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BBC Releases P2P TV Client Test
evildeed writes "The BBC's Internet Media Player trial started today, and a few thousand lucky UK citizens now have a copy. The good news? Legal P2P downloads of quality shows. The bad news? Requires IE and Windows Media Player, and it's probably going to be UK-only. Oh well. One of the lucky few has uploaded screenshots and a brief review." The service was first announced back in may.
I don't see how it can be considered P2P. You download the media off of the BBC's servers, not from your friends and neighbors.
In addition, the media files themselves are DRM-encumbered, so it wouldn't even make sense to have them on a P2P network when the files would 1) stop working after 7 days and 2) may not work on other machines.
Is this really P2P? If they are opening up the archives, why would they want to put DRM on the files?
It doesn't make sense.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Take a look at this page which details how to download the files:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/imp/tour/tour7.shtml
Maybe the files themselves are hosted on a P2P network and the BBC saves on bandwidth costs by offloading the files onto that network. But it doesn't seem very "P2Pish".
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Till the DRM gets cracked, it's bound to happen at some point, since apple's AAC DRM and the WMA v2 DRM (WMV as well?) have both had decryptors written.
I can certianly sympathize with you. I often wondered why we paid for the creation of the content but didn't have more rights to it. If you paid for anything else to be created you would naturally assume that you would own it at the end. Surely anyone who pays the licence fee should be able to give a copy of a show to anyone else who pays the fee (tax).
It doesn't bother me much any more though. I got rid of the TV 5 or 6 years ago and so have saved around £600 in license fees. I can't say I have missed it either. I have a decent sized DVD collection for those times when I really want to kick back and watch something. There have always been a few shows though that I have wanted to watch such as some of the nature pieces. They normally eventually come out on DVD but that's not quite the same. Hopefully this will mean I will be able to pick up such shows for a tiny price.
The thing that worries me, however, is that we will end up with an Internet tax in much the same way as they have in Germany. Be prepared to fight for you right to not pay the BBC.
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Actually I'm a strong supporter of the BBC but this move is highly offensive, adoption of Windows Media and DRM is not in the public interest. I will run only open source applications and refuse to view DRM content on principal. They sould have used VLC and put some more funding into Dirac and theora, something that is in the public interest.
But what they are doing is to use people's money - the license fee paid by the people - to support Microsoft's illegal monopoly. Yeah, it's almost a cliché by now, but by forcing people to use IE and WMP instead of relying on open, cross-browser/cross-platform technologies, they are basically forcing people back to IE and thereby contributing to cementing Microsoft's dominant position in the market.
They are apparently looking on Mac and Linux solutions in the long term. Will they force people to use a certain browser/media player there, too?
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Excellent. The BBC is making moves to let me, a Licence Fee Payer, get at the content I've been forced to pay for in a way that is more useful to me. Well done.
But can you imagine the arguments that are going on inside the BBC at the moment?
The licence fee is pretty reasonable at the moment (well I think it is) and a large part of that is due to additional funds that are created when the BBC sells DVDs of archive and popular shows. The nice thing about DVD sales is that licence fee payers benefit, because the BBC gets a cut, but also the underpaid BBC talent gets a chance to make some money. The other source fo revenue is global syndication. I simply don't see how this won't cut into DVD sales.
I hope the BBC has the foresight to see that this really shouldn't be a problem. People are used to paying a subscription for TV, let non-uk citizens pay their $17.50 a month and let the money roll in. Sure there will be illegal copies of the shows rolling around bittorrent sites, but thats happening already.
What the BBC really need to do is get into bed with Apple on this. Just open up the archives, explain that it needs to be sold as a subscription ($15 a month has a nice ring to it), all you can eat service and let Apple do the rest.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
"Except they don't compete with anyone, it is amazing that the BBC's long standing culture of nepotism and corruption has managed to produce so many worthwhile programmes."
Ahh, so basically you're one of those people who hate the BBC and will look for any old stick to bash it with? Fine - that puts your previous comments in a little more context. Have you ever thought you might have got the argument the wrong way round - that the fact that the BBC produces so many worthwhile programmes (much more than "free market" ITV) is actually evidence that it's not nepotistic or corrupt? Or would that be using logic instead of your own bias?
And if you think that programme makers aren't in a competitive market, you know nothing about media.