On Sat, 11 Sep 2010 15:14:25 +0100, Jim Lesurf
wrote:

In article , Don Pearce
wrote:
On Sat, 11 Sep 2010 12:11:52 +0100, Jim Lesurf
wrote:

In article , Don Pearce
wrote:
On Sat, 11 Sep 2010 09:54:59 +0100, Jim Lesurf
wrote:


Do the Beeb even allow buffering on these services?

Depends on what you mean by "allow".


Well, consider a comparison with something like Youtube. When I use
that, I see the "downloaded" portion of the progress bar move swiftly
across to completion in not much more than a few seconds. the video
then effectively plays off my hard drive.

From what I've been told that is because the BBC iPlayer works in its
own way. The process is effectively dominated by the BBC wanting to
'wrap' it all into a Flash process So the iPlayer isn't necessarily
like Youtube, etc.

I thought Youtube videos were Flash - they certainly download with a
.flv postscript.

That does not mean that the Flash code you download and use is exactly the
same in both such cases. Flash is essentially a programming / scripting
language aimed at specific sorts of tasks. So the two organisations each
use it in their own ways.

Yes, you are right of course. But that sort of goes to the heart of my
comment on what the BBC "allow" by way of buffering.

d