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.
Amazon-owned Lovefilm has signed a major new deal with the BBC and ITV to provide its online streaming arm a much-needed shot full of juicy content. Read more
Apple TV rumours are only going to spiral and swirl and get more unlikely as we draw nearer to the official launch (whenever that may be), but we’d file this particular under: spurious. According to word from the Daily Mail, Apple is looking to buy the UK rights to the football Premier League. Read more
There’s a new catch-up TV service in town for Android users. ITV player for Android is now live in the Android Market, offering unlimited access to seven days worth of past programming from the network’s four channels.
Unfortunately, just like the BBC iPlayer app, ITV player does not offer live streaming. In order to use the app you’ll need to be running Android 2.2 Froyo or higher, Adobe Air 2.6 or higher and be connected to a Wi-Fi network.
A big shake up in the sharing of metadata is hitting UK TV streaming services: BBC iPlayer is now hosting search results from non-BBC TV channels. It means that if you search for Coronation Street on iPlayer, it will show up in the results, and drop you on the ITVplayer page to watch the episode.
UPDATE: Turns out that 4oD actually only offers the last fortnight’s shows on catch up through the PS3, but all teh archive goodies will be available by the start of 2011.
We heard on Monday that ITV Player and 4oD would be coming to the Sony PS3 this week, and would you look at what just turned up in our XMB. We took both services for a spin: find out how they stack up against all the console’s other video streaming services here in our review: first look.
