UK residents: the iPlayer beta is here. As it announced last month, the BBC launched a large-scale beta of its iPlayer catch-up software today. For such a compelling product, the iPlayer has certainly been dogged by its share of controversy; 12,000 people have already signed an e-petition to 10 Downing Street over the iPlayer's tie-in with Windows.
And it's not even tied to all versions of Windows. It only works, in fact, with Windows XP, leaving our own Peter Bright to punch the wall in impotent rage after making the switch to Vista some time ago. As for Linux and the Mac, both are right out—although the BBC says that a Mac-compatible version is coming this fall.
The BBC has been trying for months to mend fences over the public perception that it is endorsing Windows by meeting with open-source advocates and promising to roll out cross-platform versions of the software as soon as possible.
Those who do have XP can sign up for the beta and hope to receive an invite in the next several days. Invitations are limited, but the BBC will gradually expand the numbers over the next few months until the official launch later this year. Television shows can be downloaded freely up to seven days after they originally air and can be stored for up to a month. Once a user begins to watch a program, he or she has seven days to finish watching. When the time period is up, DRM ensures that the programs go poof in order to protect future revenue streams for the shows' rights-holders.
Channel 4 already runs a similar service called 4oD (which also works only on XP) that allows users to catch up on shows from the last seven days or pay to access older material from the archives.
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