The UK TV licence fee could be extended to cover catch-up services such as the BBC iPlayer as part of an overhaul of the levy being considered by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. British viewers currently pay £145.50 (€166) annually for a licence if they watch or record programmes as they are broadcast, […]
UK VoD service SeeSaw appears to have closed for good, following an initial planned closure in June. The company’s website simply says: “Thanks for your support but SeeSaw is no longer available.” Broadcast transmission infrastructure specialist Arqiva, which acquired the aborted Project Kangaroo from it founding partners BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, put […]
In September 2011, the UK Internet population made over 785 million visits to online video websites – an increase of 36 per cent year-on-year, according to analysis from competitive intelligence firm Experian Hitwise. According to Experian’s report – Online Video: Bringing Social Media to Life – the majority of growth in this space has been […]
Apple Airplay subscribers can now watch BBC content on their TVs via Apple’s set-top box. The international version of the iPlayer has been available exclusively on iPad tablets since its launch earlier this year. Matthew Littleford, general manager for the global iPlayer, said it was “constantly looking” for ways to develop and evolve the global […]
Forty-four per cent of TV households in the United States have at least one Digital Video Recorder (DVR), and one-third of DVR households have more than one DVR -representing 14 per cent of all households having multiple DVRs according to recent consumer research from Leichtman Research Group (LRG). In 2005, just 8 per cent of […]
The BBC has revealed in a blog post that tablet devices now account for half as much usage of the iPlayer service as Freesat, Freeview, BT Vision, Virgin TiVo and Blu-ray combined (3 per cent vs 6 per cent). The iPlayer received 153 million requests for TV and radio programmes in September, with Tablet requests […]
BBC Worldwide confirmed that the global BBC iPlayer App has launched in Australia and will be available to on the App Store exclusively on iPad. The app will give iPad users access to a quality mix of classic and contemporary British television specifically tailored for Australian viewers. The global BBC iPlayer is a video […]
A new report on UK cable operator Virgin Media’s prospects (from investment bankers Morgan Stanley) says that TiVo’s functionality will make life very hard for YouView or BSkyB. Virgin’s senior staffers say that their TiVo box, now rolling out to its customer base, will beat to the punch the UK’s digital terrestrial service YouView and […]
The BBC has launched a new version of its homepage in beta. The emphasis is shifted from news, sport and weather to the iPlayer, which was still in its infancy when the current homepage was launched in 2008. The new site is clearly built for the tablet age. The entire homepage fits inside the screen […]
Viewers logging on to watch the popular costume drama Downton Abbey found only three ads on a loop in place of the WW1 upmarket soap. There was also an apology for ‘technical difficulties.’ ITV continues to plagued by glitches in its multi-screen strategy; the mobile stream crashed in the first England game of the Rugby […]