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BBC Threatened Over iPlayer Format
greengrass sends us to coverage in The Register of the Open Source Consortium's threatened anti-trust challenge against the BBC over its use of Windows Media format in its on-demand service, iPlayer. From the article: "The OSC will raise a formal complaint with UK broadcast and telecoms watchdog Ofcom next week, and has vowed to take its accusations to the European Competition Commission if domestic regulators do not act. The OSC compared the situation to the European Commission's prosecution of Microsoft over its bundling of Windows Media Player with Windows."
Blogged about the BBC's choice of DRM a while back, Could the BBC lose respect over DRM?
ilovegeorgebush
You can't play DRM-encoded windows media anyplace you don't have windows media player. You are asking an irrelevant question, "What platform can you not play Windows Media on?", the actual question is "What platform can you not play DRM-restricted Windows Media on?" And the answer is "most places" - you can't play it anyplace that doesn't have a recent windows media player. And that turns out to be quite a few places.
I have a better question or two, though. Why should the BBC choose a proprietary format? Why should the BBC use DRM at all? Those are the two biggies.
MKV isn't a codec, it's a container format. It's an open container format that supports AFAIK effectively unlimited video and audio streams, internal subtitle tracks, etc. Not ever having heard of it is irrelevant, because it's not a large download and the beeb could provide download instructions.
I'm not really suggesting that anyone use MKV, though. It simply exists, and is Open. AVI is fine with me, as it's unlikely they will release any video streams over 2GB and AVI is well-known. Frankly, I would prefer to see them simply use an MPEG stream to any of this other stuff, because it's the most compatible thing out there (even MPEG4 is widely playable these days.)
This is completely irrelevant, because we're talking about playing them, not recording them.
This is completely irrelevant, because we're talking about playing them, not recording them. And the BBC decides whether DRM is used, not the user.
If this is the height of your debating ability, you'd better go to digg.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Radios 5 through 7 aren't available on standard radio.
Radio 1's enhanced podcast broadcasts aren't watchable on Microsoft, Sony, or Creative MP3 players.
What is the market share of MS in the UK? 80 - 90% at least? So isn't 'run of the mill' actually, a Microsoft machine? A standard run of the mill TV at the moment doesn't have access to BBC3 and BBC4, does that make freeview illegal?
Also note the beeb use the Apple version of enhanced podcasts to display images in their radio show podcasts, rather than the Windows Media version, so they are hardly in bed with MS.
Either we require the BBC to broadcast in a format everyone can view, in which case we are stuck in B&W 5:4 format, or we accept the BBC pushes multimedia to the edge, which means not everything will be viewable by everyone all the time.
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. --Albert Einstein
Freeview is broadcast using DVB-T, an international standard. You can get receivers from a number of different companies from about £30 up (or hard disk based recorders for a bit more), it's built into many high-end TVs, and there are several different available receivers to watch and record it on a PC. Sure, you can't watch it on a normal TV without extra hardware, but it's cheap, probably due to having actual competition.
.m4a files of the stuff already available as MP3 but with added chapter markings and images. I don't see any technical reason why other players couldn't convert them to a format they support, though I'm not sure how many actually have the correct features...
The iPlayer, on the other hand, requires you to watch the programs on one piece of software running on one operating system produced and sold (and not cheaply) by a single company. Sure, it's currently, the most common operating system, but the two things are not comparable.
I'm not sure what the "enhanced podcasts" are. I think they're
UK and ex-pats only though.
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/iplayer/
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
It is after all, a proprietary format, wholly owned and controlled by one company, which is why Creative and MS Mp3 players can't play the content.
The "Enhanced Podcast" appears to be an MPEG-4 container with an AAC "track" and a still image "track."
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.