The BBC yesterday launched an updated iPlayer for the PS3 platform and having quickly tried it last night I can say it finally offers a compelling user experience and a valid combination for catching up with those programs you may have missed on the big screen. Whilst it’s still built on a combination of HTML and Javascript, it’s presented as a much richer interface and will be, I suspect, much easier to find the content you’re interested in.
The other major benefit is that whilst the old version was functional for simple playing programs, it didn’t work well at all with the Blu-ray Remote Control. In the old version, once you managed to get the picture into full-screen mode, touching any key would cause it to jump back to a small embedded window within the overall page. With the new version, my initial impression is that all the major control buttons on the remote control now work logically. The default is for programs to start in full-screen, albeit with an initial top-and-bottom gray information bar (letterbox format), this disappears after a few moments to leave the picture in all it’s full screen glory. If you find you want to pause a program to make that all important cup of hot beverage then just press the pause button and ‘hey presto’ the picture is frozen, ready to resume when you’re refueled. Scanning backwards and forwards works, of a sort, but with a delay and with large incremental backwards/forwards jumps; this seems to make it difficult to accurately rewind or fast-forward in any meaningful way but it might be better than restarting the program once again.
Whilst it may not be perfect, it’s a big improvement over the old player.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2011/08/bbc_iplayer_connected_tv.html
