British Apple TV owners have been longing for the BBC iPlayer on our favorite black box pretty much forever, but now we might finally know why it hasn't happened. BBC's Chris Yanda has outlined why they went Chromecast, and not Apple TV.

One of the reasons we decided to support Chromecast was that Apple TV currently works only with Apple devices. Chromecast has SDKs available for a number of different platforms including iOS, Android, and the Chrome browser for laptop and desktop computers.

iPhone and iPad owners can get a proper iPlayer experience on their TV using Chromecast. It works really well, but I have to confess to being massively disappointed, still, that it isn't on the Apple TV. From what Yanda says, it doesn't look like we can expect to see it any time soon.

It's still not a particularly great reason, either. The Chromecast is a totally different product to the Apple TV. It requires a mobile device or the Chrome browser to operate – even if it takes the streams directly from the content provider, not from your phone. Apple TV just sits there under your TV, whether you have any other Apple product or not. Chromecast however does mean the BBC just had to add to its existing iOS and Android iPlayer apps to enable the functionality. Apple TV would require a dedicated channel.

So, we may not like it, but there we go. Disappointing though, isn't it?

Source: BBC