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.

Comments

In the age of the internet...

[AnotherFreakboy]

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.

Re:In the age of the internet...

[mat catastrophe]

Oh, it makes sense all right. What it does not make is a good argument for even *having* an internet.

Ten years ago, we'd have all shit ourselves to get streaming video from overseas or the ability to send it overseas. Now, we have so much corporate nonsense in the pipes that almost all meaningful content is restricted by this kind of crap.

Yes, I know, I'm being unrealistic to what's going on in the Real World. But, then again, wasn't the Internet supposed to change the Real World?

Instead, the World is now changing the Net. And not for the better.

Re:In the age of the internet...

[AnotherFreakboy]

It would appear that some letters went missing.

Of course I meant:

I freely share with you my feeling

Re:In the age of the internet...

[dmayle]

divide rights up based on target demographics

This is a outcome of a functioning open market anyway. The Wall Street Journal online gets the financial types reading news. Slashdot gets us geek types, and The Onion gets everyone else... ;)

Re:In the age of the internet...

[John Seminal]

Ten years ago, we'd have all shit ourselves to get streaming video from overseas or the ability to send it overseas. Now, we have so much corporate nonsense in the pipes that almost all meaningful content is restricted by this kind of crap.

I remember when the net first went up and there was so much quality information. There still is. Problem is now if you try and do a search on any search engine with any word that could be a commercial term, it comes back with page after page of stores and re-directs. I try and limit searches to "site:edu" to try and eliminate that kind of crap, and hope someone with a university account has what i am looking for (which is often the case). I worry the internet will become so flooded with useless "middlemen" offering re-directs to stores and bullcrap, that it will become too much work trying to find usefull information. For example, I was trying to find a website that listed the reputation of used computer/parts stores in a certain area. I got everyone and their pet monkey trying to redirect me to a sales website outside my area. It is as bad as spam, and might be the next battleground. The search engines will have to become more intelligent and eliminate these worthless hits.

I remember reading before the internet that France had some internet for their country. It was much like our gopher system in the early days of the internet. But everyone was identifiable, and they could remove useless content. I think I remember reading it is still popular and is in use. I wish I could remember the name of it.

Re:In the age of the internet...

[Paul Jakma]

I remember reading before the internet that France had some internet for their country. It was much like our gopher system in the early days of the internet. But everyone was identifiable, and they could remove useless content. I think I remember reading it is still popular and is in use. I wish I could remember the name of it.

minitel

Re:In the age of the internet...

[halowolf]

What must be remembered is that dividing broadcast rights up in this manner is the "traditional" way of managing such things. The content owners are used to being able to sell the rights to broadcast again and again to different countries to make as much money as possible.

The age of the internet did blow all this out of the water with its ability to deliver information to anyone that wanted it nomatter where they are. What we are seeing now is content owners trying to reign in this free for all to get the value that they want out of their content, the value that they are "used" to getting.

As always they try to do this after we the consumers have become used to getting what we want, when we want it, from who we want, from where we want. Of course these different ways of doing things are going to clash, from the consumers believing they are being ripped off and from the content owners thinking they are not getting the value out of their content that they deserve.

Re:In the age of the internet...

[drinkypoo]

The internet paradox goes something like this: In the beginning it was more or less all useful information but you couldn't find it because there were no search engines, no spiders. Of course we all wanted it to grow, because it would bring such things. Now there's dramatically more useful information and tons of search engines but you still can't find it because there's so much crap around, because it grew.

So basically, the basic facts of the internet have not changed - you have to know where to look in order to find things. It's the way we look that's different, and instead of bouncing from site to site we tease and cajole search engines until they produce the desired result. Actually the most effective strategy seems to be somewhere in between the two; I find a site that almost has what I want, pick up some new search terms that will help me, and run another search; lather, rinse, repeat.

Re:In the age of the internet...

[rhodespa]

I remember reading before the internet that France had some internet for their country. It was much like our gopher system in the early days of the internet. But everyone was identifiable, and they could remove useless content. I think I remember reading it is still popular and is in use. I wish I could remember the name of it.

Minitel is what you're looking for

Re:In the age of the internet...

[saden1]

I didn't know Tom Brokaw was doing the Olympics.

Re:In the age of the internet...

[AnotherFreakboy]

Why have an internet?

The internet represents cheap, fast, global communication.

From the point of view of individuals this is a great thing. It means keeping in touch with loved ones on the other side of the globe, not having to be constrained by the choices of news editors idea of what is newsworthy, and generally be able to share information with whomever we choose, in both directions.

From a corporations point of view the internet is a great thing because it allows cheap fast access to the eyes and minds of the individuals.

Unfortunately these reasons are orthogonal, and often exclusive. Fast, cheap marketing gives corporations mindshare (which often leads to marketshare), while open communication channels give us the oportunity to discover competitors to those same corporations we may never have known existed otherwise.

Individually we can quickly adjust to taking what the internet offers, societally it will take some time before everything large groups of people do together is optimised to make the best use of fast, cheap, global communications.

The same applies to organisations. Single organisations can quickly make use of internal networks to streamline their in house processes, but it will take a while for entire industries to optimise for the ability to quickly and cheaply share information.

Slowest of all are governments, and other regulatory bodies. Once governments, standards setting organisations, and industry regulatory bodies have had time to adjust to the internet, we will probably find that the world stops trying to change the net, and rather changes to take advantage of it.

In short the internet is changing the world, but not necessarily overnight.

Re:In the age of the internet...

[sql*kitten]

In the age of the internet dividing rights up based on geographical regions makes little sense (if any).

Umm, do you know who pays for the BBC? The British taxpayer, that's who. Nothing it ever free, someone always pays somewhere. Why do you think that the overtaxed Brits should pay for your media?

Re:In the age of the internet...

[tyndyll]

...we are governed by older organisations.

The Register reported on this previously. The limitations on access is not put in place by the BBC but rather by Olympic Committee regulations. The BBC is pretty good about its content and is probably more interested in internet technologies than most...

Re:In the age of the internet...

[jrumney]

I never quite understood the whole broadcast rights thing. Lets say you want to watch the badminton, because you're a fan of the sport. The BBC is showing it, but you live in the US, and NBC are only showing the basketball and athletics. Why shouldn't you be able to tune into the BBC feed to watch something that your home broadcaster is not showing?

Broadcast rights seem to be about nothing except controlling which sports people can watch. How does that benefit anyone?

Re:In the age of the internet...

[dave420]

It does when the company providing the content is funded by the inhabitants of a specific country :)

Re:In the age of the internet...

[ynohoo]

If we get organised enough, it would be interesting if Americans could buy the annual British TV license, and recieve the BBC channels via their cable provider - the commercial free version, as opposed to BBC America, which is kinda BBC lite + commercials.

I hate commercials, I always channel surf when they come on.

Re:In the age of the internet...

[prisonblues]

You could search other nations universities too, not just American

Re:In the age of the internet...

[gmby]

I hate commercials, I always channel surf when they come on.

But you always go back to that same channel?!
They welcome you back with more commercials.

I for one wecome our new/old commercial over....
ahh nevermide....

TIVO TO THE RESCUE!

Re:In the age of the internet...

[mrdaveb]

That's a great idea, but I don't think it will ever happen. The BBC buys content from other TV companies just like any other channel does. They are stuck with broadcast rights restricted to the UK only. E.g. The Olympic Games

It would be nice if Americans and others could buy BBC channels without adverts, and I'm sure there would be a market for that, but it couldn't be the exact same channels we have in the UK.

Re:In the age of the internet...

[ynohoo]

But you always go back to that same channel?!

No, when I had cable I usually ended up watching parts of two or three different programs! Yeah, Tivo is a great idea, but since I left the US I haven't bothered with cable, and and happy watching alot less TV - I find other ways to rot my brane :)

Re:In the age of the internet...

[gmby]

Oh yeah... so do I...

Like /.!

Re:In the age of the internet...

[Geoff-with-a-G]

In the age of the internet dividing rights up based on geographical regions makes little sense (if any).

Much like posting content in English instead of machine code makes little sense? It's not about how the Internet works, it's about why it works and who it works for. The Internet is used by human beings who live in geographical (and more importantly, legal and political) areas.

If your website sells products that you can only ship domestically, then it makes sense to categorize it by region. Or in this case, if your website is funded by the taxes of one country only, then it makes sense to only implement its streaming to that country.

People who talk about the Internet as "cyberspace", as though it was some alternate world, some parallel dimension separate from our physical world are missing important points. The Internet as we know it is made up of servers in physical locations, paid for by citizens of specific countries using certain currencies, connected via ISPs and telecom companies who are located in specific countries and subject to certain regulations and taxes, and it is accessed by people living in certain places and subject to certain laws. In this case, the content is being hosted by the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Yes, it's fantastic that the Internet lets me communicate rapidly and cheaply all around the world. But that doesn't mean that it is somehow independent of geography, politics, and law.

Re:In the age of the internet...

[Ilgaz]

Can you try to seek what "multicast" is?

I did years ago (Real player 2 times?) and I am still amazed how the heck ISPs, Radio stations didn't implement it. Only reason comes to my mind is RIAA/MPAA power.

Multicast is, you cast stream ONCE, to millions of users. Like a TV station.

If they gave it free, you probably couldn't watch since it needs Multicast friendly ISPs with pretty configured routers.

http://whatis.techtarget.com/wsearchResults/1,29 02 14,sid9,00.html?query=multicast

Re:In the age of the internet...

[parliboy]

That's not quite fair. As someone who's been watching the late night fare on the cable networks, we've had at least one badminton match every night.

For the uninitiated:

[Anonymous Coward]

Posted anon for non-whore-action:

Quick scoop on multicast vs. unicast (what you are using now).

non U.K. citizens?

[Anonymous Coward]

"non U.K. citizens" .. so they check yo passport/citizenship papers in addition to your geographical location?

Damn that totally sucks.

Wish we had one world.

Re:non U.K. citizens?

[YrWrstNtmr]

Wish we had one world.

We do. Don't fuck it up.

Re:non U.K. citizens?

[mattjb0010]

"non U.K. citizens" .. so they check yo passport/citizenship papers in addition to your geographical location?

The iTunes store checks credit card billing address in addition to geographical location. I didn't bother testing it, I figured if they were going to discriminate against me they weren't worth my money anyway.

Re:non U.K. citizens?

[zerblat]

Yeah, but you know, there are like, people living in the UK who aren't UK citizens.

Re:non U.K. citizens?

[isorox]

Ahh, now the rubber band's on the other claw! It's typically the rest of the world that misses out.

Re:non U.K. citizens?

[genixia]

Unfortunately not. If they did I wouldn't still be stuck in NBC hell.

Out of curiosity

[numist]

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...

Re:Out of curiosity

[WIAKywbfatw]

Uh, isn't it obvious how they determine someone's location? They do it by IP address. Lots of websites have been doing this for years.

For example, MLB.com stops non-North Americans from being able to make purchases from its online store (well, it did when I tried it, even though I intended to provide the address of a US relative for shipping). And Apple's iTunes Music Stores use IP addresses to lock out potential purchasers from shopping at a store that doesn't cover their country, so that Americans have to use the American iTMS, Canadians have to use the Canadian iTMS, Europeans have to use the European iTMS, etc rather than whichever one is the cheapest (or, in some cases, whichever one has the tracks that they want).

It all boils down to distribution rights. The company that has the rights to a band's music in the US might not be the same company that has the rights to that band's music elsewhere, etc. The same holds true for television programming: the BBC has Olympic broadcasting rights for the UK but not worldwide, etc.

Mirrors? Well, we are talking about streamed content here so that's not as easy as it sounds, but neither is it impossible. However video sucks up bandwidth real fast, so if you intend to mirror streamed video content of the kind of quantity broadcast by the BBC (and that's just one broadcaster) then prepare to have a bill so big that even Bill Gates would double take at the cost.

Re:Out of curiosity

[jupiter909]

Just as a note.

http://www.bulldogdsl.com/

Offers a 4Meg line on the London Net system. They run a line direct to BCC, by passing BT(British Telecom). BCC has Bulldog and some other ISP's on 'safe' lists of IP ranges, but it's easy to route through other peoples systems, the problem is that the up on the stream on home lines is 400k. Enough for one stream.

Re:Out of curiosity

[andreMA]

Apple's iTunes Music Stores use IP addresses to lock out potential purchasers from shopping at a store that doesn't cover their country

It was my understanding that they did this based on credit card billing address, not IP.

Re:Out of curiosity

[Rufus211]

It's actually fairly easy for a small roll out like this. The way the internet normally works is that I announce out to the world I have some block of IP addresses sitting off some network connection. This announcement gets propagated around the globe so everyone knows to follow back to my connection to get my range of IP addresses.

What they're doing here is simply not propagating those announcements out. Here the BBC announces to a few (British) ISPs how to access the block of IPs associated with these streams but specifically tells them not to rebroadcast the announcements out. That way their subscribers can access it, but the rest of us are left with no idea where the routes are.

Re:Out of curiosity

[maharg]

Wrong. In order to get the stream, you have to be using an approved broadband ISP. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/broadband/info/providers.shtm l

Re:Out of curiosity

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, I'm one of the BBC R+D engineers working on the multicast project.

We restrict the Olympics streaming to UK ISPs who multicast peer with us, and the participating ISPs have to make sure that they don't let this multicast down non-UK routes.

Sounds crude, but it's an incredibly effective way of doing it, and it avoids the need for intrusive things like credit card verification (which also doesn't work as well).

Sadly we need to be really careful about how our Olmpics coverage is allowed out, since it's a big deal for the IOC to allow us to stream it at all, and they have only granted us rights for the UK. The IOC tend to notice when people overstep their agreed rights too, so people absolutely must play nicely (you can understand that, it's their event, after all).

As an aside, the material itself is a really interesting test for the coders, and we hope to be able to supplement the real10 stuff with an H.264 stream (H.264 is the mpeg-4 advanced video codec) at some point. The tough part is finding distributable players which can handle this newish standard. VLC is a wonderful multi-platform player, but sadly only copes with H.263 at the moment, the 264 support isn't there *yet*. Quicktime won't know 264 until Tiger comes out, and Windows Media needs special plugins for it.

MPlayer depends on ffmpeg etc in the same way as VLC, too, so that's not an option- shame, I am too used to MPlayer playing anything I throw at it- the BBC's "Blue Planet" looked great in ascii art :-)

Anyway, it has been a really interesting project so far, and we hope to be able to keep going with it, the results are very promising. Thanks for the slashdot writeup too, it's nice to have your efforts noticed, sometimes you feel a bit invisible in the techie bits of a media organisation.

-pjm

Re:Out of curiosity

[ThaReetLad]

Kudos mate.

Re:Out of curiosity

[dunstan]

Thanks for the post - I'm glad my licence fee is going towards useful R&D in the true BBC tradition.

My big fear is that in all the political machinations at the BBC these sorts of endeavours, as well as the Dirac codec development, could get axed or shut down by mistake. Do you find that flying below radar coverage is the best tactic, or should positive reinforcement of this work be sent into normal BBC feedback channels?

D.

Re:Out of curiosity

[rp8774]

Hello from BBC Bristol I.T. :)

Re:Out of curiosity

[aidan folkes]

Sadly we need to be really careful about how our Olmpics coverage is allowed out, since it's a big deal for the IOC to allow us to stream it at all, and they have only granted us rights for the UK. The IOC tend to notice when people overstep their agreed rights too, so people absolutely must play nicely (you can understand that, it's their event, after all).

Could you say why office connections aren't allowed? When I'm at home I can watch the extra streams on DSAT!

It's especially annoying to have lost FiveLive.

Re:Out of curiosity

[isorox]

quantity broadcast by the BBC

That's arround 80 hours of TV a day (UK only stuff, not including BBC world, Prime, America etc), and hundereds of hours of radio.

embrace this decision

[pvt_medic]

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.

Re:embrace this decision

[stubear]

I'm really tired of people like you telling others what is and is not quality programming. I happen to enjoy watching many programs on the History Channel, TLC, Discovery, ESPN, AMC, Bravo (well, actually NBC aired "The West Wing", Bravo just plays old episodes I missed), and NESN (gotta watch the Red Sox) and believe they are quality programs. HBO occasionally produces some excellent movies though I have to rent or purchase them since I don't get HBO or the other movie channels. I wound up buying "Band of Brothers" after seeing teh first episode on The History Channel. You might not like these programs but that does not mean they are not quality programs.

Re:embrace this decision

[WIAKywbfatw]

FYI, Band Of Brothers was co-produced by the BBC in partnership with HBO. So that's partially a British product too.

In fact, the series was shot in Britain and much of the cast, including Damian Lewis who played Maj. Richard D. Winters, are British actors.

Re:embrace this decision

[WIAKywbfatw]

A lot of the best BBC programming (together with other top-notch British television output) can be had in the US on BBC America.

I'm not sure but I believe that the channel is carried by DirecTV and most cable companies. I'm sure you could find out easily yourself if your local cable operator is one of those.

Re:embrace this decision

[DeepRedux]

Many cable systems carry BBC America. It carries only BBC programming, but it is not the same as any actual BBC channel in Britain. It is missing some popular BBC programs. For instance, it does not carry EastEnders because "70 per cent of BBC America's viewers switched off when EastEnders came on".

Re:embrace this decision

[Malc]

It seems like this would undermine one of the BBC's revenue streams. Don't they sell they programmes to companies like PBS? MI5 (a.k.a. Spooks) was on A&E. And of course they have commercial departments like BBC America and BBC Canada.

Re:embrace this decision

[drinkypoo]

This is the answer. Well, if you have broadband anyway.

Re:embrace this decision

[Osty]

A lot of the best BBC programming (together with other top-notch British television output) can be had in the US on BBC America.

We get whatever BBC America gives us. Unfortunately, that doesn't currently include the only BBC program I'd care to have -- Top Gear. Thankfully, you can find some clips on the web, and BBC has some downloads available as well (only available in Real format, though, so I won't bother). However, that's not quite the same as watching the full episodes on my TV. They used to have a page where you could vote on what shows you wanted them to air on BBC America, but I can't find that now (and IIRC, the list didn't include Top Gear anyway).

Re:embrace this decision

[Fred Or Alive]

It carries only BBC programming,

Well, apart from the odd Channel 4 (Faking It, Father Ted) and ITV programmes (Prime Suspect, 60s stuff like The Avengers, The Saint and The Prisoner) as well. Although it's mostly BBC programming.

It's a bit suprising how badly EastEnders does in the US though, considering it's the highest rated show on BBC One...

Re:embrace this decision

[ayjay29]

Hi,

You can get Newsnight, broadcast every week day. It's a very different take on world news than you will get from CNN/Fox/ABC.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/ de fault.stm

During the 9-11 attacks the BBC managed to keep a live video stream running the whole time, and keep their news site up. The only other news site I saw that stayed up was slashdot.

Re:embrace this decision

[Lord_Dweomer]

Look, there are ALWAYS going to be exceptions. But lets look at a couple things. First, we have VASTLY more channels than the BBC does (I'm not counting Sky). Now, the amount of crap per channel that we have when compared to the BBC is absolutely astronomical. Yeah, Big Brother is horrible reality tv at its worst, but over here in America, we are subjected to god knows how many reincarnations of the same reality tv.

So, while I agree there are certainly some quality programs here in the states, if you look at the percentages, I think the quality of the BBC far exceeds ours, but of course the definition of quality is very subjective.

Re:embrace this decision

[RichardX]

The BBC doesn't show Big Brother.. in fact, AFAIK they're not guilty of any "reality shows" except perhaps the occasional *choke* "Fly-on-the-wall-docusoap" as I believe the trendy media types like to call them

Re:embrace this decision

[Lord_Dweomer]

Well, my only experience with the BBC tv is from when I stayed in England for 4 weeks this summer, and as I recall Big Brother was on BBC 4. Is that considered part of the BBC?

Re:embrace this decision

[Anonymous Coward]

"Big Brother was on BBC 4"

Big brother is on *Channel 4* (which is an independant TV company).

http://channel4.co.uk/

Re:embrace this decision

[UnxMully]

That would be Channel 4 as opposed to BBC 4. The BBC do not broadcast Big Brother, in spite of what your short visit may make you think to the contrary.

Re:embrace this decision

[Kuad]

Channel 4 is not the same thing as BBC 4.

Re:embrace this decision

[Richard_at_work]

No, Big Brother airs on 'Channel 4' and its sister satelite channel E4, both part of the Independant Television Network which is advert funded. BBC has BBC1, BBC2, BBC News 24, BBC3 and some others and doesnt advertise anything other than its own products.

Re:embrace this decision

[Motor]

No, Big Brother is shown on Channel 4.

In the UK there are five so-called terrestrial channels (old analogue broacasts available via an aerial), they are: BBC 1, BBC 2, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5.

You can also get something called a FreeView settop box which allows access to digital broadcasts via your aerial, and this gives you many other channels, such as BBC 3 (more light entertainment), BBC 4 (documentaries and more high-brow films -- BTW, this is proving to be an excellent dip in-out channel), and lots of other stuff.

Another option is handing over your shilling to the Murdoch bandits by getting a Sky Digital set top box and dish.

Re:embrace this decision

[BenjyD]

People actually go out of their way to watch Top Gear?
I'd gladly pay my licence fee if they'd make a program where Jeremy Clarkson is beaten to a pulp by three burly blokes for half an hour.

Re:embrace this decision

[BenjyD]

Fame Academy.

Re:embrace this decision

[Ancipital]

It's a funny one, since stereotypically, Americans complain about paying *any* sort of tax-like charge, yet people often want the BBC content too. This is having your cake and eat it :)

Of course, there's a smattering of BBC content on BBC world, but you don't get the whole BBC, and the lack of adverts for what the average American contributes to see BBC World.

It's a different culture- UK broadcast news is legally bound to be truthful and unbiased unlike Fox "news" etc, and the sorts of programmes commissioned are very different to commerical TV too. It's not all wonderful, there is some tedious populist nonsense like DIY shows, and rubbishy "Reality TV" too. However, stuff that would never see the light of day on Murdoch's TV turns up on the BBC, recently there's been a bit of a renaissance of original programming.

I don't know what answer is.. Some of the really amazing-looking BBC nature programmes are produced in association with the Discovery Channel (I think they mostly put up the folding green stuff for a chance to show it). This means that you guys will get/will have seen mind-blowing stuff like "Massive Nature". As to the more daring cutting-edge comedy, like "Monkey Dust", I fear that it'd not do very well in the US, much like Chris Morris' "Jam"; fall foul of the religious right "moral minority" world view. Maybe you'll get stuff like "The Smoking Room", which is exquisite and in the classic British theatrical tradition. Occasionally very dark, has a delightfully tight script.

I don't know what the answer is, Reagan shredded public service broadcasting in the US, made "liberal" a dirty word, and taught people that taxation was akin to Satan worship. This isn't really an environment in which the BBC could florish.

Moreover, you have to remember that the stuff which goes out on BBC TV is often only cleared for the BBC to show in certain places- and it wouldn't be allowed to show it in the US- US rights are often negotiated separately.

Anyway, whatever the eventual answer is (and I hope it's not the Americanisation of British media, reducing it all to the lowests common denominator via Sky), I hope you guys there get at least some of this stuff- call it payback for Bill Hicks :-)

(All the views above do not represent those of my employers, they're mine. If they upset you, that's the fault of me and thee, not the lovely people who pay me)

Re:embrace this decision

[cortana]

Maybe they don't have townies in America?

Re:embrace this decision

[Ilgaz]

I am in TV business too and "Fame Academy" you reference is what "reality show" must have been.

It was an amazing show with REAL talents and real teachers etc.

It was a REAL academy...

Cutting it short, its NOT "* Idol" which made some Dutch licensers rich.

Re:embrace this decision

[PhilipPeake]

It's a bit suprising how badly EastEnders does in the US though, considering it's the highest rated show on BBC One...

Not really ... a lot of the content is context sensitive, requiring a fairly good knowlege of England, and its culture. But more to the point, it is no longer available on BBC America, but only on a pay per view basis - really, do you consider it worth $4.95 per episode?

BBC America really sucks. If BBC World was available it would cease to exist after about two weeks. I am really dissapointed that the BBC sold out to the money grabbing assholes that dominate American media.

Re:embrace this decision

[Phil Wilkins]

The irony here is that many of the better documentaries on The History Channel, TLS, and Discovery, and Bravo, are BBC productions in the first place, and only sound american, because they've been dubbed.

The West Wing kicks ass though.

Re:embrace this decision

[Phil Wilkins]

Doh, meant to delete Bravo, as MI5/Spooks isn't really a documentary...;)

Re:embrace this decision

[cfuse]

It's a bit suprising how badly EastEnders does in the US though, considering it's the highest rated show on BBC One...

Considering that every episode I've ever watched has made me want to slash my wrists I'm not surprised that it isn't popular.

Is it really as awful as it's depicted? Dirty, crowded streets, miserable people and not a blade of grass to be seen anywhere. And constantly overcast. Yuck.

Mind you, the poms also like our (Australian) soaps (which are total crap) as well.

Re:embrace this decision

[arwel]

Indeed, I was pleasantly surprised by BBC4's recent repeat of "The Prisoner" -- I hadn't seen it since Channel 4's showing many years ago (and before that, I can just about remember being puzzled by the original ITV transmission as I was far too young to have any idea what it was about!).

Who'll pay?

[wombatmobile]

In the UK, "free to air TV" is not free:

http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/

Re:Who'll pay?

[WIAKywbfatw]

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.

The average hour of American TV has almost 20 minutes of advertising. If you watch just 1 hour of TC a day, that's over 2 hours of ads per week. Now, the TV licence here in the UK costs me about 2 pounds a week, which is around $3 US. Wouldn't you pay $3 for 2 extra hours of your life back?

Whichever way you look at it, the BBC is excellent value for money. Six TV channels, about a dozen national radio stations, arguably the world's best newsgathering organisation, one of the best websites on the web, etc.

Re:Who'll pay?

[Malc]

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.

Re:Who'll pay?

[newandyh-r]

True, you need a licence to receive TV in the UK tho' there are some anomalies. However, this licence is needed just as much for the subscription or advertising-supported channels (Sky, ITV, C4, C5).

The anomaly comes as follows:

To receive Bloomberg via satellite: need licence

To receive Bloomberg via Cable: need licence

To receive Bloomberg via internet streaming: no need for licence.

Re:Who'll pay?

[FireFury03]

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.

Re:Who'll pay?

[rleyton]

In the UK, you don't have to have annoying ads breaking up your programming

Not true. Well, sorta not true. On the BBC it's certainly true we have no commercial breaks within programmes, but the Beeb has an increasingly annoying habit of trailing it's own programmess as if they were adverts. About the only way it can get an audience sometimes for some of it's offerings (anybody remember the BBC Tivo hoo-ha a year or two ago?). It's still miles better than the commercial channels (of which we have ITV, Channel 4 and 5 on terrestial, and *many* more on terrestial digital and Satellite), but I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed it.

Saying that, it used to be that the BBC broadcast the cricket (bear with me here, I'll not starting talking about LBW rules). Test series (you know, the five day matches that often end in a draw... Start your jokes NOW) were broadcast in their entiriety with nary a break for mother nature. Along came Channel 4 (focused on 'minority' programming, Oh, the irony to the non-cricket lovers) and promptly put adverts in.

Similarly with F1 coverage here when it moved to ITV. A heck of a storm kicked up: The end of the 'decent' coverage; How-can-they-do-it etc. etc. (Every change in this country is met with the usual conservative (note the lower-case 'c') pundits who suggest it's the end of the world)

But, the scary thing is, in BOTH cases, the coverage is IMNSHO immensly better, and dare i say it, actually better FOR the adverts, which are placed carefully (Cricket during changes of end; F1 every 20-30 mins with replays straight after of any important action). Certainly for my bladder, but it's nice to have an imposed break every now and then. Try watching Ben Hur on video and tell me the recorded intermission isn't good, and you'll see what I mean ;-)

Re:Who'll pay?

[shepd]

>Wouldn't you pay $3 for 2 extra hours of your life back?

For only 2 channels? Hell no. Americans pay far less and get way more. For example, you can get showtime, which runs 10 channels in the US, for $11.99 a month. That's $1.20 a channel. That's a much better deal than the BBC offers, and unlike the BBC, you can watch movies ALL DAY.

I have to say, it sorta drove me nuts that there are no breaks in BBC programming when I was in the UK. I wanted to get a sandwich, say, but if I did that, I'd have to miss my TV show. That sucked.

I'd go for a half and half system. 10 minutes of commercials an hour at half the price. Gives me time for a washroom break and leaves my wallet a bit heavier.

>Six TV channels

*SIX*? When did that happen? Something major must have happened in the last 5 years to the UK TV market. Last I remember when I was over there, BBC 1 and BBC 2 were all that you could get commercial free without special (expensive) equipment.

>arguably the world's best newsgathering organisation

This I won't deny. BBC world news is good. I haven't a clue how they afford to give it away for free without commercials outside the UK. Fortunately... it's not my problem... :) Although, I would gladly pay for it.

Re:Who'll pay?

[cs02rm0]

I couldn't agree more with parent post. As for grandparent... no, whilst I'm a student, 2 hours of my life a week isn't worth 2 pounds a week! That's about a quarter of my food budget to pay for the privledge of having less suitable time to check email during shitty TV programs?

Yet if I don't buy a TV licence and have a TV, the chances are I'll get fined even if I don't receive anything. I can't choose to just get BBC1 and C4 say and pay half. Or even just watch cable - there's no choice and that's what people hate. The cost just goes up each year whilst my income goes down with the programming quality.

At least I graduate next year... think I'll disappear abroad and leave my 16 000 pound student loan behind.

Re:Who'll pay?

[Looke]

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!

Re:Who'll pay?

[hughk]

Elsewhere in Europe the license costs more but you still get ads, albeit not so much on the public channels. The license is still compulsory whether or not you whatch the private channels. ACtually somof the better BBC content makes it offshore, but is dubbed into the local language though.

Re:Who'll pay?

[tyndyll]

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).

can't agree with that one, having watched the wonder of Dave Gormans Important Astrology Experiment - :) If you haven't seen/heard of this guy go for it - he redefines the term obsessive compulsive

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.

sorry no - 'friad not. i'd rather have an independant channel that can produce and broadcast non mainstream programmes on *both* television and radio (not to mention their web presence) at a price that amounts to little over a few pounds a week. Pay per view is not the way to go - if you want to go down that line why not pay a few pounds more and support the BBC by using your local BBC shop. Granted there is a steaming turd beside every polished gem. Agree with you on The Office, someone likes it though and I suppose they have to broadcast it. Now if only I could replace those people with some with taste....

Re:Who'll pay?

[jrumney]

For only 2 channels?

The license fee funds at least 8 commercial free channels in the UK, maybe more (I'm not sure if S4C and tele G are license fee funded as well as the 8 BBC channels).

Re:Who'll pay?

[mustrum_ridcully]

Believe me it has changed

For Analogue viewers (switch-off of analogue services due between 2007-2010)
BBC 1
BBC 2

For Digital Viewers (Terrestrial, Cable, Satellite)
BBC 1
BBC 2
BBC Three
BBC Four
CBeebies (for very young children)
CBBC (for older kids)
BBC Parliament
BBC News24
BBCi (part-time extra TV channels for major events like the olympics so you can decide if you want to watch swimming, cycling or gymnastics for example)

Re:Who'll pay?

[FireFury03]

i'd rather have an independant channel that can produce and broadcast non mainstream programmes

So would I - unfortunately that isn't the BBC... Or do you consider football, reality TV and soap operas to be non-mainstream? I would have much less of a problem forking out 120 quid a year if the beeb _did_ stick to their charter of broadcasting non-mainstream stuff. The Sky Digital package I'm on costs me 216 quid a year (ontop of the beeb's licence) and I get *way* more than double the amount of non-mainstream stuff off that than I ever do off the beeb. (Not to mention the mainstream stuff I do watch).

And don't talk to me about how the BBC has to charge that much to fund their extra digital channels: the digital channels are more full of crap than the terrestrial ones (I think I have watched BBC Three _once_ since it was launched), and not everyone can get them (yes, believe it or not there are some locations in the UK where you can't get either satellite or DVB-T)

Re:Who'll pay?

[shepd]

Decent. Glad to hear the UK finally has a good selection of TV channels. I recall coming back to Canada, letting people know how in the UK you could only get 4 channels and, well, people here were quite astonished to hear that a country with twice the population had about 1/4 the free stations [Then when I mentioned that in the UK you guys were paying for that 'privelege', well... I'll leave the reaction to that for your imagination].

When I left the digital switchover was about halfway in progress, so, as I see, it seems that when the UK completely switched over, the BBC took full advantage of the spectrum.

All that being said, I have to say, when I was in the UK I spend most of my time watching ITV / Channel 4 (Big thanks to the UK for introducing me to that crazy game show 'Banzai').

Re:Who'll pay?

[mikechant]

And assuming you've got the coverage (I think it's about 85%+ at present), the price of the 'Freeview' DTB box you need to get the BBC channels listed + about 20 commercial channels is now down to less than 40 pounds sterling.

Re:Who'll pay?

[lucas teh geek]

I live in a flat with 3 other people. each month or so, three of us recieve letters threatening that the tv licence boogy man is gonna coem and check our rooms for tvs. the three of us who get these do not have tvs, the one who doesn't get them has a tv and no licence. with the money they waste sending those letters they could have bought a tv and gave it to me, giving me a reason to buy a damn licence. i love those guys

Re:Who'll pay?

[BenjyD]

2 pounds a week is a quarter of your food budget? Bloody hell - I thought I had it tough when I was a student. I guess the end of grants is hitting people hard!

Re:Who'll pay?

[BenjyD]

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.

Re:Who'll pay?

[WIAKywbfatw]

I listed mostly US programmes because I wanted to contrast the experience that American TV viewers have with British TV viewers.

I could have, of course, listed lots of British output, but as the majority of Americans, etc reading this site wouldn't have a clue what I was talking about then that wouldn't have given them a clear indication of what I meant.

I clearly get far more out of the BBC than you do. For one thing, I'm far more appreciative of BBC News 24 than you are, as I find it far superior to the alternatives (ITV's ITN News, Sky News, etc), with the exception of Channel 4's evening news. And for another, I don't agree with your view of the BBC's current drama, documentaries or comedies.

True, few of the modern offerings have the critical or popular appeal that BBC programmes of yesteryear have but expecting all new BBC output to match up to the best of the best from its past is asking a bit much, especially when the BBC's archives are full of programmes that set such very high standards.

Re:Who'll pay?

[BenjyD]

I was mentally comparing to Channel 4's output, which (Big Brother aside), I find to be superior. BBC News (24) is certainly better than ITV, but that's not really saying much! I think News 24 is used as a training ground for the less experienced journalists, so you get a lot more mistakes and problems there.
I guess comparing this year's output with everything before it is a little unfair, and Radio 4 does go a long way to making up the value of the licence fee to me. It would be nice, however, to see a channel that doesn't rely on advertising income for its existence to take more risks and be more creative in its output. As it is, at present I'm hard pressed to find much to watch on the BBC channels.

Re:Who'll pay?

[BenjyD]

Shooting stars is comedy? Doesn't comedy have to be funny? Have I Got News for you is good, and the office is a given. But My Hero, Coupling, Two pints of lager, ab fab(newer series), the Kumars? You're lucky to get one laugh in the whole half hour programme.

The Radio 4 documentaries are interesting, certainly: From Our Own Correspondent etc. John Simpson's programme was interesting. The Boney Programme and Panorama have occasional flashes of brilliance. The One Life series was interesting in parts.

But Battlefield Britain? Simplistic and dull. The laughable D-Day documentaries? The endless Robert Winston documentaries with virtually no information content? Documentaries on 'time' consisting entirely of some actor running around in slow motion?

Yes, there is some good content there, and I'm about to get a digibox to have a look at what's there. But the good stuff is drowning in a sea of crap, and this is public money they're pissing away.

Re:Who'll pay?

[maharg]

when I mentioned that in the UK you guys were paying for that 'privelege', well... I'll leave the reaction to that for your imagination

So who exactly is paying for the TV channels in Canada - The viewers, via increased costs of goods to pay for their advertising, or the viewers, via taxes paid to the state ?

Re:Who'll pay?

[shepd]

>So who exactly is paying for the TV channels in Canada - The viewers, via increased costs of goods to pay for their advertising, or the viewers, via taxes paid to the state ?

Here's the difference:

You don't go to jail if you don't buy products advertised on TV (I know plenty of people, including myself, that see most ads as annoying putoffs and avoid those products instead of purchasing them [I'm looking at you most shampoo companies -- At least generic brands aren't supposed to give me some sort of scalp orgasm.])

Now, you do tend to go to jail if you don't pay taxes.

I hear it's a 5,000 UKP fine for not paying the TV tax in the UK, and about 6 months jail time for chronic offenders. And then even people who are paying have to deal with detector vans invading UK residents' privacy, checking on what channels are being watched.

Am I off on that?

This isn't so say Canada doesn't have TV stations paid for by taxes, such as TV Ontario, we do. However, everyone pays for it so we can avoid the whole invasion of privacy and non-payment type issues. I suppose it sucks for those who refuse to watch TV, however, I can assure you that government funded TV channels like TV Ontario carry absolutely no interest to anyone *except* for the artsy-fartsy type that wouldn't own a TV. Yeah; the fact the channel exists at all makes no sense to me, either... :-)

A lame substitute.

[iamdrscience]

Why would I bother watching olympic gymnastics on the BBC site when for only $9.95 per month I can watch naked gymnasts in streaming video with some uhh... "special moves" that the olympic committees frown upon.

Oooh...

[iamdrscience]

I would kill for BBC olympic coverage. I just cannot stand watching Bob Costas for one moment longer. For God's sake NBC, get another sports anchor!

I don't have anything against the guy, I think he's fine, but when he's doing 80% of the coverage himself it starts to make my head swell.

Re:Oooh...

[simong_oz]

The irony of this entire concept being that if the online coverage is anything like the BBC1/2 TV coverage, you will see nothing but totally biased coverage of british athletes. This isn't a bad thing, I know coverage in Oz, USA, etc media is just as bad, but why anyone else would want to watch it I don't know.

Of course, if you can actually choose what to watch (yes, I haven't RTA'd), then this a great thing.

huh?

[John Seminal]

To be able to watch the Games online, you need to live in the UK and have a broadband connection at home.

What is to stop someone from using a proxy from the UK? If porn can't stop proxies, what makes BBC think they can? LOL.

With BBC Sport providing more than 1,200 hours of coverage on the web, you can make sure you do not miss out on your favourite events from the world's biggest sporting extravaganza.

I am just tossing out this thought. Most countries sign a "cease hostilities" agreement paper for the duration of the olympics. How about if corporations also validated the purity of what the olypics are and not limit coverage by advertising or broadcasting rights. 1200 hours is alot. If NBC thinks basketball will have a large viewing audiance, then black that out. But why black out everything from the internet?

Re:huh?

[mcrbids]

What is to stop someone from using a proxy from the UK?

I guess you've answered your own question... sorta.

Nothing is there to stop someone from using a proxy - but there's plenty in place to keep people from using proxies. If you spend 6 hours at it, you *might* find an anonymous proxy that doesn't include headers that the great folks at the BBC could recognize to find that you are in the good old "bastion of freedom" US of A.

But is that going to happen en masse?

Definitely not.

So, what will stop SOMEBODY? Nothing. Will it stop most people?

Yep.

For example, most proxies add additional headers to indicate who they're proxying for. For example, X-forwarded-for

So, in most cases, it's not too difficult to tell that: 1) You are using a proxy, and 2) You aren't in Great Britain.

As Scott McNealy said, so eloquently: You already have zero privacy. Get over it.

Re:huh?

[FireFury03]

What is to stop someone from using a proxy from the UK? If porn can't stop proxies, what makes BBC think they can? LOL.

The proxy would have to be on one of the ISPs that the beeb peer with - they only offer "broadband" content to ISPs that peer with them, everyone else is stuck with "narrowband" (48Kbps) stuff. (Which you can kinda understand - the BBC were predicting that the online Olympic content would suck up over 10Gbps of their bandwidth)

Re:huh?

[Adrenochrome]

If you spend 6 hours at it, you *might* find an anonymous proxy that doesn't include headers that the great folks at the BBC could recognize to find that you are in the good old "bastion of freedom" US of A.

Actually, the second proxy I tried worked...

Ironic that this is being discussed now...

[Kris_J]

...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.

Re:Ironic that this is being discussed now...

[Fallen Andy]

The real irony is it's *worse* than you know! Here I am in Athens GR and not only are the internet news feeds of the BBC, CBC ABC (australia) etc mostly blanked out, but there are at least two FM stations here who rebroadcast BBC WS! One on 87.7 from about 2.a.m. local to 6.a.m and another which comes and goes on 104.4... Hmm. Neither appears on the BBC web site so I can only assume they are doing this illegally ...

Just woke up so my eyesight hasn't gotten right yet, but I have a beautiful LOS to that blimp here
from my office/home across to Mount Hymettus.
Wandered to the balcony. Yep, we could frag it...

Pass the rocket launcher alice!

Re:Ironic that this is being discussed now...

[Kris_J]

Here I am in Athens GR

I was going to make a snide remark about the GR, then I decided to just check and sure enough there's an Athens, GA (Georgia). Next up, Medieval England, Iowa.

Re:Ironic that this is being discussed now...

[mcbridematt]

Broadcasting rights. A greedy business. Sad thing nothing else can fund sport.

Sad that you lose the ABC. Down here in Aus, Channel 7 is olympic-only coverage for the next two weeks, and thats on one channel only (IMHO, most of the stuff on CH7 is family oriented crap anyway. I never watch it), afaik they might be able to multichannel for those lucky enough to have a digital STB, but thats only 400,000 out of 20,000,000 of the population that have it.
Figures released by the dominant "repeatvision" providers (or "pay for special content with 20 minute long ads and 11 hours per day of old content tv" to elaborate) Foxtel (Metro, mainly where Telstra layed cable until they stopped years ago, some sat installations) and Austar (Regional, sattelite except in one case) say they signed up more subscribers to their "digital" service (which for sattelite is just repacked with MDS instead of Irdeto 2 encryption) than all time FTA digtal STB sales.

SBS (the special broadcasting service for all things multilingal etc.) is also broadcasting clips and stuff like bike riding et al. Mind you, loosing two free to air stations (out of 5) to Olympic coverage sucks. No pay tv coverage either (not to mention that pay tv is simply 30+ channel "repeatvision" here..)

Re:Grammar Nazi.

[Anonymous Coward]

All your nouns are be verbed by us.

Re: WTF is multicast?!?!?

[mcrbids]

You can find out about what multicast is and what it means by checking out this Cisco page that explains what it actually is.

As always, Google is your friend...

funding

[sometwo]

How are they going to get the funding for this? I realize that the BBC is funded by the British government but there must be some limits.

Re:funding

[newandyh-r]

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.

Re:funding

[Ancipital]

Dude, you misunderstand multicast.

The BBC already streams a lot of radio programmes, but multicasting video is a very cost-effective option. You only need to put out a few streams even if you have thousands oif viewers. You could have 10,000 broadband viewers costing the bbc no more than a few hundred narrowband unicast radio listeners, in bandwidth terms. It's really quite clever, and lets better services be delivered more cheaply, as long as people get their multicast peering up :)

Re:Grammar Nazi.

[iamdrscience]

It's not a decision I made, it's the way things are. Look it up in the dictionary. The fact that some people don't use it like this doesn't automatically make it correct. Yes, languages evolve, but at this point it's not a verb and using it as one is very awkward.

Re:Being a pommy ex-pat

[martinX]

If English pr0n is anything like English cooking, no thanks.

An Aussie in Oz.

Not available in the US.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do I see a pattern here?

Streaming internet video,
---not available in the US.

Free-to-Air DVB satellite
---not available in the US

Cheap Broadband
---not available in the US

DMCA chip free inkjet cartridges
---not available in the US

Region code free DVD players
---not available in the US

Looks like Asia and Europe are quickly becoming the new lands of the free. Funny how all we hear about in the US is how oppressive it is outside our heavily guarded borders.

Re:Not available in the US.

[AnotherFreakboy]

Reminds me of the Empire from Interesting Times, by Terry Pratchett.

They built a big wall around their empire, even along the ocean shores, and told everyone on the inside that it was for their protection, and that they would surely be killed by ravening hoards of barbarians if ever they left the safety of the wall.

In the end, the Empire had done such a good job of brainwashing its citizens, that no-one bothered to question the continuing need for the wall.

Of course the hoardes had never existed to begin with. The wall had always been about stopping the citizens from considering the possibility of leaving the Empire.

Re:Not available in the US.

[cujo_1111]

On the opposite:

iTunes Music Store
-- Only available in the US

Can't think of much else though...

Re:Not available in the US.

[Fred Or Alive]

iTunes Music Store has been availible in the UK, France and Germany for bit now.

In Europe we generally seem to get video games last (or never) as well though.

Re:Not available in the US.

[hcdejong]

Europe "the land of the free"?

- We're getting our own version of the DMCA.

- HDTV? What's that?

- Electronics cost 30-50% more than in the US.

- TiVo? No chance, due to noncooperation from TV stations (who abuse copyright to protect revenues from selling programming information).

Let's face it, we're all in the same boat.

Re:Not available in the US.

[Jack Porter]

In Europe we generally seem to get video games last (or never) as well though

For console games that's generally because doing a PAL conversion of an NTSC game is a non-trivial undertaking. On PS2, the PAL framebuffer is higher resolution so it needs more GS memory, and the framerate is different which causes many subtle issues, eg control feeling.

Re:Not available in the US.

[munro]

That's just what it's like when you get media from other countries. You find out that sometimes the best X is somewhere else. We in small countries are quite aware that occasionally the best X is in our own country; but more often than not the best X is in Norway, or Switzerland, or the USA, or somewhere else.

Welcome to the world.

Re:Not available in the US.

[Lost Dragon]

Norway? Pfft. More like Snoreway! o/` only in Kenyaaaaa o/`

Re:Not available in the US.

[shepd]

>Streaming internet video,
>---not available in the US.

It's actually ironic, considering that for the longest time, the UK had such a screwed up set of laws enacted for the benefit of BT (*) that the idea of streaming *anything* took far longer to materialize in the UK than many other places.

>Free-to-Air DVB satellite
>---not available in the US

There's plenty available in the US. Here's a few popular DVB satellites (yellow = FTA DVB signal):

Intelsat Americas 5 (was: Telstar 5)
Galaxy 11
Galaxy 10R
AMC 3
AMC 4
AMC 1
Satmex 5
Intelsat Americas 7 (was: Telstar 7)
There's more, but that should do. :)

It's just that there's nothing particularly *interesting* to most people there. Now, if you happen to speak arabic or spanish, you're in luck.

As far as pay DVB goes, you'd be surprised to hear it, but DishNetwork is a DVB system (although they hate to admit it). Point a dish at it and hook up a DVB receiver and you can download a list of channels, and watch the unencrypted ones (not many).

>Cheap Broadband
>---not available in the US

I hear of all sorts of deals. That being said, you have to expect a small (by area) country like the UK to be able to better provide cheaper internet to its citizens. They're so close together, wiring things is dirt cheap.

>DMCA chip free inkjet cartridges
>---not available in the US

LOL :-) Also not available in a lot of other countries. Well, there's no DMCA, but the chip is still there.

>Region code free DVD players
>---not available in the US

That's a case of supply and demand. I'm in Canada and I'd offer them in my store, but there's about zero interest in them. I sell specialty products like what you've mentioned (Ex: DVB satellite systems), and if there were more than a couple of hundred people in Canada that *REALLY* wanted a region-free DVD player, *and* didn't want to go to the hassle of DIYing one, I'd have heard about it by now, and I'd be selling them [nothing beats Value Add services for good profit margins].

That being said, oddly enough, I *have* had people come to my store with PAL games they want to play on NTSC PS2s, and PAL PS2s that they want to play NTSC games.

Re:Not available in the US.

[Des Herriott]

Are you referring to the UK & USA-backed dictator of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov?

Re:Not available in the US.

[Dogers]

most decent TV's can now do PAL-60 though.. 60Hz of solid lovely pictureness, mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Re:Not available in the US.

[lucas teh geek]

in the past this was true, but for xbox at least it rarely is the case any more. take a chipped xbox and set it to PAL mode, insert ntsc disc and voila! pal output from an ntsc game. only time things get messy is FMV since its not being rendered on the fly

Re:Not available in the US.

[don.g]

> > Region code free DVD players
> > ---not available in the US

> That's a case of supply and demand. I'm in Canada
> and I'd offer them in my store, but there's about
> zero interest in them

Of course, here in New Zealand, it's difficult to find region-locked DVD players. And the ones you do find come with instructions to un-region-lock them :-)

Re:Not available in the US.

[mgcarley]

Heavily guarded borders, you say? What about the coast of the State of (Oregon?) - According to Fareinheit 911/Michael Moore, there is all of 1 (one) troopers guarding ~100mi of Pacific coastline.

Heavily guarded my ass.

Re:Being a pommy ex-pat

[AnotherFreakboy]

Don't knock English cooking.

What not to like about a lump of overcooked meat sitting in slowly congealing puddles of its own fat?

Can't remember the original source, feel free to chime in.

Uhh, what about the British taxpayer?

[mosel-saar-ruwer]

In the age of the internet dividing rights up based on geographical regions makes little sense (if any).

In the age of the great Brusselian monolith devouring [formerly] free and independent states, I know it ain't exactly the fashionable point to make, but that BBC thang is [at least ostensibly] owned by [and operated for the pleasure of] the tax-paying British citizenry.

If they don't want us to see it, well, they're the ones paying fer it.

Re:Uhh, what about the British taxpayer?

[AnotherFreakboy]

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?

Re:Uhh, what about the British taxpayer?

[rokzy]

yeah right as if Canadian and Brazilian TV could even approach the levels of British TV.

no offense but that's like saying America and Mexico both pay for police so the best-trained American SWAT team should be available to go rescue Mexican cats that are stuck up trees.

Re:Uhh, what about the British taxpayer?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they don't want us to see it, well, they're the ones paying fer it.

I don't think many of us mind really - the BBC has always had an additional duty: to spread awareness of Britain, British viewpoints and British interests abroad. The whole BBC online thing does this excellently IMO.

Re:Uhh, what about the British taxpayer?

[mkosmul]

> 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.

leapfrog

[Doc Ruby]

For centuries Americans have laughed at "backwards" Europeans, so bogged down in the trap of monarchy that they couldn't even keep up with American innovations. Halfway along, Americans invented the corporation, an innovation as convenient in managing people in our economy as it is constraining. Are Americans doomed to watch Europeans move past us, working past our corporatism, building on its successes for new heights of human achievement, as we surpassed our monarchial predecessors?

Re:leapfrog

[dave420]

Backwards Europeans? Europe started the industrial revolution, and was responsible for the first cars, powered flight, iron ships, iron bridges, steam engines, typewriters, trains, radio, light bulb, tv, phone, computers and about a million other things. I'm not saying America hasn't invented its fair share, too, but please don't call Europe backwards. Without Europe, you'd be sitting in the dark scribbling your posts to slashdot on a post-it note ;)

Anyway, I agree with you fully. America is too bogged down with the idea that whatever America does is cool, which is silly, as it's hurting the country.

Re:leapfrog

[BenjyD]

Halfway along, Americans invented the corporation,

I think the Europeans had a headstart in money-grabbing corporations too - the East India Company (incorporated in 1600) had a monopoly on British-India 'relations' for 250 years.

Re:leapfrog

[Doc Ruby]

Without Europe, I'd be in North Africa, communicating with South America by some kind of boat/telegram. All of those inventions you mentioned, though started in Europe, were accelerated and democratized within the global American system. Without America in the mix, only the richest, most noble Europeans would use them. So their innovation, and multiplying interaction, would never have happened, at least not nearly quickly enough to produce the effect they have.

But the result has been kind of a solution worse than the problem. We're stuck with technology that destroys our environment and our character. While trapping us in the political/economic system that produced us, keeping us from moving on to something more sustainable. Hopefully Europe can at least influence us with style, moving itself towards a better system, that America can once again compete with effectively, getting brought along.

Re:leapfrog

[Doc Ruby]

Those English "companies" were prototypes for American corporations. But they were controlled by the Crown, so they were centrally planned. And they weren't artificial people, with full rights, but limited liabilities for their directors and owners. American corporations were an evolution, but, like Homo Sapiens, quickly competed so effectively with competing species of businesses in their economic environment that the rest were either extinct, or hiding in a niche.

Re:Grammar Nazi.

[drinkypoo]

Trial: Middle English triall, a testing, from Anglo-Norman trial, from trier, to sort, try.

In other words, trial is what you call it when you try. Verbing trial is redundant and unnecessary.

damn

[Sv-Manowar]

another case of the bbc spending money in areas it doesnt need to when desperate funding is needed to keep anyone watching their television channels

The mbone was doing this about ten years ago

[mrob2002]

It might not be exactly ten years ago, but I remember getting very excited in around 1995/1996 when the mbone was in use, which was a trial multicasting network that allowed me to watch live Nasa TV coverage of Shuttle launches and missions.

That was video streaming from the US to around the world, and worked pretty well, and was free too.

If this goes further, it will be interesting to see how it could be combined with a Tivo-like device to make the concept of channels obsolete, as you should be able to record multiple streams at the same time, making program clashes a thing of the past.

Re:Grammar Nazi.

[UserGoogol]

Verbing is a perfectly acceptable linguistic practice in English. here's this page on the matter I found via a quick Googling.

The only problem is that the newly verbed word may often sound awkward or pretentious, and it's not at all Formal English. But Slashdot editors aren't exactly known for their linguistic fortitude.

Top Gear

[Clueless_Medic]

Look on Suprnova for torrents of the Top Gear episodes, regulary uploaded.

Re:Top Gear

[Osty]

Look on Suprnova for torrents of the Top Gear episodes, regulary uploaded.

I did, but Suprnova is for-pay. While there's nothing wrong with that (though it does seem a bit suspect, since they appear to offer more than just videos of TV shows, such as games and other apps. $29.95 for a lifetime subscription to warez?), I'm not going to pay for that. I checked out UKNova from another poster, which is free, and they have a few torrents to recent Top Gear episodes. It'd be nice to have access to the Top Gear archives, but if I'm going to pay for that I'd rather pay BBC directly (because I'm sure Suprnova doesn't pay BBC).

Maybe BBC America will eventually wise up and bring over Top Gear, too. It doesn't matter that they review a number of cars that will never be available in the US (the show Fifth Gear does that as well, yet Speed TV carries the program). The reviews are highly entertaining (so much better than anything we get here from shows like Autoweek and such), and they actually run many of the cars on a race track and compare times against others they've reviewed.

Re:Top Gear

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong Suprnova. suprnova.org is the real (free) one. The perils of websquatters when what your doing in the first place is (probably, somewhere) illegal.

Re:Top Gear

[RichardX]

No! No! No! No! No!
*thwack*
Supernova.com is a scam! (as is suprnova.net)
What you seek is on suprnova.org

Re:Top Gear

[Osty]

Thank you very much. Clueless Medic didn't have a link, and perhaps I'm a little naive to think that "whatever".com would be valid :). The scammers on suprnova.com are pretty slick, copying most of .org's site design. Apparenlty they've scammed quite a few folks, because they show up as the number 4 hit on google (1 and 3 are the right site, 2 is a .tk site that doesn't have anything on it). I should've googled first, and gotten the right site initially.

See, if BBC America would just bring Top Gear State-side, we wouldn't have this problem, would we? :).

Where else can I see if multicast works?

[Air-conditioned cowh]

Yes I could Google for it but I have to rush off to work in a minute.

The BBC streams don't work for me. I am in the UK but I don't think my ISP (E7even) has an agreement with the BBC yet.

Are there any other multicast streams out there that I could tune into using Real Player 10 (like the BBC ones) for me to see if multicast works where I am?

What stops multicast working? Is it the ISPs just not bothering to implement it? Would my wiresless ADSL router block multicast?

If so I hope the BBC really make a service out of this because this will hopefully it will go some way to convincing ISPs, router manufactures etc to start making there services multicast-ready (assuming they're not, and I don't know this yet).

Re:Where else can I see if multicast works?

[FireFury03]

AFAIK the internet at large has no support for multicast at the moment, which is why your ISP needs peering with the beeb for it to work. So if the ISP's routers aren't set up to do multicast and they don't ahve peering with a multicast content provider then you won't be doing multicast any time soon.

Re:Where else can I see if multicast works?

[jmilne]

Not quite true. Many of the larger players support multicast (Sprint, Level3, Verio, etc.). The big problem is that very few of the smaller guys, the ones that actually connect up people's homes, support multicast. AOL, MSN, and Earthlink certainly don't. You might get lucky and have a clueful person running the local cable modem network (DOCSIS 1.0 and later all support multicast!), and it certainly works for DSL as well, although my own provider doesn't even know what I'm talking about when I call them up monthly about getting it.

Re:Where else can I see if multicast works?

[creamandchives]

Multicast is very uncommonly supported in the Internet/ISP world at the moment, mainly because most ISPs would not see a need for it. However, as video on broadband grows and gets serious, multicast is the only efficient and cost effective way of delivering it to many people. So once the isp's start to realise this and find a use for it (ie broadcasting their own video content and charging for it) will we see it in common place. Of course all the intermediate routers in the internet must be allowed to either tunnel or replicate the traffic (DVMRP is probably the most common multicast routing protocol). Also, IGMP which is the protocol used for requesting multicast streams, although in its 3rd iteration, is far from secure or reliable - and the bigger problem is, most network equipment, especially in the access leg of broadband (ie: DSL) only supports version 2 of IGMP, and although compatability is kinda built in - in practice its difficult to get workingi across all platforms, all modems, etc reliably.

Trust me, its hard, its part of my job.

Re:Grammar Nazi.

[iamdrscience]

The problem is that there's already a verb, the word try! When you try something it's a trial. There's no need to "verb" a noun when the noun is already derived from a verb!

Re:Grammar Nazi.

[meringuoid]

Except, of course, that using 'trial' as a verb sounds ugly, ignorant and barbaric.

There's worse, though; every time I hear some fucking PHB say 'action' when they mean 'do' it's like fingernails on a blackboard.

Re:leapfrog - Hang on....

[Air-conditioned cowh]

What does BBC stand for.

British ---- Broadcasting ----- Corpor..... uh oh!

OED disagrees

[DarkMan]

The Oxford English dictionary list trial as a varb, and cites the word in use in 1981. Thus, it's been a verb longer than this web site has existed.

Oh, and "Period." is not a sentance. It's missing a verb. Unless your verbing [0] period, in which case there's a whole mess involving objects and subjects that you've missed out, assuming you're sticking to formal rules of grammar.

Alas, much as I would have liked OED not to list period as a verb, it's cited from back in 1595.

Oh, and for those who are interested, verb has been verbed for a while. The earlist citatation is 1936, from a poem, thus:

1936 F. CLUNE Roaming round Darling vii. 62 The Poet accused me of verbing a noun, but I soon fixed him. I threatened to noun a verb

which seemed oddly appropriate, and a bit of a special case. After that the first verbing of verb was 1978.

[0] Do excuse. I verbed verb there.

finally makes Real Video look good.

[martin]

used is last night - 225kbs and it make the video stream look very nice - almost TV like. Unlike the normal 90kb or so I normally get which looks like one of those video phones TV journo's use today.

More people need to get this stuff going, it will really help people adopt high bandwidth connections.

Of course if they streamed in MP4 it would be nicer :-), but this sort of connection stream (>200kbs) really looks nice.

Radio only

[hughk]

The BBC does ro at least did receive some support from the Foreign Office for the BBC World Service (not BBC World, which is commercially funded). This is just Radio and available around much of the world and translated into many languages.

The US is a monarchy

[joss]

What's the name of a politcal system where the main qualification of the head of state is that he is the son of the previous head of state ?

Re:The US is a monarchy

[Doc Ruby]

No, we've got plutocracy. Bush Jr lost the election. He was selected by the Supreme Court not for his relation to a previous president, but for his connection to a powerful (Republican) political party. He was picked by that party for his name, and family connection to a still-powerful politician/businessman (Bush Sr of the Carlyle Group). That's government by a small rich group of people, grafted onto democracy. England, for example, has monarchy grafted onto democracy. They're similar under the hood, but the US is weirder in the driver's seat.

BBC Advantage?

[arclightfire]

The BBC do seem to be at an advantage, being publicly funded (via the license fee) they can push things that other media companies probably would not want to spend the cash on - this is one example, and the move towards file-sharing the content, see wired.com.

Re:Grammar Nazi.

[dave420]

"Normalcy" and "agreeance" are two Americanisms that I'm becoming more and more annoyed with. "Normality" and "agreement" aren't too scary, are they? :)

Not particularly happy....

[Psychotext]

You see... due to the unique way the BBC is funded (In other words rip off everyone in the UK who owns anything with a tuner in it) this means that us licence paying Brits are paying for this (Admittedly cool) technology to be provided to everyone. Screw that... you want access to it abroad? Pay. As far as I'm concerned, you shouldn't have access to anything the BBC does until you've entered your TV licence number (Yeah, I know that's not feasible). Grrr! Sorry, I know this is a rant, but this is the company that will happily jail people AND fine them heavily for not having a licence.

The money, of course goes into massive director wages as usual and providing "dubious" programming for the masses (and now, not just for the UK masses).

The BBC are not as benevolent as people like to make out.

Re:Not particularly happy....

[TeknoHog]

You see... due to the unique way the BBC is funded (In other words rip off everyone in the UK who owns anything with a tuner in it) this means that us licence paying Brits are paying for this (Admittedly cool) technology to be provided to everyone. Screw that... you want access to it abroad? Pay.

What about the Britons who don't own tuners and thus don't pay any licences?

I remember returning TV licencing forms when I lived there a few years ago. I never paid a penny as I didn't have a TV set.

Re:Not particularly happy....

[joss]

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.

Re:Not particularly happy....

[akb]

The added cost of making BBC programming available to the world online is relatively low compared to the cost of producing that programming in the first place. Using multicast there is no added cost.

I live in the US, BBC News is far superior to any broadcast news on international issues available here. Indeed it is virtually impossible to get any international news not on the subject of the US blowing something up. I would gladly contribute financially to the BBC.

Re:Not particularly happy....

[Psychotext]

I completely agree with you. The BBC has excellent news services. My rant mainly comes on that back of the BBC also announcing that they will soon be making their back catalog available online too.

The point is, yes - Once produced, there is no real cost in further broadcasting it (Short of the technology they are creating to do it), but it's like software - sure, it can be distributed for free... but someone has to pay (In terms of cash or time) for it to be made in the first place. I'm just not sure I like being forced into spending money on something that others will get for free. No, I don't like taxes much either. ;)

Re:Not particularly happy....

[akb]

You mean you would not share even if it cost you nothing, for the sole reason of not sharing?

I can't say I much care for the view of the world in which every information exchange requires a monetary exchange. Everyone receives tons of information that someone else paid for at no charge. We would all be incalculably poorer if this was not the case.

The BBC's decision to put its archives online will make the British people richer. Not restricting it to only British people will also make the world richer, which in turn makes the British richer. I hope other countries follow this lead by making their publicly supported media available to the whole world as well.

Re:Not particularly happy....

[Psychotext]

I would not be happy with sharing in this case (for free) simply because the BBC seems to value their income highly enough to feel the need to fine people living on the breadline into oblivion for nothing more than wanting to watch TV (Irrespective or not of if they want to make use of the BBC). This stands also for anyone who uses a TV for DVD / Console purposes. In the UK, we must register our address when we buy anything with a tuner in it - Then not long after we would generally get the nasty "BUY A TV LICENCE OR FACE THE CONSEQUENCES" letter. These are the people that decide that the blind should still pay 50% of the normal cost for a licence! They also like to charge students in shared houses per lockable room (With TV) rather than one licence for the entire house. They are nice like that.

The only way around it (Unless you are over 75) is to take the tuner out of your TV!

I'm all for sharing as a rule, but in this case, they are giving away free what they would happily hunt down people who will not pay for it. My beef here is with the BBC and the way they aggressively pursue licensing fees only to waste them later on worthless projects.

If it's done by IP a simple UK based proxy

[dnixon112]

will fool the system.

The BBC charter.

[Moderation abuser]

You should read it BTW, it's a right laugh.

The very first object of the charter of the BBC is:

"To provide, as public services, sound and television broadcasting services (whether by analogue or digital means) and to provide sound and television programmes of information, education and entertainment for general reception in Our United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man and the territorial waters thereof, and on board ships and aircraft (such services being hereinafter referred to as "the Home Services") and for reception elsewhere within the Commonwealth and in other countries and places overseas (such services being hereinafter referred to as "the World Service") the Home Services and the World Service together being hereinafter referred to as "the Public Services"."

Anyway. Knowledge is power. By distributing knowledge and information you empower people making the world a better place and if it's a better place then it's a better place for British people as well.

Re:The BBC charter.

[bongomanaic]

The BBC World Service is funded directly by the UK government and not by the licence fee, and its aims are somewhat different:

To be the world's best-known and most-respected voice in international broadcasting, thereby bringing benefit to Britain.

To be the world's first choice among international broadcasters for authoritative and impartial news and information, trusted for its accuracy, editorial independence and expertise.

Providing a forum for the exchange of ideas across cultural, linguistic and national boundaries.

To be a global hub for high-quality information and communication.

Promoting the English language, learning and interest in a modern, contemporary Britain.

Offering a showcase for British talent across the world.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/us/annual_review /2003/index.shtml

The BBC World service competes with other international broadcasters (e.g. Voice of America) and not with domestic broadcasters overseas. The whole World Service budget wouldn't pay for the cost of rights to broadcast live TV coverage of the Olympics globally.

Presumably US broadcasters have paid for broadcast rights in the US. If the service is crap well, that capitalism for you -- maybe US residents should donate money to public service broadcasters to provide a better service in future.

Evil Corporatism stifles quality of American life

[Cryofan]

Yep, Europeans (and to some degree Canadians and Australians) have a better quality of life right now than most Americans.

If you go to Europe or read about it, you will read about their relaxed lifestyle. How do they do it? Well, they can afford to relax--they have a strong social safety net. THey have universal healthcare, funded by taxes (although Britain is less strong in that regard than most other western european nations). THey have longterm unemployment (years worth) and welfare is available not just to single mothers, but also to ablebodied males).
And if they need medical care, they just go get it, even if they are broke...it is paid for by taxation.

And for most people, taxes there are not that much higher than taxes here, unless you are rich. And if you are rich, you will be taxed more there than here....

Discworld

[pommiekiwifruit]

Discworld Convention 2004 starts tommorow. Are you going? :-)

Re:Discworld

[AnotherFreakboy]

Is it in Canberra? (Don't answer that)

Top Gear?!

[jrwillis]

Does this mean I can get my weekly dose of Top Gear without have to load up the old Bit Torrent client? WOOHOO!

Only problem is...

[NoMercy]

To watch BBC Content online means using Realplayer :(

Outside UK access

[jjr23]

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!)

Re:Outside UK access

[Frobisher]

Agreed. Another Brit in the USA who would KILL to get access to the real BBC. I have the broadband news service too, but you're right, the content is slow to change. If they could get in online before Eccleston steps out of the TARDIS I'll be WELL happy....

Channel4 Real broadband streaming

[Scorchio]

Channel 4, for the non-UK types, is a terrestrial broadcast UK tv station, which although has had it's low points, actually has a lot of good quality original shows and documentaries. If I had to choose between the BBC and C4, I'd probably go for the latter. As it happens, I have to choose the latter, as only C4 make some of their programmes available for streaming over the internet.

C4 uses Real for their streaming. I signed up from the US and paid the 5UKP monthly fee. When I tried to view the streams, I was told that they were only available to UK residents. I simply changed my location setting in the account details to say UK, added a UK postcode, then I was able to view the streams without problem. The Texas billing address didn't seem to phase it. It's sad that I have to use this underhand tactic to get at what I'm happily paying for. They could probably make a lot more money if they loosened these artificial restrictions a bit.

Best to be in Ireland

[zoney_ie]

Ah yes, free BBC (off-air or from Satellite) and four other channels to boot too (RTÉ1/2, TV3 (ITV Ireland), TG4).

Interestingly, in Ireland, you can get BBC from satellite with no subscription, but not RTÉ. Our state broadcaster signed up with Sky. Oh, and Granada have been blocking UTV/ITV free-to-air what with TV3 being what us Irish are supposed watch. In fact, with an Irish Sky subscription, one doesn't get UTV either (but you do get C4). Apart from that, Ireland gets a very nice deal with the Sky subscription. Everything the UK gets (minus UTV), plus the 4 domestic Irish stations.

Every time my mother in law visits

[way2trivial]

She watches tv2.hu and markiza.sk
hungarian and slovakian televison, fulls screen, for hours at a time..

did I mention she usually spends two months visiting? I don't understand why this is such a big deal, unless it's because it's english language programming..
BTW, I highly reccomend markiza at their 'late hours' they show a lot of full nude porn, that locally is available around 6pm eastern

Re:leapfrog - Hang on....

[Doc Ruby]

Exactly my point. It's a corporation, but it's supported by mandatory TV taxes. It's controlled by the government, but it's got enough autonomy that it's more respected for news than the private, corporate tabloid newspapers. Post-capitalist socialist corporation.

Kind of like the movie

[mgcarley]

Kind of like the movie "The Village"... isn't that one of the ones where a bunch of people aren't allowed out "in the interest of their safety"?

Infowars has a great thing on US Govt VS It's citizens in the form of "911: the road to tyranny"