No BBC iPlayer for Windows Phone

David Robinson Sep. 6, 2011 at 19:03

No BBC iPlayer for Windows Phone Bad news for the... several Windows Phone 7 users out there: the Windows Marketplace may have quiety built up to now hold more than 30,000 apps, but the BBC iPlayer won't be joining them anytime soon.

It boils down to the Microsoft platform's lack of support for key technologies the iPlayer relies on, including Flash.

Windows Phone 7 has pretty much hit the skids while everyone's been waiting for the Mango update to arrive. We're at least seeing some much-needed new WinPho hardware rocking up, but it's not likely to change the likelihood of the iPlayer hitting the platform anytime soon.

“Unfortunately, as the Windows Phone 7 doesn’t support HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) or Adobe Flash, the formats we use for streaming videos, we can’t make BBC iPlayer available on this phone at the moment,” WMPowerUser quotes a spokesperson as saying.

Microsoft is backing HTML5 heavily, something that the Mango update only reinforces. So now iPlayer for WinPho.

Still, if that massive burst of popularity some are expecting from WinPho in the next year or two does materialise, we'll be interested to see if the Beeb's hardline stance softens.

Waaaait a minute, the iPhone doesn't have flash but does iPlayer and I distinctly remember using a non-Flash iPlayer player before the Android Froyo update.

read it again

Unfortunately, as the Windows Phone 7 doesn’t support HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) or Adobe Flash

HLS "or" Flash. The iPhone supports HLS wheras Windows phone does not.

My post did come off as a bit ignorant but I'm trying to say there is surely other ways to provide streaming. It does YouTube after all.

Completely pointless article.

It's possible to sideload BBC iplayer programmes onto Windows 7 phones (certainly my HTC HD7) from your PC. First, though, you have to change your PC settings to allow you to view your phone as an external drive in My Computer rather than always going via Zune. There are plenty of instructions on the net for this and you only have to do it once per PC. It's a useful thing to do anyway and ridiculous it's not set up automatically.

Once you've done this sideloading from your PC will work normally. You'll need to download the mobile versions of iplayer programmes in Windows Media Format. Open briefly with Windows Media Player on your PC to download the digital media rights BEFORE dragging and dropping the file onto your phone where they'll be playable for 7 days.

OK - it's a bit cumbersome and it would be great to have live streaming too, but I usually want iplayer on my phone when I'm travelling and don't have wi-fi access, so already downloaded content is usually what I need.

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