I saw on the BBC News this morning – well, between the news and something else – that you can get BBC iPlayer shows on your TV now. It didn’t say how, but this was something I simply had to get set up. It would irk me if I didn’t.
So, I did a bit of trawling and found the usual load of crap, bitching about Sky, and misleading rubbish on the various forums.
In actual fact, to get iPlayer, this is what you have to do. It was really rather easy after all.
- Go to www.sky.com/tvondemand and activate the service (it’s free).
- Connect an ethernet cable between your Sky box and your broadband router.
- On your Sky box, go to Services >> On Demand (red button) >> Options >> Customise. Set Broadband Connection to ON.
And that’s it. Once Sky activates your service (mine took less than 2 minutes), when you go back into Services and press the red button you’ll have an updated menu with Catch Up in it. From there you can select iPlayer, ITV Player, Demand 5, and various Sky shows. Apparently, more services are planned.
I’m currently watching a great episode of Guitar Heroes (Part V) from the BBC.
Note: You can get wireless boxes direct from Sky (which connect to your router) to avoid cables if that’s what you prefer. They only cost about £20.