BBC iPlayer enters ‘new phase’ as it attempts to replicate one of Sky TV’s biggest innovations in streaming
Tired of hearing your neighbours celebrate goals before the stream on your television has caught up to the action? Or finding out the final result of a critical cricket match from the ping! of a notification on your smartphone before the result appears on-screen?
Switching from a traditional television aerial comes with a truckload of advantages — reception is less likely to be disrupted by bad weather, you aren’t restricted on where you can place your telly — but streaming does build in a delay that can be frustrating, especially during sports fixtures.
To solve the headache, the BBC is in the midst of trialling a new low-latency upgrade that could eliminate the gap between traditional terrestrial broadcasts and streaming experiences. BBC Research & Development teams hope to slash the typical 40-second delay between traditional broadcasts and streams to just 8-10 seconds.
Engineers first trialled this technology during Wimbledon, but have now announced “a new phase” for its tests.
Senior Research & Development Engineer, Melissa Darragh wrote in a BBC blog post: “As of this week, we’re entering a new phase designed to broaden device support and extend the hours of operation. This is so we can reach more reliable conclusions about how low latency streams behave in the home, at scale.
“This will also increase participation from homes with different internet service providers, Wi-Fi setups, and network stress patterns. Low latency puts the player closer to the ‘edge’ of what the network can support; so, diversity in real-world conditions really matters.”
Ms Darragh added: “Low latency shouldn’t mean fragile. It should mean timely and reliable. This research is an important step along the way to getting there. However, more work is needed before we could deliver a fully resilient fault tolerant low latency stream at the scale needed for a major sporting event.”
Want to test the new lower-latency feed from the BBC? If you’re watching on a supported device, switch on iPlayer Beta and watch BBC Two live between 8am – 10pm BST for viewers who have set their location to England or Scotland. The latest phase of the test will run for around a month, the BBC has confirmed.
The BBC is playing catch-up with this effort to slash streaming delays. Sky was able to cut the transmission delay between something taking place in a stadium and the footage being delivered to your telly via Wi-Fi by a whopping 22 seconds last year. Bundled with a free update to SkyOS 1.3 to its Sky Glass and Sky Stream devices, the UK broadcaster says that watching on Sky Stream and Sky Glass, sports fans will now experience “give or take” the same delay as satellite broadcasts on Sky Q or Sky+ HD.
Sky Sports Main Event was the first to see the pioneering new technology from SkyOS 1.3 last year, which dropped the delay from roughly 30-seconds down to 8-seconds between the action taking place in the stadium and showing on your screen at home
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GB NEWS
The dramatic drop in latency will work across live broadcasts in Ultra HD and HD, GB News was told.
And now, BBC iPlayer is looking to implement a similar improvement to its streams. If you want to test the system yourself, you’ll need to enable beta mode within BBC iPlayer, which signals to the broadcaster that you’re happy to Guinea Pig newer, unfinished features.
The reduced latency brings technical challenges. With less time to adapt to network changes, streams may become more prone to buffering. The BBC’s solution involves playing video slightly faster after any interruption to maintain low latency without viewers missing action.
Discussing the improvements, BBC Lead R&D Engineer Chris Poole wrote in a blog post: “Reducing internet delivery delays to match traditional broadcast means less time for the streaming client to adapt to changes in network conditions. This in turn makes it harder to avoid ‘stalling’ where video playback stops and viewers have to wait for a period of ‘rebuffering’ before the stream continues. We have worked on ways to solve this and have modelled, tested and analysed the performance.
“That work suggests that we should be able to achieve delays comparable to broadcast. But, since everyone’s internet connection is different, the only way to be sure how well it works in the real world is to try it in the real world.”
You’ll need to dig into the Settings menu of your BBC iPlayer app on compatible hardware and enable “iPlayer Beta” to access the early test streams
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BBC PRESS OFFICE
Illuminating some of the behind-the-scenes discussions that are taking place within the BBC about this new technology, Chris Poole added: “With low latency streaming, we also have to think about what should happen if users do experience some rebuffering. Should the stream just resume, leaving them further behind for the rest of the programme? Should the stream catch up, skipping a few seconds in the process?
“Neither is ideal. Instead, our trial stream will play slightly faster after a stall, aiming to maintain low latency but without the viewer missing any of the action. Doing this without the viewer being aware requires some functionality that is not available on all TVs.
“To get the best quality data on the reliability we can achieve at delays comparable to broadcast, we are starting our trial using only devices that support this variable speed playback capability and will maintain the target latency we have set. Later on, we may extend the trial to other devices too.”
For now, the BBC iPlayer is limited to specific devices that support the required technology. While the initial trial during Wimbledon was only available on 3rd generation Amazon Fire TV Stick, 2nd generation Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K, and Samsung Smart TVs with the model numbers CU8000 and CU8500, the BBC has dramatically expanded availability across a wide variety of devices for this “new phase”.
The full list of compatible devices is as follows:
Amazon:Samsung:Samsung:Samsung:Fire TV Edition 4K 2022 (FVP) – Series 2QE32LS03CBUXXUQE75QN90BATXXUQE43LS05BAUXXU2nd generation Amazon Fire TV Stick 4KUE**CU7100KXXUQE65QN90BATXXUQE85LS03BAUXXU UE**CU7110KXXUQE55QN90BATXXUQE75LS03BAUXXU CU8000QE50QN90BATXXUQE65LS03BAUXXUYouView:CU8500QE43QN90BATXXUQE55LS03BAUXXUBT TV Box ProQE43Q60BAUXXUQE85QN85BATXXUQE50LS03BAUXXU QE50Q60BAUXXUQE75QN85BATXXUQE43LS03BAUXXU QE55Q60BAUXXUQE65QN85BATXXUQE65LS01BAUXXUSky:QE65Q60BAUXXUQE55QN85BATXXUQE55LS01BAUXXUSky Glass Gen 1QE75Q60BAUXXUQE85Q80BATXXUQE50LS01BAUXXU QE85Q60BAUXXUQE75Q80BATXXUQE43LS01BAUXXUBush:QE43Q65BAUXXUQE65Q80BATXXUQE65LS01BBUXXUU43F8CQE50Q65BAUXXUQE55Q80BATXXUQE55LS01BBUXXUU43F8VQE55Q65BAUXXUQE50Q80BATXXUQE50LS01BBUXXUU50F8CQE65Q65BAUXXUQE75Q75BATXXUQE43LS01BBUXXUU55F8CQE75Q65BAUXXUQE65Q75BATXXUQE43LS05BGUXXUU58F8CQE85QN95BATXXUQE55Q75BATXXUQE**LS03BGUXXUU65F8CQE75QN95BATXXUQE85Q70BATXXUQE**LS01BGUXXUU75F8CQE65QN95BATXXUQE75Q70BATXXUQE**LS01BHUXXUU86F8CQE55QN95BATXXUQE65Q70BATXXUQE**S95BATXXU QE85QN90BATXXUQE55Q70BATXXU Sony:LG:LG:LG:XR-A95K series75QNED99T9B65ART90E6QCLGOLED77Z29LALGXR-X90K series86QNED99T9B65ART90E6QBLGOLED88Z29LALGXR-X94K series48LX1T6LA65ART90E6QALG75UQ91006LAXR-A90K series55LX1T6LAOLED42C24LALG65UQ91006LAXR-A80K seriesOLED42C44LAOLED48C24LALG55UQ91006LAXR-A84K seriesOLED48C44LAOLED55C24LALG50UQ91006LAXR-A75K seriesOLED55C44LAOLED65C24LALG43UQ91006LAXR-Z9K seriesOLED65C44LAOLED77C24LALG60UQ90006LAXR-X95K seriesOLED77C44LAOLED83C24LALG75UQ81006LBXR-X90S seriesOLED83C44LAOLED48C26LBLG70UQ81006LBXR-X94S seriesOLED42C45LAOLED55C26LDLG65UQ81006LBKD-X80K seriesOLED48C45LAOLED65C26LDLG60UQ81006LBKD-X81K seriesOLED55C45LAOLED77C26LDLG55UQ81006LBKD-X85K seriesOLED65C45LAOLED55G26LALG50UQ81006LBKD-X89K seriesOLED77C45LAOLED65G26LALG43UQ81006LB OLED48C46LAOLED77G26LALG75UQ80006LB OLED55C46LAOLED83G26LALG65UQ80006LB OLED65C46LAOLED97G29LALG55UQ80006LB OLED77C46LA65QNED996QBLG50UQ80006LB OLED83C46LA75QNED996QBLG43UQ80006LB Toshiba:Hisense:Hisense: 43UV2363DB50E7HQTUK43A66HTUK 50UV2363DB50E77HQTUK43A67HTUK 55UV2363DB43E7HQTUK65A6BGTUK 65UV2363DB43E77HQTUK65A6CGTUK 43UV3363DB65A63HTUK65A6EGTUK 50UV3363DB65A64HTUK65A6FGTUK 55UV3363DB65A65HTUK58A6BGTUK 65UV3363DB65A66HTUK58A6CGTUK 43QV2363DB65A67HTUK58A6EGTUK 50QV2363DB55A63HTUK58A6FGTUK 55QV2363DB55A64HTUK55A6BGTUK 65QV2363DB55A65HTUK55A6CGTUK 43UV2E63DB55A66HTUK55A6EGTUK 50UV2E63DB55A67HTUK55A6FGTUK 55UV2E63DB50A63HTUK50A6BGTUK 65UV2E63DB50A64HTUK50A6CGTUK 43UV4E63DB50A65HTUK50A6EGTUK 50UV4E63DB50A66HTUK50A6FGTUK 55UV4E63DB50A67HTUK43A6BGTUK 65UV4E63DB43A63HTUK43A6CGTUK 43QV5E63DB43A64HTUK43A6EGTUK 50QV5E63DB43A65HTUK43A6FGTUK 65QV5E63DB 55QV5E63DB
To access the low latency stream, you’ll need to enable iPlayer Beta in the Settings menu and make sure your location is set to England or Scotland.
The experimental stream isn’t available for BBC Two Wales or BBC Two Northern Ireland, BBC explained. While this is an exciting advancement for the BBC, don’t expect all streams on BBC iPlayer to offer the same latency as traditional broadcasts via aerial.
As the BBC Lead R&D Engineer summarises: “This trial is only our first step in trialling low latency streaming to the public: viewers should not expect that all live internet viewing will match the delays on broadcast at the end of the trial. Gradual improvements are more likely. This trial is aiming to assess the reliability of the delivery of low latency media over the internet.
“More work is needed to build a fully resilient, fault tolerant system that can scale to the size of audience that the BBC serves for major sporting events. Since common ways to build in resilience to failure themselves add delay, achieving this for low latency streams remains a challenge.”
