BBC iPlayer now Mac Friendly
After a lot of campaigning by UK Mac users, check out our article on the petition from last summer (here). To play a programme on the BBC iPlayer website, you need Flash installed. If you want to download a programme, your computer needs Windows Media Player 9 or a later version.
The BBC iPlayer console in both these methods gives you good quality playback on your computer in a small window or full screen, providing your computer set-up meets our minimum requirements. It’s also possible to connect your computer to your TV.
With BBC iPlayer you can catch up with the programmes from the past seven days you’ve missed or want to watch again by playing them direct on the BBC iPlayer website or downloading them to your computer.
As long as you are in the UK and connected to the internet you can:
- find programmes you want to catch up on or watch again from the past seven days and watch them on the website through a method known as streaming
- download and store them on your computer for up to 30 days if you have a Windows PC, it should be noted that it is not possible to download programmes on the Mac version.
- play back high quality programmes on your computer as often as you like during the time that the programme is available
Finding programmes
A wide range of BBC TV programmes from the past seven days from most of our television channels are available to download with BBC iPlayer at www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer.
You choose what you want to watch and either play the programme as soon as it is available through a method known as streaming, or download it to your computer to watch when it suits you.
Streaming programmes
Streaming is the way you can simply click to play and watch a programme as soon as it is available on the BBC iPlayer website. This is designed to work on any computer in the UK, including Windows, Macintosh, Linux or other operating systems, as long as it can run the latest version of Flash and access the BBC iPlayer website.
For more information visit the iplayer site.
6 Comments
Hmm- don’t believe the hype!
I tried to use iPlayer for the first time the other day, and it crawled in 10.5,2, and I got a spinning wheel for about 2 minutes after about 5 seconds of playback. That went on for ages, until I eventually quit.
However booting into XP via Bootcamp (as an experiment to test our connection speed) on my MacBook Pro, opening up in IE, iPlayer worked flawlessly.
Not impressed at all. Shame on you Beeb.
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I agree with the above – for some reason, the iplayer cuts out my internet connection – (BT Home Hub) and then i have to reconnect via BT.
Top Gear and Doctor Who are the only things that interest me on TV, and as i’m a barman, i can’t catch the repeats at any time. As a license holder (how much is it now!?) I can’t even watch the programmes i want to watch. Does work on Wii, though. Interesting. What would Wogan say?!
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Aggghhhh, i want to get a macbook, but i dont understand!! Can you use iplayer on it or not??? Pls help!!! x
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The non windows version of iplayer is flash based like youtube. it runs OK on an 800MHz PC running puppy linux. A 350 MHz G3 mac is too slow. A recent Mac will work fine, (Any problems are more likely to be issues with early versions of Leopard, rather than the BBC doing it wrong.)
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I have a MacBook Air, running OS X Leopard & could not even connect to wireless at home through my Belkin MIMO router. I have a Fonera (Like BT Open … http://www.fon.com) connection which shares a % of my bandwidth with the public (If you are a BT or FON user).
I connected through this network (MyPlace) and everything works great, even BBC I-Player … so, Yes, it works, but it’s a bit of a faf-on.
Ken
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It’s important to remember that the non-Windows versions are still in beta.
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