Slashdot Mirror
BBC to Trial Worldwide Multicast Streaming?
An anonymous reader writes "There are tantalizing hints, via The Inquirer, and other tech news sites, that the BBC may extend its multicast streaming services to non-UK citizens, for material where rights allows. There's details about how ISPs may peer to join the multicast trial network on an official BBC page." We previously covered the BBC's multicast streaming of the Olympics, unfortunately not available in the U.S.
In the age of the internet dividing rights up based on geographical regions makes little sense (if any). A more interesting idea, and potentially a big money earner would be to divide rights up based on target demographics. Not sure how well this could be done in practice, but I freel the idea has potential.
Why not get the real ultimate power?
How do they restrict it now based on geography? Isnt such a thing more or less impossible on the internet? Dont people now currently offer mirrors inside the UK to rebroadcast interesting material out of the UK? If not... Im surprised indeed...
I look forward to any possibility of getting bbc programing here in the states. I think they have excelent programing, and only wish we could get the same quality for what i pay for cable.
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
...given that rights related to the Olympics has shut down the BBC's normal international news feed, as well as Oz's ABC and a Canadian stream I found recently. In fact, the rights surrounding the Olympics is do draconian that I'm not sure I'm even allowed to make a post on Slashdot with the word "Olympics" in it.
The magnitude of advertising in N. America becomes quite apparent when you watch the same shows in the UK. Star Trek TNG took an hour timeslot in N. America... running time on BBC2 was under 45 minutes. I guess that's one of the reasons why TV programmes start at odd times in the UK rather than at 00 and 30 mins past the hour.
The BBC is funded mainly by licence payers, not be general taxation ("the government"). It also gets some income from commercial activities. This is a bit "nit-picking" as the licence comes close to being a poll-tax.
Nationality is a demographic. However it is not the only one.
If any other demographic were to put together the money to fund an information source exclusively for their use the legal and organisational structures would not be there to support it.
There is no reason why Slashdot (assuming they wanted to) should not be able to buy the geek rights to the olympics, in much the same way the BBC has bought the British rights to the Olympics. No reason except for inertia on the part of the governing bodies of the Olympics that have always sold right to nations (or other geographical areas).
Yes we would get non-geeks coming to Slashdot for the Olympic coverage, but the BBC gets non-British watching their Olympic coverage via proxy servers, so what difference is there really?
Why not get the real ultimate power?
In the UK, you don't have to have annoying ads breaking up your programming. Imagine watching Star Trek, Farscape, The Simpsons, Buffy, Angel, The Office, sports or even just the news without any commercial breaks whatsoever. The BBC lets you do that.
Err, no it doesn't - The beeb don't show any new Star Trek series (Channel 4 show Enterprise), nor do they show Farscape or The Simpsons anymore, they have never shown Angel (Channel 4 showed that) and any imported shows like Buffy are always a year behind because the beeb only show the reruns, not the premiers.
Whilest I love the fact that the beeb are at the forefront of a number of very interesting technologies, their programming is absolute crap these days. Whilest they do have the occasional interesting documentary I haven't seen a good weekly science programme on the beeb since they cancelled Tomorrows World (whilest claiming they would be replacing it with similar science content that never appeared). And the last good comedy that came out of the BBC was Red Dwarf VI, which was *years* ago. (Sorry, The Office just makes me cringe).
Rather than being forced to pay the TV licence I would prefer to have the option to pay a licence for the services I do use (the online content) and be able to buy the occasional BBC show that's worth watching on a pay-per-view basis. Over 120ukp a year is just too much money when a large chunk of it is paying for content that I'm not interested in which panders to the masses (no, oddly enough I'm not interested in hours and hours of football or "Fama Acadamy" just because 99% of the population seems to be interested in them - isn't the whole point of the beeb to provide content which _doesn't_ pander to the masses, i.e. stuff that's not feasable for commercial channels to produce?).
The most worthwhile programmes I've seen on the BBC over the past few years are the survival programmes by Ray Mears, which are absolutely excellent but there aren't that many episodes.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Yeah, one hour of "24" is 45 minutes in Norway :) It's more fun to watch David Letterman as well: "We'll be right back" ... logos and jingles ... fades to black, and back again!
> If they don't want us to see it, well, they're the ones paying fer it.
On the other hand, nobody is forcing them to put it on the net. The 'raw' internet was designed for making information available to anyone, anywhere. If they want the information to be restricted to only a particular group, they should give them accounts and only let registered users in. Of course, the hard part is making sure each citizen gets his or her account - and doesn't simply post the username and password for public use.
So there's no perfect system for preventing people from other countries from viewing their broadcast. The 'standard' system (based on the physical limitations of receving transmissions from large distances) isn't perfect, either. I can go to Britain by plane and view or listen to any British Radio or TV. The difference is that it would be rather expensive - and probably not worth the fuss, whereas spoofing IP addresses or ripping streams via ports forwarded over SSH is relatively easy and inexpensive.
But this is a problem of all media - physical objects are hard to copy while digital data is not. When first CD titles appeared, nobody cared about them being copied - the 650 MB CD was larger than most hard disks sold at that time and CD burners weren't available or were terribly expensive. It was the physicla object (the disk) that prevented copying - and it did quite well. As larger hard disks appeared and cheap CD-recorders emerged, that stopped being an obstacle.
As technology progresses and faster, larger, cheaper storage and bandwidth capacities become common, any amount of digital data will be easy to duplicate on inexpensive equipment. So, once something's gone digital, copies will appear, no matter what. Even more or less restrictive laws cannot really stop this. Thus, if someone decides to put something in digital form on the web, they must cope with the fact that it will be copied. If they want to avoid copies being made or viewed by unauthorized people, they should better stick to paper and celluloid film.
Interesting that only one program in your list is UK created and most of the rest either aren't on or never were on BBC.
A few years ago I would have agreed with your point. But as the BBC has shown itself completely unable to produce much quality drama, documentaries or comedy for a long time, something needs to be done to shake up the BBC.
They're still showing reruns of Only Fools and Horses from 20 years ago. The only decent drama they've done in recent memory was the one with Bill Nighey as the newspaper editor. The news coverage is going tabloid-style fast (don't get me started on the horrors of News24).
So this year it's 120GBP for Newsnight, repeats of Little Britain and Malcom in the Middle.
I'm a brit who lives in the US now. It would be really great if I had the option to buy a UK TV licence that also gives me some digital certificate that identifies me and that then allows me access to *all* BBC content.
I currently buy the BBC's international broadband news service, but I've been disappointed by the amount of content. It changes regularly, but there are only 20 or so news storys and a repeating set of headlines that gets really annoying after a while.
(BTW I'm a BIG support of the licence fee... if you had to suffer US TV, you would be too!)
tight git
ever heard of PR ?
Think of the BBC as our national PR agency. It does a pretty good job too. BBC's foreign broadcasts offset our worrying habit of invading other countries, reducing resentment against Brits leading to everything from better prospects for British companies to a reduced likelihood of vacationing Brits getting shot.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/