During the month of December, 2009, the BBC’s iPlayer service dished up an incredible 115 million show requests across all platforms that it is available for. The popularity is driven by Top Gear and Doctor Who. The most watched single program was the Top Gear special, racing across Bolivia.
This just shows the popularity of such a service and that the BBC and Internet Service Providers are going to have to work together to help each other out with the increased work load put forward by high definition on demand services.
As it becomes more integrated into TV sets and set top boxes, this figure will only increase, during December a massive increase in requests coming via consoles was noticed – up 74% on the previous month. This can be attributed to Wii and PS3 users (the iPlayer isn’t available on the Xbox 360).
During the year, expect to see new innovations on the service and it being more widely available via Freesat and built into new televisions using various technologies. I believe this year will see a big increase in the amount of on demand TV watched by all.