Although I signed a negative petition against the BBC’s iplayer for being platformist and not having a mac/linux version available I do have a windows PC and I’ve been making full use of it since I brought it down to uni. My main reason for bringing it down being that I needed to run Maya and photoshop/premier and flash CS3 without my laptop dying. I’ve also just upgraded the ram so its pretty good at running them too!

I did try to run the iplayer on parallels but I have a total disk space of 300mb on there so I’ve moved onto my desktop. It has a few bugs but other than that its AMAZING. Its something i’ve been waiting for for years either that or them moving casualty to a sunday night because having the only terrestrial TV program I watch (other than Top Gear) on on a saturday night when I now have a social life is damned annoying.

Firstly if you don’t know who the BBC are get out!

The iplayer is the BBC’s on demand service. You have up to 7 days after a program is shown to download and watch it. Once you’ve downloaded the file you have about a month to watch it although once you’ve watched it the file expires within a week.

To use the iplayer you sign up here. You then need to download their annoying program thing which even MORE annoyingly uses windows media player, the slowest media player on the planet! You get the option to download the program as soon as you click the download button next to a program.

Another thing to remember is to upgrade your windows media player if your like me and have never used it before it’ll need upgrading otherwise you’ll get a full list of ticks on the requirement check and be confused as to why you can’t download things!

I’ve been relying so much on the iplayer lately, I’m out all day and pretty much most nights so its a must have for my forgotten casualty, top gear and james and oz’s wine adventure!

Because the service isn’t available outside the uk I think they should implement a system whereby you put in a special number you get with your TV licence in your profile so you can watch the programs worldwide - would have been SO useful when I was in china and I wasn’t allowed to catch up on topgear! grr!