Re: Multicast > 5-10 years time?

Nigel Cliffe wrote:
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:
Nigel Cliffe wrote:
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:
Nigel Cliffe wrote:
- Nigel ( UI designer, even when working on Eurescom networking
projects )

Have you had a look at the BBC iPlayer yet? If so, what do you
think of its UI?

No I haven't.


Here you go, and you don't need to register to have a look round any
more:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/

I'm giving it a go.

Ashely Highfield, the Director of New Mejyaa at the BBC, thinks that
people will find programmes that they wouldn't or might not
ordinarily watch and it'll take advantage of the "long tail effect".
So given what he wants people to do, why they've made it as difficult
to browse for programmes as humanly possible, I really have no idea.


I've looked around, and yes, its got some problems. They serendipity
side (as per quote above) is fine, and I support its inclusion, but
there are means of getting serendipity which don't compromise "I know
what I want" navigation.

I can understand how the design got to where it is though, having
been in various product and technical design meetings.
I'd guess the design got to its current state without end-user
testing (or the testing was done, but there was no time to make
changes, so the test was a waste of time); it shares weaknesses which
I've seen in other work where the budget/time for testing was removed
and the designers did the best they could in the gaps.


The way I look at it is that the iPlayer has been in development for 4
years, and it's had a couple of hundred people working on it for the last
couple of years, so I find it amazing that they came up with a UI as bad as
it is. Then add the fact that they didn't bother to port it to the Mac or
Linux, so you have to question what on earth all these people have been
doing all this time?


Obvious problems
- inability to list programmes directly by channel.
- no complete A-Z, instead its via key-letter. And that is not
obvious; programmes starting "The xyz" are usually filed under "X",
whereas those starting "A xyz" are filed under "A".


Agreed.


I'm not that impressed with download times either, seems to take an
age to deliver a programme, but that might be my connection (now
showing 3Mb on several speed testers).


If you download at peak times it's not very impressive, although it's
probably a lot to do with ADSL contention ratios and/or bandwidth
throttling. It's at off peak times when I've been really impressed by the
download times - averaging about 6-6.5 Mbps for some downloads.


Not overly inclined to look, given its P2P nature


Why don't you like P2P? I can understand why people don't like
illicit file sharing, but the way I look at it is P2P is just a
technology, and it's not the fault of the technology itself that
people are using it to illegally share files.

Its more to do with controlling my bandwidth use for the upload side.
(Plus a bit of concern about what else can be hoovered off the
machine if there is a bug).


Fair enough.


That said, I watched carefully which processes and keys were created
on install, and can turn it off if the internal programme options
don't do all they should.



The only good thing about the iPlayer is that because there's a lot
of users on the P2P network, if you download a programme at off-peak
times you get blistering download speeds - such as averaging about
6.5 Mbps, so you download a 30-minute programme in about 5 minutes,

Its taking 2hrs to do a 1hr programme with a claimed 9 sources and
around 1.3Mb/s. I'm trying "Top Gear" as I think that will be a popular
item
amongst the typical users of the service, so ought to be fast.


I don't think 1.3 Mbps is bad for (presumably) peak time downloading. If
you'd ever used Bittorrent to download a TV programme you've missed you'd
think 1.3 Mbps is incredibly impressive!


which I think is pretty impressive. It's obviously dependent on your
own broadband connection speed as well though.


and the current
slow speed of my broadband connection (been plummeting recently,
used to be around 5Mb, but now showing 2Mb. Might be time to swap
ISP as there have been no wiring changes here).


Yeah, sounds like it.

IDNET are my current front runner for replacement.
But I need to consider any changeover carefully, we run a business
from home which is heavily dependent on a connection; stability is
more important to the business than outright speed. We're not reliant
on the ISP for anything other than connectivity; email is all on the
company domain, etc., so a swap shouldn't be too traumatic, but I
want a few days when I know we could be offline if things went wrong.


Right.


--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Broadband Update - P2P being throttled around the world
    ... So that's what was happening to my 2Mbps connection a couple of weeks ago, when the download speed plummetted to 237kbps. ... We know that lots of customers aren't ... The rollout of MaxDSL is going to help the fault volumes too as the RAMBO kit at the exchange should help to ensure that lines aren't provided at speeds they can't support. ...
    (uk.people.silversurfers)
  • Re: OT: Your input requested
    ... Dish TV provide television and internet service. ... Sounds good what sort of speeds do they ... On that download last night, which was fairly large, we started the ... I guess it depends on what one uses an internet connection for. ...
    (rec.photo.digital)
  • Re: Wired telephone bandwidth - More DimBulb lies
    ... There were problems establishing a good connection early on. ... But a nominal 48000 56kFlex connection was good for download speeds ... Obviously if you have the option then ADSL or ISDN is better still. ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
  • Re: DSL vs. Cable
    ... speeds touted by Cable are illusory -- your perceived performance is ... rather than your own broadband connection. ... > war games, or often download files that take over 2 minutes to download, ... Does it matter if the web page ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Alltel Wireless Internet Problem
    ... For the last week my download speeds have been ranging from less than ... with the Alltel service in my area. ... I got better service with my dial-up connection at 1/3 the cost! ...
    (alt.internet.wireless)