BBC's iMP

[Cheese]

Downloaded it today, I'm on the trial run of it. Basically it is a legal service that allows you to download and share any BBC program (with their own version of a P2P app) but after a certain amount of time (seven days after transmission) you can no longer watch that file. Also you can only watch the file with BBC's own media player which is built into the P2P program.

At the moment, from what I've seen, it sucks. It does have a great library of shows to watch but the actual filesharing side of it is suspect. For starters it doesn't show you what speeds you're downloading at and neither does it show if you are uploading. The only way I knew something was actually happening was the progress bar slowly filling up (that's right no time display to tell you how long to go, just a bar) and the fact that my browsing speed was reduced to a crawl. Great...

Screenshot of TV show menu:



The "downloading" screen:




The options you can change are virtually non-existent. You can alter the folder it downloads into and the size of that folder, a few bits of parental control and subtitles and that's about it. There seems to be some option for mobile devices but I don't have the equipment to try that out.

Options (or lack of) screenshot:



So not that impressive, certainly not when you consider that a lot of BBC's shows already make it onto the "free" networks without the need for integrated players or restrictive DRM. Though, if you miss an episode of Bargain Hunt this might be the ideal application for you as it is unlikely you will see David Dickinson on Bittorrent or the like.

BBC iMP

[worldpease]

I don't like it.

[4play]

I don't like it.

dont worry i hear they are going to make this uk only so you probably wont get the chance to use it anyway.

its only in the testing stages at the minute anyway so hopefully they will add a few more features like a estimate of the the time left to download and speed indicator.

[Cheese]

Turns out you can open a movie file with just WMP (I don't use it myself so hence the oversight) but I had no luck with BSPlayer, Winamp or Media Player Classic. Just as well you can open it seperately with WMP as the actual inbuilt media player (which is just a stripped down version of WMP) sucks for options.

But, as 4play points out, this is still in its testing stages so hopefully they'll be throwing in more options as they improve/fix it.

[Samurai]

I'm on this too, but haven't downloaded anything yet.

[Barbarossa]

So what format do the files come in.. .wmv?