BBC iPlayer getting 1.3 million unique viewers a week...

According to BBC figures quoted in this Guardian Unlimited article. In addition it reports that "iPhone and iPod Touch owners will be able to access iPlayer content within the next few weeks. This will be the first time the broadband TV service has been available beyond PC and Mac computers." This means a move away from WMV for the high quality Windows only download to the H.264 codec (WMV is available on Mac and linux, but not the DRM). This would also make the downloaded videos compatible with AppleTV, even though AppleTV is not mentioned in any of the many articles carrying this story, Ashley Highfield, the BBC's Director of Future Media & Technology, discussed the possibility previously:

"Apple's (long anticipated) move to a rental model, means that we can look to getting BBC iPlayer onto this platform too, as we should be able to use the rental functionality to allow our programmes to be downloaded, free, but retained for a time window, and then erased, as our rightsholders currently insist."

This would make three services that are AppleTV compatible, after iTunes (which is already selling BBC shows) and arthouse movie download service Jaman. The Jaman plug-in is an unsupported hack not an official update (and I've no idea if it's been kiboshed by the recent AppleTV makeover). It's odd that Apple haven't been more welcoming to services like Jaman, since iTunes basically sells iPods as much as it sells music, the more third party services that are supported on AppleTV the more attractive it is as a commodity.

This article from The Register included an addendum which says "the BBC got in touch to say it will always offer a Flash version", presumably in the browser embedded player, but since flash is moving away from the old Sorenson Spark codec to H.264 too, the statement may mean the embedded player will remain SWF based, even if the codec is updated.

This hopefully will mean a significant step forward for H.264 becoming a de facto web standard for online video, since it will be seamlessly supported by Quicktime (installed on all Macs and 60% of PCs) and Flash (installed on 90% of internet connected computers).