BBC iPlayer - Taking Over The World

So first the BBC iPlayer was made available on your computer. Then it was made available on your iPod Touch and iPhone, now it's available on your Wii. The end result is its crashing the Internet.

According to an article at TimesOnline the traffic caused solely by iPlayer traffic is around 3-4 percent of all Internet traffic in Britain. Sure, that may not sound like a lot at first glance, but considering Britain is one of the few countries giving the US a run for its money when it comes to who has the most Internet traffic, 3-4% from one single web app is simply amazing.

Now, back to the bit about the iPlayer working on the Wii, it's a new addition, but quite an amazing one. Basically all you have to do is buy the Internet Channel on your Wii, which you can use for more than iPlayer, then navigate to the iPlayer website and choose your favorite program and enjoy. Essentially what they had to do in order for this to work is to change the codec they used to work with the codec that the Flash player on the Wii uses.

So, all this iPlayer business is breaking the internet, and I can only presume it's going to get worse as they add more compatibility with other devices to the list. Apparently the Internet providers are thinking along the same lines and want the BBC to pay for part of the now, nearly requisite network upgrade which will cost roughly £831 million.

[via timesonline and the BBC]