Sky has announced that the BBC iPlayer and ITV Player on demand services will roll out to Sky customers later this year, as part of an ongoing expansion of the Anytime+ on demand feature. The services will be available to up to 5 million Sky+HD customers direct through their living room TV.
BBC iPlayer is already available on a host of platforms including Virgin Media, BT Vision, Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, Freesat, Freeview and various tablets, smartphones and connected TVs and Blu-ray players. The BBC’s decision was prompted by Sky’s plans to make its Anytime+ on demand service available to all its broadband-equipped customers – the BBC says that a core value of iPlayer is that it should be able “to reach all audiences on a universal basis”.
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Some BBC archive content is already available to Sky Anytime+ users through an existing deal with UK TV, and from tomorrow ITV archive content will join it. Later this year customers will be able to access catch-up TV from both the BBC and ITV through Anytime+.
Anytime+ is currently available to any Sky TV customer with a Sky Broadband account (around 1.2m people nationwide at present), but by Easter 2012 the service will be offered to Sky customers regardless of broadband provider.
