I just found my invite to the new BBC iPlayer beta service. I got very excited to (finally!) be part of a major piece of online video history and man oh man is it bad. It's so bad, it makes Windows 3.11 look awesome.

Just how bad? Let's start at the top.

• I copied over the link to a new Firefox tab and it asked for my log in details. It uses standard HTTP authentication, so I got a modal window that I cannot make go away interfering with me. Why do I want it to go away? Because I want to copy my username and password. Just so you understand why this is necessary, my username is FBArbkNad (actually, I changed one letter only for security, but that's pretty much it). What kind of username is that? They can at least use the email address as a username. I notice that in the top right hand corner, it has a 'sign in' link. Surely it knows I've signed in, no?
• Fine, I manage to login after a copy/paste shuffle with notepad. Great interface. Very shiny, very sleek, a piece of art. Well done on that front. Browsing through, I picked a program at random and I was offered a download link. I click that, and errr, ummm, an error message. Remember Firefox? Yeah, it's not supported. The service requires Windows XP and IE and Windows Media Player. I scored 2 out of 3.
• Fine. Sheesh, I'll load up IE. Again, copy/paste the URL and neatly, I was browsing at the correct page. At least the URLs are emailable as they point to the correct episode pages. So I click download and it asks me to login again. It's a different server (download.bbc.co.uk instead of www.bbc.co.uk) and it's a setup file. Fair enough, a player is needed. Save it and install it.
• True to any bad installer, it tried to register something for startup in the registry. No, thank you (but thank you Spybot S&D), just run. When the player opened, it tried to register the same thing again. Does this remind you of RealPlayer and why it's so hated? To make it worse, the name of the file it's trying to register is "koh", making it completely obscure that it's related to the BBC iPlayer. Rename the file, willya? As my friends' resident geek, I get to deal with a lot of spyware and adware. You could at least help me by naming the files properly.
• Hey, the player works. Very informatively, it tells me that my library is empty (remember, I asked to download a specific episode). Handily, it offers a link to the iPlayer home. Click that and a new IE7 starts. Now I'm angry: it refused to let me download the player from Firefox only for the player to turn around and start a new IE window? Why can't the player be downloadable from any Windows browser (it is Windows only as far as I can tell...) and then open as many IE windows as possible. This is very bad usability, not to mention annoying.
• So now I'm on my third tab of the iPlayer website (the Firefox one, my IE one, and the iPlayer-started one). Fine. Just let me see a stupid episode. I browse around and click one at random... Oh, I need to log in again. Oh flippin' 'eck. I copy and paste the username and password again... and it says my password is too short. Umm... it your freaking password!

So I give up and decide to write this rant review. Honestly. I've seen alpha software that's better quality than this. Sorry Beeb. I love you, I love your site, but the iPlayer is broken.

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