Technology + Creativity at the �� Feed

New look subtitles and playback for �� iPlayer on TV

2021-04-08T08:00:32+00:00

From today, we’re rolling out a new look for �� iPlayer’s playback on TVs. It’s a cleaner, sleeker and more pared-back interface, with some changes to how things appear during playback and new, improved subtitles you can customise and control.

The first thing most viewers will notice is the playback bar along the bottom. You will now see a simple, elegant bar that shows how far through the programme you are.

Gone is the play/pause button - play and pause icons are now briefly displayed in the centre of the screen when pausing and resuming, whilst rewinding and fast-forwarding brings up visual stills from the programme, so you can easily see when to press play again.

All the extra controls for more episodes, subtitles and settings and the button to add a programme to your list to watch later have all been moved to the top left of the screen.

As part of these changes, we’ve also made significant improvements to the way viewers can control subtitles on iPlayer. The new position of the subtitles and settings menu makes it easier than ever to turn subtitles on or off, as well as making it easier to choose the audio described and signed versions where available; plus, we’ve also added the ability to change and control the size of the subtitles.

Previously subtitles on iPlayer were automatically displayed as a larger size than we use on broadcast, so as part of these changes, we’ve made the default setting a smaller size. For those who need larger or, indeed, even smaller text, they can now choose from a range of five options. That choice is remembered for other programmes they watch in the future.

These changes follow some other recent improvements we’ve made to subtitles on iPlayer on TV. Previously subtitles would appear as coloured sans serif text with a black outline, always at the bottom-middle of the screen. This was far from ideal as, for example, it could be difficult to read the white text if the video image behind it was also white or was patterned. And if the part of the video image behind the subtitles contained something that viewers needed to see to understand the programme – for example, the clues on Only Connect – they could only see it by switching subtitles off.

The improvements we’ve made recently mean when you’re watching iPlayer on a TV, subtitles are now clearly readable, in the �� Reith Sans typeface, with a black background behind the text, and the correct colours to show who is talking. They are also now positioned to take account of what’s on-screen, so they will no longer be covering important information, and mean our viewers who use subtitles can play along with Only Connect and enjoy Victoria Coren-Mitchell’s witty and withering jokes at the same time.

Currently, the new size controls are only available on our on-demand content but will be coming to live channels on iPlayer in the coming weeks. Let us know your feedback on the new look playback interface, the new subtitle controls or anything else at bbc.co.uk/contact.

> �� iPlayer - Accessibility

> �� Technology + Creativity - Accessibility

> �� R&D - Casualty - Accessible and enhanced audio trial

An international update on �� Sounds and �� iPlayer Radio

2020-09-22T08:49:50+00:00

Here in the UK, �� Sounds is now one of the most popular audio apps available, and just had its best quarter ever. We’re seeing around 3.5 million people a week listening to the �� on Sounds across the app, website, connected TVs and voice-activated devices – more than we’ve ever seen before.

There are also millions of people who watch, listen and read �� content outside the UK – we recently announced the �� had reached an all-time record global audience of 468 million. Until now, �� Sounds has only been available for those international listeners through the website, and people who’ve wanted to listen to the �� through an app have had to use the old international version of the iPlayer Radio app. Now though, the time has come to turn off the old international iPlayer Radio app and transition those users over to �� Sounds.

From today, the �� Sounds app will begin to be made available to download on international app stores, available for devices capable of running iOS 11, Android 5 or Amazon OS 5 or above. People who currently use the iPlayer Radio app outside the UK will now begin seeing messages encouraging them to download the �� Sounds app and switch over. At some point in the near future, the iPlayer Radio app will stop working, and listeners will need to get the �� Sounds app to continue listening.

This change won’t affect the content international listeners can enjoy. They’ll still be able to listen to all their favourite �� programmes, the wide range of �� radio stations will be available to stream live, including the World Service. Popular radio programmes like The Archers, Desert Island Discs, and Radio 5’s Elis James and John Robins show will be available to listen to on-demand, as well as the wide range of hit podcasts from the ��, including Grounded with Louis Theroux, That Peter Crouch Podcast and George the Poet’s fantastic Have You Heard George’s Podcast?

�� Sounds will now also offer international listeners a personalised experience they didn’t get with iPlayer Radio, receiving tailored recommendations based on what they’ve been enjoying and the ability to pick up where they left off with their favourite shows. International listeners can also stream �� Sounds to their Chromecast device, and enjoy the improved experience for Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, which offers a larger choice of content from the dashboard than the old iPlayer Radio app did.

These changes won’t impact people within the UK, and we’re excited that international listeners will now be able to get the much-improved experience �� Sounds offers.

The �� Sounds TV app

Here in the UK, we’re bringing the �� Sounds TV app to more devices. Since first launching in March on Virgin Media and YouView, the Sounds TV app has also come to some Sony and Samsung TVs – giving people with those devices another way to listen to their favourite music, radio and podcasts from the ��. From today, we’ll begin rolling out the TV app on Roku streaming devices, and we’ll be bringing it to more devices in the coming weeks.

We hope you enjoy this update, and that our international listeners enjoy the new Sounds experience. We’ll be bringing more updates in the future to make Sounds even better, and we’ll keep you posted.

Update: Since we last told you about the �� Sounds on TV app, we’ve made some updates to the app and launched it on several new devices. The Sounds TV app now has search functionality, and viewers can now access their personalised My Sounds section on the TV app experience as well as on the mobile and web versions of Sounds.

We’ve also launched the �� Sounds TV app on a number of new devices, including Now TV, Roku, Freesat, LG, Freeview Play, and Google TV, and as of today we’re bringing it to all Amazon Fire TV devices too, including sticks and smart TVs. Anyone with those devices will be able to find and add the app, and enjoy all of our best live and on-demand radio, music mixes, and fantastic podcasts like the new series of Grounded with Louis Theroux, Bex Smith’s women’s football podcast The Players and iconic rapper Eve’s new podcast Constantly Evolving.

Update #2: The �� Sounds TV app is now also available on Sky Q. You can find the app on the SkyQ screen, or just say “Launch �� Sounds” into your Sky Q voice remote, and start easily listening to your favourite music, radio and podcasts from the ��.

Restarting live �� TV with the green button

2018-07-25T13:17:02+00:00

We all know how irritating it can be to miss the beginning of your favourite TV show. You don’t want to miss the first dance on strictly, the beginning of EastEnders or the first game on Match of the Day. That’s why, a few years ago, we introduced Live Restart on �� iPlayer, enabling viewers to watch live TV programmes from the beginning.

Now though, our TVs are much smarter than they were then, and in fact the last couple of years have seen connected TVs become the most popular way of accessing �� iPlayer. Because of this we’re expanding the live restart feature to work from the green button on your remote control, helping to make sure that you’re never late for a �� programme again.

The iPlayer team describe the work that's gone into making Live Restart work on TV.

Whilst this feature is already available via Red Button+ and the �� iPlayer app, we felt that it could be given more prominence by providing it where the audience needs it most: when they change channels. And we have made this as seamless as possible through the press of one button, the green colour button on the remote control.

When asked, users who hadn’t used our connected services before were delighted when we showed them the feature and said that it would be a key driver for using �� iPlayer on their TV.

We found that our audiences tend to restart a programme at different times of the day and for different programmes, but the peaks were usually a few minutes into a programme. We also found that usage increases when we hit a so-called ‘schedule conflict’ - in other words where programmes don’t end at the traditional on-the-hour or half-past-the-hour junctures.

For example when the Great British Bake Off finished on Channel 4 and Doctor Foster on �� One had started 15 minutes ago - we saw a huge peak in our audience launching �� iPlayer to restart it. So with this knowledge we decided to display the trigger when the user turns to the �� channel. That way we display the trigger when the user is most likely to need to restart. After 30 seconds the trigger clears from the screen, but the viewer can press green at any point whilst on the channel.

This feature works for Smart TVs that are connected to the internet and devices that can ‘seek’ to the start. We’ve built a ‘smart’ trigger that will only display if the device is capable of supporting the functionality. This covers many LG, Panasonic, Sony, Samsung, Vestel, Phillips, Hisense TVs along with Humax and Netgem set top boxes.

Whilst on the surface this is a simple and straightforward feature, under the hood we’ve had to contend with considerable complexity. Working at the �� always means you’re building to scale and I love that about my role, but this time it came with a warning. “You might break the whole of �� iPlayer”.

The challenge came on two fronts - both concerned with capacity. Firstly, there’s a finite number of simultaneous streams we can safely support and secondly there’s an upper limit to the speed at which we can provide them. First imagine that the entire audience of EastEnders decided they wanted to restart the programme. Second, imagine that they all decided they wanted to restart it within the same 5 second period.

These are unique, scaling problems at a national level and it’s inspiring to work with teams who try to solve them. Mitigating the risk of a reduced audience experience has taken the majority of our time on this project. We’ve built a monitoring service so that we can measure traffic in a more timely fashion, ensuring we protect and maintain quality for the current viewers in the stream. Alongside this we worked with our distribution and media services colleagues to trial the feature on �� Two and �� One regions to build a traffic profile.

Today we have launched our green button ‘watch from the start’ trigger on �� One and Two along with their HD equivalents and �� Four, and it’s available via this list of smart TV and set top boxes. We’ll be looking to learn from the data and provide the best quality experience we can, and hopefully, in the future, pressing the green button will become just as much a part of the TV viewing experience as pressing red has become.

How we got �� Red Button and Red Button+ to work together

2015-04-02T10:20:20+00:00

The �� have been providing interactive TV services for the past 40 years, from Ceefax, to the Broadcast Red Button service. Now the TV & Mobile Platforms department, part of �� Digital, are introducing the internet connected Red Button+ service.

To continue supporting this vision the �� has been working closely with TV manufacturers for the past 3 years to certify and approve connected devices, such as Smart TVs and PVRs to build the Red Button+ service. During that time the department has published our open source framework TV Application Layer (TAL) which we use to develop services for these devices, allowing us to bring streamed video content, and present interactive interfaces that showcase a much larger set of �� content.

The migration challenge

We have taken care to migrate our audience over to Red Button+ without restricting access to the existing service they know and love.

Even with standards and a certification process in place, it has been a challenge providing a mechanism to allow users to switch between the new and the old services. At one stage in development it looked like there would be no way to perform a back journey from the HTML engine back to the MHEG layer.

To explain a bit more; all Smart TVs and Smart PVRs are basically equipped with a variant of a web browser and a broadcast presentation engine called MHEG. To launch a web browser from broadcast (on Freesat and Freeview), part of the MHEG-IC spec (also known as MHEG-5) includes a command known as ApL (Application Launch). This enables the event listener for the Red button press on the remote control to launch a HTML based application running in a borderless web browser. Without the ability to pass information back from the HTML layer to the MHEG layer, there would be no way for a user to switch back to the original service.

Our approach

One theory was that by uniquely identifying devices, we could use Cloud based storage to pass messages between our HTML apps and MHEG. If both layers could talk to the internet, then they could use external memory to exchange messages. This was quickly dubbed by our team as "coexistence" and a few days were set aside to investigate. Core to this investigation was making use of specific persistence features in the MHEG spec had never been validated by the department in order to build a working prototype.

To prove the theory, we developed a test harness in MHEG, and spiked out how direct launch would work across our technology stack. With the test harness, it was possible to physically check devices to see if they supported coexistence, and prove that a direct launch could be combined with preference setting for the user to switch between the Red Button and Red Button+ services. We have to work with a fragmented set of devices, with hybrid devices produced for international markets, and it is not always possible to get a full set of features on every device. Using the MHEG harness we were able to gain a high level of confidence that devices would perform as expected despite their differences. This meant we could couple them to a web-based message passing service to act as external memory.

The solution

The eventual solution required a few more leaps and innovations from the engineering team; particularly around handling heavy traffic. For big events such as F1, Sports Day, Wimbledon, Glastonbury, and the Olympics, the Red Button service can receive tens-of-thousands of interactions within a very short period of time, usually as a result of on-screen messages or call-to-actions from presenters. To cope with this traffic we opted to host the message passing service in the Cloud so that it could be scaled in advance of large events.

We also focused on maximising cache hits, increasing the number of generic calls to our services, to minimise the load on shared resources, and to help cope with really heavy traffic. The result seems bafflingly simple - there is a Settings page that lets you choose between Red Button, and Red Button+. The next time you press Red, the option you chose is launched.

Send us your feedback

As an engineering team, we're committed to improving the service based on your feedback. If you have a Smart TV or PVR with access to the service, please take a look at the new RB+ service and let us know what you think. I hope you've enjoyed this article, and given you a better idea about what goes on under the hood when pressing Red.

Round up: �� Red Button+

2015-03-30T15:07:31+00:00

David Loder on the About The �� blog writes: "Red Button is evolving".

"This April sees the next step in Red Button evolution – the Connected Red Button gets a new name, Red Button+, and this will become the primary experience when you press Red on a wide range of internet connected TVs... Red Button+ lets you:

Access �� iPlayer to catch up on your favourite shows and discover more from all �� channels
Enjoy wider coverage including live streaming of sporting events from �� Sport plus the latest headlines, highlights and results
Catch up on the latest news stories without leaving the channel you are watching, including video highlights
Check the local weather for your area and more"

�� TWO on Red Button+

The new �� News website continues to stimulate a lively conversation. Ryan O'Connor explained some of the UX&D work on the new �� News app last week. Neil Barraclough at Techmark gave his opinion on "Why the switch to a responsive website was long overdue for �� News", while the Daily Express's view was "incomplete and amateurish".

�� Research and Development's "Walls Have Eyes" installation is at the Design Museum until August.

And Dan Taylor Watt, head of ��iPlayer tweeted a picture of 20 ways to get it.

Testing �� Connected Red Button

2014-08-08T04:39:29+00:00

Hello,

I am Krishnan, part of the team that brought Connected Red Button service to TVs. I'm a Junior Developer-in-Test working in the Platform Test team at MediaCityUK in Salford. This post is about how we test the �� Connected Red Button service on Smart TV devices.

The Connected Reb Button service available on connected TV devices

Team Structure

Testers are embedded within our agile development teams, as Test Engineers or Developers-in-Test. We work very closely with Software Developers, Product Owners, Project Managers and Business analysts to develop and test software to ensure we make a great end product.

Process

The team operates a pull-based workflow where we set a limit on our work in progress (WIP). This is set to four tasks, with each tester supporting two tasks each.

CRB Kanban board

Developers pro-actively identify a tester to pair with who has the capacity to support the work moved to in-progress on the KANBAN board. This has helped us regulate work better, to avoid bottlenecks and overburdening. It has improved the engagement of testers and has resulted in more testing happening earlier in the workflow. It has also helped to breakdown the old divides of developer and tester ensuring we work collaboratively by developing and testing in parallel. Overall, the quality and the flow of work to "ready to deploy" has improved.

We use Behavior Driven Development (BDD) tools like cucumber to help us organise and automate our acceptance criteria. Testable Acceptance Criteria are created collaboratively for the feature to be developed; issues can be detected and even dealt with at this early stage. It also helps ensures that everyone has a clear view of what is required and importantly that the product developed and tested relates directly to what the product owner wanted in the first place!

We use feature toggling as a way of letting us ship releasable software any time we want. Even if we are in the middle of building a new feature that isn't ready for users to see. Whenever we develop a new feature it will be ‘feature toggled’ on or off according to its readiness and then a build is created for testing.

We initially test the feature running on a VM (Virtual Machine) and if we find any easily fixable bugs, they are fixed immediately and released in a new build on the VM. We monitor the health of builds using build verification tests running on a browser, as code is continually integrated into trunk and builds are created periodically

CRB build monitor

If a feature requires issues to be resolved then they will be triaged and added to the product backlog. When a viable VM tested build is ready it is released onto our TEST environment. Here we fully test the new feature that has been developed on a TV device and carry out a regression test of major existing features in the application using a combination of automated and manual testing. This is how we work now but it is constantly evolving as we try to continuously improve.

Automated Testing

Automated test are created as features are developed, using a Cucumber and Ruby framework which includes a message queue that sets up a communication channel between a browser or a device. These message queues are created on the fly whenever they are needed, and messages and responses are sent and received using simple HTTP requests. The test results obtained from the automation execution on devices are pushed automatically into our Test case management tool and from that we can produce a combined and dynamic view of product coverage and automated device execution in our test dashboard.

CRB Test dashboard

Our automation tests use a combination of live data and canned data from a static data provider. It is very useful during development of new features when the service layer code that supplies the data in normal operation is still under development.

Regression and Risk based testing

The regression testing of a product is a combination of automated and manual testing. Product coverage is set by prioritising areas of change in the code and key existing features that would cause the greatest impact to the product if broken.

Using a risk based test scope we can reduce our overall product regression effort whilst managing the risk that significant application issues could be introduced. The supported device list keeps increasing and we also take a risk-based approach to our selection of devices by selecting some representative models from each manufacturer to test.

Summary

Previously when we had only a small amount of automation a lot of time was spent manually testing builds on a device. Sometimes we needed to repeat this testing once a build was found to have bugs. With more automation both in validating developed builds and testing on devices, we can find bugs faster and spent less effort and time manual testing. Additionally process experiments across the whole development team have found ways to improve the flow of work, making it possible to increase the number of supported devices and still introduce new features into CRB quickly.

Krishnan Sambasivan is a Junior Developer-in-Test in Platform Test, �� Future Media

New �� iPlayer for Connected TVs: update

2014-08-08T04:24:17+00:00

Back in March, we started rolling out a new version of �� iPlayer: designed for a multiscreen world, so the experience is consistent, but optimised across PC, tablet, mobile and TV devices. We’ve had some great feedback so far, but lots of you have been asking when new �� iPlayer will be coming to the devices you have. So today, I can update you on the roll-out on Connected TVs.

As I outlined in my previous post, over time, we are looking to migrate the majority of all existing devices to the new version. However, with �� iPlayer now available on over 1,200 devices, this is a major task and will take a bit of time. Today, I am happy to announce the next wave of devices is ready to go.

These include (by device):

TVs:

Bush (2014), Celcus (2014), Cello (2012), Digihome (2014), Finlux (2014), Hitachi (2014), JVC (2014), LG (2014),Linstar (2014), Luxor (2014), Panasonic (2014) Philips (2014), Polariod (2014), Samsung (2010, 2011, 2014), Sharp (2014), Sony (2011, 2014), Toshiba (2012, 2013, 2014), Vestel (2012)

Blu-Ray:

LG (2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014), Panasonic (2013, 2014), Samsung (2011, 2012, 2014), Sony (2012, 2013, 2014), Toshiba (2014)

Set-top boxes:

Bush (2014), Hitachi (2014), LG (2012), Tesco-Technika (2012), Western Digital (2010, 2011, 2012)

These will be rolled out over the coming week.

For full brand and model information, please refer to the �� iPlayer help pages.

Closure of �� iPlayer ‘Bigscreen’

�� iPlayer on Bigscreen

The eagle-eyed amongst you will see the list above includes a number of devices that are currently using our ‘Bigscreen’ version of �� iPlayer - which launched over five years ago and is currently only being used by 0.1% of �� iPlayer users.

With this in mind, limited resources, and new �� iPlayer rolled out to over 85% users, we’ve had to make the tough call to retire the ‘Bigscreen’ version. This means that from next month (September 2014) some devices that are using this ‘Bigscreen’ version on some TVs, Blu-Ray devices and PCs connected to TVs will no longer have access to �� iPlayer. There are lots of other devices that can access �� iPlayer and for the full list please refer to the �� iPlayer help pages.

Please note that we have a similar looking service based on MHEG technology for Freesat compatible devices. This is not closing in September.

Q. What about the versions of �� iPlayer on Virgin Media Tivo, YouView, BT Vision and other devices?

A. We are working with YouView, Virgin Media and BT to bring new �� iPlayer to these platforms. Whilst I cannot announce dates, we are targeting this year for these platforms. Similarly, other devices on our legacy version of �� iPlayer will be migrated to the new version this year as well.

Q. You said Xbox One was coming soon – any update there?

A. Yes. I am happy to announce that we’re aiming to launch new �� iPlayer on Xbox One by the end of this year.

We have completed four releases to this product since we launched out of preview in May – this has included a number of fixes and improvements to performance of the product on all devices. Some of you will have noticed better video playback performance, clearer labeling and a number of other minor improvements that we have made in response to both audience feedback and usage data.

As always, I love hearing your feedback, so please drop me a note below with suggestions for how we can make �� iPlayer even better on Connected TVs.

Marcus Parnwell is Executive Product Manager for �� iPlayer on TV.

Summer of Sport on the �� Sport App on Connected TV

2014-06-04T07:48:01+00:00

Hi, my name is Justin Barritt and I am Executive Product Manager for �� Sport on connected TVs which includes Smart TV’s, Games Consoles, TV operator platforms and Media Players. In this blog post I’ll provide an overview of what you can expect for the �� Sport App on connected TV for the exciting summer of sport which kicks off next week with the FIFA World Cup!

The �� Sport App

The �� Sport App for connected TV brings our extensive digital proposition to the biggest and best screen in the house offering a wide range of live sports, video highlights, headlines, match reports and analysis. Along with extensive coverage of popular sports it also offers unique destination for each of the major events taking place this summer – The World Cup, Wimbledon, the British Grand Prix and the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. A detailed overview of what the app currently offers and how to access it is available on our Connected TV and certified devices pages however to find out what’s new and what we have planned for this major summer of sport read on below…

What’s New?

Ahead of the Sochi Winter Olympics in February we made a number of key changes to deliver an improved experience for this event and also to provide reusable functionality for the upcoming events this summer including:

• Sport Switcher – A ‘Choose Sport’ option to access a dedicated destination for up to 3 major sporting events (including Sochi 2014), 11 sports and each of the 4 UK Nations

• Headlines – The latest sporting text headlines, analysis and match reports from the ��

• Medals Table – A Live medals table highlighting Team GB that will also be used for the Glasgow Commonwealth Games in July

Following the Winter Olympics the development and design team began work on delivering 3 further enhancements as follows;

1. Integration with our new Live Event platform – �� Live is a new technical architecture that we are now using to deliver live content as detailed in Neil Hall's blog post. �� Live is now powering each of our 4 screens (PC, mobile, tablet and connected TV) and will power many of our future connected TV innovations. Initially it is being used to source medals table data for the Commonwealth Games and to power our new ‘Coming Up’ promotions that highlight upcoming live streams. Most importantly however it’s powering our new Live Guide…..

2. Live Guide – The Live Guide is accessible from the landing page and will provide details of all the available live streams available to watch each day. With up to 17 concurrent streams planned for the Commonwealth Games we expect this to be an invaluable source of information for our audience. Users will be able to access each of the active live streams directly from the Guide and also watch full length Catch-up videos from key events streamed earlier in the day.

3. Football Scores, Fixtures & Tables – The new Fifa World Cup index will be the home of all our World Cup coverage including all the World Cup Scores, Fixtures and Group Tables. This new feature will also be accessible from our Football index and will include UK, International, European and Women’s leagues.

These new features have gone live on the �� Sport connected TV app this week so take a look or alternatively watch the short video trail that provides a walkthrough of the app and the new functionality.

What’s On?

A huge summer of Sport begins next Thursday 12th June with the World Cup. Alongside extensive broadcast coverage the �� Sport Connected TV App will offer:

• World Cup 2014 (June 12th – July 13th) – Archive World Cup Rewind matches, Live match coverage including build up and alternative camera angles. Video highlights and 10 minute ‘World Cup breakfast’ clip every morning. All the latest headlines, fixtures, scores and group tables.

• Wimbledon (June 23rd – July 6th) –Up to 12 live courts along with all the latest highlights and headlines

• British Grand Prix (July 4th- July 6th) – Live race coverage including additional driver tracker, pit lane and on-board camera options

• Commonwealth Games (July 23rd – August 3rd) – Up to 17 Live Event Streams and all the latest Video Highlights, headlines and medal standings.

It’s a busy summer of sport this year so we hope that you enjoy the coverage and make use of this new service. We are really keen to hear your feedback about how we could extend and improve the service. Please let me know what you think by adding any comments below.

Justin Barritt is Executive Product Manager for �� Sport on Connected TVs

Update to �� iPlayer on Sky+ HD

2014-05-16T10:32:08+00:00

Hi, I’m Marcus Parnwell, Executive Product Manager for �� iPlayer on TV, including operator platforms such as Sky.

I am happy today to announce that we are updating and improving the interface on �� iPlayer on Sky to bring it more inline with the new version of iPlayer being rolled out on computers, tablets, mobiles and connected TVs.

It’s been over 18 months since we launched this version of �� iPlayer and I am pleased that we have been able to work with Sky to make some significant improvements to �� iPlayer on the Sky+ HD platform.

So what’s new?

The first thing you‘re likely to notice is that you can see and select programmes on the home-screen. Previously you would have seen effectively a menu of the areas to browse, but now the first thing you see is highlights of the content we have curated for you.

Updated iPlayer homescreen on Sky+ HD

Next is the navigation which, you may notice, is very similar to the new IPTV version of iPlayer I told you about a few weeks ago that we are currently previewing. The same Channel and Category headings are there, alongside dedicated areas for Most Popular and Collections.

Finally, we have added an ‘All’ area that will provide an A-Z listing of programmes available from �� iPlayer. This should make finding a programme by initial letter and browsing the full iPlayer inventory on Sky both much easier and hopefully you’ll find it useful.

The new All view in iPlayer on Sky+ HD

Collections

The new interface enables us to increase the number of collections available by providing a dedicated area for you to browse them. So if you are looking for a theme or series to enjoy, please check this area out. We will be updating these regularly so do remember to come back. These have been very successful in the new versions of �� iPlayer so it is a natural fit for us to enable them on Sky+ HD as well.

Collections, including whole series will be regularly updated

Exclusives and Premieres

I am pleased to announce that iPlayer exclusives and premieres are now available on �� iPlayer on this platform. Look out for new and exciting content from �� Radio 1’s Big Weekend and Glastonbury in the coming months. We are bringing this inline with other versions of �� iPlayer so you won’t miss a thing.

Linking from �� Red button

You may have noticed that we have added a link to �� iPlayer from the Red Button menu, accessible from any �� Channel. Simply press red and select ‘�� iPlayer’ and we will take you direct to the home screen of �� iPlayer. We know that many of you love the Red Button service and hope this will further improve the service by providing a nice easy way to get more programmes through �� iPlayer.

What about double programme entries?

We are aware that displaying SD and HD copies of an episode next to each other isn’t the best use of screen space, which is why we are working hard with Sky on an update to improve this. We hope to have this solved in the next few months.

I am very interested in hearing what you think – please let me know below in the comments.

Finally, I would like to thank the hard working team at Sky for their work on this update and support.

Marcus Parnwell is Executive Product Manager for �� iPlayer on TV

Testing �� iPlayer on Chromecast

2014-04-04T06:35:10+00:00

Hello, I am David Colter, part of the team that brought �� iPlayer to Chromecast on mobile devices. I am a Senior Test Engineer at �� North in Salford Quays where a great deal of our work on mobile devices is done.

We developed our Chromecast capability in partnership with Google. They provided us with their software development kit for us to integrate Chromecast connectivity into �� iPlayer apps. We were also given some design guidelines to define how the cast experience was to work in use. We did this on the Google Android and Apple iOS platforms side-by-side, for phone and tablet form factors. No platform was allowed to race ahead of the other; nothing was declared to be done until it was working and tested on both platforms.

Our Core Engineering team operates on agile behavior-driven development principles. The functionality of the app is broken down into small user stories which describe a small part of the journey through the app towards the desired result. These stories are written by stakeholders from product, development and test all working together. Once a common understanding has been reached, the stories are prioritized and then put into a sprint, which is a two week long effort that gets the stories developed as software, tested, fixed where necessary and declared done.

The Raspberry Pi used to test ��iPlayer in Chromecast

At the end of each sprint, we demonstrate our completed stories to our Product Owner and any other interested stakeholders including, in this case, Google. In this way they can see what we have done and gain confidence in the progress of the project. It gives them an opportunity to change direction if they decide that what we are producing does not match what they intended. They might also want to change direction due to external influences that have developed while we have been working on the project. At the end of each sprint, our team also holds a retrospective to discuss what went well and what did not, and this guides the direction of the next sprint.

The Chromecast dongle

Testing is an integral part of the lifecycle of a user story. We sit together with the developers, attend the same morning standup meetings and track our work as another stage in the same process. Once a story has been developed in software it is passed to a tester who immediately sets to work. First we make sure it passes all its acceptance criteria, seeing that it does everything it is supposed to do. Then we crack our knuckles, put on our black hats and try to break it.

If we find a defect or some questionable behaviour, the first action is to check with the developer, who is only a scoot of the chair away. Very often they can just facepalm and fix the problem straight away. If a defect is likely to have a longer lifespan than this, we will raise a bug report describing exactly how to reproduce the problem and what the expected versus actual behaviour is. These are then prioritized and worked on in exactly the same way as the rest of the user stories.

In this project we came up with the idea of portable network environments for developing and testing in. We used tiny Raspberry Pi computers as Wi-Fi access points. These were set up to filter and intercept some of our web traffic, replacing it with local responses specific to development or testing. With this we were able to keep development and test within separate environments while still using all of the real-world content available on �� iPlayer. A Raspberry also became our travelling demo environment, enabling us to show the current state of the project to senior stakeholders wherever they were.

One of the challenges that affects mobile testing is the wide range of devices that our apps run on. We select a representative sample of phones and tablets, weighted by the statistics we gather on the current mobile usage of iPlayer. We will never have the time or budget to test all features on all devices. We try to get the best coverage for the greatest number of users without ignoring older or less popular devices. It is always a difficult decision and only time, feedback and comments from you, will tell us whether we have got it right this time.

Welcome to the new �� iPlayer on TV

2014-03-12T09:59:09+00:00

Hi, my name is Marcus Parnwell and I am Executive Product Manager for �� iPlayer on connected TVs, games consoles and TV operator platforms.

We are currently offering users a preview of the new version of �� iPlayer for big-screen devices. If the preview is available for your TV device (see the list below and the �� iPlayer help pages), you will see a new link at the bottom of the screen inviting you to try out a new version.

We launched the current TV version in 2011 and since then we have seen a dramatic change in how people use �� iPlayer. Whilst we know users still want to catch-up on those programmes they know they’ve missed on TV, a lot of you want an easier way to find new things to watch. We are aiming to meet both needs with this version.

So what’s new?

Channel and Category homepages

We know that you like to use �� iPlayer to find programmes by both genre and channel. We have improved this experience to allow you see a curated stream of content – either highlighted by our editorial teams or because it has been popular. Our user testing indicates this is an easy way for users to discover programmes they may not otherwise have known about.

�� ONE channel page

Collections

You will notice some double-height images - these are collections. These may include all the episodes from a series, or all the programmes that from an on-air season, such as our current �� FOUR “Ballet Season” programming. When you chose a programme from a collection, we will highlight more from that collection in the play-out area so you can easily go from one episode to another.

A collection page

More like watching normal TV

With the current version of �� iPlayer on TV, it’s not always easy to find something else to watch. When you finish watching an episode then you have to leave the playback area to start looking for the next show. We want to make watching �� iPlayer as easy as normal TV - a seamless experience without breaking playback.

So now you can browse all of �� iPlayer without leaving playback. So if the credits are rolling or you are just not that into what’s on, then pick up the remote and browse our suggestions of other programmes you may also like or else return to the ��, Channels or Categories areas. And don’t worry if you change your mind - you can always return to what you were watching.

Playout

‘Find tools’ and Search

Know what you want to watch? Great. We provide a simple set of ‘Find tools’ that are designed to help you quickly locate the programme you’re looking for. These are found at the front of the stream and allow you to find all the programmes within a given area. On the home screen, you will be able to access new episodes of programmes you’ve recently watched or programmes you have added to your Favourites. In the channel and category areas we provide schedule and A-Z lists. Search is accessible from any page and uses auto-suggest technology to get you to the programme you’re after as quickly as possible.

What devices?

We are bringing this preview to a range of TVs, games consoles and the Freesat with Freetime box. The list of devices to receive this preview includes:

Brand Type Year/Model

Sony TV 2013

Sony Console PS3, PS4

Samsung TV 2012 & 2013

Panasonic TV 2011, 2012 & 2013

LG TV 2012 & 2013

Freesat Set top Box Freetime

This is only the start – we are looking to bring this new version to current HTML based big screen devices.

For a full list of available models please go to the �� iPlayer help pages.

Where is radio?

We decided not to include radio within this new version of �� iPlayer. The low usage of radio on big-screen devices means it is not cost-effective to develop and support. You can continue to enjoy live radio on all Freeview and Freesat devices and live and on demand radio via �� iPlayer Radio on computers, tablets and smart phones .

We are releasing this new version of �� iPlayer for TV as a preview so that we can hear your opinions and improve the product. So please let me know what you think – either via the comments below or using the TV survey we have provided.

Marcus Parnwell is Executive Product Manager, �� iPlayer on Connected TVs

Connected Red Button: a first look at the new service on Smart TVs

2013-12-19T13:37:06+00:00

I’m Jennifer Lyons, product manager for Connected Red Button in the TV and Mobile Platforms team in �� Future Media.

Twelve months ago the �� launched the new Connected Red Button service on Virgin Media’s TiVo platform. Today I am very happy to announce that we have now extended this service to more platforms by launching a beta version of Connected Red Button on a number of Sony Freeview Smart TVs. This new service will run alongside the existing Red Button service during its ‘beta period’, giving viewers a chance to try the new service whilst it is tested and refined.

Connected Red Button brings the best of the Red Button and the �� online to your TV by simply pressing red. The service offers a lot more content including �� TV programmes via �� iPlayer as well as live events and the latest news, sport and weather, yet is powerfully simple for anyone to use.

The Connected Red Button is being launched as a beta service on supported Sony Smart TVs, with Samsung and LG Smart TVs launching in January 2014. Viewers will be able to try the new service, gain familiarity and provide feedback that we can potentially incorporate into the product as we continue development. They can do this while continuing to use the existing Red Button service as usual. More devices and platforms will be added in 2014.

Viewers can access the new Connected Red Button via the featured section

To access the new service, viewers with supported Smart TVs that are connected to the Internet can press red on a �� TV channel such as �� One, �� Two, �� Three, �� Four or �� News and �� Parliament to access the Connected Red Button beta via the ‘featured’ menu.

Viewers of the new beta service can enjoy the following:

• TV – including up to 10 featured �� iPlayer programmes from the channel you are watching or explore more catch-up TV via the �� iPlayer button

• News – keep up to date with the latest UK news and select headlines to read or news videos to watch along with a link to ‘News home’ for more news coverage

• Sport – watch live sport and highlights and read the latest sport headlines, with a link to ‘Sport home’ to access the dedicated �� Sport application

• Weather – check the latest 5 day forecast for your location

• C�� and CBeebies – easily get to up to 10 featured �� iPlayer highlights from C�� and CBeebies

The TV section in Connected Red Button

Right now Connected Red Button beta is available on selected Sony Smart TVs, with more makes and models coming soon. However, if you bought a Smart TV in the last 2-3 years, you may still be able to access �� iPlayer, �� News or �� Sport when pressing red or via the TV app store. For older TVs or those that are not connected to the Internet, don’t forget you can still get the existing Red Button service for great digital text and video content from the ��.

The Connected Red Button is built using HTML and JavaScript and supports standards-based browsers and streaming technologies. It uses a modular, scalable, shared (with Connected Red Button on Virgin TiVo) architecture that enables us to easily add features, modify sections or bring new TV platforms on board. We continue to work closely with the industry to bring Connected Red Button to a broad range of TVs, devices and platforms. Connected Red Button is built using the TV Application Layer which simplifies development, porting and certification. For more on the development of Connected Red Button visit Duncan’s blog post "Building Connected Red Button."

Sport section in Connected Red Button

As Matt mentioned in his previous blog post with up to 13 million people pressing red each week, the existing Red Button service remains very popular and we continue to support the service.

Connected Red Button represents the next step, bringing together the best of Red Button and �� online content and services with the advantage of modern design and making the best use of the connected services that internet enabled devices have to offer.

We hope you enjoy this new service and I would like to hear your feedback in comments. There are also details on our �� FAQ page. As the name suggests, we’re still at the ‘beta’ stage and I hope to have more updates in 2014 on the progress of Connected Red Button.

Jennifer Lyons is the Product Manager for Connected Red Button.

Update 8th May 2014:

�� Connected Red Button is now available on supported LG and Panasonic Smart TVs. Please see the list of supported devices to check if your Smart TV can access this new service.

Proms in HD on �� Red Button

2013-07-26T14:57:32+00:00

�� Proms

This year, some of the �� FOUR Proms are being made available in HD on the �� Red Button HD stream.

A total of 12 Proms are going to appear on the special Red Button HD stream which is available to viewers with a HD TV or set-top box with Freeview HD, YouView, Freesat HD or Virgin Media. Viewers can watch the additional Proms by tuning directly to these channel numbers:

Freeview / YouView on channel 303

Virgin Media on channel 994

Freesat on channel 980

The �� Proms that you will be able to see on Red Button are as follows:

National Youth Orchestra USA - Friday 26 July at 7.30pm

�� Symphony Orchestra – Sunday 28July at 7.30pm

Mahler Chamber Orchestra – Thursday 1 August at 7.30pm

�� Philharmonic – Friday 2 August at 7.30pm

�� National Orchestra of Wales – Sunday 4 August at 7.30pm

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra – Thursday 8 August at 7.30pm

�� Scottish Symphony Orchestra – Friday 9 August at 7.30pm

Santa Cecilia – Thursday 15 August at 7.30pm

Bach Oratorios – Friday 16 August at 7.30pm

Hollywood Rhapsody Prom – Friday 30 August at 7.30pm

Tristan and Isolde – Sunday 1 September at 7.30pm

National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain – Friday 6 September at 7.30pm

Xenon Embedded Media Player

2013-07-11T08:35:19+00:00

I’m Gareth Jones, a software engineer at �� TV and Mobile Platforms.

At the end of November last year the �� launched the Connected Red Button service on Virgin TiVo along with updated versions of the iPlayer, News and Sport apps. This package also consisted of a fifth release: an application that is both integral and vital to each of the above apps, yet few are even aware of its existence!

Xenon player in action

Xenon is a brand new embedded media player that was developed specifically for AS2 embedded devices such as Virgin’s TiVo, to be used by applications like iPlayer, News, Sport and any other such applications that the �� develops in future.

The development of a new player was actually driven by Connected Red Button. The CRB project was subject to some aggressive performance requirements that were going to be difficult to achieve even with an ideal setup on the modest TiVo hardware, but impossible with the existing media player.

EMP as it was known had been built years before to a different set of requirements and for a different platform, and really wasn’t optimised for this environment. If we were going to stand a chance of meeting CRB’s performance requirements then we’d need to build a new player from scratch.

A new beginning

Xenon is based on an MVCS pattern with separate services performing the important tasks of reading playlists, parsing server responses, loading subtitles and streaming the media itself, while dedicated views handle the presentation to the user. It can be used both by standalone applications and those that are based on an AS2 framework of ours: the benefit of the latter being that the host application can then take advantage of the framework’s underlying automated behavioural testing functionality.

Inbound communications are provided by an API that the host application (i.e. iPlayer) can use to control everything from the desired media bitrate to subtitle preferences in real-time, while an events system to which the host can subscribe is used for all outbound communications. This events system provides the host application with around 70 different events, though only 20 of them are required for “normal” use: the others are either used for debugging, were included in order to support possible future requirements or are there simply to provide the host with more specific information on given scenarios.

The project is covered by around 200 unit tests which not only provide confidence in the existing code but will also provide future engineers with a means to test any additions or refactors.

So what’s new?

Viewers should notice a significant improvement in performance, some of which are covered by the following statistics:

• Media load times have been halved

• Video scrub times are now 3-4 times faster

• Toggling between SD and HD is now 3-4 times faster

• Subtitles load times are improved tenfold down from 30-40 seconds to just 3-4 seconds.

In order to achieve this kind of performance we had to employ a number of tricks!

One of the things we looked at was the process by which the old player would select and then connect to a server. We were interested in improving this because we’d noticed that there was a noticeable delay between getting the list of stream locations from the server and the start of playback.

It turns out that EMP would make multiple connection requests to its chosen location using different ports – 1935, 80 and 443 – the standard Flash Media Server (FMS) ports. When one connection responded favourably the other two were closed and the stream was requested from the open one.

Trying to avoid the delays associated with working through a list of ports in series by trying them all in parallel would be worthwhile if each port had a shared chance of success, and on a platform like the PC which operates on different types of networks with different routers and firewalls that’s most probably the case.

On TiVo however, unless there’s a serious problem with the chosen content delivery network (CDN) the 1935 connection will work 100% of the time and if it doesn’t work then we’re better off trying a different CDN than the same one again on a different port.

So that’s what Xenon does: if the single connection request on port 1935 to its first CDN fails to connect then it moves on to the next and sends another single connection request to that on the same port. If the user is unable to connect to a single CDN then either their internet connection is down or they have bigger problems because each CDN has a lot of failover and redundancy.

This approach means the box only has to allocate enough resources to create and connect a single NetConnection which means more resources are available elsewhere to help deliver a more responsive user experience.

Another thing we looked at was subtitles. The old player took 40-60 seconds to resume playback after subtitles were enabled and we really wanted to bring this figure down.

When we looked at how subtitles were being handled in EMP we discovered that typed objects with verified data were being created as soon as the file was downloaded and parsed. A 60-minute program with lots of talking might contain hundreds of lines of subtitles which would require a fair amount of work to get through. Again such an approach makes sense on a PC but not so much on a set top box.

The way we got round this in Xenon was to download and parse the XML file as before, but to create only basic reference objects at first without typing or validation and to defer such calculations until the reference object was relevant to the stream based on the current playback position. At this point the object’s data is verified and converted into a more usable format before the subtitle is displayed on-screen.

This approach means a little more work is done by the player for each individual subtitle as playback progresses, but it also means we can spread the necessary calculations over the duration of the program rather than doing them all up-front which allows us to resume playback in just 3-4 seconds.

What it means for us

Some specifications and supported features are as follows:

• The project weighs in at around 6,000 lines

• Both audio and video streams are supported, both live and on-demand

• Akamai, Limelight and Level3 CDNs are supported

• Dynamic CDN switching and ABR1 bitrate downswitching are both supported

• Dynamic connection weighting and prioritisation is supported

The new player also provides a number of benefits for our development teams:

• An API that allows direct control of every aspect of the player at runtime

• A comprehensive and consistent events system which makes debugging quick and easy

• A complimentary example application that both provides new teams with an implementation template and a convenient way for us to diagnose issues with the live service

• The codebase is extensively covered by tests which provides confidence in the robustness of the code.

Although invisible to the average user, Xenon seems to have gone down well with the public with positive reviews highlighting improved speed and reliability.

If you have any questions about Xenon please leave a comment below.

Gareth Jones is a software engineer in the TV Platforms team, Programmes and On Demand, �� Future Media

Round up: Goodbye!

2013-07-05T14:12:55+00:00

Hi everyone,

This is a quick post to say a thank you and a goodbye as my time on the Internet blog has now come to an end. It’s been a fascinating nine months where the blog has covered some really meaty content, not to mention a new look design!

Some of the new features introduced on the Interent blog earlier this year

I hope you’ve found some of the posts I’ve published over this time informative and interesting and that they’ve given you a bit of insight into the workings of �� Online. Here are some of the highlights:

New features for �� Sport were covered in depth including the iPhone app launched in January, followed by the android version the following month. Sport had a full desktop refresh and launched a responsive version of their mobile site.

Executive product manager Matt Coulson blogged about the launch of Connected Red Button on TiVo while we heard from the senior UX designer about how his team designed the site. Technical lead Duncan Fortescue blogged about how it was built.

Linked data was a major theme on the blog over the last few months with posts including Linked Data: Connecting together the ��'s Online Content by Oliver Bartlett, the launch of the News Juicer and the News linked data Onthology along with the release of the Storyline Data model

Changes in the ��'s Knowledge and Learning product were well covered including the release of the new Beta site as blogged by executive editor Chris Sizemore and we heard in more depth about how the site was built from technical architect Rob Lee. Further changes to K&L included the closure of the Health Website and the launch of �� Food Your Favourites (including the closure of the recipe binder feature).

That’s just a whistle-stop sample of some of the content we’ve covered, I hope you have found some of it enjoyable and useful.

Thanks and bye!

Eliza Kessler was the content producer on the Internet blog.

Technology + Creativity at the �������� Feed

New look subtitles and playback for �������� iPlayer on TV

An international update on �������� Sounds and �������� iPlayer Radio

Restarting live �������� TV with the green button

How we got �������� Red Button and Red Button+ to work together

Round up: �������� Red Button+

Testing �������� Connected Red Button

New �������� iPlayer for Connected TVs: update

Summer of Sport on the �������� Sport App on Connected TV

Update to �������� iPlayer on Sky+ HD

Testing �������� iPlayer on Chromecast

Welcome to the new �������� iPlayer on TV