The new BBC iPlayer Beta has impressed me. Not so much because it changes the general iPlayer experience in terms of play out, but simply because of the approach to releasing the software.

The new additions of recommendations, last played and the consolidation of radio and TV are helpful, but it’s more about the confident forward motion of the overall strategy that indicates a platform that has been well planned, executed and will be successful.

I don’t often think too hard about the player experience itself as it seems like a very normal thing to do on the web now. But I’ve been looking at some player stuff myself in the past couple of weeks, and with the iPlayer release and Tim Heuer’s work on a generic Silverlight player, I thought I’d see what the general breadth of player experiences looked like.

I’ve created a series of screen grabs on ScrnShots comprising the main UK broadcasting channels and then the list of stuff from the Wikipedia list of Video Sharing websites.

The similarity of each is striking, but hardly surprising, and it would make sense given the statistics that a player should have a similar control set to that of the YouTube player. There are nuances in the behaviours of each of course – particularly in the non-core features (sharing, rating/ranking, advertising) that are still up for grabs in some respects.

So which is my favourite? Ultimately I’m familiar with YouTube and am drawn to that and I like the Hulu player, but actually I think Vimeo is the best. Chunky, friendly and simple. Just like me.

Anyway, maybe there’s some inspiration for you in the list. I’d be interested to know which players I’ve missed and which you prefer.