A new updated version of the BBC's hugely successful iPlayer is just "weeks away" and will add radio and personalisation.
The news came at Broadcast's Digital Channels Conference from BBC head of digital media technology Anthony Rose.
"In a few weeks time, we are going live with an all new iPlayer that has radio and TV all in the same interface," he said.
The recommendations will be based on genres and include an Amazon style "people who liked that, liked this".
Rose said that different personalisation techniques will be tested over the next two to three months and will then "have a shoot-out" to decide which are adopted (Why not just use a combination of all the several different techniques available, a la Sky? - Ed).
Broadcast magazine said Individual users on shared computers will be able to protect and build on their own profile with a personal log in, possibly by selecting an avatar. Rose predicted that a lot of the scheduling for these genre clusters will be done by computer but said there will always be a need for human schedulers.
"The endgame is that the linear scheduler isn't quite dead yet. Long live the online scheduler," he said.
As yet there's no word on whether they'll be keeping the delightful black and pink or upping the encoding rates.
Bebo and Universal Music UK are set to launch The Secret World of Sam King about the adventures of a fictional employee of Universal who sets up his own record label from the post room. While mostly scripted, it will include plot contributions from the Bebo community. With this, Kate Modern, Sophia's Diary, and The Gap Year, Bebo is becoming as much a video destination as a social networking site...
BSkyB, Virgin and online only service Joost have submitted a complaint to the Office of Fair Trading over the proposed video service kangaroo (hang on, isn't this called SeeSaw now?) Mike Volpi, chief executive of Joost had this to say on the matter...
"When you have a situation where so much good content ends up being potentially exclusive through a single distribution channel, it makes it very difficult for any player outside of those three to be competitive in the UK market."
Is Kangaroo doomed? Is it vaporware? Or will it be a storming success? Who knows...
BT Vision is asking customers to pay for on-demand BBC content freely available on the iPlayer.
The company has contacted subscribers saying that BBC VoD programmes will now incur a charge as part of its paid for service, the TV Replay Pack.
Previously, users could watch BBC VoD content for free.
BT says it always planned to charge for the programmes but was prevented from doing so by a technical problem. It's always had paid-for on-demand access to Channel 4 content, which is also freely available online.
The BBC isn't making any money on the deal though. A BBC spokeswoman said the move by BT meets with the corporation's demand that content is always made available under the cheapest possible subscription package.
"In line with other TV platforms where BBC programmes are made available on demand, the BBC requires that all public service content should be accessible via the lowest cost subscription tier, which in this case, is BT Replay," she said.
