It seems Britain’s three biggest broadcasters, namely the BBC, ITV, and Channel 4, want a slice of the increasingly popular online television pie, and are willing to put aside traditional rivalries to grab that slice.

The three most popular TV broadcasters have jointly announced a plan to launch ‘Kangaroo’, a video on demand online venture, which they hope will compete with the giant that is YouTube.

Each of them are taking a one-third stake in the new venture, which is being labelled “Freeview Online” and between them will provide over 10,000 hours of original programming.

Up to now, the BBC and Channel 4 have provided limited amounts of their own programming on their own services, the BBC iPlayer, and 4oD respectively, but this new plan sees a new level of participation entirely.

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When the BBC launched their new iPlayer, there was an outcry of opposition to the plans for it to be compatible only with the Windows platform.

Now, Downing Street has officially come to the aid of the 16,000 people who signed an electronic petition online designed to address the matter of inequality.

The UK government is reiterating conditions originally stipulated by the BBC Trust (a sort of internal watchdog of the media house) as indeed mandatory, and that the BBC must provide solutions for the minorities of the PC market. Mac OS X and various Linux systems of course come immediately to mind.

While Windows clearly dominates the PC market, it’s certainly not the only operating system around. 

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It’s been reported that some of the UK’s major ISPs are threatening to shape network traffic generated by the BBC’s iPlayer as their concerns grow that hundreds of thousands of users will put a huge strain on their broadband networks.

There’s a suggestion that some of the ISP’s, including Tiscali, BT and Carphone Warehouse, would welcome the BBC contributing funds, presumably to assist with network upgrades, which would then circumvent the need to limit bandwidth.

Representatives from BT and Tiscali both acknowledged that this was a very real and current debate between ISPs and the BBC. The Internet Service Providers Association has also been dragged in to the debate, but is yet to provide a united front for the ISPs.

The iPlayer allows viewers to download about 60% of the BBC’s weekly TV schedule on a seven day catch-up basis.

[Via The Independent]

The iPlayer, the BBC’s new online TV service, launched last Friday offering users the chance to download and watch a selection of the channel’s most popular shows from the previous seven days.

For the corporation’s director general, Mark Thompson, the launch of iPlayer is as big a milestone as the arrival of color TV, but others are criticizing its reliability and late emergence into a crowded marketplace.

Screen Digest Analyst, Arash Amel, told BBC News that in the two weeks he had been testing the service in a closed beta environment he had come across “technical fault after technical fault.“

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The BBC has used 4 years and a lot of money to develop an on demand video player that is out of date before it’s even released.

The upcoming iPlayer, recently announced its July 27th launch, despite being in development since 2003. It will allow users to watch BBC television broadcasts seven days after they are aired.

The idea of the BBC iPlayer sounded great, but the restrictiveness of the iPlayer made a DVR sound like a better option.

The problem? The iPlayer relies on Microsoft’s DRM technology, which means if you aren’t running a Microsoft operating system, you are out of luck. No Linux or Mac versions exist, although the BBC estimates a Mac version may be available by this fall.

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Back in January the BBC was given a provisional approval for the BBC iPlayer that would allow BBC TV shows to be distributed online using peer to peer technology for up to 30 days.

Now the BBC has been given the full and complete approval after working out the concerns and details of the iPlayer service. The service will appear later this year bringing BBC shows such as EastEnders and Doctor Who online.

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The BBC, which already offers a variety of on-demand TV shows and news, will soon be offering even more TV over the internet.

The on-demand iPlayer service (sounds like something from Apple) will allow viewers to watch their favorite programs from the previous 7 days and store them on a PC for 30 days. It sounds kind of like an automated DVR service.

iPlayer will allow viewers to watch their favorite programs from the previous 7 days and store them on a PC for 30 days

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