[Stooky Bill]

My Manhattan T3-R didn't like loading the history channel when I tried it the other night, and promptly crashed whilst attempting to play.

The cartoon one doesn't even appear on the FireTV iPlayer at all. I tried adding it to favourites on my phone to see if that would work, but it won't let you even let you do that

[London Lite]

Changes to iPlayer include VOD being avaliable much faster using the previous live stream to provide a temporary VOD file and latency on live stream reduced to 60 seconds behind linear.

www.tvzoneuk.com 

BBC INTRODUCE CHANGES TO BBC iPLAYER
The BBC have announced some changes it is making to its online platform BBC iPla…
  Source: www.tvzoneuk.com

[Newshound47]

60 seconds is still a major gap that surely can be reduced considerably.

[IanJRedman]

Changes to iPlayer include VOD being avaliable much faster using the previous live stream to provide a temporary VOD file and latency on live stream reduced to 60 seconds behind linear.

www.tvzoneuk.com 

Bit in bold - I thought this was what already happens? If someone watches a live show like Strictly on iPlayer, it's just taken from the initial live stream?

Also - what happens if the changeover from the 'temporary' to 'higher quality' file happens while someone is mid-stream?

[Spencer]

Also - what happens if the changeover from the 'temporary' to 'higher quality' file happens while someone is mid-stream?

I’m guessing if you start watching the temporary file, you’ll carry on with that, but once the higher quality version becomes available, the former simply won’t be linked from the UI.

[Technologist]

It may be that the system moves seamlessly from the “temporary ex live file “
to the “well formed VOD file “just as they change chunks to a different resolution
when your connection changes .
This is the blog post
www.bbc.co.uk 

BBC iPlayer improves speed of programme availability and live video as part of s…
HomepageAccessibility linksSkip to contentAccessibility HelpBBC Account Notifica…
  Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Which mentions the shorter and more consistent time to chunk on the live stream.

[SunburntRock89]

60 seconds is still a major gap that surely can be reduced considerably.

60 seconds is a major gap compared to the incredibly low (in my experience, usually around 6 second) latencies you can find on Twitch and (if you turn the playback speed to 2x until you run out of video) YouTube.

However, the BBC streaming chain is probably a little more complicated than Twitch and YouTube's RTMP server > Encoding > You setup.

I can't say I particularly understand their chain but I would think that lower latencies should be possible. They might be keeping distances so that they can pull feeds if needed.

[Brekkie]

It's another reason why any thought of abandoning terrestrial broadcast should be a non-starter for now.


On a less technical aspect as nice as it is to be greated by the gorgeous Maya Jama everytime you sign in to iPlayer online does she actually present anything for the BBC anymore? She quit that BBC3 show, has long left Radio 1 and the last think I recall her doing is the Peter Crouch show a couple of years ago.

[Technologist]

It's another reason why any thought of abandoning terrestrial broadcast should be a non-starter for now.

but it was very much being thought about by UK PSB and Mux operators
and their likely service providers in 2005 ......
and the result is the current UK DTT model and contracts - typically 25 years from 2010
we did factor in the decline in linear and emissive viewing - which made it not 30 years

[IanJRedman]

It's another reason why any thought of abandoning terrestrial broadcast should be a non-starter for now.

I mean, other modes of broadcast have latency too, just perhaps not quite as much. I'm not sure that, in itself, is an argument for keeping terrestrial. In theory, if all the BBC channels went iPlayer-only, there would be no perceptible lag because there'd be nothing else for it to be 'behind'