has been the case ever since the BBC introduced a HTML+H.264 standards based iPlayer for the Apple iPhone, and then went out of its way to implement technical measure after technical measure to block this interface to other, unapproved platforms.
As per a previous blog post, it is a very unhealthy situation for the BBC to be able to pick & choose the “winners” according to its whims.
Paul Jakma's Blog 