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BBC Begins Open-Source Streaming Challenge

Posted by michael on from the fear-factor dept.

bus_stopper copies and pastes: "The BBC is quietly preparing a challenge to Microsoft and other companies jostling to reap revenues from video streams. It is developing code-decode (codec) software called Dirac in an open-source project aimed at providing a royalty-free way to distribute video. The sums at stake are potentially huge because the software industry insists on payment per viewer, per hour of encoded content. This contrasts with TV technology, for which viewers and broadcasters alike make a one-off royalties payment when they buy their equipment." We've mentioned this project before but this story goes into a bit more depth about the goals and motivations of the developers.

73 of 373 comments (clear)

  1. Good old Auntie! by jdtanner · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It just proves that you get a hell of a lot for your 125 GBP license fee!

    John

    1. Re:Good old Auntie! by jdtanner · · Score: 4, Informative

      Nice comment! For 125 GBP you get...

      8 channels of television
      11 radio stations (not including local radio)
      BBCi (http://www.bbc.co.uk) including live streams of all of the radio content and 'listen again' facilities
      BBC research labs contributing to the open source community.

      I would say that the license fee is a bit of a bargain!

      John

    2. Re:Good old Auntie! by skaffen42 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      8 channels of television

      Even better, you can usually find something worth watching on those 8 channels. Since I moved to the US I have 20 times as many channels, and the best thing on is still British comedy reruns on public access TV.

      --
      People couldn't type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this.
    3. Re:Good old Auntie! by Shisha · · Score: 3, Insightful

      On the other hand, it could be argued, that many people benefit enormously from the BBC, despite not paying the TV license. Me, for one, I don't have a telly and so I don't pay, despite listening to BBC radio, reading the website etc.

      My point is that by developing this code, _eventually_ and _slowly_ less and less people are going to have a television in the house and hence less and less people will pay the license.

      Which means that the UK government will have to figure out how to finance the BBC. I would hate to see them deciding to sell it. It would be really unfortunate if this project marked the beginning of the end of BBC as we know it.

    4. Re:Good old Auntie! by jdtanner · · Score: 2, Informative

      I think they are funded by the license fee...

      http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/licencefee/

      and

      http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/report2004/text/financ ia l_statements_review.html

    5. Re:Good old Auntie! by REBloomfield · · Score: 2, Funny

      Except they have just as many sodding adverts as the other channels. Yeah, you don't get 10 seconds of "This show sponsored by Creamsicles", but who cares about that? They're much less annoying than the tripe that gets served up every ten minutes just after you've sat down with you're cup of tea....

    6. Re:Good old Auntie! by Hungry+Student · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I have to utterly disagree with you. After getting used to satelite TV ad breaks, moving back to BBC leaves me barely enough time to get a drink and get back to the tv, and I live in a modest sized flat. I think the BBC is fantastic, and if you've seent he volume of ads on American TV, you'll thank the BBC and the ITC for keeping the UK tv in check.

    7. Re:Good old Auntie! by Omni-Cognate · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It looks like the BBCs intention is absolutely not to compete with the likes of Real. All they are saying is that the license fees for the existing codecs do not scale, and that it will be cheaper from them to write their own. There is nothing in the BBC's remit that requires them to spend the license-payer's money on overpriced software they can more cheaply write themselves.

      While it is true that dirac may reduce the amount that Real, etc, can make from their codecs, once again there is nothing in the BBC's charter which requires it to prop up commercial software markets at the license-payer's expense.

      The BBC is not selling dirac. It is simply a tool they feel they need to do their job. However, they are releasing it under an open-source license. You may feel that this is anti-competitive as it undercuts Real, but Real et al are not the BBC's competitors. ITV, C4, etc are the BBC's competitors (though in an ideal world, the BBC is supposed to be about pulic service, not competition). By making the codec open-source, the BBC is freeing these other stations from the requirement to pay Real and its ilk. It is freely giving the products of its work to its most direct competitors, along with everyone else. This seems to be a very fair and competition-friendly way of going about things.

      As for public service, a primary use for this new technology is to provide a huge, free, online repository of BBC content. This is an extraordinary project, entirely in the service of the public, which would be absolutely impossible for a commercial broadcaster to attempt. Whatever else people may have to say about the BBC's scorecard in living up to its remit (and I certainly think it's gone too far on a number of occasions) this is an absolute bullseye.

      --

      "The Milliard Gargantubrain? A mere abacus - mention it not."

    8. Re:Good old Auntie! by tialaramex · · Score: 3, Informative

      ITV's shows are dire, as atested not only by critical failure (not winning many awards these days are you, ITV?) but also by poor audience figures. Some ITV regions are supported by the taxpayer indirectly, but it's true that the large part of programming and broadcasting is funded through the obnoxious advertising.

      Channel 4 is partly government funded, and seeks grants for its, uh, unconventional programming from European projects which are themselves... government funded. Whether it means sending film crews to Italian beaches to film topless women, or showing 30 year old obscure Dutch movies about bicycling in 16:9 with subtitles, C4 reads the latest funding trends from Brussels and incorporates their needs into its schedule.

      Channel 5 is entirely pointless and should never have been launched on analog. The government (the one you think shouldn't be interfering) forced them to add the movies and news bulletins which break up their otherwise relentless schedule of old material bought from other networks. In some cases the BBC (which you don't like) paid for this material (which you apparently DO like) to be made more than 20 years ago. Didn't you notice how the average C5 program seems kinda... retro?

      In general I'm not in favour of government interference, but it's the reality we face. The technology for everyone and their dog to try to run a TV station doesn't exist yet, and might not for another decade. In the absence of that situation the invisible hand of market forces cannot operate properly, so the government inevitably must REGULATE broadcasting activity or we'll experience the spiral of reduced expectations. Once the government actively regulates the activity you're going to pay those taxes, and you might as well get something useful out of it. I think the BBC is fairly good value for money, and would support direct taxation rather than the "license fee" to support it until better means are available, despite the fact that this would inevitably mean that I personally wind up paying more for the same service.

    9. Re:Good old Auntie! by fyonn · · Score: 2, Informative

      So I'm coughing up £125 for the priviledge of *owning* a telly

      well, to be fair, you're paying for thr priviledge of receiving broadcast TV. you don't need a licence just to own a tv if you only use it for video's, dvd's, consoles and the like (ie no broadcast tv at all).

      not that it should make you feel any better mind you :)

      actually, what I dislike about people like sky tv is that they charge you the earth for alot less service (or so it seems). sky seems to spend it's time just buying shows from other people, while the bbc does that, it also makes shows itself, some of very high quality (some pretty crap admittedly).

      sky just seems to be a huge rip off to me, how can they charge you a huge monthly fee for the posrts channel and then have the cheek to ask you to pay even moe to see some boxing match, and then not allow you to record it!

      and then carpet bomb it with more and more adverts. ads, or subscription. pick one dammit. that just really pisses me off and I just won't sign up to it. but I suppose I don't watch a huge amount of telly now. I've got freeview (and a tivo*) and thats mostly enough for me.

      dave

      * please, give us a new UK tivo! I want a high quality dvdv/dvda/sacd player/dvdrw/tivo with huge HD, ethernet, multiple tuners etc. I'll pay a good fee for that

    10. Re:Good old Auntie! by FireFury03 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Since I moved to the US I have 20 times as many channels, and the best thing on is still British comedy reruns on public access TV.

      The only stuff in the UK worth watching these days are the British comedy reruns...

      --
      http://blog.nexusuk.org
    11. Re:Good old Auntie! by goatan · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Agreed with everything you say except

      Channel 5 is entirely pointless and should never have been launched on analog.

      despite it's poor start it is becomming a half decent channel it is already well above ITV in quality especially there documentry's, 5 is showing real potentiall. It is a worthwhile channel now perhaps they should scrap ITV and make 5 the new 3.

      --
      Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.

    12. Re:Good old Auntie! by jc42 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Here in the US, the Comedy Channel is now widely considered to have the best news and political reporting. The Daily Show can be especially good at times (and just silly at other times, but any Monty Python fans will appreciate that).

      It's too bad that ComedyChannel.com sends out such bizarre, often-broken HTML. They have some good clips there, but pretty much everyone I know who has looked at it complains about how confusing and, well, "broken" it is.

      The fact that they seem to send only Real and Windows media formats might be part of their problem. But there are a number of blogs that link to their clips, and those usually work pretty well. So if we had a good way of extracting the bare URLs from the javascript, we could all see them online, and the whole world would understand US politics.

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
  2. Ogg Theora by SWroclawski · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It seems to me that the best way to support Free codecs would be to throw support at an existing project such as Ogg Theora. Does anyone know why they're not throwing support behind it?

    1. Re:Ogg Theora by Gilesx · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Perhaps because they are attempting to develop a broadcast standard codec from the ground up, which I would speculate would require different goals and optimisations to the Ogg Theora project.

      --
      Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
    2. Re:Ogg Theora by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Maybe because the trouble of making certain that no patented technology found its way into an existing project could easily become greater than the value of using that existing project.

      The started with a clean slate with much attention paid to keeping the IP clean. I think this was necessary, any excuse for MS or Real or whoever to shut down or slow down the project should be avoided.

    3. Re:Ogg Theora by meringuoid · · Score: 4, Interesting
      From what I read last time this was covered... Dirac kicks Theora's arse, and xvid too.

      IIRC, it takes forever-squared to encode, but once done it beats just about anything in terms of file size and picture quality. Since the BBC's model is going to be encode once, then let the public download at will, this is fine by them.

      --
      Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
    4. Re:Ogg Theora by deimtee · · Score: 2, Informative

      Keeping the IP clean only works to guard against copyright infringement. You don't have to know about a patent to infringe, you just have to use the technology described in the patent. It doesn't matter if it was independently developed, you are still infringing.
      This is one of the main reasons companies try to get software patents, as well as copyrights.

      --
      I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
    5. Re:Ogg Theora by langarto · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Actually both projects seem to be using similar techniques (besed on the wavelet transform). But Theora didn't get very far and the project seems stalled long ago.

    6. Re:Ogg Theora by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That's great, but do the BBC want to maintain the infrastructure around an open-source project or simply develop the codec?

      There's more to running an open-source project than giving away your code. You have to maintain it, patch bugs, run a mailing list to inform people of the bugs, and so on.

      Wouldn't it be better if they collaborated with the Ogg project so that, even though they are developing a new codec, the codec would be an Ogg codec, with the surrounding infrastructure maintained by the Ogg project?

    7. Re:Ogg Theora by akb · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Theora (vp3) competes with current generation codecs, Dirac is a next gen technology. Dirac is also just a codec, so one should be able to use the Ogg container format or any other one for that matter. Since the BBC's stated goal is a royalty free system and they seem to be FOSS friendly I would assume they would be considering Ogg strongly.

      By the way, I haven't seen a link to it so far, here is a link the a BBC info page on Dirac and here is the Source Forge page for those wanting the code.

    8. Re:Ogg Theora by Daniel · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well, they said that Dirac is sticking to techniques published at least 20 years ago, so patents shouldn't be much of an issue.

      Daniel

      --
      Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
    9. Re:Ogg Theora by smallfries · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Looking at their info I'm wondering about Our algorithm seems to give a two-fold reduction in bit rate over MPEG-2 for high definition video (e.g. 1920x1080 pixels), its original target application. Now assuming that MPEG-2 is DVD quality then the bitrates tend to be quite high, around 8000kbps. Divx gives reasonable quality at only around 1500kbps. If their quote is true then I'd expect Dirac to use about 4000kbps on broadcast video - so how does it compete with current codecs at all?

      --
      Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
    10. Re:Ogg Theora by gbjbaanb · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Divx gives reasonable quality at only around 1500kbps. If their quote is true then I'd expect Dirac to use about 4000kbps on broadcast video - so how does it compete with current codecs at all?

      reasonable quality != broadcast quality.

      If Dirac had a 'reasonable quality' mode, then you'd likely see it at 2000kbps which is getting close. They say they are still optimising it, so perhaps they can come to within a gnat's whisker of Divx compression.

  3. From the article by Megaweapon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It can be used for passing video round home networks, rights-managed peer-to-peer file sharing, or playing media in handheld devices, as well as for web streaming.

    And this is why it will be fought against on the political front. How much you want to bet that the feds will want to require some sort of keying/user tracing mechanism in order for this "free" technology to be made publically available? Big media will argue that in order for the government to protect copyright, they shouldn't allow technology that can subert other's copyrights.

    --
    I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
    1. Re:From the article by jimicus · · Score: 4, Funny

      I would imagine that the British Broadcasting Corporation doesn't much care about the feds.

    2. Re:From the article by Bill_Mische · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The BBC is the biggest media organisation in Britain and goes regularly goes one on one with governments including our own.

      If the "feds" were to ask the BBC not to release it we'd end up seeing one of your politicians getting an unexpected kicking in his next interview. A few years ago a BBC interviewer asked the Home Secretary (in charge of the police, prisons, immigration, "Homeland Security" etc.) the same question *14* times, when he wouldn't answer the question.

      --
      Boring Old Fart (40, married, 3 kids...er no...make that 49, married, 3 grown up kids...it's been a long time)
    3. Re:From the article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Jeremy Paxman is a great interviewer, he does all the "wrong" questions the public wants answered and doesn't let the guest answer anything but what he has asked.

    4. Re:From the article by hoofie · · Score: 3, Informative

      What a spanner.

      The reason he asked the same question 14 times was that he wanted a straight answer and the politician concerned (as usual for all politicians) wouldn't give one.

  4. Go BBC! by tdvaughan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Another reason why I'm glad to be a UK citizen - every time I start to wonder if it's really worth having a 'public service' broadcaster the BBC goes and does something like this. I'm hoping they'll be able to make a stand when someone tries HDTV regulations over here.

  5. Only in the US by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Informative

    This contrasts with TV technology, for which viewers and broadcasters alike make a one-off royalties payment when they buy their equipment.

    Again, there are other countries in the world where things don't happen that way. In most of the EC in fact...

    For your information Michael, the Beeb is in the UK where your statement doesn't apply.

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    1. Re:Only in the US by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 4, Informative
      Again, there are other [tvlicensing.co.uk] countries [zdnet.fr] in the world where things don't happen that way.
      A TV license is a payment against royalties on content, not royalties on TV technology. In contrast to existing TV technology, users of commercial streaming video applications pay a per-viewer/per-hour fee for the technology. That is what the BBC wants to avoid by developing their own streaming solution.
      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  6. The BBC by payndz · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Another good reason (among many) why the BBC should remain a non-commercial operation. Yes, paying the licence fee is an annoyance, but everyone gets a lot out of the Beeb, not just TV (BBC Online has all but replaced daily newspapers for me, and after having grown up with BBC radio, I find commercial radio unlistenable). And they're even bringing back Doctor Who!

    Sure, it has its problems, but I'd trust the BBC over any politician, especially ones who make threatening noises about its charter every time it does its job by being independent and embarrassing the government of the day...

    --
    You must think in Russian.
    1. Re:The BBC by CarrionBird · · Score: 3, Informative
      All in all it's probably a better deal than we get here (US). We have "free" TV, but it is Ad laden and restricted by what the ratings will support.

      Our public TV has some good stuff (and some HD too), but it gets minimal federal funding and has to beg for donations all the time. (AFAIK, the congress mandated push to HD is reaming their budgets too, they won't survive this decade)

      The pay options are ok, but still ad driven and you can end up with a $100+ a month TV bill if you get any "top tier" stuff.

      As for me, basic cable is bundled in my rent, so there's little choice in it.

      --
      Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
  7. I am glad this is what my license fee pays for! by McCall · · Score: 3, Informative

    I have paid for ten TV licenses in my life, and I have to admit that I am glad the the organisation that gets some of this money is developing something like this...

    ...although I have to admit, the BBC would have probably have been better off using my money to become the "offical" sponsors for an existing open source project such as Theora, rather than starting from scratch.

    The link is the story is dead, I found the home page here, and the SourceForge site here.

    Thanks,

    Andrew McCall

  8. In fact, I found a schematic for the network by bailey34 · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://support.bbc.co.uk/support/network/

    1. Re:In fact, I found a schematic for the network by CroyDax · · Score: 2, Informative

      If you're interested in the guts of Dirac, here's a link to some documentation http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/projects/dirac/documentati on/api/html/index.html

  9. BBC by 5m477m4n · · Score: 2, Funny

    Did anyone else think it was funny that the BBC wants to provide something royalty-free? Me thinks that's grounds for a hanging.

    --

    ---
    Those who can, do
    Those who can't, teach
    Those who don't know how, supervise
  10. 14 times by James+The+Gent · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/events03/uk_pol/ cons/leadership/nb_newsnightiv.ram

    1. Re:14 times by Insipid+Trunculance · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Infact Mr. Howard was only following a very old politicl advice "Say what you want to Bernard,and dont pay any attention to the question".

      --
      Wanted : A Signature.
  11. Last I checked the UK Was Not the 51st State by FreeUser · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And this is why it will be fought against on the political front. How much you want to bet that the feds will want to require some sort of keying/user tracing mechanism in order for this "free" technology to be made publically available?

    Let the feds scream like stuck pigs.

    Now that the Bush administration has completely gutted our diplomatic clout to such a degree we can't even rally people against emerging nuclear threats (remember the boy who cried wolf?), no one but no one is willing to blindly go along with the United States.

    Britain is the last staunch ally we have, and at this point we need them more than they need us. If Hollywood's lackeys in Washington try to push London around on this one I suspect they will be in for a very nasty surprise.

    Cheney/Bush: "Ban this subversive technology or we'll have to impose tarrifs on many British goods."

    UK Prime Minister: "It would be a shame if the US felt it necessary to impose trade tarrifs on the UK. That would depress our economy enough that we could no longer afford the fiscal expenditure to maintain our presence in your latest cockup, that is to say, Iraq. It might well call Afghanistan into question as well."

    Cheney/Bush: ??? Who knows if they would be stupid enough to do so anyway, and lose both wars before the year is out, or if they would cave and crawl back into their backrooms for some more Haliburtan deals. Either way the US will have lost even more political and diplomatic clout (which at one time had been our greater asset, far outweighing our military strength), and the BBC's free codec will continue to be developed and deployed, unabated.

    And, lest Kerry think he could pull a similiar stunt (remember, as destructive as Bush/Cheney have been on every other front, they are equaled by the Democrats on this particular topic: selling the interests of the people out to Hollywood), he would face exactly the same reaction, and results.

    So, I think the BBC is reasonably safe from the depredations of Washington, whether Hollywood and Redmond like it or not.

    --
    The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
  12. A bit of politics by Maljin+Jolt · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "...a bit more depth about the goals and motivations of the developers."

    Freedom of information is not about paying or not paying for commercial content. Freedom of information is about politics, human rights, rulership and ideology manipulation. BBC is on the side of freedom for some time, and currently under heavy pressure from the conservatives.

    Letting free codec technology to public now may help in some near future, when independent journalists will be hunted to underground or illegality.

    --
    There you are, staring at me again.
  13. Re:open codecs? by Alan+Cox · · Score: 3, Informative

    and its not open in some countries in the "free to use" sense. You collide with the various mpeg related patents

  14. Videolan by Hi_2k · · Score: 2, Informative

    Why develop your own streaming software when VideoLan is already out there and working great? I regularly use it for any media viewing, and I've had great sucess with the streaming features.

    --
    When life gives you crap, Make Crapade.
    Sluggy Freelance.
    1. Re:Videolan by elandal · · Score: 2, Informative

      VideoLan is not a codec but an application. Dirac is a codec. You could stream dirac-encoded video with VideoLan I presume.

  15. Project homepage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    no KW required

    BBC Dirac

    The Dirac Project

    Dirac is a general-purpose video codec aimed at resolutions from QCIF (180x144) to HDTV (1920x1080) progressive or interlaced. It uses wavelets, motion compensation and arithmetic coding and aims to be competitive with other state of the art codecs.

  16. Ogg Theora is alive by tialaramex · · Score: 4, Informative

    Theora is a conventional (block, motion, color transform, throw away bits, then ordinary compression) 2nd generation video codec, it is alive and well, and it reached bitstream freeze just a couple of months ago. Presumably beta and then final releases of the software & associated documentation will follow in good time.

    Tarkin is the Ogg wavelet codec. You're correct that work on Tarkin has more or less stalled, but wavelet codecs are a legal quagmire today, in part because so many people have conflicting patents in this area and are just waiting for the chance to litigate. Are any of the images on your website JPEG2000 instead of regular JFIF? Thought not.

  17. Do it quickly before Blair kills it by NigelJohnstone · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There's a green paper due on the BBC later in the year. A pre-report has already been critical of the BBC's online activities, suggesting it does too much itself.

    From an investigation in August 2003:
    http://www.culture.gov.uk/global/publicatio ns/arch ive_2004/BBC_Online_Review.htm

    You can bet MS (or Microsoft lobbyists the BSA) will try damn hard to kill this project.

    I wish the BBC would stop dragging its feet and do it, start releasing the archive now with their codec, before the politicians kill.

    1. Re:Do it quickly before Blair kills it by dodongo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Hear, hear! You're exactly right. MS and Real both have a very vested interested in making sure BBC isn't allowed to do this.

      If BBC IS allowed to do this, then all kinds of legislative repercussions might go down on this side of the pond. I'm so dismayed with Congress and the FCC right now that I wouldn't be surprised if the MS - BSA lobby came over here, told Congress (truthfully or otherwise) about how royalty-free distribution options reduce the ability for existing coprorations and CODECs to make money, thus it needs to be stopped.

      I wouldn't be surprised if BBC still had to license somebody else's CODEC to broadcast to the US.

      There's precedent for something like that, with what they're having to do with their Olympics coverage. It's freaking absurd.

  18. Re:Darwin Streaming Server / QTSS by SlamMan · · Score: 3, Informative

    None of the above. Darwin SS is free (source and usage). To encode sometihng to it, you can use Quicktime Broadcaster, which is free (but not source), and only runs on a mac. You can of course encode with other solutions. The one of best ones on the market is Live Channel by Channel Storm, which runs about a grand as a one time price.

    --
    Mod point free since 2001
  19. Dirac homepage by flyhmstr · · Score: 5, Informative

    Dirac homepage and the Sourceforge pages

    --
    -- The Flying Hamster
  20. Re:Quicktime by Quobobo · · Score: 2, Informative

    Really? First off, Quicktime is an application/api, not a video codec. Secondly, they're looking for an open source and royalty-free way to do this. Quicktime most definitely isn't open source, only runs (officially) on two platforms, and the best codecs included with it are definitely not royalty-free.

  21. The Future of Television by plasticmillion · · Score: 2, Interesting
    This is an old hobby horse of mine. I'm not a big fan of mandatary licensing fees, and the point made by parent (among others) is a good illustration of why.

    I think the future of TV will involve less and less advertising and licensing fees. Instead, big content producers like the BBC will sell their archives on a pay-per-view basis. Yes, I know they are planning to offer them for free, but if they have any sense they'll bag the license fees and attach a small, reasonable price to each download.

    Everyone agrees that the BBC makes great shows, so why shouldn't we cough up a quid or two when we download from their archives? This alone would let them finance future programming in spades, and a direct link between consumption and payment is a much better business model than wooly license fees linked to TV ownership.

    --
    Peer Pressure
    1. Re:The Future of Television by MikeDX · · Score: 5, Informative

      It annoys me that I have to pay even if i own a set, regardless of what i watch, even if I only use if to play my XBox.

      If you do indeed only use your TV in the UK to play DVDS or consoles, you can apply to be EXEMPT from a TV license as I did for 3 years. When you get the letter advising you have not got an up to date Television license, simply call the number on the bottom of the form, and advise them that you use your TV for console and DVD use and they will add you to the exemption list.

      Of course when they show up at your door or sit outside and see if your TV tuner is actively tuned to broadcasted television channels instead of playing the XBOX or watching DVDs then you can expect to get heavily fined and rightfully so.

      So if it bothers you that much about paying £125 for quite easily the best broadcaster in the world, I'm sure you will find my advice useful.

    2. Re:The Future of Television by MikeDX · · Score: 2, Informative

      There was talk a few years back about charging per TV, but as it stands, you are charged per household. Each household pays £125 per year (less any disability allowance) for as many TVs/receivers in the house. TV licenses cover recievers and not just the television, so Video recorders, Televisions, satelite recievers, etc.

    3. Re:The Future of Television by vrai · · Score: 2, Informative

      Lots of companies make such devices - they're monitors with SVHS/composite inputs. Perfectly capable of displaying the output of DVDs and consoles, but devoid of the tax incurring UHF receiver. Most mid to high-end LCD monitors have at least a composite input. Failing that you can buy VGA output boxes for all the major consoles at Lik Sang.

    4. Re:The Future of Television by MatSimpsk · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Everyone agrees that the BBC makes great shows, so why shouldn't we cough up a quid or two when we download from their archives? This alone would let them finance future programming in spades, and a direct link between consumption and payment is a much better business model than wooly license fees linked to TV ownership

      It's those 'wooly license fees' that *allow* the BBC to make such great shows. If they had to chase subscriptions and/or download fees, the BBC would just turn into ITV. In fact, you could make a good argument saying that ITV would get *even worse* if it didn't have the BBC raising standards and expectations.

      The licence fee isn't free money for the Beeb. They take the cash on the condition that they provide quality programming *for the public good*. Do you see Sky One campaigning to save historic buildings? Does Channel 5 show programmes telling us how to reduce stress, or do their programmes induce it?

  22. Open standard by mm0mm · · Score: 2, Insightful
    This is a great news as we really need open standard codec for broadcast streaming. BBC is already influential in the broadcast business. Once their new codec is acknowledged by SMPTE, it's matter of time that the new codec will be used widely by media conglomerates in the US. It may take some time to catch up, and/or there may be attacks by proprietary codec providers, but open standards will eventually prevail (...hopefully).

    As a non-Windows OS user, compatibility is extremely important for me. I'm sick of media contents that don't play but ask me to "update your browser/media player/codecs." Someone may think "proprietary technology" that locks in consumers is synonym to "business opportunity." Apparently BBC has a different opinion and doesn't want to swallow the pill.

  23. Dirac? by NiceGuyUK · · Score: 3, Funny

    I think the BBC is using the name Dirac in the wrong document - shouldn't it be the name of a villain in their new series of Doctor Who?

  24. Serious problem for conferences by thrill12 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This could be a perfect solution for conferences such as HAL 2001. I remember there was a need for sponsorship by a professional television broadcaster to provide licenses for realtime streaming of conference speakers back then.
    A good alternative to Real and Media encoder that is free is definitely wanted in these areas.

    Offtopic: I wonder why the DV's of this conference are still not encoded...

    --
    Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
  25. "Dirac"? by mikeee · · Score: 2, Funny

    Sure, the compression is really good, but the problem is that it makes everybody look like they have really bad hair...

    (Only physics geeks will get this. Why am I bothering?)

  26. It's patent-free by tepples · · Score: 2, Informative

    so how does it compete with current codecs at all?

    DivX and XviD: heavily patented. Theora and Dirac: not patented. From the article:

    Borer believes Dirac could turn out to be more efficient than standards based on commercial patents, even though it has to use technology more than 20 years old to avoid breaking patents.
  27. Re:3GHz by $rtbl_this · · Score: 2, Funny

    Could be worse. :)

    C:\>egrep '(processor|Hz)' /proc/cpuinfo
    The name specified is not recognized as an
    internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

    --
    "Are you being weird, or sarcastic?" said Emma. I said I didn't know because I get the two feelings mixed up.
  28. Ogg Vorbis streams by rikkus-x · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Right, so the BBC have the resources to _develop_ a whole new codec, but not to set up Ogg Vorbis streaming of their radio programming, alongside the existing RealAudio streams?

    The BBC, IMNSHO (as a licence payer), should be champions of open communications, and this extends to the openness of their distribution formats. I wish they'd stop wasting resources from crappy little mini-sites with gossip and games relating to soap operas.

    Rik

    1. Re:Ogg Vorbis streams by rikkus-x · · Score: 2, Insightful
      It's probably to do with your average non-technical person won't have heard of Ogg Vorbis. Joe Average has heard of Real. It's the format that "all the sites use".

      AFAIK, RealPlayer doesn't come with Windows, so the user has to go and download it, trying desperately to avoid paying for the non-free version.

      If the user has already downloaded it, they can cope with downloading and installing a player, so I'm sure they'd be happy to download and install something like Winamp, with its less annoying installation procedure.

      All the BBC need to do is provide a link to Winamp, or some other player that can deal with Ogg Vorbis.

      Again, it comes down to the brand-awareness. If they either can't afford or don't wish to run two streams then it makes most sense to use the one with the most brand-awareness.

      I actually think they should stream Ogg Vorbis only and drop the RealAudio streams. Wouldn't that be cheaper in the long run? They can probably use the same hardware they used for encoding the RealAudio streams.

      Rik

    2. Re:Ogg Vorbis streams by TiggsPanther · · Score: 2, Insightful
      AFAIK, RealPlayer doesn't come with Windows, so the user has to go and download it, trying desperately to avoid paying for the non-free version.

      You're not wrong. But RealMedia is, unfortunately, a known quantity. Even people who don't like it at least know what it does and that it does what it's supposed to (albeit, historically, along with one or two things it wasn't supposed to), whereas many people simply won't have heard of Ogg. And I think this is what sways the decision. That and the fact that it's an all-in-one product. The codec and the software are linked, whereas there is no single official player that runs Ogg - and I do get the feeling that BBC Marketing/management/whoever might not be quite so keen on relying on Winamp or another MP3 player as it's main method of streaming.

      I actually think they should stream Ogg Vorbis only and drop the RealAudio streams. Wouldn't that be cheaper in the long run? They can probably use the same hardware they used for encoding the RealAudio streams.

      I agree with you. I'm just not convinced that whoever is in charge of the decision-making at BBC would see it the same way any time soon. Plus there's the whole mutual-advertising thing. Real does list the BBC as being one of it's news sources in it's "Real Guide" section - or whatever it's called. So people browsing the site after installing it to get other content might see BBC's name there.

      I think it simply hinges that people know "Real". People don't know "Ogg". And Real and BBC seem to have a deal which is mutually beneficial. I don't think the BBC (apart from R&D/Technical) would really benefit from a partnership with Xiph.
      I don't like it, and I do agree that using Ogg would probably be better on several levels. Unfortunately for whatever reasons Real seems to do better on whatever criteria the decision-makers use.

      --
      Tiggs
      "120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
  29. Explanation of name by tepples · · Score: 2, Informative

    The Dirac delta function corresponds roughly to a spike in a flat signal. Run a low-pass filter on it and you get the various scaling functions used in wavelet image coding.

  30. You mean Ogg Tarkin by benwaggoner · · Score: 2, Informative

    The wavelet codec was Ogg Tarkin. Ogg Theora is a more traditional codec, based on On2's open sourced VP3 codec from a few years back.

    Ogg Theora is lurching towards an actual release, and is supported in a few tools like VLC, while Ogg Tarkin never really got very far along in implementation. Theora was meant to be the quick interim release while Tarkin was developed, although the schedule has slipped quite a bit since.

    --

    My video compression blog
  31. Don't count your chickens yet by benwaggoner · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well, even if this was released, it's a real stretch saying that it's "only a matter of time" before it'll be widely used by US media companies. A codec is really only a small part of a digital media architecture. Some of the competitive factors that go into these choices include:

    Compression efficiency
    Cost of implementing decode in consumer electronics (read, what's the cheapest chip that can decode it)
    Support for existing transport mechanisms (like MPEG-2 transport streams)
    Existence of industrial grade encoders (like massive statically multiplexed encoder arrays)
    License fee

    The license fees do matter a little, but that's really a secondary issue. A more efficient but more expensive codec can actually be cheaper to implement, because the content provider can use less bandwidth per channel, enabling them to sell more channels over fixed bandwidth.

    Today, the battle for the next generation "TV" codec is between Microsoft's VC-9 and MPEG-4 H.264. And that battle is already well underway. The BBC codec isn't far enough along to compete for the current generation of standardization efforts for technologies like HD DVD and digital cinema.

    --

    My video compression blog
  32. BBC Interactive Media Player (iMP) by tom+taylor · · Score: 2, Informative

    Currently the BBC are trialing iMP (interactive media player), which allows users to download TV content from the last 8 days. It uses a peer to peer basis for downloading (like Bittorrent), and is currently using Windows Media 9 with its DRM to restrict the content. As I gather, it is a standalone application.

    Cross platform compatibility is a fairly hot subject at the Beeb at the moment, and one of the developers hinted that WM9 is just a stand in for any other codec. Presumably when Dirac matures, we'll see Dirac being used.

    It's currently in trials with up to 1000 users.

    This is probably the best public article about it.

  33. For the lazy... by Malc · · Score: 2, Informative

    Working link without the /. mangling: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/events03/uk_pol/ cons/leadership/nb_newsnightiv.ram.

  34. Re:Quicktime by julesh · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The license for that software contains a rather - err - interesting clause, where the user grants back to all other users a license to any patents the user owns. This is a rather insidious and sneaky tactic, and I wouldn't be surprised if a fair number of people decided not to use the software on the basis that it might weaken their IP portfolio.

  35. BBC Technology Sale by awol · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I wonder how this project is affected by the recently announced sale of "BBC Technology" the BBC technology arm to Siemens. It is projects like this that seem to me to make the sale an extraodinary decision. Unless they are completely unrelated? Any insiders want to AC?

    --
    "The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."