iHate iPlayer

Tried out the BBC iPlayer yesterday, or was it the day before?  Fuck, what the hell does it matter you shitting bastard!

It’s a multitude of immense bouts of stupidity. It only works on Windows, so first, being that I tossed out my boot camp installation a few months ago I kicked up Parallels, which I have a pretty standard XP install on.  So that’s stupidity #1.

First had to sign into the site with my beta invite login.  Here’s stupidity #2, the beta ID wasn’t my iPlayer Login, it was just to access the page where you sign upto iPlayer.  So I had to created yet another login.

Once i’d got a login I choose a show to download.  Ironically the big show on the iPlayer page that day was one of those celebrating Stephen Fry’s 50th, I say ironically because he’s a well known Mac advocate, even going as far as saying he hates windows and Microsoft in general with a passion.  So I choose that one.

It then gave me a sorry message because my system had failed the check list.  Oh I can’t use firefox. Stupidity #3.

So, in Internet Explorer now, tried again.  Chose the same show, this time I got 4 happy green ticks.  Yay…oh, not yay.  Despite the ticks my set up is still wrong, it tells me to look at the point with a red X.  Cept they’re all ticks.  All happy green ticks.  Stupidity #4.

Googled my problem and discovered it’s so specific that I need Media Player 11.  No mention of this by the beeb.  So upgraded Media Player and tried again.  Stupidity #5.

So logged back into the site again, chose the Stephen Fry thing, then guess what.  I’m still not ready, I now have to download iPlayer. Why the heck didn’t the process begin with this?  Stupidity #6.

So I installed iPlayer, went back to the site, chose the Stephen Fry thing.  It then added the show to the iPlayer apps download list.  Pheeeeww.  Ah, not much is coming though.  Left it for a good hour.  Still 0%.  Stopped the download and restarted it.  Nothing.   Stupidity #7.

Life is too short.

If I was the BBC I’d immediate scrap the iPlayer and sack everyone involved.  Just put the shows on an infrastructure already established.  iTunes, or maybe even Joost. It’s simply a waste of resources and license payers money to construct your own.  Just stop it now.  Please.