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."

Comments

Codecs

[XanC]

Maybe your mplayer plays them fine. My 64-bit mplayer's offerings are a bit more basic.

Let's get some open codecs!

Getting money the right way

[aussie_a]

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 :)).

"They don't get it"

[Dancin_Santa]

They are trying to sell ice to Eskimos! Sand to scorpions! Dentistry to Britons!

Well, that last one doesn't really fit the theme of what I was getting at. Which was: You can't sell something to someone who can get it for themselves for free.

Re:"They don't get it"

[sp3tt]

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.

Re:"They don't get it"

[Troed]

You can't sell something to someone who can get it for themselves for free.

Of course you can. I'd very much like to go to one central place for music, movie and tv-series downloads where I know the quality of the content and that I indeed support the ones producing it. I'll happily pay for such a service.

Not everyone here on Slashdot is 14 and thinks free downloads are cool.

Re:"They don't get it"

[sp3tt]

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.

Re:"They don't get it"

[drsmithy]

Why oh why can't you idiots understand that there is a FREE MARKET [...]

Anything involving copyright isn't a free market, it's a government-granted monopoly. That's what copyright *is*.

[...] and that the market has CLEARLY AND UNEQUIVOCALLY said that the work done by middlemen, such as distribution companies, advertising and marketing firms, etc IS VALUABLE

Actually the "free market" is currently demonstrating that the role of those "middlemen" has become obselete. The fact that it's doing this *in the face of* blatant law-buying by those who are being obseleted, draconian laws and ridiculously excessive punishments just makes it all the more obvious.

Why oh why can't you pro piracy liars [...]

I'm not pro-piracy, I'm anti-"intellectual property".

[...] finally just grasp the simple economic reality that it is neither a common nor easy nor cheap task to take my bathroom hummings and turn them into a product?

Actually it is fairly cheap - and it's very quickly getting cheaper. That's why those "middlemen" have become obselete.

Re:"They don't get it"

[asliarun]

I agree with you that the author's/director's cut is an economic deal, and should be treated as such.

However, that doesn't change the fact that the whole creative business has been perverted to such an extent that the laws of economics no longer prevail. We currently live in such an artificial world that we've forgotten the real value of something. This is aided by the fact that a painting sells for tens of millions of dollars, a music album sells for over $20, and a 30 minute TV episode sometimes contains 15 minutes of commercials.

The way things currently are, these creative works are priced as high as a customer can bear. Forget about economics or supply/demand for a second and answer this. How much is something really worth? For a manufactured product, the answer is fairly simple. Take the manufacturing cost (plus R&D cost), add a 10-50% margin, and you'll get a fair value for a product. Economics only kicks in when you want to figure out the exact margin, based on competition or lack of it.

The price for a creative work can be determined similarly as well. The only difference is that the R&D cost in the above example is substituted with the royalty that the creator should get. I don't pretend to be an expert, but my rough calculation tells me that the current prices of books, audio CDs, movies, and paintings are a complete perversion of the above calculation. $20 for a audio CD cannot be justified by ANY real means, especially considering the fact that the same creative work was priced 1/4 a few years ago.

This is my objection to the current system. Barring that, issues like the monopoly of distributors or authors getting a raw deal are just by-products of this screwed up system.

Buffering...

[Arcady13]

The demo videos all play fine for about 20 seconds and then I get "buffering..."

same here, on PowerPC

[r00t]

Linux runs on Macs too.

Plus, being able to fix bugs is addicting. I know that I never need to seriously worry that my Open Source software will break if I change platforms, upgrade my OS, or whatever. I can always find or make a fix, because I have the source. Support doesn't end with an uncaring or bankrupt vendor.

Say, is it even legal to use those Windows DLL files and such?

NRL

[POds]

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.

Hey

[chiapetofborg]

Where is Star Trek Enterprise, I can't find it anywhere on their site

Good quality

[jg_elliott]

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?

Re:Good quality

[PhillC]

There's BBC Motion Gallery. Here you can view and download watermarked preview files of BBC archive content. This site is primarily aimed at commercial stock footage buyers.

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.

Erm..

[Turn-X Alphonse]

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..

First?

[pshuke]

>>>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?

Re:5th gear!

[Anonymous Coward]

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".

Swedish public service TV does this too

[md8mart]

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.

Danish TV station already doing it

[donely]

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)

Re:5th gear!

[Dogers]

Except Top Gear is back, and has been for some time, on BBC2

Submission Bias

[Afty0r]

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).

Why does their choice of platform mean they "don't quite seem to get it"? This is fanatical raving - choosing a closed codec is a perfectly valid thing to do, and ensures at least casual copiers will not be able to pirate this material.

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."

What lack of response? Do we have any stats on how many people took up this offer versus their expectations, or is the submitters comment mired in biased speculation?

Channel 5 History

[t_allardyce]

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.

Re:Channel 5 History

[TobascoKid]

Oh and the program in question - Fifth Gear is a blaitent rip-off of the BBC program Top Gear without Jeromy Clarkson.

It's not a blatent rip off, it is Top Gear. When the BBC cancelled Top Gear five got most of the cast and crew of Top Gear involved in Fifth Gear. When the BBC realized thier mistake they they got Jeremy Clarkson back for a completely new show but with the Top Gear title.

Re:Channel 5 History

[g_attrill]

In areas of the country covering approx 12 million homes Channel 5 uses the frequency reserved for VCR aerial modulation. Channel 5 made test transmissions and placed press adverts with details about how to book a retuning technician, and when they ran behind schedule they had to send out thousands band-block filters instead.

This page explains it in detail.

Gareth

Say What?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

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?

BBC should make this available for free

[superskippy]

...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.

Re:BBC should make this available for free

[TobascoKid]

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.

Re:BBC should make this available for free

[JonnyCalcutta]

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.

We've got this in Iceland

[hugsa]

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

BBC archive background music problem

[evilandi]

jg_elliott: I read a while ago that the BBC... were going to open up their archives

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.

my 2c

[flatcat]

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.

Rant ahead...

[MoonBuggy]

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.