The BBC's iPlayer is set to create the biggest change to the consumption of television programming since the advent of colour. That's the intimation from the BBC's director of future media and technology Ashley Highfield.

He's hyping up the player of course, but I think he's right. A free and legal way to download and watch programming is incredibly powerful. Forget concerns about quality - illegal downloading has shown that people just want to see the content. They're not too worried if it's not top quality, it's about the opportunity to view.

However, citing the iPlayer as the biggest change to broadcasting is only relevant when you consider it is free. After all, we've seen similar paid-for services already launched - such as Channel 4's 4OD and Sky's download facility. Indeed, these other services are broadly based on the same platform as the iPlayer and use Windows Media DRM.

And it's this DRM that has attracted the most controversy . That's the reason the iPlayer is Windows XP-only at present. The DRM is necessary - there's no doubt about that - as it is what restricts users to only being able to watch the programmes for 30 days after viewing them.

But it really does need to be made multi-platform. Once that's happened - and I don't mean it to sound like a cakewalk, because it isn't - there should surely be little reason why the iPlayer won't become one of the most used pieces of software in the UK. Given the BBC's new media record to date, it should be a blast.