Doctor Who website videos

Doctor Who website videos are videos which appear on the main Doctor Who website. Videos on the site covered various topics including clips, trailers, interviews, documentaries and behind-the-scenes.

Initially video content was only available in RealPlayer (.ram) format, however after the 2005 series it began to be made available Windows Media Video as well. This was due to a visitor survey where the RealPlayer format was heavily criticised.

Due to licensing, prior to 2010, most video-related items could not be accessed by non-UK visitors on the site.

1999
Originally videos were embedded in web pages and had a resolution of 128p.

2000
By late 2000 video resolution had increased slightly to 144p.

2001
Initially video clips were uploaded mainly to promote upcoming home media releases on DVD, VHS and CD, however later in the year more videos were added when the website's new "PhotoNovel" and "TARDIS-Cam" sections launched.

From c. November 2001 videos began to be made available in two resolutions; 144p continued for "low bandwidth" internet connections and for "high bandwidth" connections increased to 240p for videos in 4:3 aspect ratio and 180p for videos in 16:9 aspect ratio.

The trailer for Death Comes to Time had a resolution of 155p and the "TARDIS Databank" videos 340p.

2002
Due to bandwidth restrictions at the time videos could not be longer than about 2 minutes, so anything longer than that, such as webcasts and video interviews, had to be broken up into several (up to 20) shorter videos.

The newer "TARDIS Databank" videos now had a resolution of 260p.

Episodes 4-6 of Real Time carried a warning stating "This week's episode contains scenes that may not be suitable for younger children."

2005
On c. 6 March the website refreshed the "Classic Series Clips" pages, all older clips were removed and replaced with higher quality clips in advance of the start of the new series.

Throughout the 2005 run, the website released a series of videos called Video Diaries. Videos in this series are noted in brackets.

†On 26 January 2006 the website began trialling video downloads for phones and media players. The four test videos came from The Christmas Invasion and were available to download in Windows Media (.wmv), 3G (.3gp) and MPEG4 (.m4v) formats.

2007
For the third series the website began a weekly series of behind-the-scenes video podcasts (or vodcasts). These were part of a BBC trial where audio and video content was made available for seven days after broadcast, for users to stream or download. They were in .mp4 format.

Also during 2007 the BBC's YouTube channel started uploading many of the website videos, albeit cropped into 4:3 aspect ratio.

2008
Videos continued to be uploaded in RealPlayer and Windows Media Video format until 2 April 2008, when the new Series 4 website launched. The new site used the flash video format, as used by the BBC iPlayer service.