As announced earlier in the year, the BBC has now launched an official iPlayer app for the Apple TV. The app uses native a tvOS interface, closely resembling the normal iTunes Store films and TV shows interface. The app is free but requires a TV licence and is therefore only available to UK Apple TV owners.
The app includes the full iPlayer catch up catalogue as well as live streaming of BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three, BBC Four and other channels. The BBC is prioritizing the iPlayer service more over time as it makes more and more content availably exclusively online, especially with the cancellation of terrestrial BBC Three due in February 2016.
https://twitter.com/pauldunlop/status/676181559356096512/photo/
https://twitter.com/jasonbetts/status/676190576568569856
iPlayer is so important to Apple TV there's a dedicated promo page on Apple's website. https://t.co/YRqCiiaI9S https://t.co/JZy9pVuJED
— Benjamin Mayo (@bzamayo) December 14, 2015
The app does not include Siri voice search integration, currently limited to just iTunes content in the UK.
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You don’t need a TV license to watch streaming content (“catch-up” VOD, etc.) Never have. Only for Live broadcast. But that’s besides the point as a “license” isn’t a magic numb you input into a text box anyway, it’s simply a tax to pay for the government-funded BBC. The player app will however likely check the country you’re connecting from via your IP address and block anything not within the UK.
‘Live broadcast’ includes the live streaming content in the app.
Bruno is right, a TV licence is only required to watch live broadcasts that are also being broadcast on TV and not catch up services. From the TV licence website:
“You need to be covered by a TV Licence if you watch or record programmes as they’re being shown on TV or live on an online TV service”
But it’s kind of a moot point because by having the app installed you need a TV licence; there’s no (easy) way to prove to TV licencing you’re exclusively watching catch up services and not live broadcasts.
Better to have it than not of course, but even for a first release this is surprisingly basic. It’s lacking pretty much every iPlayer standard feature except playing video. No favourites, no recently played, no episode list, no suggestions, no region setting for local content. I’m not even sure it’s in HD as it lacks the standard iPlayer settings screen.
Surprising too to see the BBC jettisoning the standard iPlayer UI that is used on EVERY version of big screen iPlayer to go with a basic looking TVML screen of lists. It’s clearly a rush job and needs to improve a heck of a lot.
Funny to see Siri missing despite the BBC saying it was the main reason to write a native app in their own news report when they announced they were starting development!
Since this uses the basic tvOS templates it seems like Apple should be pushing this out to the atv 3 as well. It’s a significant app and deserves to be there given its still a current model.
Great to finally see BBC iPlayer with a proper Apple TV app. It’s quite buggy with a lot of error messages so far, but let’s see. I assume they will improve significantly on this in the coming weeks up to Christmas, because this seems very basic so far. If it’s true what Steve Lawrence mentions above, that they’ve used basic tvOS, it seems obvious that there is a major work-over needed…
thaaaaat
Doesn’t seem to stream in HD – yay for blocky SD pictures :(