How to make the most of the BBC iPlayer
Winter is here and the BBC iPlayer offers a strong alternative to paid streaming services
As we approach the end of 2025, it’s fair to say the BBC hasn’t had a good year.
Its impartiality has been called into question by a series of unnecessary scandals, while non-payment of the licence fee is reaching alarming proportions.
Yet the BBC – and its on-demand iPlayer service – continues to represent a welcome domestic bulwark against the proliferation of American film and TV content.
Of course, it’s not alone in this battle.
The 4OD and ITVX on-demand services also host treasure troves of high-quality homegrown content, as do BritBox and My5, while NOW TV offers a smorgasbord of UK-made Sky originals.
However, iPlayer remains the biggest, best-known and most compelling alternative to the ubiquitous American platforms like Netflix and Disney+.
And while iPlayer is easy enough to navigate, it has various attributes which casual or occasional users may not be aware of.
Platform wars
Firstly, licence fee payers don’t have to watch BBC iPlayer content exclusively through their TV set, as they would with a terrestrial signal.
There are apps for numerous devices – Android and iOS, Windows and macOS, Amazon Fire sticks, PS4 and PS5 consoles, the Nintendo Switch and Microsoft Xbox ranges…
Each app supports live streaming or pre-downloaded content on demand, with the latter especially useful if you’re going on holiday (or keeping kids entertained in transit).
Pre-downloading content is also beneficial if your home broadband uses a sluggish ADSL or Fibre to the Cabinet connection, since it eliminates buffering or latency.
Consider batch-downloading shows at times when home broadband isn’t being taxed, such as overnight, ensuring a stockpile of HD material is ready to view the next morning.
Downloading content over WiFi also minimises the data drain on mobile devices outside the home.
Streaming one hour of HD iPlayer content could consume 1.5GB of mobile data, though it is possible to save bandwidth by specifying standard definition streaming.
If you need to stream live (all BBC channels are simulcast on iPlayer) and your broadband is bogging down, iPlayer will diminish picture quality as far as it can.
Help it by disabling apps or programs which might be stealing bandwidth, disconnecting web-enabled devices, or asking family members to reduce their own streaming activities.
A picture of content-ment
As a public service broadcaster with over a hundred years of programming in its archives, the BBC iPlayer is a vast resource which can be daunting if you don’t have a specific show in mind.
A great deal of Auntie’s archives aren’t available on iPlayer for a myriad of reasons – copyright, licensing, DVD sales, performer payments, digitisation delays and so on.
Nonetheless, there’s a huge amount of content to sift through. Once you’ve viewed a few shows or added them to your Watchlist, pay attention to recommendations in My Programmes.
This section can be personalised by creating iPlayer accounts for every viewer, so a sport-mad parent isn’t bombarded with suggestions about children’s TV shows.
Accounts are also automatically age-restricted, so an eight-year-old won’t be recommended The Night Manager or a Dennis Potter play.
Added reassurance comes from a Parental Guidance lock which parents may apply to children’s accounts. A four-digit PIN code is required to unlock over 18s content.
Further customisation may be achieved by specifying your home nation, and whether you want Gaelic or Welsh as the default language.
There are a dozen main content categories (comedy, sport, music, etc), while From the Archive hosts over 700 programmes and series from post-war general election broadcasts to old Woman’s Hour radio shows.
Niche features
We conclude with a couple of little-known iPlayer features, like the picture-in-picture function.
This lets you keep an eye on one programme while watching another – following two simultaneous snooker matches or waiting for a show to start on a second channel.
Tap the on-screen S as a programme plays to bring up subtitles, or segregate available content into audio described or signed categories in the main menus.
Finally, series recording enables you to automatically download the next episode in a series as the last one concludes – data-intensive, but ideal for bingeable boxsets on cold winter nights…
