While I was recently reminded of, and amused by the success of the BBC’s video-on-demand iPlayer service in the UK, it did get me thinking about the ABC’s digital ambitions, in particular the National Broadcaster’s recently beta launched iPlayer-like service ABC Playback.

What follows is my take on the ABC’s latest step into the future…

While there currently isn’t much content to play with on the ABC’s beta of Playback, thats really secondary to the usability, design and quality of the service, as no doubt the videos available will jump sharply when the service is running at full steam. That said however, the BBC has revealed that the greatest expense in running the iPlayer service has been creating a back end “that’s able to crank out 400 hours of content each week”, although perhaps the ABC won’t be quite that ambitious in its output.

The quality of the video on Playback is absolutely acceptable by todays standards, high definition would be a waste of resources and bandwidth, and for the average consumer it will be more than enough, and for me watching At The Movies on a 24″ display was comparable to a regular television experience. The use of Flash video means the content is easily available across platforms and for most people won’t even require installing any new software.

Where I think the greatest flaws exist in the service however are in the layout and design of site. The ABC has some great web properties including the recently revamped ABC News site, which I honestly believe is one the best news websites in the world, so why couldn’t the Playback interface take some cues from it?

As it currently exists the ABC Playback site is in Flash overload, and while Flash is great for delivering videos, as a tool for creating successful interfaces it is not. The arbitrary use of channels to break up the programming is unnecessary, and the cute but ultimately pointless carousel that presents a spinning selection of programs will become unbearable when an expanded selection comes online.

YouTube couldn’t possibly of become the success it is if it had implemented a similar all-Flash design, complete with superfluous animations, and a green and black colour scheme.

ABC Playback has the potential to be incredibly successful, and I have no doubt it will be. However I think part of that success will come from ABC Playback becoming a destination in itself for users to not only catch up on their favourite shows, but to also discover new ones, and currently there is no motivation for the visitor to explore beyond a few clicks.

A ready-for-primetime Playback service needs to look to the simpler designs, and fresher looks of Hulu, iTunes, iPlayer, and even YouTube. A lot more functionality could be achieved by adopting a new look that doesn’t rely so heavily on Flash, things like: direct links, podcast subscribing, for keeps downloads, cast details, comments, recommendations, specific program sites, most watched lists, and a raft of other features that are limited by the current look.

While I’m sure this sounds like a lot of criticism, the ABC has a high standard to maintain in its online endeavors, as one of the largest podcasters in the world the National Broadcaster has proven how effective it can be at delivering content over the internet. The launch of Playback will be a first for an Australian television network, and will be important for the ABC to get right.

The 48 foot tall installation was designed by Freestate and unveiled on the 16th of October 2007 as part of the broadcasters 25th anniversary celebrations. For more about the story behind the artwork read up on it here and here.

- Thanks for the photos Marc.

In April 2006 the BBC ran a competition asking for a new design for the frontpage of their crazy popular website bbc.co.uk. I entered that competition and was one of ten runners up. My design for the site scored me a iPod Nano which I later gave away to a reader. The BBC has finally launched a beta version of the new look front page and its available for the worlds criticism here.

I have to say I really like the new design, not only because they finally centered the layout of the site, but also because of the bold use of colour. Clicking any of the four tabs in the main promo space changes the entire palette of the site, a feature I’m sure some will hate, but if it makes it beyond the sites current beta phase will be an audacious move.

The analogue clock in the top right of the page pays geeky homage to the old test cards of the sixties that once graced the screens of the BBC. The addition of the clock has been described by the BBC as “initially punted as a bit of fun, but feedback revealed that users find this icon, a homage to the “golden days” of analogue programming, bizarrely reassuring.”

Read more about the new design from the man responsible for it here, overall I’m really impressed, and hope that the new look abc.net.au whenever it comes about will bring with it the same sensitivity and venturesome the BBC have delivered.

7 – The making of Top Gear and the fate of season 10.
6 – All my life watching America.
5 – The making of the Six Feet Under title sequence.
4 – The Simpson’s War on Everything.
3 – Two stunning minutes of MTV.
2 – The Chaser’s War on uncut H264 downloads.

and the most popular post of 2007 so far has been…

1 – The Simpsons very own Channel 4 ident.

I’m glad an ident related post came in number one, but I think overall the top seven represents the right mix of idents, title sequences and television-shows-I-really-like that I hope this blog will continue to embody.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for navigating my varied interests and poor grammar, and a huge thanks to everyone who has sent me videos, much appreciated!

All the best,
John

UPDATE: And we’re back! Enjoy.

Podcasting never looked so good. Subscribe to the idents.tv podcast here, and carry me around with you on your iPod.. or on your iPhone if you’re lucky enough to have one.

- Thanks for the photo Mitch.

Back in January I was sent a screenshot of the new abc.net.au/news, and while it was very much still a draft, it gave us some idea of what was coming.

The relaunched site is due to go live tomorrow, and from what I’ve seen its damn good. As you can see from the before and afters above, it is a much needed leap forward and has the most elegant and useful integration of video and audio I have seen on a news site. With simple audio and video flash players that appear and disappear thanks to the magic of ajax, it has Google Maps built right into the articles, which I immediately thought would be useless, until I realised how geographically challeneged I was and actually had no idea where Caloundra was (turns out its in Queensland).

The weather page is a brilliant, and even in fullscreen all the videos are more then enough, they load without any of the buffering that comes with the inconvenient WindowsMedia and RealPlayer formats that most news sites still use.

There is tons more to explore of the new site, but the incredibly simple and useful execution of audio/video and maps really are the top story of this news relaunch.

More screenshots below.. or visit abc.net.au/news sometime Monday.

The folks behind ABC Online have been busy. A new ABC News site is due to go live any day now, and as of this morning there is a new ABC television portal.

With an emphasis on video (in user friendly full screen flash), and more full episode downloads including The Einstein Factor and The New Inventors, the ABC is taking some positive steps towards the promise of TV 2.0. The site encourages you to watch previews of upcoming shows and participate in a newly opened forum.

Check it all out for yourself right here.

Aunty’s latest boss is its most surprising one yet – an evangelical Christian who’s fluent in management-speak. One year into his tenure, Mark Scott talks to Caroline Overington about his big plans for our cultural behemoth.

Read the article in full online, or in The Weekend Australian Magazine.

… a 2002 Saab 9-5 Arc 2.3t.

The Managing Director of the ABC unvieled a new plan for the national broadcasters digital future yesterday. While I look forward to more video content online and expanded podcasting (apparently the ABC is the “largest creator of podcasting material in the world “) I’m less enthusiastic at the idea of the ABC carrying ads online.

I know there is the obvious argument that it will bring in revenue with very little effort, but I just believe that we are so fortunate to have a commercial-free national broadcaster. To quote Crikey the ABC needs to remain a “non-commercial public meeting space – a town square rather than a shopping mall”, its something other countries aren’t lucky enough to have and I think we should protect it.

The ABC has been talking about relaunching their news site for a while now, and if the above screenshot I recently received in my email is to be believed you could be looking at a draft of the national broadcasters new news frontpage.

Only time will tell I guess.. click the screenshot for a better look.

I’m going to Paris for the week, I leave tomorrow, and get back the following Sunday. So I won’t be in Canberra for Australia Day, but I guess I can still listen to the hottest 100 online.

Last year 15% of the downloads from this site were RealPlayer (about 70% were Quicktime), and so far this year Real has accounted for less then 4%. With almost everyone having Flash installed I thought I’d test out the format for myself.

I’ve replaced the RealPlayer format with flash on all posts so far this year, I’ve supplied the code if you want to embed it somewhere else. I’d love to hear if it works for you and what you think.

Richard Hammond has been seriously hurt while filming a segment for the upcoming season of Top Gear. For more read this, and lets hope he recovers.

A few weeks ago I was a runnner up in the BBC’s reboot competition to redesign their home page. My prize was an iPod nano which I recieved from White City last week. But I’m happy with my shuffle, and since I recently celebrated my new found employment by buying my friends 30gb iPods, I thought one of you might like it. Not to devalue the prize the BBC gave me, its frieken awesome, I just thought someone would probably get better use out of it then me.

So, if a brand new 4gb iPod nano sounds good, leave a comment on this post and I’ll randomly pick someone on **Tuesday the 15th**.

One comment per person, and make sure you use a real email address. Anyone in the world can enter, and just realise your comment may need moderation before it appears.

Update: Lilian from Sydney won! Thanks to everyone who entered and should I find anything else cool to give away you’ll all be the first to know.

The Chaser’s War on Everything didn’t seem to appear on iTunes (direct link) untill Sunday and within the day it jumped from #34, to #18, and today it toppled Rove for the #1 spot.

JTV still doesn’t seem to be listed yet, but it will interesting to see where that lands, and hopefully the ABC will reveal some download figures as well.

In summary.. this is awesome.

I started working full time for the first time in my life about a month ago, and in an orgy of random gift giving I bought four of my friends iPods last week, above was the resulting mess from my hastily planned surprise Christmas in July for them.

Maybe its the democracy of it, or maybe I’m just a huge geek, but today the ABC offered for download their first video podcasts, and I’m frieken psyched.

Available for download are The Chaser’s War on Everything (75mb) and JTV (38mb). You have the choice of MP4 or Windows Media formats.

They both have their own consumer advice (left) and don’t seem to have any rights management, I’m not sure if international users will be able to access the site, but good luck to them.

Subscribe to the feeds:
> The Chaser’s War Vodcast
> JTV Vodcast

The quality is pretty good for the file size, and don’t forget you can play the MP4′s in full screen in iTunes and VLC so don’t worry about not having a video iPod.

Hopefully Media Watch, Spicks and Specks and the news are just a “trial” away.

The BBC ran a competition in April/May of this year called Reboot asking for submissions to redesign bbc.co.uk for the new web 2.0 world. I submitted a design on the last day of the competition, and quickly forgot about it… Until yesterday when I got an email informing me that I was one of the ten runners-up!

I’m pretty sure they weren’t too jazzed with my design (heck, I wasn’t), but they did seem to like some of my ideas, the judges said about my submission:

It was the 2 fascinating “social media” ideas here that swung it. The promos for Project: Planet Earth (“six billion volunteers required”). Eat that myspace! And the idea of a collaborative wiki based EastEnders script also stood out.

I’ve been told I win an iPod nano, which is cool, but I’m just excited that my ideas got recognised, it feels good! See my design in all its grainy-jpeg glory here, and of course check out the actual winning design here.

And no, I’m not talking about my feeble attempts (here and here) to give away episodes of the Chaser. It turns out that the SBS show Speaking in Tongues was offering Mac and PC compatible downloads the day after broadcast from back in November last year.

I just can’t believe I never picked up on this, either way Speaking in Tongues is still on iTunes, and holding strong in the top 30 Australian podcasts.

Tim, who was involved in the Speaking in Tongues podcast also points out that the last episode of Thank God You’re Here is also available for download.

I just think there is so much opportunity for Australian content to be better distrubuted, and the ABC is sitting on most of it… So much of their programming is things that never end up on DVD, and even if it does, the ABC is (to my understanding) more interested in as many people as possible getting access to its content then their ability to see how tightly they can hold on it.

Shows like Media Watch, Spicks and Specks, The 7.30 Report, Glass House, Four Corners and even just the News would work perfectly in a video podcast format. Hopefully the ABC are working on something, I know there would be a huge demand for it, and its not like they don’t have experience in podcasting, they are Australia’s largest supplier of it.

All I know is that people want to “own” their downloads, they want to be able to move them around, and ideally they want them to be free, something that Speaking in Tongues pulled off fantastically.

Most downloaded: Chris on Sunrise
Second place: BBC Radio 1 promo
Most comments: BBC News openers (34 and counting).
Bandwidth: 90.01 gigabytes
Total downloads: 36,781 videos

So I’ve shaved about 30px off the top of the logo to maximise space, and I’ve finally dumped ‘Rockwell’ as my font of choice, for now its ‘Gill Sans’ which aptly enough is the BBC and Saab font (..I drive a Saab).

It’ll probably change again soon, just got bored with the old one.

In an ominous start to the Australian TV download scene the Nine network is offering this week’s episode of McLeod’s Daughters available for download for free. After that though it will cost $1.95 an episode and you won’t own the video, you’ll just have a license to watch it for five days.

It doesn’t work on a Mac (of course), and I’m still struggling to get it download on my Mum’s Compaq, instead of just letting you download the file they have this tortured flash interface which is still loading.

Several minutes later… It’s all loaded now and after downloading a “download manager” I’ve started to get my 460mb file of a show that hardly seems the most compelling program to launch a service with.

The SMH has reported that Nine apparently gazumped Seven who are also working on a download service, hopefully the Sunrise network will offer something a bit more useful though.

To give it a go yourself (as long as you don’t have a Mac) click here.

I’m back in Australia, the trip was awesome, I didn’t get to capture any international idents, Ireland was interesting, their RTE Two looks a lot like FOX8 (but green). Ireland and Bahrain both had Paramount comedy channels which I hadn’t seen before, and I got to watch BBC Prime in Manama (pictured) which was interesting (even if there wasn’t that much I really wanted to watch on it).

> RealPlayer Media (1.2mb)
> iPod Download (1.6mb)

“God, we have fun”, that was a line from the opening scene of this weeks episode of The Simpsons. I thought it was an appropriate line, nicely reflexive and retrospective and timed perfectly for The Simpson’s Movie trailer.

My love of the Simpsons is pretty well documented, so I couldn’t not post this.

I leave the comfort of my Arlington wifi tomorrow so probably won’t bug you with Simpsons crap for a few days.

I was in a Rite-Aid today and took this picture, I don’t know why it seems so cool, I just love that Dove got Marge Simpsons (a cartoon character!) to sell their hair styling products.. she’s never looked better by the way.

Back in August I took the blog on a bit of a road trip when I went to London for a week, well I’m at it again, and while I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to capture, hopefully I’ll be able to get something.

I leave tomorrow for Washington D.C., before heading to Dublin, Bahrain and Singapore. I get back home on the 17th when hopefully normally blogging will resume.