February 2011 ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ iPlayer performance pack
Post categories: iPlayer,ÌýiPlayer Press Pack
| 11:29 UK time, Wednesday, 16 March 2011
The pack of information about ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ iPlayer performance in February is now available. Click here to access a PDF.
Here are some headlines selected by my colleagues in the Communications team:
February was another very strong month for average daily requests. A new record of 4.5 million online requests per day was set, 5.3 million including ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ iPlayer requests on Virgin Media; however purely because the month had 28 days compared with January's 31 days, the monthly total was correspondingly lower... The new ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ iPlayer Apps helped Apple's iPad total requests increase +22% month on month, now delivering 2 million requests for TV programmes per month, up from 1.6 million in January, on that device alone. Since launch on Feb 10th, the Android and iPad apps have been downloaded a combined total of over 460k times.
Nick Reynolds is Social Media Executive, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Online
Comment number 1.
At 16th Mar 2011, Eponymous Cowherd wrote:***"Since launch on Feb 10th, the Android and iPad apps have been downloaded a combined total of over 460k times"***
What are the totals for each platform?
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Comment number 2.
At 16th Mar 2011, cping500 wrote:Mmmm liKe the iPlayer comment. Judging by the prices of last years model on Ebay lots of people have not yet found a use for it. So watching tele under the pillow may help retention.
I use if for small business meetings. Do you?
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Comment number 3.
At 17th Mar 2011, Nick Reynolds wrote:Hi Eponymous Cowherd. The 460K breaks down as:
Android - 125,000; iPad - 335,000
Thanks
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Comment number 4.
At 18th Mar 2011, Eponymous Cowherd wrote:Hmm, Android downloads are not much more than 1/3 of the iPad downloads. Fairly poor going considering how many Android phones there are compared to the number of iPads. And that doesn't take into account that almost half of those commenting on the Android app are awarding it 1 star and, probably, immediately uninstalling it.
Leaving aside the 1000's of devices that cannot, and never will, be able to run the Flash based iPlayer, is the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ ever going to address the main complaints that plague this software (and consistently earn it poor ratings on the Android Market):
1. Will not play radio in the background.
2. Will not play over 3g.
3. Will not save for later viewing.
4. Poor performance on some devices.
5. Audio synch issues and "force closes".
I'm fairly sure that 1.will never be resolved. iPlayer is a Flash app and Flash apps are intended to be visual. Flash, therefore, has no capability to run in the background.
2 is certainly possible, even using Flash, but appears to be a matter of policy, as does the inability to download for later use. The problem is that a mobile phone app that can only be used where there is an available wi-fi connection is totally useless. I'm only going to want to watch TV on my phone if I don't have access to a TV, games console, computer, etc. So most places people have wi-fi, they will have something better to watch iPlayer on than a tiny phone screen.
The performance and stability issues are probably also related to Flash and appear to be common complaints when running Flash apps on Android. So it is probably up to Adobe to improve the stability and performance of the underlying VM.
I would be interested to know the actual percentage of all Android devices that can run iPlayer with acceptable stability and performance. Given the number that can't run it at all, and the number of complaints on the Android Market from those that should be able to run it, I suspect the figure to be quite low, probably well under 25%
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Comment number 5.
At 21st Mar 2011, lisajacobs wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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Comment number 6.
At 21st Mar 2011, MrESWC wrote:Concerning the iplayer I still wonder when and how you will be able to access ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content from outside of the UK. P.S. Any reason why online video content is not showing when you click it? (IE 8) That is not an Iplayer plugin, but simply Flash, right?
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Comment number 7.
At 24th Mar 2011, Doge wrote:Give us Airplay so we can stream ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ iPlayer from iPads to our TVs.
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Comment number 8.
At 27th Mar 2011, Jane wrote:Hi, Great news about the apps - do you know when iPlayer will be available on Apple TV?
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Comment number 9.
At 31st Mar 2011, OfficerDibble wrote:Nick, can you explain why there seems inconsistency in the results, from month to month? Take the Archers for example.. in the table
³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ iPLAYER TOP 20 RADIO EPISODES
– MOST-REQUESTED EPISODE PER SERIES
it features in some months but not others.. and the number of hits changes wildly each month if it is included. With such a large variance, can these figures be trusted?
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