ITV has since launched a new and improved version of its online TV service, so we've taken another look at it to see where the improvements have been made...

Though ITV launched the service months earlier than the iPlayer, it has quickly been overhauled by the BBC's offering. Around 11m videos were viewed via the iPlayer in January, compared with just 2m for ITV.com  

ITV's offering beat the iPlayer to market, launching a 30 day catch-up service back in June, so why has the BBC overtaken it so quickly? Let's take a closer look at the two services to find out...

The figures from Hitwise's Robin Goad show that the iPlayer, having launched a streaming version of the service and opened up to the public, has begun to take off.

Quoted by Reuters, Smith said it was looking for new ways to capitalise on the BBC’s online audience, including acquisitions, social networking applications and the joint on-demand video venture it announced yesterday with Channel 4 and ITV.

The venture, dubbed 'Project Kangaroo', will operate independently of the three broadcasters and offer video content from a range of providers.

The company provides news alert services for the London Stock Exchange, CNN, the BBC and others, and recently announced the launch of LiveStation, a P2P live broadcast application.

The move follows heavy criticism of the Beeb over its decision to limit access to the service to users of Windows XP.

After the jump, our list of the things that annoy us about websites, some from well known brands who really should know better...

ITV plans to make much of this projected revenue from online display, video and local ads, and plans to introduce a new targeted video ad system. The projected figure of £150m is three times what ITV makes at the moment. Can it do it?

Well, the broadcaster launched its broadband TV service summer, and it now has a broad range of recent and archive programming available to view online, but much of this is spoiled by the amount and style of advertising on offer. It's too much...

The BBC is reportedly in talks with Microsoft over allowing the corporation's content to be downloadable via Xbox Live, as Microsoft looks to turn the console into an entertainment hub in people's living rooms.

In the US, Microsoft currently offers a video on demand service through content deals with Warner Bros, MTV and others. It apparently now plans to expand this service to Europe.

But is there a silver lining? Do the links from authority news sites generated by such stories bring a search engine optimisation benefit?

While piracy may have played a role in the company’s demise, it is more likely that it has been ground down by pureplay online DVD rental firms, including one operated by mighty Amazon, which launched its service in late-2004. For starters, online DVD rental pureplays have much lower overheads than ChoicesUK, which seems to have been strangled by the costs of maintaining 170 shops and 1,800 employees.

But hold on. I’m starting to wonder whether the pureplays themselves will last the distance, in the face of changing consumer behaviour.

Providers including BT and Tiscali are worried that having thousands of people receiving content from the BBC will increase the strain on their networks.

The iPlayer, the online TV on demand service from the BBC, has been downloaded more than 120,000 times in the first week after its beta launch.

The BBC predicts that the software, which gives users the chance to watch the best of the last seven days' programming, will reach 500,000 downloads within six months.