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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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.

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.

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:non U.K. citizens?

[YrWrstNtmr]

Wish we had one world.

We do. Don't fuck it up.

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...

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: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.

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.

[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: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.

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: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

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.