johng Blog

I have been saving this rant since last week due to the blog issues. I still think it’s relevant.

When I read this blog post by the BBC’s Darren Waters last week I started to get very angry. Now that I’ve had some time to think about it I can make a cool rational judgement - something I suggest Mr Waters tries.

“The BBC’s announcement of a deal with Nintendo to put the iPlayer’s streaming service on the console makes something of a mockery claims by Sony and Microsoft that their consoles are the true multimedia machines.”

I don’t care which side he is on but the fact is that he and the BBC should not be taking sides. It’s all very well to brag about how amazing your online video service will be on the Wii but it’s another thing to shit all over Nintendo’s competion. It’s called impartiality buddy.

Now to the techie meat of the issue. Any browser that supports the latest flash can play iPlayer content. So that’s why Wii and PS3 support is on the way - they have browsers. The catch is that this is the low quality version, the high(er) quality video must be downloaded. Unlike that BBC blogger I have a PC connected to a large screen and attempted to watch Doctor Who via the flash player this week. It looked horrendous. I couldn’t watch it. The same video I couldn’t watch will be what is offered on the Wii and a download option can never be implemented that platform.

People don’t mind watching YouTube videos on their PCs in tiny windows but when you stretch it out on a huge screen they will not be impressed.