BBCi - Generalish thread

I know that BBCi is not strictly a channel as such, but it does offer a television service usually across mutliples of streams daily.

For example, today could be listed as (and forgive me for lack of completeness)

BBCi
24hrs News Headline Service/Entertainment News/Lifestyle Extra
8.45am-8.00pm London Marathon Extra
12.00-10.00pm Snooker Table One
12.00-10.00pm Snooker Table Two

It would better publicise the extra services offered by BBCi, which, can at times, be incredibly useful.

Thoughts?

Plus, couldn't BBCi run a menu showing all their online streams at one time. For example, if someone wanted to go from the Snooker to the News to the Marathon, without jumping through multiple hoops?

Agreed.

'Er indoors found the snooker, almost by accident, yesterday afternoon, having remembered using it last year.

Surely they could create something like Sky Active's screen with all of the different sections, with a multi-screen layout of all of the streams available at that time. It would certainly make them much more accessible and probably increase BBCi's audience. It would also make BBCi's offering on freeview look more substantial.

Well a start would be info in the EPG and on the downtime screen (e.g. Coming Up... Live Snooker at 7pm).


As a side note, I read on MediaGuardian today that BBC3 are going to launch a limited Video-on-demand service via the red button from May 1st, offering an alternative selection of programmes (i.e. Little Britain!) to the main BBC3 schedule (come to thing of it, i.e. Little Britain!).

I think you may be meaning something similar along the lines of News Multiscreen, of which a similar multiscreen format is also used with various video/audio streams (but is only available to those with Sky or cable) for the Marathon (which I think replicated the similar offerings available through the Menu on Freeview) and the Wimbledon tennis matches.

I would guess the reason as to why the multi-screen layout of all the streams available at the time is not on Freeview is due to the usual reason of capacity limitations, being (and I think I am right in this theory!) that there is only room for two multiple streams per channel on Freeview, where as there is more capacity on Digital Satellite.

Here's some of my suggestions to improve BBCi on Freeview:

Extend the ability to hide/show to include the front page, and not just for pages available in quarter-screen or full-screen mode

Change the format of the TV pages (for example, the regional variations for BBC1 and 2 and ITV1 could be included within their listings, which could free up more space)

The rectangular box which appears when you enter a page number should be coloured to match the relevant section of BBCi you are in, rather than just white and red

Now that the page 100 overlay bridges (which were coloured according to the BBC channel being viewed at the time) have gone (with the exception of customised bridges for the CBBC and CBeebies channels), the "Press RED" icons could possibly appear in a similar way to the ones used on Sky (ie icons for Scores Interactive, and the "Come and Play" icon for the CBeebies channel, for example).

Change the current way of exiting News Multiscreen to allow you to go back to the last BBC channel you was on, rather than going to News 24 when exiting the application.

And some other suggestions depending on capacity:

Extend the column selections on the Index pages (in quarter-screen mode) from one to two-column, if technically possible

The logos that appear in the coloured headings for the relevant sections should also appear where the page you are viewing is in full-screen mode.

There are two BBCi related press releases/stories today:

BBC THREE trials pioneering multi-screen application: http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/04_april/18/three.shtml

BBC's Spooks interactive picks up top award in Cannes: http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/04_april/18/spooks.shtml

digiperson