nice to see someone highlighting this issue – i run a linux box, and believe it goes against the term "public service broadcasting" to force us to own third party commercial software in order to view "our" content (if we pay the licence fee we are all shareholders). it's like saying we can only watch the bbc on a sony tv. itis bad enough that the bbc already uses realmedia when there are open-source formats out there. so alastair, what can be done? write to the bbc, or as you say, hand over a chunk of money to bill gates when we have already paid to view the content.