BBC iPlayer is available to all BT Vision customers, allowing you to access and enjoy on demand content whenever you like. This creates great flexibility and convenience, so you can catch up on all your favourite shows. The BBC offer a wide variety of programmes, including popular soap operas EastEnders, Casualty and Waterloo Road, various documentaries on a number of different topics, comedy shows and panels such as Mock The Week and Russell Howard’s Good News, dramas including Doctor Who and Spooks, and even some top films, both old and new.
Anyone who owns a television within their home or office must pay an annual TV license fee under legal obligations within the UK. This means that iPlayer is free apart from that, so you can use it as much as you like at no extra cost. It is very quick and easy to access, as all you need to do is select channel 990 or click the BT Vision button on your remote control.
You do not even need to subscribe to the service, because it is automatically available to all BT Vision customers. You’ll get most of the shows that are featured on the internet version of iPlayer, with a couple of exceptions due to copyright controls. You also need to ensure that your television set is HD ready if you want to take advantage of HD programmes, although HD iPlayer programmes are not available on BT Vision at the moment.
BT Vision TV Replay provides a catch up service for ITV, Channel 5 and Channel 4, whereas BBC iPlayer gives you a range of shows across all the BBC channels. It has been specially designed for your television set, making it much easier to access and select what you want to watch.
Subtitles and Audio Descriptions are not available for iPlayer programmes, although signed shows can be found in the Signed Zone. The good news is that BBC iPlayer through your television will not count towards your usage policy for your broadband service, although radio content is excluded. As an example, Option 1 BT Broadband gives you more than 100 hours of iPlayer radio programmes without going over the 10 GB provided download limit.
There are various different features to take advantage of on the iPlayer service. Using your remote control, you can simply rewind or fast forward any programmes. The progress bar at the bottom of the screen will help you with this. You cannot record any iPlayer programmes, but you can tape two other Freeview channels whilst using the BBC service, so it still offers great flexibility.
BBC iPlayer programmes tend to last about a week before they are taken off. Sometimes this is longer until a whole series, such as Dragons’ Den, has finished, while other times they may only be available for a couple of days.
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