T3 - Tech 100

Giving us on-demand 'Stenders.

In 2007 Rose was poached from the music-sharing website Kazaa to help develop BBC’s iPlayer service, and the rest, as they say, is history. Since then we’ve seen the iPlayer go HD, become available to Virgin Media subscribers and Wii owners, and various mobile phones (including the iPhone) supported.

“Over the past few months major TV manufacturers have released TVs with true internet and video on-demand capability” Rose told us. “Right now the offerings are fragmented and aren’t compatible with many, or even any, significant video services. But over the coming year all that will change, and we’ll see huge advances in the way that you interact with your TV set, and an explosion in the amount of content you’ll be able to access in your next-gen TV”.

It’s not just rose-tinted glasses that Rose is looking through, with him describing a major challenge facing him in the coming months. “We’re going to see a number of US video aggregator sites launching in the UK, giving consumers a huge range of online viewing choice. That’s great for consumers, but it’s going to make it challenging to continue to grow the audience for a BBC-only content proposition, however good our content may be. Naturally we’re working on some very exciting ideas for the next version of iPlayer to meet this challenge – stay tuned!”