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BBC Trial of TV Show Download Service
Little Hamster writes "Five thousand households with broadband access has been selected for a trial of the BBC's new interactive Media Player. The trial will run from September to December, and users can 'time shift' and download selected BBC TV shows, radio programmes, regional programming and feature films. After seven days, the content will be automatically deleted from the user's computers. BBC will use this trial to iron out any outstanding rights issues and resolve teething difficulties with the technology ahead of a full launch next year." The BBC Press Office has a release about this as well.
Anyone wanna bet it'll be Windows only.
Guess i'll probably end up sticking to bittorrent.
yes, you don't get a free TiVo with a UK tv license
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
TiVo I believe you can only record shows that were on and watch them later, or am I missing something?
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But with that headline, i first thought it was refering to a lawsuit. Trial and Music in the same headline, and it's not a lawsuit?! Expect a letter from the RIAA soon, guys!
A computer makes it possible to do, in half an hour, tasks which were completely unnecessary to do before.
If the BBC essentially runs a public domain service anyway, why are the shows deleted after seven days?
I don't think it's that simple. For one, I believe that BBC doesn't own all the shows they broadcast. (Although they do own quite a few.) As such, they are licensed to provide public distribution of the shows, but are not necessary able to just give them away. This would seem to be backed by the article's mention of Hollywood and independent studios.
In addition, it also mentions that the acting unions are "acting up"^H^H balking at the idea of Internet distribution. They don't give any details, but my guess is that actors are concerned that rampant piracy would result in lower wages and fewer acting jobs. It's probably pretty hard to convince them that if given a good for-pay alternative, the majority of people will use the convenient pay service. (The only reason why Napster ever appeared was that the music industry failed to respond to market pressures. What did they THINK was going to happen?)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I've had a decent idea for legal TV distribution online in my journal for a while now. Most of the posts I see so far about this BBC service are negative. Finally a media outlet is trying to embrace technology instead of calling their lawyers every 5 minutes, and all people can do is complain. Downloadable shows will probably never be free without the show including some form of DRM or advertising... get used to it. I'd much rather have DRM or ads than no downloadable shows at all.
If you don't want the DRM or ads, get a Tivo or TV capture card and skip the commercials or edit them out.
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If they didn't delete content, people's computers would crash. You seem to forget we're talking about the public here...
I often read Americans saying they had to turn on subtitles to understand parts of The Office. As an English person I've always wanted to know which parts/characters Americans find hard to understand. Or is it just the slang terms used?
From an English person's point of view, the accents are fairly standard mid-England/London accents. But then, having driven round rural Georgia, I know we are two countries divided by a common language.
Where have you been?
The UK TV licence fee is regularly moaned about on Slashdot!
For info:
In the UK you need to have a licence for each address which has a TV receiver (you can have dozens of sets in the same house and one licence if you want*)
FWIW I'm happy to pay it for TV free from adverts disrupting the shows and with greater freedom to express ideas without worrying about business withdrawing advertising revenue. And don't worry about the 'tax' aspects meaning state direction - the Beeb regularly clashes with the government of the day - as both main parties seem to complain about it, it must be reasonably neutral. (BTW I have no connection with the BBC)
Others may dislike the licence on philosophical / political / dogmatic grounds (esp if they like watching the commercial channels more) - I accept that I have to subsidise, through higher prices, the advertising 'industry' and through them the other channels.
* actually there are some restrictions (eg multiple independent occupancy of a house split into flats) but the principle holds for most cases
"the BBC is supported by advertising and (are you sitting down?) a yearly television tax."
Nope, just a yearly TV tax, no advertising.
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