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BBC to Trial Worldwide Multicast Streaming?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the please-yes-please dept.

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.

8 of 259 comments (clear)

  1. In the age of the internet... by AnotherFreakboy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In the age of the internet dividing rights up based on geographical regions makes little sense (if any). A more interesting idea, and potentially a big money earner would be to divide rights up based on target demographics. Not sure how well this could be done in practice, but I freel the idea has potential.

    --
    Why not get the real ultimate power?
    1. Re:In the age of the internet... by John+Seminal · · Score: 5, Interesting
      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.

      --

      Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."

  2. Oooh... by iamdrscience · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  3. huh? by John+Seminal · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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?

    --

    Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."

  4. Re:non U.K. citizens? by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wish we had one world.

    We do. Don't fuck it up.

  5. Re: WTF is multicast?!?!? by mcrbids · · Score: 5, Informative

    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...

    --
    I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
  6. Not available in the US. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. Re:Out of curiosity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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