Although the BBC’s iPlayer only works with XP-equipped computers, there is no secret alliance between the world’s biggest broadcasting corporation and Microsoft. According to one exec, the XP compatibility merely arose out of an interest in serving the greatest number of people possible.
BBC Moves Forward With Online Archive, iPlayer
It’s only for a six-month trial period, and it involves just 20,000 people in the UK, but something important has transpired – part of the BBC archive went online. And if everything goes well, we can look for all of that audio and video to become much more widely available.