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."
Download company 7 Digital, which is providing the technology for the online shop, said TV companies were increasingly keen to earn money from the internet.
:)).
Good to see they aren't trying to get money from the web via lawsuits. Then again, this is a british company, not an American one (before you mod me flame-bait, the American *AA's have always been the first to do it in their industry. If I'm wrong, feel free to post a link
The demo videos all play fine for about 20 seconds and then I get "buffering..."
Fifth Gear is a spinoff, of sorts, of the BBC's very popular Top Gear, and is the best car review programme out there, by far.
It is on the air where I live, and there are torrents of this show online. However, it is a good start. Now only if we could get the rumored Season 5 of the BlackAdder series via downloads.
That's not true.
In fact, here in Sweden at least, many downloaders want to pay the author of the works they download. But they do not think the prices are reasonable, thus they download. And for a DVD which sold 200,000 copies, the director got 15,000SEK (less than 2,000 USD). Which is also a cause for downloading - not enough money goes to authors.
Right now, there is actually a discussion between a director and "pirates" on Sweden's largest pro-"piracy" website. What they have reached is the points described above.
The director has proposed to hold a seminar about the film industry's future and how it can use the internet. The seminar is currently being planned.
I think being able to download music for free is a great thing, but I'd love to pay the artists for it. But for a CD which costs $20, the artist gets maybe $1. If I could download music for a fee, if it was not protected with DRM, had good quality, and the money went straight to the artist (well, to the managers of the service and to the costs for the bandwidth too, but that is minor), and the price was reasonable, then I would do it.
And btw, I am 13.
I downloaded one of the free clips (3 mins long) and it's a whopping 896K/sec up to 1539kbps/sec VBR at 768 x 432 with 96kbps WM audio. Even if the content isn't that great, the quality is damn good. Considering they could have passed us off with some crappy res, little real media file, this is a fantastic offering.
Provided this isn't a total flop, hopefully it will lead the way for other networks to do the same which hopefully will lead to downloading whole programmes.
I thought I read a while ago that the BBC (and possibly Channel 4) were going to open up their archives for watching clips/programmes online. Anyone know what happened to that?
SVT open archive
They are still working on some IP-issues; hence no sound on most of the clips. SVT has some 200 000 hours in their archive, dating back to 1896, of which some 10 percent is digitized.
Internet Speed test
Danish television station, TV2, has been doing this for the past year or so. For rougly $80 a year, you can watch everything that TV2 has produced themselves. Works without a hitch. Requires a 2Mbit connection for full-screen watching. Tjek it out at http://sputnik.dk (in Danish, but you should be able to get the idea even though you don't speak Danish)
I will blog about your incompetence @ http://www.barelyadraft.com
Who said this programme never aired? It's my 2nd favorite car programme (After top gear) I've collected all seasons so far, and I know of many people (me included) who are willing to pay to download it legally. I don't think there will be any lack of demand... if only it were not DRMed wmv....
The following statement is true
The preceding statement is false
I have to reply to the poster..
.. I _buy_ things! .. Oh, this program was 600$? Well I buy that one, oh this movie was 30$, I want it? Yes I buy it.. now to the redthread, Im used to copy stuff right? Im used to pay for stuff (nowerdays) and therefor I would be happy to pay for downloads! .. Sweden got a wounderful service thats called sf-anytime, a movie download service where you pay a fee and you get to "rent" the moviestream for 24hours. After 24hours they cut you ability to stream the video... ..
When I was 14 I gladly copied games (the only thing you could copy back then) I still got a box of old sins. Im now grownup, Im used to "get what I want", and what do I do now when I got money?
I would just say, I want MORE OF THAT
I'm wondering if I'd want to pay for all 12 million episodes of 'The Bill' or 'EastEnders'
:-)
And if so, how much
I figure about a pound or so... (for all)
in DRM'd WMV 10 format (mplayer plays them fine)
Could anyone elaborate on this?
Last I heard, mplayer could not do DRM'd WM9 files.
Will it play high-def WM9 files with DRM too?
How about the ones with "phone-home" DRM?
How about the ones on a DVD-ROM like this WMV-HD Italian Job?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
If you want the artists to get the money from the music/films that you buy, just go to local shows/film festivals and buy the cds or dvds there, directly from the artists. They will get basically all of the profits from that kind of thing. You can also purchase cds or dvds from the artist websites sometimes. Unfortunately, very few musicians and writer/director/producer types sell their products electronically, and usually use the internet for advertising and wider distribution in order to get popular, not for making money. The already popular major label acts like Britney or Metallica are exceptions i'm sure, but i don't want their crappy music anyway (if you do, it's not difficult to obtain). Artists are likely always going to use outside services for distribution via the internet until it becomes a part of their technological repertoire to do secure sales via their own sites. The best thing to do about that is to send email, snail mail, telephone/text messages, etc., to the artists until they get it. If they don't, well, they may not be cut out to make it in that business.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: That averages about 660,000,000 of each kind.
...at least to UK citizens. Remebember the BBC is already paid for by the license fee (a tax by any other name), so all of the programs made by the BBC _already belong to us_. It makes me a bit sad that the shops are full of DVDs of BBC shows retailing for £20 a go, when license payers have already paid for this show's creation.
Yes you can, it's called the "Bottled Water" theory of marketing.
People can get it for free, but you offer them it for a small fee with some kind of added value (such as not having to worry about breaking the law). Real or imagined added value makes little difference.
I'd pay a subscription to have on-demand access to the british tv networks programming from my home in Italy (I'm English, but live in Italy with my Italian wife), and I'm sure many people would do the same even from their homes in England.
I was in the audience for this parliamentary seminar in February where Paula Le Dieu of the BBC Creative Archives Project spoke.
Apparently the biggest problem for the BBC is figuring out how to deal with the copyright problems of background music. Almost all BBC TV programmes have background music, and almost all of that music has been licenced for TV use only, not for download over the Internet.
Until that problem is resolved, there are very few programmes that can be released via the BBC Creative Archive.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
It should be offered as a download, not streaming. No one wants buffering issues when too many are trying to watch the video, I guess it could be used as a break to get something to eat/drink. And who wants to watch on a computer monitor when you have an AV room?
"Come on family, lets crowd around dad's desk to watch some telly on the 19" flat screen, we'll give the 60" HDTV and 7.1 a rest for the night."
Heck offer it as a commercial free download to Tivo or Replay, but don't time restrict it. Most already skip commercials anyway.
And lower the price, ~$3 for a 43 min show ( thats about all that is left after commercials are removed from an hr show ) is a little steep.
Since Fox binned My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss, they've been putting the unaired episodes up on their site every Friday.
The quality isn't the best, but it's a hilarious show, and it's always nice to see companies embracing technology.
The Gadget Show? Ugh. I watched a few episodes with interest since there was nothing similar on terrestrial TV, but it is the most non-technical, biased piece of crap I've ever seen. Half the time they spend the show emphasising one insignificant point of a product as the only reason to buy or avoid it.
Their 'review' of the PSP vs. DS was laughable; it basically said that the PSP is better (which I agree with), however their reasoning was based mainly on 'it looks nicer and costs more' and not much else. The Mac Mini review was, if anything, worse. The explained that it wasn't cheap because in their opinion it's useless if it isn't bundled with a £100 pair of speakers, a £350 copy of MS Office and a brand new LCD monitor and therefore you may as well go and buy an £800 Windows Laptop.
It wont catch on, the whole point people in britain are downloading TV shows (Especially from the US) is because they have to wait months if not a year before the shows appear over here in the UK, and then it might only be aied on sky or a straight to DVD release leaving everyone with "basic" TV another year to wait before it airs, the point of downloading TV shows already over here is pointless.
This has been changing because the US is now not always the first to get programmes. e.g. "Battlestar Galactica" shown in it's entirity on Sky 1 before any US broadcasts. Together with "Dr Who" which might well be available on DVD (possibly even R1 DVD depending how things work in Canada) before any US broadcast.
there's no need for you to characterize them as "immoral or moral." I mean, you can think that, but it adds nothing to your argument.
Look at it this way: the internet and other technologies now provide artists unprecedented ability to self-publish cheaply or freely. And yet great thousands of artists are still dying to sign on the bottom line to give a media company some giant percentage of their future earnings. Why? is it because the artists are stupid and clueless about the internet? in some small percentage, yes. but for the vast bulk of them, the answer is NO. they are simply looking out for their own PERSONAL best options... 10% of (a chance of) 1 million is a hell of a lot better, they figure, than 90% of (a chance of) $10000.
It's like this: if I have the one cabbage patch kid, then the price goes up for it due to supply and demand. right now, the artists want that one cabbage patch kid, which is the distribution, promotion, and organization that the companies provide. they do this, even though there are free alternative dolls out there! It's not rocket science - the companies provide a valuable resource that artists are willing to sign given terms to get.
You havent made any economic argument at all. You've said "sucks corporate cock." Tha's not an argument- that's junior highschool grade paranoiabullshit.
But that show is great!
... you get all the facts and figures, but have to read between the lines to figure out the real story.
It is on the air in the USA on the speed channel, and I watch it pretty religously.
It's pretty darned funny sometimes as the Brits don't pull any punches when describing cars.
American car programs and magazines seem a little bland when reviewing