Folks with Xbox Ones, Roku, Now TV, Amazon Fire TV and YouView boxes can now skip back to the beginning of live programmes on BBC iPlayer.
The live restart feature, which launched on desktop iPlayer way back in 2012, is now rolling out to a number of set-top boxes, letting more Johnny and Jenny-come-latelys jump back to the beginning of shows if they’ve missed the beginning.
Even if you’ve missed the first five minutes of The Great British Bake Off, EastEnders or, um, Homes Under the Hammer, instead of waiting for that content to become available in the general catch-up menu of iPlayer, which normally happens after a programme has finished broadcasting on air, you can start watching straight away.
Head of iPlayer for BBC Digital Dan Taylor-Watt said: “With iPlayer’s live restart feature you can jump back to the start of the programme without having to wait for it to end; just select the relevant TV channel in iPlayer and hit ‘Watch from start’.”
The feature start rolling out on more devices as Sky announces a similar ‘watch from start’ service for Sky Movies. This lets you skip to the beginning of a film with a tap of the green button.
BBC iPlayer live restart is also available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It will also be rolling out to BBC iPlayer iOS and Android apps at some point in the coming year, but there’s no word yet if live restart will land on the Wii U, which is a shame as Nintendo’s second screen console is perfectly geared towards multiroom TV watching.
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