On April 20th this year, BBC announced that the iPlayer will soon be streaming high-definition {HD} videos, which will be a treat to the online viewers. The HD footages will be available only in the upcoming version of iPlayer’s TV-on-demand service.
Since its launch on Dec. 25, 2007, the iPlayer has been a huge success online with over 400 million requests for downloadable and streaming videos.
The HD iPlayer is indeed a milestone in improving video quality. The idea behind streaming HD videos is to enable users to enjoy BBC programmes in HD mode without a set-top box, Anthony Rose, BBC’s Head of Digital Media Technology said.
Online viewers would now be able to download videos of enhanced quality. Though BBC has not yet mentioned the release date of this next generation iPlayer, it did disclose that the episodes of the next three Doctor Who? specials will be accessible through the iPlayer in HD mode. Episodes of Dragon’s Den, Kerwhizz and CBeebies are also expected for HD release online.
Another impressive feature of the next generation iPlayer is an in-built indicative tool that would detect the Internet connection of the user and would accordingly stream the video to present the best quality HD video.
The new iPlayer comes with the innovative bit-rate technology and high speeds that help to make the viewing experience a delight whereas the adjustable windows feature provides the users the option to toggle between various quality streams.
The BBC is also planning to include a complete and comprehensive iPlayer desktop and a software manager in the iPlayer that would make the BBC programmes compatible with Windows, Linux as well as Mac Safari in High Definition mode.
BBC claims that there are plans are afoot to launch the HD streams with other devices as well, such as the PlayStation 3 and the Virgin Set Top Box, but nothing on the same has been finalized yet.
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