Beginning September 13th you will be able to watch your favorite BBC shows online, all the time. In the past, the BBC would post shows to the iPlayer and keep them up for only 7 days.

The new format will use series stacking, which basically means as each new episode becomes available, it will stack on top of old episodes. All episodes will remain available online so you will have the opportunity to watch entire series in one sitting or, just catch up on a few weeks of missed viewing.

According to the BBC press office, you will be able to catch up on a maximum of 13 episodes. It doesn't state if that's in one sitting or for one series or on the iPlayer overall though. Seems like an important detail to include.

iPlayer use for television shows is limited to those connecting from the UK, though radio programs are available to everyone.

[Via Mashable]

Nevermind all that DRM stuff that we talked to the FSF about, the iPlayer is causing all sorts of other trouble for ISPs. The player, built for viewing and downloading popular television shows onto computers through the special application is taking a toll on the ISPs bandwidth. So much so that they are looking for compensation from the BBC, threatening to initiate traffic shaping that would slow down service and render the player unusable if they don't pay up.

The BBC iPlayer is supposedly seen as 30 times as bandwidth heavy compared to other video players like YouTube. These ISPs might not realize what's in store for the internet as even more services and larger content moves online, they might have to buckle sooner rather than later and spend the $2 billion necessary to upgrade networks before things really get out of control.

[via usatoday]

As we mentioned on Monday, the Free Software Foundation's Defective by Design campaign against DRM paid the U.K. a visit yesterday with protests outside the BBC's London and Manchester locations against the use of Microsoft DRM technology in their highly debated iPlayer software.

The BBC iPlayer has been in development for a number of years now, costing the BBC public £130 million (nearly $260 million) to date. The use of Microsoft's DRM technology has been highly contentious, especially with the appointment of Erik Huggers (previously director of Microsoft's Windows Digital Media division whose technology the BBC now employs in their iPlayer software) as controller of the BBC's future media and technology group which is managing the iPlayer project.

The BBC is a publicly funded body, governed by the BBC Trust who protect, amongst other things, open access and independence form corporate influence. The BBC has been told to make the player platform independent, however Mac and Linux users are likely to be out in the cold for some time.

Download Squad decided to visit the protest and spoke to Peter Brown, Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation, about the reasoning behind the protests and what the campaigns hopes for the future. We've made the interview available either as a text transcript after the break, or via the Download Squad podcast feed.

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Podcast Links

• BBC iPlayer homepage
• Defective by Design
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