BBC using Flash as a standard for web video
According to Tim Anderson who is at Qcon today, the BBC is standardizing on Flash as the way to deliver web video. There have been a bunch of back and forth about the iPlayer, but that’s not related to this announcement – this is just for video on the website which used to be viewed after a pop-up selection offering a Real version and a Windows Media version.
Tim said that the BBC folks found that embedded video has a much better click through rate than pop-ups which makes sense. In related good news, Tim says the BBC is “getting better at negotiating rights to video content and we can expect lots of video from this year’s Olympics, for example.” Looks like we have a way to watch the Olympics in Flash video after all. 
Thanks to JD for the tip.
[tasg]BBC, Flash, rich media[/tags]
Posted in Rich Internet Applications
March 14th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
about time they figured this out… what took them so long???
March 15th, 2008 at 1:26 am
Although you’ll need a UK IP address to watch them….
March 15th, 2008 at 2:55 am
Hi Ryan,
I hear a rumor they were dropping flash for their iPlayer as they are weeks away of a release of iPlayer that will work on iPhone / iPod touch. Whether they will maintain two versions one flash based for the desktop and the other (iPhone web app / iPhone SDK?) for mobile users I don’t know. What have you heard?
I hope Apple and Adobe can resolve their differences and develop a flash player for the iPhone (but that is a different issue).
Anyway being passionate about Flex, it would be a sad day if the BBC dropped flash for future versions of iPlayer as they have a fantastic product and it is by far the best internet on-demand tv service we have in the UK.
March 15th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Further to my last comment it looks like they are offering the service concurrently. If you browse now to the iPlayer site with your iPhone you can play the video content using Quicktime but still get the flash UI from the desktop… Great.
March 15th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Hey Jon, thanks for the update. Alex, do you know if there’s any way around that other than IP spoofing?
March 15th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
+1 on the IP spoofing!
Wasn’t it about a year or two ago that BBC said it wasn’t going to Flash for cost reasons (they were locked into a deal with Real, or something like that) and the blogosphere was sounding the death knells for Flash and Flash video? Yaaaawwwwn!
OK, we REALLY need Apple to support the Flash player – stop with the pettiness Jobs! If the video you want to watch isn’t on Youtube, you can’t watch it! Ridiculous (disclaimer: I DO own an iPhone)
Cheers,
Davo
March 17th, 2008 at 8:27 am
Psssst…. BBC: interstitials generally have a better click-thru; Flash ALWAYS does. BTW, my current iPhone hardware can’t handle Flash Player: hell, just answering a call whilst rocking out, checking mail, & browsing means my battery life is already sapped before I even plug in my headphones. Imagine what a poorly optimized .swf would do to the iPhone’s performance, IMHO…