iPlayer Disappointment

29 December 2007, 10:00

Surfing around some blogs I came across Adam Bowie's post about Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe. I'm a big Brooker fan, from back in the day when people bought these paper objects called magazines and Charlie wrote in PC Zone through to TV Go Home, Nathan Barley and now this BBC Four series.

Anyhow, Adam referenced the iPlayer URL of Brooker's end of year special of Screenwipe which I'd really like to see but missed due to being on holiday. I'd heard that the Flash version of iPlayer was released so I readied myself for a dose of Charlie's rantings to be streamed to my Mac and clicked the link. It wasn't to be. "Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe is no longer available - sorry!" the error message says. All very well - the rights aren't cleared for the BBC to stream this after 7 days, I understand that, but ultimately I'm very disappointed.

iPlayer error

However, lets compare this experience to performing a search for the title shown in iPlayer: Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe Review of the Year.

Screenwipe results

The "More results from www.youtube.com" link then gives me over 600 Screenwipe videos. The top 3 are the exact result I'm looking for (and they work - I eventually watched the show with my dinner from these URLs), but it also gives me last year's review of the year!

Whilst iPlayer has failed to be able to show me the programme that has been broadcast 8 days ago, the combination of YouTube and Bittorrent have been able to give me exactly what I was after instantly. It then allowed me to browse every Screenwipe programme that has ever been made, faster and in higher quality than iPlayer provides, and I could have done it whilst still on holiday. There are also user-editted clips, user comments, and user ratings.

BBC iPlayer: Making the unmissable, missable.

Jason Cartwright RSS Feed

about

Jason is a web developer living in London, working for Google and Ferrago Ltd.

links

me

work

colophon