Being heavily involved in the IPTV sector we have to say that the continual improvements in the BBC’s iPlayer are very welcome. They are in a unique non-profit requirement position to make products which are simply excellent and not constrained by insane client deadlines, unrealistic budgets or any sort of commercial RoI requirement. Bundle this with the BBC’s approach to using the best people and technology partners in the industry to produce their visionary solutions and what you have is an incredible recipe for world leading, technically excellent solutions. This alone is reason enough for paying your TV licence fee.
The new player which was announced today, will have a number of improvements including:
Simple
- Cleaner user experience, with three discovery areas
–Sliding drawers: Featured, For you, Most popular, Friends
–TV Channels: TV listings page, showing what’s on now
–Categories: browse by genre and sub-genre
- Separate TV & Radio
–No longer grouped together, easier to browse
–Radio console
–Pop-up console runs while you browse
- Channel-hop whilst watching live
–Quick links in viewing window, one-click to flip between channels
- BBC iPlayer Desktop
–Download favourites in advance to save time
–Easier to watch favourite programmes offline
- Improved viewing experience
–Fewer buttons
–Larger screen
–Higher quality video
Personal
- Favourites
–Tell BBC iPlayer what you like, and it will line programmes up in a convenient playlist
–New programmes, expiring programmes and unwatched programmes are flagged so it’s easier to keep track
- Improved recommendations based on what you watch and listen to
–Stored in local cookies, or via BBC iD
–Families can log in through separate IDs: individual experiences through the same machine
–Improved programme alerts delivered via email, so you don’t miss a thing
- Roam with BBC iD
–Log in to store preferences, so you pick up where you left off on another computer
- Customisable EPG
–List your favourite channels and stations
Connected
- Connect with Facebook
–Post content directly to your wall to recommend and share with friends
- Sync with Twitter
–Auto-tweet to recommend and pass links to friends
- Live chat with friends using Windows Live Messenger
–Log in to Windows Live Messenger through BBC iPlayer
–Forward links to others online: watch on-demand at the same time
–Comment live on programmes as they air
That’s all great, but can someone please explain why the volume controls goes between 0 and 11.
Well, it’s one louder, isn’t it? It’s not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You’re on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you’re on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
I don’t know.
Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Put it up to eleven.
Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
[pause] These go to eleven.
It’s very interesting that you noticed that. It’s because the BBC did extensive intuition user experience testing and found that subconsciously users associate the number 0 with no volume more readily than they do 1. They also went on to discover, and subsequently publish a white paper on the subject in the British Psychology and Psychiatry Journal, that we are all programmed to work in scales which end in prime numbers. As such they took the radical step of scaling their volume controls from 0 to 11. Hope that explains the anomaly.
Or, that could all be b011ox that I just made up because I have no idea how that got through the user testing 😉