Every now and then a technology comes along that changes the way we live, the BBC iplayer is not a new technology but it’s a new way of using technology and it’s changing the way I watch TV.

Being an expat and living in Thailand is great, but there have always been things that I miss, and good quality English TV is one of them.  Not that I watch much TV, but on those occasions when I do sit down with my feet up to watch some TV it’s nice if it’s English and good quality.

Bring on the BBC iPlayer.  I downloaded it to the Windows XP partition on my MacBook Pro and then it complained that I was not in the UK..  Hmm I thought, surely its just my IP address that it does not like so I logged in via a UK proxy server and it was happy.  Even better, it only checks country once and then it’s fine over my Thailand broadband connection.

My Mac Book pro has a DVI connector, and I recently bought a DVI to HDMI cable by mistake so I decided to try hooking my MacBook to my LG 42″ LCD in the living room.  Wow, the picture is super and it set the resolution by itself.

I dont want to take my MacBook Pro into the living room, and anyway my bootcamp partition only has 30gb space, so I decided to take my little Acer computer, which is a “small form factor” PC running 3.2ghz P4, 1gb Ram and 160gb hard drive.  It already had XP on it and I don’t really need it for anything else.   It sites nicely next to my DVD player and sat receiver, and it works a treat with BBC iPlayer, except that I need to use a mouse, I will soon buy a wireless controller.

My son, who is just under 2 years old, loves the BBC kids stuff, I love the documentaries and Doctor Who and it’s really nice to be able to choose when to watch.   I just select the programs I want and go to bed, next morning it has downloaded loads of programs and I can wait up to 28 days before watching them, then after the first time I watch it I can watch it again for up to 7 days.  It would be nice if I could keep the kids stuff, but all the time there are more programs coming in overnight its no real problem.

Oh yes, and the picture quality is really good.  I’m fussy, but I can’t really tell the difference between the BBC content and a good DVD.