[madmusician]

I wonder if the with the desktop apps it was easier to then rip the files using a third-party app to make them DRM-free. I'm guessing that the number of users downloading to PC/Mac is considerably lower than when the feature was first launched, which I think was in the fairly early days of the iPlayer.

The ability to download programmes to PC actually pre-dated the ability to stream the video! Yes, in 2007 when iPlayer was first brought into public beta, it was just a programme that downloaded DRM'd video files that you then watched from the local download. 4oD was the same (and did it much better, in my view!), and it wasn't until late-2007 that the ability to stream iPlayer video through the Flash player on the iPlayer website became available. That was when iPlayer really took off as, suddenly, it was a simple as just pressing 'play' (just like YouTube) rather than having to wrestle with installing a programme, downloading files, waiting for them to download, then watching them.