Have you thought of watching the BBC iPlayer on your Nokia 5800 yet? Yes, we know it’s only officially available for the Nokia N96 and Nokia N85 devices but the link to the software sits there ever so temptingly on the Downloads page of the Nokia 5800.
It’s something we’ve been meaning to do for the last few days so we finally took the plunge and downloaded the software. Read on to find out what we discovered…
An interesting story popped up recently over on Mobile about the BBC iPlayer and how smartphones will be the driving force for the service in the coming years. According to the piece, the BBC will be making a heavy bid for the mobile community, quoting Richard Titus, the BBC’s future media controller of audio, music and mobile, of saying: ‘The Nokia launch was the first major proposition where we were really focusing on the mobile version of the product.’
It goes on to state that the BBC will be rolling out further device specific launches but never goes into any details about Nokia phones. The thing is, if you go to the Downloads section of your Nokia 5800 you’ll see BBC iPlayer sat there waiting to be downloaded.
Here comes the science...
We’d like to point out before you go any further there hasn’t been any official word as to whether this will natively support the Nokia 5800, so don't go blundering in. Anyway, it downloads and sets itself up within a couple of minutes. So we thought we’d give it a go…
It’s all handled in the background by RealPlayer, which is no real surprise, because it loads quickly enough. The touchscreen makes it easy to move around the page but iPlayer isn’t exactly the most user-friendly of interfaces, so actually working your way around the screen can be a bit of a pain.
The page can be viewed in Portrait or Landscape mode, as you'll see from our images below. Getting to the programs is a little tricky but you'll find that TV shows load reasonably well. The problems tend to begin a minute or so in, as you're never guarenteed a decent picture for long.
Sadly, we found the programmes tended to break up a little too much for our liking, even strange and eeiry 'Dalek' voices making an appearance at times. This isn't the fault of the Nokia 5800, as it's got a cracking Wi-Fi connection, and the S60 platform is robust enough. So, surely it's down to the way the BBC codes iPlayer?
So, what have we learnt? Well, there is a VERY good reason why the software needs to be device specific and that's because it'a not the most robust of tools - the question is, when will the BBC get a solution that works, as we want to watch telly on our Nok... come on BBC, sort it out!
