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BBC To Create 'Catch-Up TV Player'
grouchal writes "The BBC Trust (a semi independent regulator) has just approved the BBC's efforts to launch iPlayer (no new info on this link yet). This means that UK residents can watch broadcast BBC programs out of sync with the broadcast schedule by up to 30 days for free. The iPlayer will launch for the PC but is expected on Media Center, Xbox 360 devices in the near future. The approval also included some constraints." This would really have made my life a lot simpler when my tivo died a couple of weeks ago.
I should also add that the BBC will also support OS X.
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what file format are they using ? WMV ASF ? and any idea on the type of DRM involved ?
Only with us here in the US, it can be anywhere from a year to 30 years, depending on when PBS broadcasts it - all for free. Why, I'm just seeing the "Dr. Who" with Billy Piper - how old is she now? 75?
Technology schmology...
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Can I sandbox this proprietary DRM-laden crud in a QEMU VM running Windows?
Looks like that's the best us F/OSS using license* payers can expect.
* spellchecked to en-us.
Bravo. Only kidding Commander.
They are also looking at releasing the whole BBC archive to viewers as well.
see http://www.pandia.com/sw-2004/33-bbc.html
Xbox 360, PC, MEdia Center and other devices?
from TFA "The iPlayer computer application will only be initially available to those with Windows PCs. But the trust has asked the BBC to ensure that the iPlayer computer application can run on different systems - such as Apple Macs - within 'a reasonable time frame'. "
So how long before we can get this on Linux? or the PS3?
And how long is 'reasonable'...?
Suddenly my TV License payments seem more reasonable.....
It's still tied by DRM to the one platform so I don't give it high chances for success. I guess they have a lot of money to keep it afloat it if flounders for a while then catches on (I'm trying to avoid CmdrTaco's fate with the iPod prediction here).
But is there no MythTV or Tivo-type solution available in the Britain? I mean it's publicly funded so shouldn't people get more control over what they've paid for?
more of the same on Twitter.
After months of careful preparation and a dedicated training regime, the slashdot editors have today finally reached the summit of typographical errors - screwing up the world's most recognisable acronym at the beginning of the story headline. Well done guys - you should be proud.
If anyone from the BBC is reading this, as a non-UK resident I would be happy to pay the annual licence fee if I could get access to the UK BBC channels.
If you could make it work with my Apple TV, even better!
edit, that is.. the title now does read "BBC". Scaaaaary. Rest assured, though, parent poster - you're not going nuts, it did indeed spell "BCC" before. Made me wonder what that electronics chain had to do with it..
This would really have made my life a lot simpler when my tivo died a couple of weeks ago.
My goodness I know. It's a wonder how we make it through the day.
The BCC would like to apologize for being called the BBC for all those years; we realize this will create chaos and confusion to our viewers, but mild sedatives should make the whole thing right.
NOTE: And for anyone reading this post, the posts mentioning the typo are now out of date, as the error has been corrected. We apologize to any Slashdot readers who are confused, and suggest that a spot of work will make everything right.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
How long before iApple and iJobs get the iLawyers to send a iMail to BBC for an iNappropriate and possibly iNfringing use of an iWord?
Even though I am a UK BBC license fee payer, I won't be able to use this service I have paid for, because I don't use Windows and in and case I'm mot prepared to accept DRM.
I'll continue downloading DRM free BBC shows via bittorrent just as I have for a while now. I have no moral objection to doing this since I've paid for the content anyway.
How long are we going to continue in a situation where the unofficial channels of content delivery are superior to the official ones? Surely it can't be forever and DRM will soon have to die?
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
I can get British TV programs in less than half a year!
(or how long do you think it will take to hack'n'open it?)
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Channel4 in the UK have been providing a similar service via their 4OD (4 On Demand) software http://www.channel4.com/4od/, you can watch episodes of their 'standard' tv series for free for a week after their first showing. After that, there's a (relatively) small charge of 99p (about $2) to rent it with a 24 hour viewing "window" (you can keep the file for several days, but once you start watching, you get 24 hours to finish it).
They should be selling this content, DRM free, to the rest of the world, hell, I think they should be selling it in the UK too, then maybe they could bring the license fee down a little to compensate. Selling their content online (for reasonable prices) would allow them to move long-term to a model where they are a content creator and licenser, not a broadcaster.
However just like their archive this has been hobbled by rights issues and silly rules about 'broadcasting' on the internet for 7 days, 30 days, or whatever their limit is now. If it wasn't for those rules, they wouldn't have to use DRM at all. Instead they're stuck in 1996, trying to create an ecosystem that their users couldn't care less about.
They've bought into this Microsoft DRM, and are now going to pay the price of becoming irrelevant to users of other platforms, like OS X, mobile phones, consoles which don't come from MS, Linux etc. Good job BBC. How they will move it to other platforms is anyone's guess - the BBC says it might be difficult within 2 years to move to OS X (which is what the trust wanted) - that's hardly a promising sign. Frankly, I don't think they'll ever make it with their 'iPlayer'. MS certainly has nil incentive to provide a working solution on OS X or Linux.
Quite apart from the DRM I don't want to download another player for every TV station that wants to go online - they should use the outlets currently available, like Microsoft Live and iTunes, to sell their stuff. Instead of using standard channels and outlets they've rolled their own player and bought in DRM. Channel 4 has pulled the same trick and their forum is full of people complaining about how crap it is. The C4 player even installs a P2P client to serve their stuff for you without asking. Nice.
These media creators/outlets are obviously stuck in the 1990s, and they're not going to get the internet till they're dragged kicking and streaming onto it. The fact they still talk about broadcasting when they're actually talking about downloads says everything really. They're trying to hobble downloads to turn them into a broadcast.
What a service like this needs to succeed :
1. Offer downloads of files which will play on any modern video software, on computers, phones etc etc
2. Not time limited
3. Sell the damn content worldwide 1 year after first broadcast
4. Use any sales channel you can get, don't try to limit it to your 'iPlayer'
5. DRM not required, in fact it'd be a huge hindrance because it makes it impossible to do 1 above
6. Don't try to turn the Internet into TV - the obverse is inevitable, and the sooner you get used to it the better.
Say you have a data center, essentially a giant MythBackend. Subscribers pay a license fee to stream TV shows, movies, etc. to a MythFrontend appliance in their living room. The license fee in turn goes to pay the networks to let you "re-broadcast" their shows.
Is this essentially what they're doing?
For really good shows, you'd still want to tune in the night of broadcast in order to see it, because say for example you're just obsessed with "Lost" or whatever. But if you miss it, you could always watch it the next night. Or if you just feel like watching a Star Trek marathon then you could do that too.
I really don't know why we don't have this. AT&T promised that I would be able to pull any movie or tv show to my living room back in the 1990s, and still my only options are whatever crap is on Cox's "On Demand" service or bittorent. It seems like the first person to navigate the legalities and set up a data center for this would stand to make really embarrassing amount of money off of it.
You could probably charge a lot for it, too. Right now I pay $30/month or so for Cable TV. I only watch a few shows, and I never watch them before editing out the commercials with Myth. I would gladly pay 2x or 3x this amount if it meant that I was actually getting commercial-free content, plus the whole backlog of shows I hadn't seen yet.
I... want an iToilet so I can take an iDump and I can patent it and I can sell it as the youPoo... BBC iDea good or bad, I can see certain parties wanting their iCut of the iProfits for youCopyright reasons. (ducks)
flinging poop since 1969
Let non-UKians pay for a TV license and get access to all the online services. £135.50/year to get access to all of BBC programming and that massive back catalog? I'd certainly consider it.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
I'm an American in the U.K. doing an internship. I know currently you need to register with the channels to watch tv online (simulcast)- registration only requires a valid postal address (easily forged). And a U.K. ip/isp address. It also checks your ip/isp when you start the links, and you authenticate. But I'm assuming us Americans who want to watch Doctor Who, Hollyoaks, Peepshow etc. just need a good U.K. proxy. Pretty simple- minus the 5-7 hour time change. So this could be great, we wouldn't be forced to watch friday night shows on friday afternoon. Get what i'm sayin?
the internet grind to a halt as the entire output archive of the BBC crashes onto the P2P networks. Old episodes of East Enders anyone?
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
If the BBC has committed to supporting one product above others in the market place--that is, the DRM platform in Media Player--then politely inform the BBC that you will not pay your license fee until universal access is provided. Such a blatant attempt to support a commercial organization through a government programme should be most strongly resisted. Moreover, it is only when the citizens require that government truly level the playing field, rather than prop up commercial organization's poor products through forced purchases, that they have fulfilled their consumer and market protection goals.
Windows DRM = No TV Tax!
(too bad bumper stickers aren't so popular over there)
Then again, this whole tirade is easy for me to say, as I'm in the States. Nonetheless, if Bush and the other Royalists here started the same crap, I'd resist. I've done with web sites that only support IE, and I will do it every time that lazy developers and foolish, ill-informed managers make decisions that prevent all the citizens from accessing the services of the government!
...tizzyd
As is pointed out in other posts, this won't benefit users of Xbox 360s, PS3s etc in the near future (reasonable timeframe?) or perhaps ever. That's just a symptom though of the underlying wrongtitude.
The root cause is the Memorandum of Understanding that the BBC signed with Microsoft under which they agree to siphon a portion of the license fee straight into Bil Gates's pocket in exchange for access to 'advanced technology'. The BBC can no longer develop its own tech as it sold off its technology arm to Siemens.
Had they not done so, they could have developed their own DRM scheme and licensed it to TV, set-top box, etc manufacturers. The resulting revenue stream would have positioned them very well to play in the online space. Open APIs would also have spurred innovation in the UK software industry.
I'm not in the know as to whether the BBC was required to follow government procurement rules when setting up that Memorandum but the whole thing stinks of wrongness & short-sighted contingency.
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---
No technical reason no, but they bought this DRM from MS. It'll be a cold day in hell before it integrates well with anything other than Windows.
That's why it's unreasonable, and frankly, stupid, on the part of the BBC.
Now "iPlayer". Enough already, okay? Give Apple their little triumph and realize that there are *other* ways to name a gadget or service. Sort of think out of the box. (Why I didn't buy an iRiver I was looking at -- I'd have felt silly owning and using it.)
Nothing that the BBC does is "for free": UK residents pay for the BBC, to the tune of about $6 billion per year (!) or about $250/year/household.
I subscribe to that as well! I am living in the south of Italy and all I can get is BBC Prime (the re-run channel) and BBC World through Sky satellite service. If anybody has managed a way to receive standard BBC channel through sat, please let me know!
Because it sure sounds familiar...
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
I want high quality radio7, thanks!
mplayer -dumpstream anyone?
which is no doubt why they are playing DRM and also why they outsource all program production.
When BBC produced their own content the license payers could claim moral ownership.
Now the BBC use the license money to pay someone else to own the copyright, they can legitimately keep us from the content we pay for... (for those who do)
The Trust had originally recommended a two year time frame, but the BBC Executive said that setting a time limit would tie their hands in commercial negotiations and that there was so much dependence on 3rd parties that they (the BBC Executive) couldn't take responsibility for, so what was agreed was that there would be no set time scale, but that the BBC Executive has to report on progress towards platform neutrality to the BBC Trust every 6 months.
So, for a reasonable time frame, it looks like it's somewhere between 6 months and never.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
And its the only way to change the lawyers minds, too....
If people are freely trading all BBC programmes online beyond the 30 day limit BECAUSE of the stupid DRM, they might think again.
window media player codecs have a simple API.
Most of the windows codecs have been hacked to run on 32bit x86 linux.
A few have been recoded.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
That is not correct. You can stream programs up to 7 days from the date of broadcast and in some exceptional cases (15%) you may download and keep a recording for up to 30 days.
Lets see how this service stacks up against some of the alternative on demand tv download services.
BBC Iplayer 4/10
Pros
It's free.
Easy to use.
Large selection.
Cons
Poor retention (7 days)
Closed DRM format, can't be viewed on TV or alternative OS's.
Limited life span (30 days max)
Bittorent 7/10
Pros
It's free.
Easy to use.
Good retention (many months)
Open format, can be saved and viewed on TV and alternative OS's.
Cons
Illegal distribution
Availability may be limited
Download speed is variable
Bandwidth Heavy
Giganews 9/10
Pros
Good retention (~120 days)
Open format, can be viewed on TV or alternative OS's.
Very good download speed
It is legal to download for private viewing as long you've paid your licence tax.
Cons
Monthly subscription fee.
Availability relies on people uploading (illegal).
Some may find it hard to use.
Yeah, mythtv works really well with freeview in the UK, which is free-to-air digital terrestrial.
Currently my cable TV provider offers... yes - NOT ONE BBC channel. Not even the BBC America nonsense.
I'd gladly pay $40 or more per month to be able to access the BBC shows if it really included all of the channels. So would many people that I talk to. I've talked to my cable provider as well as every satellite one and there's nothing at all short of getting a 3 meter dish in on the roof(old school Satellite TV) and DIYing it to get BBC programs in the U.S.
This would be an acceptable alternative - and well worth a monthly subscription.
I cannot understand why there isn't more outrage at this move by the BBC. And did anyone see the 30 minute Vista advert the BBC put out recently? Okay, the BBC called it a "documentary", but it certainly looked like a Microsoft-scripted advert to me.
If the BBC isn't called to account for this now will Linux ever be supported? And wouldn't that affect possible future uptake of Linux PCs? I can hear the sales spiel now: "Do you want to watch TV on your PC? Okay, then you have to have a Microsoft PC. No, that Ubuntu thing just can't do the job..."