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Yesterday the BBC confirmed the imminent arrival of iPlayer on Freesat. In a double whammy of on demand goodness Freesat viewers will also be able to receive catch up from ITV via the ITV Player. Here's some of the what's being said.

The bad news though, as laid out by The Guardian is that the roll-out starts as:

"... a limited, closed 'beta' version of the iPlayer set to launch on 7 December for "a few hundred" selected users."

"Freesat said it was aiming to launch an open beta version of the iPlayer, accessible to around 230,000 Freesat households with compatible set-top boxes, by Christmas."

Digital Spy reported that the popularity of iPlayer on TV platforms was seen as justifying the latest moves. In a detailed report Digital Spy quoted blog regular (and head of TV platforms at the BBC) Rahul Chakkara who:

"...revealed that iPlayer registered 97.2 million programme views during October, with 26% coming via TV platforms rather than the web. He said that the figure gives 'validity' to the BBC's efforts to bring the service to Freesat and other suitable TV platforms."

The Digital Spy piece also pointed out that not all Freesat viewers will be able to access the service:

"When it fully launches, the on-demand platform will be available on all Freesat HD equipment, including integrated TVs, but standard definition receivers will not be able to access it."

And while it's on HD receivers it won't start out as HD:

"Despite the platform only being available on HD receivers, it will not support any HD programming. Chakkara said that the team is adopting a 'crawl first' approach to getting the SD service right before looking into HD. He said that any HD launch would also be dependent on available capacity on the UK's broadband networks due to the much greater bandwidth required for HD streams."

Paul Murphy is the Editor of the Internet blog.

More about Freesat and iPlayer on the web:

• FAQs on the Freesat website
• BBC iPlayer coming to Freesat: Telegraph.co.uk
• BBC iPlayer on Freesat - starts soon: UKFreeTV
• Freesat iPlayer beta to start 7th December: T3.com

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Over on the Editors blog to introduce The People's Politician Tom Giles, executive producer, BBC Current Affairs, has written:

Today, the BBC is helping to launch an new experiment to try and re-invigorate the link between MPs and their constituents - using what's known as "direct democracy" to test how far politicians are willing to do what local people want.

Two long-serving MPs - both standing down at the next election and from very different constituencies - have agreed to take part: Ann Widdecombe (Con - Maidstone and the Weald) and Richard Caborn (Lab - Sheffield Central). Ann starts today with an announcement in her constituency and a new website. Richard Caborn will do the same early in the new year.

For three weeks, they'll try to become as accessible as possible to their constituents - using online tools, social networks and text messaging. They'll aim to find out what issues their constituents want them to champion and turn into real action - whether in Parliament or elsewhere.

Paul Murphy is the Editor of the Internet blog.

• Read the rest of Tom's post The People's Politician and have a look at the project blog.
• Follow Ann Widdecombe on Twitter
• Follow the People's Politician on Twitter
• The image is from MP Kerry McCarthy's Twitter feed.
• Read Ann Widdecombe takes on People's Politician role on Kentnews.co.uk.

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R&D hosted over 40 colleagues from across the BBC on the 3rd of November for an intensive day of invention, innovation and development.  The format was a 'hack day'- we've run them before on a larger scale, often with partners, (such as Hackday London 07, and Mashed) but this was a different, more specialised set up.

This time we just pulled in people from within the BBC who have been working independently on projects, technologies or systems that touch the archive in some way.

The BBC 'Archive' as managed by the Information and Archives dept is a massive and varied collection- it includes video and film, radio broadcasts and recordings from the very earliest days of the corporation, and written archives and sheet music from well before. Add to that hundreds of thousands of photographs, and you begin to get a picture of the vast collections we hold. Beyond that though is the 'metadata'! This is the crucial cataloguing information; the production notes, the cast lists, running orders, music notes, accounts even. Today every moment of broadcasting is planned, coordinated and tracked by using millions of pieces of information about the programmes, their content, and event the way we deliver it to you, the audiences.

Read the rest of ArcHak Archive Development Hack Day and leave your comments on the R&D blog.

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