Andy Merrett writes…

The BBC has announced that an open beta trial of its iPlayer will launch next month. It joins Channel 4’s 4oD service — reportedly doing quite well — for those who want to sit at their PCs and watch highlights of the last week’s TV.

Stuart has already extolled the virtues of “Telly 2.0”. BT are heavily marketing their Vision service, and 4oD can be accessed via BT Vision and Virgin Media.

Are the BBC slow off the mark? When the beta launches next month, it’ll be for a select band of Windows XP users only, with other versions potentially rolling out over the following months. Having said that, Channel 4 still have licensing and technical issues with protecting their content – their excuse for not getting the service to work with Macs (or indeed, any other non-Windows system).