BBC Partners With Adobe To Make iPlayer Platform-Agnostic

The Beeb has announced that it will be collaborating with Adobe to build a platform-independent iPlayer client before the end of 2008, something that many have been demanding for some times.

This has to be the single most requested feature BBC has received for the iPlayer and by using Adobe's AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime), users will be able to watch iPlayer content not only on Windows PC, but also on Mac and Linux as well.

As one can expect, any downloaded episodes and programmes will be protected by DRM although some might cringe at the idea of having Linux and DRM cohabiting in the same environment.

The BBC has also announced that the organisation had signed a licensing agreement with The Content Management License Administrator, Coremedia and Intertrust to create and distribute content on the Open Mobile Alliance DRM2 format.

This will ensure that more mobile phones (and generally speaking smartphones) will now be compatible with the iPlayer and will be able to download content directly to their handsets.

iPhone and iTouch users will have to wait for a while though as Apple, which is not part of the OMA DRM 2.0 alliance, is not enthusiast about licensing DRM to the Beeb.