When I heard the news that rather than reducing my licence fee the BBC was going to give some of its record overseas profits to the directors in the form of a £100,000 per year pay rise, I have to confess, I considered cancelling the direct debit and tearing the TV aerial from my roof.

Then, I read a release on the fully convergent, new iPlayer and I fell back in love with our eccentric aunt. I’ve always thought the BBC was pretty forward thinking in their broadcast convergence strategy, their use of video on bbc.co.uk/news site set a new standard.

Erik Huggers at the BBC says of the new iPlayer.  "The next generation of BBC iPlayer allows UK licence fee payers to catch up on their favourite BBC TV and radio programmes in one place – a completely unique on-demand service.”   

The iPlayer’s got it all, in addition to TV and radio in one place you can ‘pop it out’ and continue browsing other pages, it has a better screen resolution, and in a nod to web 2.0, it suggests other content you may like.  It will also be available on hand-held devices such as the iPhone and even the Nintendo Wii. 

The biggest development of all for me (and many a discussion board) is Virgin Media’s announcement that they are working on implementing a version of the iPlayer on its cable TV network.  This means Virgin Media’s already impressive on-demand service has received a significant boost, and it’s another step towards the inevitable standardisation of on-demand platforms.

With the new iPlayer I don’t need an aerial and it looks like the licence fee is safe for now.