BBC iPlayer to soak up Olympics 2012 coverage overspill

BBC iPlayer - big plans for Olympics
BBC iPlayer - big plans for Olympics

The BBC has briefly outlined its strategy for dealing with the thousands of hours of footage it will have for the 2012 Olympics, explaining that a lot of content that isn't broadcast on television will come to the iPlayer.

Speaking at the Samsung European Forum in Budapest, with TechRadar in attendance, Daniel Danker, general manager of future media and technology at the BBC, said: "The world of applications gets exciting when you combine them with TV.

"The 2012 Olympics will mean that we will have more content available than we can broadcast. So, the combination of on demand and TV is the only way we will be able to get all the content to consumers."

Olympic challenge

Danker explained that offering content through the iPlayer will mean that audiences will be able to direct their own version of the Olympics, picking and choosing what they want to watch and when.

Samsung will be hoping that consumers will be watching the iPlayer through its Smart Hub service, which has been added to its latest range of connected TVs.

Danker believes that the arrival of so-called smart TVs is great for the BBC, noting: "Smart TV is a liberating platform and we are now building to HTML, so we can express our programmes in new ways.

"This brings together iPlayer and TV which is liberating."

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.