The Auricle

by Derek Morrison, 23 February 2010

Developments in the digital world may have increased choice but sometimes at the cost of increased and unnecessary complexity. Good examples of this unncessary complexity are to be found in the plethora of online “players” offered by each and every broadcaster – each with its own interface, limitations, and quirks. The result? It’s a bit like needing an individual remote controller with its own configuration of keys for every digital broadcaster accessed. Now I’m a technophile and I manage, but I suspect many people of a certain age or – and – non technical inclination, just don’t bother. So it’s good to see that some sense is apparently beginning to prevail with the recent announcement that the BBC iPlayer is starting to offer accesss to digital content from the other terrestial broadcasters in the UK. It’s early days and much of this “other” content still appears to be “not available”. Also this facility is only for the PC version of iPlayer at the moment which limits its usefulness (the big screen is where it needs to be BBC) but this is a big step in the right direction. Even within the iPlayer there are a number of usability issues that really need ironing out (try iPlayer on a television interface to see what I mean*) but it just now makes more sense for the broadcasters to focus on developing and refining one interface and one portal. Because the iPlayer is streets ahead of the rest it’s appropriate that everyone now accepts this and seeks to gain and spread benefit from such co-operation and collaboration. Let’s try and get back to the equivalent of switching something on, pressing a choice button and it just happening with ease.

* For example sometimes actions require an “Ok” button to be pressed and other times actions happen automatically. Also, responsiveness of the interface in comparison to PC versions is very poor – consequently there is a lot of waiting around for something to happen.