Yup. TVs are used to run your console, and now consoles are helping you to watch TV. Or at least, BBC programming.
The iPlayer is a Peer2Peer legal download service not too dissimilar from BitTorrent, where you download your content of previous shows that have been aired on the BBC. There has been a debate about BBC’s iPlayer putting strain on the broadband network here in the UK, and who should pay for the upgrades in order to facilitate it.
But regardless, the BBC and Nintendo have signed a deal together which will allow Wii owners to watch programmes available via the iPlayer service, through the Internet Channel. This sort of deal, in my opinion, will trump the whole movie rentals service and such, but I have a few questions:
- Are they going to include 4OD (Channel 4 On-Demand)?
- How will they facilitate the downloads? Will they stream/cache or even store?
- If the latter is true, then how? Will it be a removable Hard Disk?
- When are broadband companies going to wise up and pull together to upgrade the network, independant of this little pow-wow?