Slashdot Mirror
British TV Station Offers Downloads
Richard W.M. Jones writes "Remember how the British just love
to download TV?
Well, British terestrial TV channel
five
has announced that it will become the
first to offer TV programmes to download legally.
Except that they don't quite seem to
get it yet. They are
offering
here some videos from
this
car programme which apparently didn't quite make
it to air, for the princely sum of
£1.50 (about $3), in DRM'd WMV 10 format
(mplayer plays them fine).
Still, it's a start, and it looks
like they're just testing the water.
Hopefully they won't take the lack of
response as 'proof' that there's no
demand.
There's
more
about this at the BBC's website."
Let's get some open codecs!
The NRL is a premier sporting event in Australia, comparable to the AFL. We've beena ble to download the games once aired on national free to air and pay television. Recently telstra has taken away our right todownload them and are now only offering them to telstra customers. Certain a step backwards.
We can still download them, but only for a week or so.
Damn, i've used 'download' in the above, but i really should have used stream. Thats how this site came about.
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
The Canadian Recording Industry Association got a tariff imposed upon blank CD-Rs which goes to them.
They did this long before the RIAA even sued Napster.
Thiswould be nice if it was a decent channel, but it's just Channel 5, it's all Nazi documentries and soaps no other channel wants.. it might be a start but it's not going to do much good..
I like muppets.
>>>TV channel Five has said it will be the first UK broadcaster to offer parts of its shows for sale as legal downloads.
A norwegian channel, http://www.nrk.no/ (click on NRK NETT-TV, between the ads) , already does what this article advertizes, I belive.
- It allows for downloads of already-aired shows to the public, and for no cost too.
It should be noted, however, that NRK is a government ``owned" channel, and that one could say that this service is already paid for by our tax-money.
Still - it can hardly belive that this is the only TV-channel to do such a thing.
Is this really such a new thing?
maybe someone should tell them that some trannys have six gears, and maybe they'd respond that they're not going to fall for that spinal tap rouse
Hahaha. It's called "Fifth Gear" because it's on "Channel 5". Get it?
Once upon a time, there was a BBC show called "Top Gear". Then the main presenter or two left, and it stagnated for a bit. Then there was a new station called "Channel 5" and the whole "Top Gear" production team decamped to Channel 5 to make essentially the same show. Hence "Fifth Gear".
Except Top Gear is back, and has been for some time, on BBC2
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
There's also the BBC's Creative Archive, which is not yet launched.
iMP is just entering the second round of closed Beta testing I believe. It's not available for public Beta testing at this time.
I'd also recommend checking out some of the excellent historical footage on the British Pathe site. This archive is now represented by ITN.
Brought to you by the author of such childrens' classics as "Some Kittens can Fly!" and "All Dogs go to Hell."
To people outside the UK, channel 5 is basically a terrestrial channel in the format of a tacky trash newspaper, they made their debut in the late 90's however they were plagued with problems, in order to get a frequency all VCRs in the country had to be retuned by a technician (no idea don't ask), their signal was much weaker than other stations and was known for crap reception and they were the only terrestrial channel to stick a logo in the corner of their screen, they've improved a little since then but they're still 'that' channel in most peoples minds. If they had waited for a couple of years for digital terrestrial tv they could probably have saved a whole load of money but they would be watched even less than that crappy shopping channel. Oh and the program in question - Fifth Gear is a blaitent rip-off of the BBC program Top Gear without Jeromy Clarkson.
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We've actually been able to download shows and news for a few years here in Iceland, both from RUV (state owned), Stod 2 and Skjar 1, both not owned by the goverment.
And here are the proofs:
RUV online:
RUV
Stod 2 online:
Stod 2 (their web is really really bad..brace yourself)
Skjar 1 online:
Skjar 1
hugbunadur.is
But it's a Channel 5 programme - five (and the rest of the commercial broadcasters) don't get a penny of the licence fee. The BBC (and the licence fee) has absolutely nothing to do with this.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
Not to mention that a lot of 'BBC' DVDs and vidoes are actually put out for sale by the independant production companies that made them, and not the BBC itself.
UK - Pound Sterling, monetary value equivalent to 1.90 US Dollars... Not lb, poor cousin of base 10 weight systems.
:)
But yeah, a lb of marbles would do nicely!
People that believe in their opinions don't post AC.
There was an article in a Swedish newspaper some weeks ago. It was about a true garage band, they didn't have a record contract, hadn't advertised very much and so on. Yet when they went out on tour, people in Milano, Italy were waiting for them at the airport.
How did they achive this fame? They released their music on the internet, and soon it became very popular, spreading all over the world.
Good music sells, because if someone likes an album, he/she will tell his/her friends about it. Those friends will tell their friends about the album, and it will spread.
Now, imagine what this can do with the internet. Imagine if an album was "slashdotted". If a very popular website (more than 100,000 unique visitors/day) posted something about an album, and recommended it. That's practically free advertising for the album!
The point is, good music sells, shit does not.
Will this only benefit the mainstream artists, the ones which sell lots of records? No. Because of the very low costs of distribution over the internet, a small band without a contract can make their music available for millions of people at almost no cost! That was what the band in the story in the beginning of this comment did.
Meh, the only thing on TV from that side of the pond that I'd REALLY like to see is Top Gear. Best damned auto show ever. Long live The Stig!
Keep Austin Weird!
As someone with economics degrees coming out their arse, and someone who has studied the field now for over a decade, the original poster's analysis and understanding of (mythical) free market economics, supply and demand, market intervention and such like is embarassingly naive. These concepts are all vast simplifications (of underlying psychological and social principles of market economics) taught to first year students. Under any sort of close scrutiny they are quickly shown lacking (as highlighted by most papers in the last 20 years), and in numerous cases are simply incorrect.
Classic slashdot however.
IMHO, Fifth Gear is better than Top Gear. Top Gear seems gimmicky and laddish, while Fifth Gear focuses on doing interesting things with cars (and is, admittedly, a bit laddetteish). Fifth Gear also features many Top Gear alumni, while Top Gear seems obsessed with Jeremy Clarkson.
As for other quality programmes from the UK, there are many. You may want to see Doctor Who from BBC Wales ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/ ).
MPlayer still doesn't handle any kind of DRM (except pechaps for CSS on DVDs).
The poster most likely is confused.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
It's not legal to use MPlayer in the first place, so what's the difference?
MPlayer includes support for all manner of patent-protected audio/video codecs, and as such, is illegal.
If you're in a country where there are no software patents, it's a very different story.
Using the DLLs is a grey area, but I'm inclined to assume they would be legal if tested in a US court. They all come from freely downloadable programs (RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, Quicktime), and are being redistributed in an unmodified form. Using them with MPlayer or Xine is no doubt in violation of their EULA, but the enforcability of EULAs is questionable.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant