According to BBC News, the BBC is gleefully jumping into the increasingly crowded internet video space with a service/platform they’re calling iPlayer:
The iPlayer allows viewers to download a selection of programmes from the last seven days and watch them for up to 30 days afterwards.
Viewers interested in the iPlayer can register for the service on Friday and will then be invited to join. The number of users will increase over the summer, before a full launch in the autumn.
The first thing I noticed, of course, is that the BBC is playing off of Apple’s branding efforts, a flaw in Apple’s naming structure that Seth Godin recently pointed out.
But like most of the bigger dogs jumping into the internet video space, I think the BBC is likely to try too hard to keep the consumer for sharing video. YouTube and its ilk succeed because people get to share content with their friends. Otherwise what’s the point of watching TV on your computer? You might as well watch it on TV.
Internet video is not, and never will be equivalent to broadcast TV. Companies that avoid trying to draw those analogies—TV to internet video, Newspaper to blogs—will see more success in the free-floating world of the internet.
Also, the service requires apparently requires Windows XP and IE 6.0 so Mac users (and…Vista users?), you’re apparently out of luck.
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