Programmes on BBC iPlayer will become available much more quickly as part of significant updates to the on-demand streaming service.
Previously, there was a significant delay before a programme became available after it was broadcast due to programmes being processed into high-quality on-demand videos after they’ve been broadcast.
A BBC statement says: “What we’ve done now is sped this up significantly, by introducing what we’ve called ‘pseudo VOD’. Rather than processing the whole programme once it’s finished, this pseudo-VOD system reuses the live segments of video you see when you’re watching live on iPlayer to create a temporary on-demand video instead, which we can publish as soon as the programme ends. This plugs the gap, while we work on processing the high-quality on-demand video as we did before, and once this is ready replace the temporary video.”
Viewers watching live streams may have found they were lagging about 80 – 120 seconds behind the TV broadcast. The BBC has now reduced this lag by 20 seconds, meaning viewers will typically only be around 60 seconds behind the TV broadcast.
