You can now catch up on selected TV series for longer than 7 days. With series catch up, once an episode has been shown on TV you can watch it and up to 13 of the previous episodes again on BBC iPlayer. Some of the series you can catch up right now are: Merlin, Little Dorrit, Top Gear and Spooks. To catch up on these series and loads more:
Press red on any BBC TV channel and select BBC iPlayer and then Series Catch Up or
Press Home or On Demand, go to Catch Up TV - any TV series that has series catch up will have all the available shows listed together with the date they were shown on TV.
BBC iPlayer is now available in two places with Virgin Media – from the internet at www.bbc.co.uk and also via the BBCi red button from BBC TV & Virgin Catch-Up-TV. Each of these has different content, which is delivered to the customer by different systems.
This is the version of iPlayer which customers see online at www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer. All programmes which are viewed from here are downloaded or streamed to a computer, iPod, or Wii via the customer’s broadband internet connection. The quality of any streamed programme and the speed of download are totally dependent upon the download speed of the customer’s internet connection. Any problems on BBC’s website, faults with a customer’s line, or congestion in their region could result in interrupted and poor quality streaming, as well as slow programme downloads.
Customers access this version of iPlayer from their set-top-box, either from going to BBCi via the red button prompt on a BBC TV channel, or from selecting the BBC iPlayer option in the Catch-Up-TV menu. All programmes which are viewed from TV iPlayer are streamed directly to the set-top-box from Virgin Media’s on-demand platform. TV iPlayer programmes are different from the versions available on internet iPlayer, and are especially produced by the BBC to work on Virgin Media’s on-demand platform.
Whenever a customer views a programme from TV iPlayer, the same system is used to deliver it as with all video on demand like Catch-Up-TV and TV Choice. In fact, all BBC programmes in Catch-Up-TV are exactly the same video streams as those in TV iPlayer. For example, Eastenders in Catch-Up-TV and Eastenders in TV iPlayer are exactly the same version, and both are streamed in the exactly the same way – from the Virgin Media on-demand platform directly to the set-top-box.
The quality of the programmes on TV iPlayer and BBC Catch-Up-TV is therefore under the control of the BBC, and the customer experience when viewing them is the same as with all content in video on demand.
Customers can find out more here and also from the BBC TV iPlayer faults helpline on
08700 101 338
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