VentureBeat

One of the truly great strengths of the Internet is its ability to be a repository for nearly everything. The BBC is the latest to make a deposit with its plan to puts its entire archive of television and radio shows online, according to The Guardian. It will create a page for every single episode, of every single program that has aired on the channel — for the past 81 years!

This radio and television archive follows in the steps of the archiving many print media publications are using the Internet for. For example, The New York Times allows you to search its archive that spans back to 1851. Similarly, many magazines make back-issues available to subscribers online. Bookseller Barnes & Noble and electronic publisher Zinio recently teamed up to make magazines from the past available online.

All of this archiving isn’t just for posterity’s sake. All of those examples require payment of one form or another. The BBC plan will be a bit different as some of the content will be free if it exists elsewhere on the Internet, but other programs will require payment. To that end, this archive will be utilizing existing services such as Apple’s iTunes store and its own iPlayer to point visitors to the correct place to find the content they are looking for.

This new archiving project is likely a result of the popularity of the iPlayer. The site, which displays BBC programs online, is the 3rd most popular video site in the UK, behind only the American and the UK versions of YouTube.

Here’s to hoping that the American networks start up their own archiving projects as well. The lack of M*A*S*H availability online is really starting to irk me.

[photo: BBC]

Both Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s Playstation 3 have well-known aspirations to be the digital entertainment hubs in your living room. This means offering not only video games, but a wide spectrum of entertainment such as movies and television shows. Nintendo has thus far stayed out of that arena to focus on the games, but with news of the BBC’s iPlayer media channel launching today on the Wii in the UK, that appears to be changing.

The computer-based version of the iPlayer allows users to stream or download BBC television content. The Wii-bound version would be used for streaming the content only and requires a broadband connection.

This partnership is big news because the Wii is the top-selling video game system in the world. While devices such as the Apple TV get a lot of buzz, it has only sold some 500,000 units at last count. The Nintendo Wii has moved nearly 25 million units! This level of living room penetration is enough to make any media company take notice.

The BBC’s iPlayer is also experience huge growth. More than 42 million programs have been accessed on the player since its launch at Christmas of last year, the BBC reports. It is the third most popular online video player in the UK behind only the American and UK versions of YouTube (our coverage).

Last year, Nintendo created a channel on the Japanese version of the Wii that gave users a TV Guide-like interface from which they could control their TVs. While there were no specific plans to bring such functionality to the United States, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime did hint: “There are other channel opportunities. They may look like games. They may not look like games.”

The BBC is preparing version of the iPlayer for the aforementioned Apple TV as well, and recently launched a test version of the player for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Can something like a dedicated YouTube channel on the Wii be far behind?

[photo: flickr/the monkey 2232]

Online video traffic in the UK is up 178 percent over the past year, new Hitwise data shows. With headlines trumpeting the rise of online video stateside, it’s easy to overlook the effect it is having in other parts of the world as well.

Not surprisingly, the most popular video site in the UK is YouTube. With a market share over 55 percent, the site is actually more dominant in the UK than it is in the United States, where it has a market share around 34 percent, according to the latest numbers from comScore.

YouTube’s UK dominance is even more impressive when you consider that the No. 2 video site is the UK portal of YouTube with nearly a 14 percent market share! Combined, YouTube controls nearly 70 percent of the market.

The third most popular video site in the UK is the BBC’s iPlayer. The site streams the BBC’s original content over the Internet to your web browser. The iPlayer has been getting quite a bit of buzz stateside recently for its publicly stated desire to work with Apple to become available on the Apple TV device. The BBC recently launched a beta version of the iPlayer for the iPhone in the UK as well.

The only other non-Google property with much traction is MySpaceTV, which controls just over 5 percent of the market. MySpace is the second most popular social networking site in the UK behind Facebook and just ahead of Bebo.

[The Hitwise chart above shows the surge in UK Internet traffic to top video sites over the past two years.]

Internet service providers in the United Kingdom are saying they may restrict customers’ access to the BBC’s iPlayer, the broadcaster’s new online television service, due to the higher cost of sending video over the web.

iPlayer, launched as a beta on July 27, lets you download BBC television programs from the last seven days for free.

UK service providers, such as BT and Tiscali, say the government-funded BBC should help pay for the costs directly.

ISPs in the UK, like their counterparts in the US, face increasing demands on their bandwidth capacity as more people watch television online.

Competing UK broadcasters, including ITV and Channel 4, have also launched internet television players. Startups including Joost, Babblegum and many others are trying to provide similar services on both sides of the Atlantic.

These ISPs are targeting the BBC because they think iPlayer will be the most popular internet television service in the UK, according to the Financial Times.

However, the ISPs are all also trying to figure out how to exploit demand created by these video services while offering competing services. Most large ISPs in both countries now have their own television services, according to a Jupiter Research blog — which makes their arguments appear self-interested:

So, these Internet-delivered TV offers both push up ISPs’ bandwidth and network costs, and they potentially undermine the ISPs’ own TV services. So ISPs vocally use the issue of higher costs, while ISPs are also concerned about revenue protection for their TV services.