BBC iPlayer launched in beta a week ago today. According to this report, 100,000 users are up-and-running on the service.
paidContent says the BBC puts the number of users so far at 120,000; with a forecast of 500,000 registrations to the service during its first six months. Meanwhile, Channel 4’s 40D service will soon reach 500,000 users, according to The Guardian.
40D has so far recorded 2.5m unique users and 20m downloads of shows since the launch in December 2006.
In a possible hint at the forward roadmap for BBC iPlayer, Jeff Richards, vice president of digital content services at Verisign, which provided the peer-to-peer download technology underlying both the BBC and Channel 4’s services, said: “Over time, the iPlayer could be modified to allow users to embed video.”
The Beyondness of Things 
There may be 100,000 users signed up to the service, but how many of those are like me, who run Windows Vista and/or Firefox and cannot actually download anything? It’s a shame that such a good idea has been doomed by limiting users to specific platforms and browsers.