BBC iPlayer now available on a toaster
Post categories: iplayer
| 10:44 UK time, Wednesday, 1 April 2009
BBC iPlayer is now available on so many devices that we thought... what next?
We've ported iPlayer to iPhone, Wii, PS3, Nokia N96, Sony Walkman, Virgin Cable and all the other gadgets and devices at "where to get iplayer" - what's the next big thing?
Our marketing team identified breakfast television as an emerging market segment for on-demand viewing and asked the iPlayer team to see if we could come up with something new in this space.
After months of top-secret development and testing, and many burned developers, we're finally ready to bring iPlayer Toaster Edition out of labs.
The iPlayer Toaster Edition looks at first glance like a regular toaster, but with the front panel sporting a 7" 1280x800 OLED display.
The touch-sensitive display is protected from the heat by special thermal insulation located behind the front panel. Device power consumption is a very eco-friendly 2 watts... until you hit the Toast button, when it rises swiftly to 2000.
The iPlayer Toaster Edition features built-in wi-fi, allowing you to stream your favourite BBC iPlayer TV and radio programmes direct to the toaster front panel. Audio is provided by two heat-proof speakers cunningly concealed within the toaster slots, which has the added advantage of shaking the crumbs off the toast - this feature can also be triggered either by the Shake link in the UI.
In keeping with the small form factor and 7" display, the UI makes use of our so-called "bigscreen" display, which is ironically optimised for small screens:
(The BigScreen version of the iPlayer UI is also available for PC - see it here
The built-in USB port is compatible with most portable media players, allowing you to transfer downloaded BBC programmes to your media player while your bread is toasting. As soon as your toast is ready, butter it, unplug your media player, and you're good to go with food and media on the move.
Our marketing team keep telling us about the importance of branding, so the iPlayer Toaster Edition can optionally burn the iPlayer play button logo into the toast using our new HD (High Darkness) rendering mode:
Another cool feature is the Digital Retraction Mechanism (DRM) which automatically withdraws and shreds any uneaten toast after 7 days. Initially the retraction mechanism was only compatible with some types of bread, but after criticism from organic bread consumers we managed to develop a full cross-comestible DRM.
Developing the iPlayer Toaster Edition has been hot and demanding work and our test team is glad it's done - frankly they've had it eating burnt toast, even though they did manage to catch up on the entire MasterChef series.
Anthony Rose is Controller, Online Media Group and Vision, Future Media & Technology
N.B. Editor's note - readers may be interested in other significant developments in media and technology today.
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~01~RS~)
Comments
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Love the toast branding.
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oh yes lets all rush off and buy one, i hear they vcan be found in Woolies ;o)
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Tut tut April fool
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Mmmm what's today's date?
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This is seriously the best thing since sliced bread!
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Worst. April Fool. Joke. Ever.
:D
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I would be laughing if iplayer was on android. Less joking around and more java work perhaps.
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Great April Fool - thanks all...
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It was always going to be hard to beat the penguins. Though if you'd substituted Apple TV for Toaster we'd probably still have reckoned it wasn't genuine :)
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I'd love it if this wasn't a joke, though...
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I'm not toastally convinced.
Where's my coat?
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1280x800 on a 7 inch display? That's a massive amount of detail, must be using super-tiny pixels.
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Breaking news - Croissant-site scripting exploit found. Causes display to show random porn sites. Home Secretary allegedly investigating (as prezzie for hubby).
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It's uncanny! I've got a toaster on my mobile phone and an iPlayer!!
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*sigh* Should have gone with "Porn to be available on BBC iPlayer". With the headline "Auntie strips bare".
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Given the BBC's weird choice of devices to support with iPlayer, and their utterly bizarre decision to block the 5800 from downloading, this story is entirely plausible and therefore not a particularly funny April Fool's gag.
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Thank you for the first April Fool joke of my day here in Chicago USA.
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Nice April fool. Shame the bit about porting iPlayer to iPhone isn't true (though why on earth you haven't is a mystery to me).
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April Fool!
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
I guess the next thing you could port it to, would be the rest of the world.I am sure the ad revenue could easily eliminate the need for the TV tax, sorry licence fee. Not quite the spaghetti harvest.
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Well, I walked right into that one didn't I!?
Anyway, not long now before we're watching Question Time projected onto towels from the comfort of a spring-mounted toilet seat.
Happy April 1st my fellow fools.
Chris
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Love it.:0)
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Ah man, someone's blammed my link to the mods. I thought this being an internet blog it would be OK to acknowledge that torrent sites exist. Fingers crossed humour wins out. :-)
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Anthony Rose. You stole my joke. I disapprove strongly.
Proof: http://www.onbreadcrumbs.com/dmc/2009-03-22/
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I guess the next thing you could port it to, would be the rest of the world.I am sure the ad revenue could easily eliminate the need for the TV tax, sorry licence fee. Not quite the spaghetti harvest.
--------
For the 100,000th time, it's not about the licence fee, it's about the beeb not having rights to distribute 90% of the programming anywhere but the UK.
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Guess the BBC are running out of Ideas
talk about being desperate, most un-original Aprils fools
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You've been watching Red Dwarf again?
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Sorry nice try, but not so much Poisson d'Avril as poisoned. I suppose spaghetti on toast would have harked back to 1957, Dimbleby set too high a bar for today.
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Not since the Amiga 2000 have I thought of a video toaster. Excellent! :)
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Actually, thinking about it. Didn't Mike Meyers wear a Video Toaster T-shirt in Wayne's World.
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Do you *STILL* need a TV licence?! Actually quite good thinking this! Like the wifi and touch screen capabilities :)
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April Fools! Come on people!....
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Yeah, cos this is original... did no-one see the George Foreman iGrill a few years ago?
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hahaha.. is that true? lolz..
nothing possible in photoshop...
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I now have executed cruel revenge against you, Anthony Rose, for stealing my intellectual property. Your sorrows assemble here:
http://www.onbreadcrumbs.com/dmc/2009-04-02/
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onBreadcrumbs - I think this may be more a case of "great minds think alike".
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Nick - I like my interpretation of the events better and, secretly, so could you I suspect!
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Is it bad that I really wanted this toaster after reading the first few paragraphs..?
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That made me smile :-)
As for onBreadcrumbs.com - kinda like xkcd.com except without the humour...
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BigBoo: And the Stick Figures, and the tech know how. Oh, and the fanbase :-P
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onBreadcrumbs: I retract my earlier statement which was wholly unjustified (bad day at work). I am a big xkcd fan though and, who knows, might become a big Bradcrumbs fan too.
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...and one day I might learn to proof read before posting :-)
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Haha, no worries! It's a young comic after all and still quite experimental. I'll better go for another few hundred instalments before I enter the ring against xkcd.
Meanwhile, if you like xkcd.com, you might also enjoy smbc-comics.com (as well as the ever-glorious achewood.com).
Nevertheless, your inital verdict has already and irreversibly been incorporated into the navigation bar on OnBreadcrumbs.com, for marketing purposes ;-)
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Thanks for the pointers. I'll look them up and have a read. And now I have an official credit as "Internet Person"! I only hope that it doesn't constitute my 15 minutes of fame... :-)
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This is one of the greatest marketing oriented jokes of all time. Wish I had thought of it.
Will
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