Good news for UK Apple TV users? (iPlayer Universal search)

[ap60019]

My first post, so please be nice. This is not a link to a news report, I've had to deduce this after a few hours of playing and researching. (If you can dissect and disprove my deductions please be nice-ish about that too!)

Basically, I think that Universal Search (or Siri Search if you prefer) may be coming BBC iPlayer before too long.

This came about after I Siri searched for QI (not easy, as the Apple TV wants to correct the phonetical "Queue Eye" to "QR I" most of the time) and saw an unexpected image, instead of a Film Poster or a square TV Poster I saw a 16:9 image of Sandi Toksvig.

If you're interested in all the evidence/clues I've managed to find you can read my full article on Medium, but essentially my logic is as follows:

QI is only on Netflix (not available on iTunes) so Netflix should be providing the Universal Search artwork. But Netflix only has series of QI that are hosted by Steven Fry, so the artwork should surely be of him and not Sandi Toksvig. Netflix also provides artwork in either TV Square or Movie Poster aspect ratios and not 16:9. Moreover, the BBC provide all their poster artwork in iPlayer and on their website in 16:9 format, and on the BBC QI webpage, the very same image of Sandi Toksvig is the displayed series artwork.

My deduction therefore is that the BBC are testing a version of iPlayer that integrates with Universal Search at the moment, and that the image of Sandi Toksvig is provided by said integration.

Read my full article on Medium...

Hope this is of some interest!

 

[Hermes Monster]

I have iPlayer installed though I never actually use it, but it's nice to know there's companies over here embracing it

 

[jelockwood]

Reviving an admittedly old thread but actually the UK situation regarding Universal Search is very, very bad.

See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205321 this is the official it seems list of what country has what channels available to search. As you will see not a single one of the main UK TV networks is listed.

To add salt to the wound, in the US they can search BBC America, but here in the UK we cannot search the BBC at all.

Whilst ITV, Channel5 and Sky are known to be backwards from a technical point of - none of them support AirPlay it is surprising that the BBC are not available as yet, they are normally quick to support any new technical feature.

 

[Hermes Monster]

Reviving an admittedly old thread but actually the UK situation regarding Universal Search is very, very bad.

See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205321 this is the official it seems list of what country has what channels available to search. As you will see not a single one of the main UK TV networks is listed.

To add salt to the wound, in the US they can search BBC America, but here in the UK we cannot search the BBC at all.

Whilst ITV, Channel5 and Sky are known to be backwards from a technical point of - none of them support AirPlay it is surprising that the BBC are not available as yet, they are normally quick to support any new technical feature.

Hopefully that will change when ITV and My5 join the Apple TV, and subsequently the TV App