New HTML5 Player beta trial for BBC iPlayer

For users interested in an alternative to Flash to deliver audio and video, James East – Product Manager in Media Playout, introduces a beta trial of HTML5, as well as a new native Android player for BBC iPlayer.

Although we’ve been using HTML5 to deliver video to iOS devices for some time, until recently we felt that the consistent experience and efficient media delivery offered by Flash outweighed the benefit of moving to HTML5 on the desktop. However, we’ve been regularly evaluating the features offered by the most popular web browsers and we’re now confident we can achieve the playback quality you’d expect from the BBC without using a third-party plugin.

To opt in, visit our HTML5 Player beta page. This will allow you to set a cookie in your browser so you can access our HTML5 player on BBC iPlayer. If you clear your cookies or switch browsers, you’ll have to return to this page to re-enter the trial. You can also visit this page if you want to opt out and return to our non-beta player.

While opted in, whenever you visit BBC iPlayer to play a programme you’ll see a reminder banner before you click Play, so you can be sure you’re using our HTML5 player.

We’re currently testing the HTML5 player with:

• Firefox 41
• Opera 32
• Safari on iOS 5 and above
• BlackBerry OS 10.3.1 and above
• Internet Explorer 11 and Microsoft Edge on Windows 10
• Google Chrome on all platforms

For more information see: The BBC Blog

See also: www.bbc.co.uk/html5