- Thursday, 8 January 2009
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The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything - Edward John Phelps
BBC helps viewers play catch-up
GOOD OLD AUNTY BEEB is helping those who only hear about a great show half way through the season, by offering a new 'series stacking' feature through its Iplayer service.
Basically, for certain shows the new service will let people watch any episode of a show within the series after it has been broadcast.
Currently first-run shows are available for seven days after broadcast, leaving some newcomers high and dry when it comes to figuring out what's going on in the show.
So if some of your mates recommend a new show to you, you don't have to try and figure out what's going on from half-way through the season or wait until the box set comes out on DVD. Instead you'll be able to vegetate for hours at a time catching up from the beginning.
"Series stacking marks a key development in our strategy to let audiences view our programmes whenever and wherever they want," said BBC Vision's Controller of Multiplatform and Portfolio, Simon Nelson.
"Series stacking will really make the unmissable, unmissable."
The new service kicks off from 13 September and will initially be available only on the Iplayer's online streaming catch-up services, but the BBC has said it will be made available for online downloads and within BBC iPlayer for TV platforms in due course. µ
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This feature has been missing since the iPlayer was set up and is really the only reason i want to use the service. It's all well and good having shows for 7 days but i generally wouldn't get a chance to watch the show i wanted within that time frame. There was/is a decent service on Virgin cable TV whereby you can watch series - but unfortunately they aren't always the complete or the series you wish to watch... so you may have series 1 and 5 of New Tricks or season 2 of 'New' Dr Who when the last season was season 4 or things along those lines.
I really, REALLY hope the networks realize that that's what people really want. I'm in the US, and about 2 years ago I quit watching TV in favor of surfing the Internet more. My fellow Arkansans think I'm an idiot, but I think surfing the Internet is more satisfying than staring at a TV, since it's more interactive. I'm not interested in scheduling my life around a television set. Nor am I interested in scheduling recordings that will make my computer sluggish. Commercials are fine(go to hulu.com to see the perfect way of doing things), but I want to be able to watch what I want, when I want.