Hurrah for the BBC

Now here's a thing I have been belly aching about about for months, or is it years? The problem of how to get the BBC iPlayer on my TV.

I have a Sony TV which has Internet, but it needs an Ethernet connection. Who has their router next to the TV, no one, including me, its in the hall by the phone! And the TV is two rooms away, no way to lay a cable. So I cannot use its internet ability, and anyway it is the most god awful interface you could imagine.

But I do have an Apple TV box connected by HDMI to the TV. Using this I can watch movies from my computer over WiFi, get stuff from iTunes and Netflix from WiFi and the internet… and look at my photos on my personal iCloud, uploaded automatically from my iPhone. Good so far.

But up until recently if I tried to beam the BBC iPlayer running on my iPhone using Apple's Airplay system to the TV I got only the sound!, No video!

Now it seems that the BBC have, very quietly, opened up the video. If you tap twice on the iPhone/iPad Home button, then slide across to the volume control, you can switch audio/video to the Apple TV using Airplay.



And if you then go back to the iPlayer app,



chose your viewing, and run it, it will play on the TV!!!!



Now I am watching lots, thank you BBC. Whoopeee!

Of course the BBC had no choice really, even if the rights holders no doubt kicked up their usual fuss, as the iPad 2 from Apple can now mirror anything you see on the iPad screen to the Apple TV, so you could do it anyway with an iPad 2… even if the BBC and rights holders wanted to or not. Thank you Apple for breaking this [copyright] stranglehold.

At last I have a sensible easy way to use the iPlayer and watch it on my TV. I don't see why the BBC doesn't shout this ability from the tree tops, lots of people have iPhones, and Apple TVs cost only £99.