The BBC has just launched an app it calls the BBC Media Player, which it says is designed to offer “improved video and audio playback on your Android phone.” We’re not entirely sure what the point of it is, all we can assume it’s an alternative to Adobe’s discontinued Flash Player for offering BBC video compatibility across its range of mobile web sites and apps.
Take a look at it. It’s on the Play Store here.
And if you have a better idea of what it’s for and does, do let us know. We are mostly just pretending to know about such things.
UPDATE:
The BBC has now put out a full explanation of its plans for this and Android video playback. New iPlayer app coming next week, too.
Today the BBC’s mobile technical teams have begun rolling out a new way of securely playing video and audio content on Android phones and tablets. It’s called BBC Media Player and we are starting to use it with the mobile view of the BBC’s iPlayer website. Next week we plan to release a new version of BBC iPlayer on Android which will use this player. Other applications and websites will follow.
We want people to have the best experience possible when they’re watching BBC TV programmes or listening to BBC radio programmes. This means, amongst other things, making them available on as many devices as is practical.
I want to reassure you that Android is an important platform for us. And I know (not least from the comments on David Madden’s recent post) that this platform is an important one for many of our users. We’ve supported iPlayer on Android since June 2010 .
The Android operating system is constantly evolving and has been upgraded several times in the last two years. Back then version 2.2 (FroYo) was the latest OS. Today the latest version is 4.1 (JellyBean) and in between we’ve had Gingerbread, Honeycomb, and Ice Cream Sandwich.
As many of you are aware, we chose Adobe Flash as the media format to stream to Android devices. Doing so provided us with a number of cross platform efficiencies as the same infrastructure can be used for delivery on PCs, Android phones, and set-top boxes.
Adobe’s strategic decision to remove support for the Flash Player plug-in meant that we had to change the way that we play back this content.
We looked at a number of solutions, but there were a few key points we had to keep in mind:
1. We needed a solution that would work on the newer Android devices running the JellyBean operating system.
2. We also had to cater for the all the devices which are still on earlier OS versions. The diagram below shows that vast majority of Android users are on Gingerbread and FroYo.
3. We needed a solution which would work both for our websites and for our native Android applications.
4. We needed a solution which would meet the security obligations we had agreed with our rights holders.
5. We needed a solution which would not require a significant and costly change to our current infrastructure.
We looked at a number of different solutions, for example, Http Live Streaming (HLS) which is used to stream BBC media to other platforms. Unfortunately, HLS isn’t supported on Android OS versions prior to Honeycomb.
In the end, Flash was still the best choice of media format for us to use. And the only practical technology for us to play this format back on Android is Adobe Air.
We are keenly aware that mobile development is a fast-changing environment and that this approach may have to adapt in the future. We also wanted a generic simple application that would be as transparent as possible, both for users of our websites and users of our native applications like BBC iPlayer.
For these reasons, we decided to go with a separate application that we’ve called BBC Media player. This approach allows us to focus on solving all of our media playback challenges in one place and in one app. Any improvements that we make will benefit everything in the BBC that uses the Android platform.
We are making this change with our eyes open. No technology is perfect. We’ve seen some of the challenges that other Adobe Air based apps have had in the marketplace and so we have worked hard, both internally and with our technology partners to build the best application we can.
Adobe have been a long-standing collaborator with the BBC and have been excellent throughout this process, working closely with our teams to ensure continuity and a great experience throughout the London 2012 Olympic Games and then thereafter to support our requirements around this project.
We have put a lot of work into BBC Media Player and we think it will improve your experience of watching BBC TV and listening to BBC Radio on your Android phones and tablets.
We will continue to work on this application and on improving media playback and mobile experience on Android smartphones and tablets. The team and I would love to hear what you think about this approach and how well this new application works on your device.
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The HTC One S is the piggy in the middle of HTC’s 2012 line-up, offering a 4.3″ AMOLED display inside a very slim and stylish aluminium chassis. The end result is a phone that’s very, very slim and stylish.
HTC’s new quad-core monster, the 4.7″ flagship for 2012 that introduces the Tegra 3 processor to mobile phones, updates HTC’s range to Android 4.0 and brings us the supposedly streamlined version 4.0 of HTC’s Sense user interface.
Sony returns with an all-new mobile design for 2012, pairing a dual-core processor with a 720p display. It’s a lovely phone, but is it enough to end our Samsung and HTC obsession?
LG’s updated Prada phone comes with an absolutely crazy black & white theme, but is it just for fashionable suit wearers who want to make themselves look a bit more interesting?
benjymous
/ September 19, 2012By the look of their description, it does the same job as the YouTube app – when you play a BBC embedded video on the web it’ll do the work in the BBC player, rather than relying on flash/html5/whatever, just like the YouTube app does for YT vids.
So it’ll mean you can use iPlayer on JB, without having to hack in a version of the flash player, and a browser that handles the plugin.
Gary_C
/ September 19, 2012Yes, nicely put. I’m just getting a loading thing and a black screen at the moment when trying to use it on the iPlayer web site.
Alasdair
/ September 19, 2012I’ve installed it on my Nexus 7, but nothing seems to be happening when I go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/iPlayer or if I try to play a news video. You just get the “Click here to install Flash”. Maybe it’ll work better later on?
I hate Adobe for abandoning Android 4.1 – HTML5 as standard is years away. And as has been shown by the BBC, instead of it forcing companies to use HTML5 they just make apps of their own to get round the lack of Flash.
Rayrob
/ September 19, 2012Try http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/iplayer/tv (or click the iPlayer link in the Media Player).
Works for me on my Nexus 7.
cob1dog
/ September 19, 2012I found this works best for my Nexus http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1789385. The latest app doesn’t allow you to listen or watch live either.
Ahemd
/ September 20, 2012This will be great Try http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/iplayer/tv
Grace Sarfas
/ November 17, 2012This doesnt work on my xperia ray. just get black screen when trying to get live radio. Please fix BBC !
app development cost
/ December 4, 2012Hey there! I’ve been following your blog for a long time now and finally got the courage to go ahead and give you a shout out from Huffman Tx! Just wanted to say keep up the good work!