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BBC's iPlayer To Be Crossplatform
craig1709 writes "10 Downing Street has responded to the petition to open up iPlayer access for those on other operating systems. While the wording is confusing, near as I can tell, they say they will make the iPlayer available to users of those operating systems. 'The BBC Trust made it a condition of approval for the BBC's on-demand services that the iPlayer is available to users of a range of operating systems, and has given a commitment that it will ensure that the BBC meets this demand as soon as possible. They will measure the BBC's progress on this every six months and publish the findings.'"
Of course it'll be multiplatform. Why, you can run it on XP *and* Vista!
Wouldn't every six weeks be more appropriate? How long does it take to make a player cross-platform?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
[John Cleese mode=on]
6 months: "Not done yet? Carry on."
12 months: "Still not cross platform? Jolly good."
18 months: "What, no Linux so far? You chaps are putting on a fine show."
And so on
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
If you read the article and related items you will fin that this is NOT NEWS. The prime minster has simply said that it is already being taken care of by the BBC TRUST and that the UK government need take NO ACTION. "They will measure the BBC's progress on this every six months and publish the findings." They being the BBC TRUST not the government. AND it a REVIEW not a "in 6 months we will have a cross platform player", its a promise to look to see if anything has been done - no word on any actions that can be taken to force the production of any such player in the likely event of it's non-existence. In short : Convicted Fellon (Microsoft) 1 : License Payers 0 Disclaimer I'm from the UK and this really hacks me off.
The BBC (Microsoft) player wraps everything in Microsoft DRM - VLC CANNOT PLAY IT.
Fuck Flash. Fuck streaming video in general. Give us a fucking download link, because we'd like to preserve your content, even after you're long gone.
That's right, even if the BBC's long gone. If the reasoning behind BBC's decicision is that the content ought to be accessible to anyone, forever, even if BBC ceases to exist as the result of an asteroid strike, then end flash.
End all streaming video.
If it doesn't end in .MPG or (I'll make one big concession) .AVI-encoded-with-something-open-like-DiVX, then fuck it.
F Fuck streaming video up its .flv- and .swf- and otherwise-restricted ass. I'm looking at youTube. And no, local storage of some piece-of-shit .flv and cross-converting to .flv isn't good enough. Give me the original file in an open format or give me nothing.
We've beaten DRM down to the point that major labels are beginning to give up DRM and offer MP3s. Don't let it be ten years before we take out Flash video next.
Is this really that hard?
VLC cannot play Microsoft DRM encumbered video files, such as the ones the BBC's video on demand service uses. Nor can any other Free video player.
F0 07 C7 C8
I think the iPlayer (horrible name by the way) is the application you need to download the content in the first place. Even once you've done that the video is encoded with Microsoft DRM that's supposed to stop the file playing after a couple of weeks to protect the BBC's DVD sales.
Given the MS DRM I don't know how realistic talk of a Linux port is, I don't think I really care much either, there are plenty of other places I can download the content I've already paid for through the license fee without any DRM restrictions.
Not legaly you can't.
We are paying (indirectly) a convicted felon to restrict our use of what as you point out is content WE have already paid for.
and i bet you've never taken drugs or broken the speed limit. stupid laws are made to be broken
I have searched the BBC Trust Website for any evidence of a change of heart, and found none.
This is exactly the same response they gave in the original approval for the iPlayer service.
Full text of the decision from April this year can be found here. From this document:
I for one would settle of VHS(ish) quality (as if I had recorded it for myself) if it were unencumbered by any form of DRM.
Those rich enough to own HDTV / Home Cinema setups can pay more for and wait for delivery of the DVD/Blueray/HDDVD/ Whatever the next format for HD is.
After all the BBC is funded by the people of the UK - MOST of which couldn't afford a HDTV at half price let alone the prices they are now.
If you want HD PAY FOR IT.
Besides the more well-known wxWidgets and Qt, there is also ZooLib, which is written in C++ and has the MIT license.
I've been a ZooLib developer for seven years, and think it's the best thing since sliced bread. I'm using it to build Ogg Frog, a Free (GPL) audio application. One reason for using ZooLib is that it still supports the Classic Mac OS, even 68k CPUs.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
I neither admit nor deny and involvement in such illegal behavior ;-)
The iPlayer is an opportunity to get it MADE LEGAL - all that is needed is the cross platform support, and then you won't need to break the law to download your tv.
Now if we only had a similarly simple way of changing the drugs/speeding laws.......
If that's true, then why petition only to obtain a different type of lock?
That's like complaining about being locked in a room full of posionous scorpians, and petitioning to be locked in a room full of posionous snakes, please. If you are going to be so incredibly brave, and sign a petition, why not request to not to be locked up at all?
I suspect that you are NOT from the UK.
The BBC unlike most other broadcasters if funded by UK residents paying an annual license fee.
What I object to is the misuse of OUR funding by paying a convicted felon for what is essentially a MONOPOLY lock into their technology.
What was it Microsoft were convicted TWICE for (once in the USA and once in the EU) ?
Ahhh yes being a monopoly.
You also fail to cover MAC users - cross platform is not just about linux.
The BBC does not own ALL of the rights for it's programming. A lot of it is produced FOR the BBC by outside parties.
As a UK citizen I acknowledge that the BBC is restricted as to what it CAN provide by those who in turn supply it.
What I do not accept is the "Use Microsoft watch BBC" "Use linux/mac and you are shit out of luck".
Essentially HANDING microsoft a FREE selling point - "You can't watch the BBC on anything else", AND PAYING THEM OUT OF OUR LICENSEE FEE.
Convicted Felon (Microsoft) : 1
License Payers : 0
I have the impression your former PM was very much a big pal of Bill Gates, was he not? Wasn't Bill Gates the first person Tony Blair talked to about computers in school? I would have started with an independant organization that actually knew something about schools, but who am I?
-- Cheers!
Why this this cross-platformness farce even exist? Just use an open standard/codec - boom, problem solved, noone is forcibly excluded. Or even use something like Flash video. Hell, it's not like there's any shortage of audio/video formats to choose from which run on multiple platforms and architectures.
If I were to look, would I be likely to discover the involvement of a certain company known for pushing closed, incompatible data formats centered on it's closed operating system?
I guess since the software AND the content it plays are paid with public money the right thing to do is make everything open source.
-- Cheers!
You're only a kernel (or X) module away from a digital version of the analog hole.
Computers in schools : been here since the "BBC Model A" / RM Nimbus - so his Billness is hardly the first, however our PM's do have a history of bending over and taking it sideways for asshat Americans - what can I say - I DIDN'T VOTE FOR HIM.
I'd like the iPlayer on Linux. You can do that? Great! It'll play swimmingly on my SPARC box then, right?
-jX
Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
OK, then I have my facts wrong about the computers in schools thing. Thanks.
-- Cheers!
I'll gladly explain.
Each household with a TV HAS to pay a license fee - it is illegal not to.
This funding is the passed onto the BBC (with additional government/public funding).
The actions of the BBC are regulated by the BBC Trust on "OUR" behalf.
They have been informed that a Microsoft lock in is unacceptable by US and are refusing to do anything concrete.
The PM was petitioned to step in and tell the BBC / the BBC Trust to solve the cross platform issue.
The response - The BBC Trust is on the case I (the PM) don't need to do anything.
Problem - the trusts proposal is to LAUNCH with Microsoft ONLY, and then REVIEW the cross platform issue every six months.
This is a REVIEW with NO "or else" attached, in other words there is NO commitment by ANY of the parties (BBC / BBC Trust / Government) to DO ANYTHING AT ALL!
The BBC is supposed to be "run for the people by the people" and this is simple NOT HAPPENING.
They know it's an issue that we the people care about - they just don't plan on doing sod all about it.
"You also fail to cover MAC users - cross platform is not just about linux."
This is slashdot, "cross platform" = Linux
'The BBC Trust made it a condition of approval for the BBC's on-demand services that the iPlayer is available to users of a range of operating systems, and has given a commitment that it will ensure that the BBC meets this demand as soon as possible.
I hate to say it, but that demand has already been meet. Via Bittorrent. Everyone who knows the phrase "Vote Saxon" will agree with me.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Please get a clue before posting. This is a *big* issue and your showing your inability to read.
Everyone in the UK pays TV tax. Said tax goes to the BBC.
See the problem? The BBC has to provide people with the content.
This isnt your standard DRM case.
The contents of the government's 'response' is almost an exact copy of the BBC own press release from earlier this year. They announced in April that there would be a 6-month review, which should be around this time. However, both texts don't tell us anything, there is no time plan, nothing. I very much doubt that there will be an iPlayer for other platforms before the end of this year.
-- Neminem laede, immo omnes, quantum potes, iuva.
Timelines for other platforms
There will be a Vista version of BBC iPlayer available this year. We are actively working on Mac and cross platform support.
It shows where their priority is
Not only would it be easy enough to simply choose another format, but I don't see how it would be possible to make iPlayer cross-platform if they continue using a windows media format with windows media DRM. Even if they were willing to break US (maybe UK too, I'm no expert) copyright law as far as I know there is no way of circumventing windows media DRM in Linux. In short the problem is currently the use of a format that cannot technically or legally be played on any platform except windows. All of the "work" in the world won't overcome that, unless perhaps they send the SAS to storm Redmond. On the other hand, as it has been pointed out BBC doesn't own the rights to a lot of the stuff they play, and most copyright holders aren't going to let them go sticking it on the internet in an unencumbered format. So short of someone developing cross platform DRM (or separate DRM solutions for the various platforms) this just plain isn't going to happen. Solution: IP Reform
Let's see a bit more of the quoted response:
...
The BBC Trust made it a condition of approval for the BBC's on-demand services that the iPlayer is available to users of a range of operating systems, and has given a commitment that it will ensure that the BBC meets this demand as soon as possible. They will measure the BBC's progress on this every six months and publish the findings....
So, if the BBC Trust's conditions have not been met by the BBC, why is this service being allowed to operate at all? There is no need to measure 'progress' on a commitment; it is just a YES or a NO.
What if only a few distros that accept DRM in the form of proprietary drivers from some select video cards.. are able to participate in this new thingy? Will that be measured as 'available on Linux'?
It's sad to see the BBC disobeying the BBC Trust, and getting away with this nonsense. While we get to read such nice articles on... yes, the same BBC!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6325353.stm
The freedoms built in to the net are under attack like never before, argues regular columnist Bill Thompson.
While Bill Thompson was talking about Windows Vista, he might have as well been referring to his own employer, the BBC. Sad state of affairs, really.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Right on ! Could not agree more.
A minimal java app plus runtime download is tens of megabytes. A minimal zoolib download, which requires no runtime, is a half meg or so, and, once most of ZooLib's codebase is linked in, grows very slowly as new functionality is added to the app.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
There's only one way I can make sense of this entire debacle: there was never any real intention to make it cross platform.
Let's see:
1. The "requirement" that it be cross-platform is 2 years, replaced with a 6-monthly audit. Come on, this is a media player FFS. And it's not as if it will have to play 101 different types of media. The problem is reasonably well understood - using cross platform libraries a rough beta could probably be thrashed out inside 2-3 months.
2. The initial beta on the BBCs website was lashed together with VB. How platform-specific can you get exactly?
3. Linux doesn't offer anything like the options to make moderately effective DRM easier to write than Windows. IIRC, Windows can block userland applications from reading the video directly from video memory, can make it hard for applications to debug each other and various other tricks which simply don't exist in Linux (and even if they did, could easily be worked around).
Yet the BBC seldom holds every single right to every single program it produces - that's why they have to implement DRM in the first place. They're certainly not stupid enough to imagine that a half-arsed attempt at DRM on a platform which is actively hostile to DRM would stand up in court if it came to that.
Bet you anything you like they spend the rest of time saying at every 6 monthly audit "Well, we've got a system more or less together on Linux but unfortunately Linux is still open source so it's trivially easy for someone to see what is happening in the various OS calls we make and work around it."
Actually, you don't. The GP is correct, but only as far as relatively ancient history goes.
The RM Nimbus was an overpriced PC clone which sold because it was accompanied with leaflets saying "We're specialists in education! Let us do everything for you!" (and RM still exist today, selling overpriced PC clones accompanied with leaflets saying "We're specialists in education! Let us do everything for you!". You'd be amazed how effective such a business plan is in the UK).
The BBC computer was commissioned by the BBC to go with a series they were making about computers. It wasn't PC compatible, mainly because the PC didn't exist at the time. The time was 1981. It was produced by a then little-known Cambridge company called Acorn, who went on to develop the ARM processor and a number of computers based on it called the Archimedes (later versions dropped the "Archimedes" moniker in favour of model numbers of the form Axxxx). Both the BBC computer and the Archimedes were very popular in UK schools - but Acorn went out of business in the late 1990's as UK schools started to look more closely at the PC.
Since then, UK schools have been more or less universally migrating in the direction of the PC. Microsoft's school contracts have something to do with this - they offer a substantial discount even compared to volume licensing prices but according to the license you're supposed to include EVERY x86 compatible system you have in the license, not just those which run Windows.
What's happened in the last 10 years is that schools no longer consider computers to be strange objects which you teach the children because you feel you should, not because you actually want to. They're now fairly universal, and it's not unusual to find all sorts of technology such as digital whiteboards, projectors and such in many classrooms. As an observer, I'd say they're throwing technology at schools in order to try and improve teaching standards - yet I have yet to speak to a teacher who thinks you can turn a bad teacher into a good one with technology.
Please get a clue before posting. Not everyone in the UK pays TV tax. Not even everyone with a TV in the UK pays a TV tax. Everyone in the UK who has a TV tuned to terrestrial analog or digital broadcasts should pay for a TV license. I get all my bbc content from bbc.co.uk without giving them a penny myself.
There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
I hope that television (especially the beeb) is going the way of the music and newspaper business. file sharing and other internet goodies will certainly help to that end.
Why;
they have dumbed tv down to the point of no return (along with the other uk channels, especially the now dismal ch4)
even the dumb content is nowhere near as good as it used to be (apart from radio 4)
they have failed utterly to conceal their cynical efforts to deceive and defraud their dosile audience (since when has public service broadcasting included stealing from gullible people who phone up to participate in shows?)
If they think that the iplayer (cross platform or not) can justify their upcoming efforts to levy the licence fee on anyone who has a computer then i would say that they have another thing coming.
You can record TV on your DVD recorder and distribute that - so all that non-BBC content isn't safe anyhow.
This is all just my personal opinion.
All the cross-platform iplayer threads. iPlayer has actually been developed to be crossplatform. the interface (written in xhtml/css/js) actually runs on firefox (i should know, i worked on some of it).
The only reason its windows only at the moment is because some of the content is NOT produced by the BBC (some shows are credited 'produced by xxxx for BBC'), and these production companies insisted on DRM for their shows, to prevent them seeping on to p2p networks (because clearly EVERYONE wants torrents of Flog It, and Cash in the Attic)
Hopefully the BBC and the trust will finally reach an agreement where they can get rid of Windows Media in favour of MPEG-4, and using a fair DRM system to prevent things ending up on p2p
A: You only pay the TV license if you own TV reception equipment - whether or not that makes it a "tax" is up for debate, but it is more-or-less ring fenced for broadcasting, and doesn't (e.g.) just disappear into the Inland Revenue coffers with your income tax. (There's a side-issue with convincing the TV license stormtroopers that you don't have TV reception equipment, but that's incompetence, not the law). Actually, I'd predict that as soon as media convergence "matures" this system will collapse - I don't think extending the definition of TV reception equipment to PCs and Internet would be tolerated - big media and comms. companies are already hostile towards this system and would roll out the astroturf like mad. In a sense, by pursuing online TV in any form, the BBC turkeys are voting for Christmas.
B: The BBC is not "run" by the government - lots of effort has been made to ensure that the management from the BBC is apolitical. Of course, this is totally immune from political appointments and back-room arm twisting - not!!! - but the thought is there. Like all journalists, the BBC news service is in the business of telling ripping yarns that get the viewers in, with accuracy and objectivity distinctly optional (e.g. the recent documentary on how nasty WiFi radiation fries kids brains, in which a tinfoil-hat salesman was given an uncritical platform) and this occasionally gets mistaken for political bias.
C: As far as I am aware, the BBC has no Royal Exemption from copyright and contract law and they have to deal with rights holders - much of their content is outsourced, bought in, involves card-carrying actors or is sold overseas (with various guarantees of exclusivity).
OTOH, this is all a bit nuts, since if you bung a DVB-T (terrestrial broadcast digital TV) card in your PC you can grab Dr Who, Torchwood and Heroes in ad-free wide-screen unencrypted MPEG2 goodness anyway (and 'Who is on continual re-run on BBC3 so you can't miss it!).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Seeing as Apple now use x86 and Linux runs on it there is no reason why the Windows DLLs couldn't be embedded into iPlayer allowing it to run on these platforms. It works for me with mplayer and the DLLs anyway. So that's the technical.
I suspect that as iPlayer is still a beta they are testing the network side of the code with the largest section of the audience first and will sort out something with Microsoft to run DRMed Windows Media on other x86 platforms - legally.
I do wish all the zealots would remember that the the Beeb don't own all the content so can't just make it unencumbered and that the damn thing is still just a beta - don't expect support for world+dog yet.
So I don't think it's impossible. Maybe unpossible.
May I suggest the un-patent-encumbered Theora instead?
I know what I'm talking about, as I'd like to support MPEG-4 audio in Ogg Frog - MPEG-4 is also known as AAC, the Apple iTunes "native" format. I've researched it, and I can't support it because I live in the US, which recognizes software patents.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Not even everyone with a TV in the UK pays a TV tax.
k 1 says that you can notify the licensing authority in writing, if your TV is not used for watching TV...
The letter of the law used to be that if your household contains any device that is CAPABLE of receiving terrestrial analogue or digital broadcasts, you were obliged to have a license. That is, even if you have an unplugged VCR in your loft, you should be paying (realistically, I'm sure any enforcer would turn a blind eye to this).
There does seem to have been a change however -- http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/gethelp/faqs.jsp#lin
Isn't there a complication here though? They have to have some sort of DRM because some of the stuff they broadcast is not theirs and they only have rights to broadcast it in the UK. DRM by its very nature can't be opensource, since it relies you send both the encrypted data and the key so a third party and the only protection you have is obfuscation. So they need to support several binaries. From my experience, cost scales linearly with test platforms - if you're doing it properly each release needs to go through a battery of tests, and you need to repeat it on each supported platform. A platform is one box for testing with one install of the OS and one tester. You need a developer familiar with the OS too.
. php
Consider this -
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2007/September/os
Now supporting Windows with one binary is pretty easy.
I'd guess you could support 90% of machines with that binary. It'll work on x64 too. You'd probably test on XP, Win2k and Vista. So three test platforms. But only one developer.
So each Windows "test platform" gives you 30% market share. Actually if the developer knows what he's doing, he'll write code which works on all supported Windows versions and maybe Win9x too, so one platform gives you 90% market share.
Adding a binary for MacOS gives you another 4%. But you need a fat binary for x86 and ppc and you'd probably only support OS X or later. So you need people to test on two more platforms, an x86 Mac and a PPC.
Each Mac "test platform" gives you 2% market share. Maybe a decent MacOS developer can make it more like 4% by writing portable code like in the Windows case.
And then there's Linux. Now it looks like you need a bunch of binaries x86, x64, ppc, sparc, shared lbraries, static linked and all the combinations thereof and all need to be developed, tested and supported. All for a tiny market share. Ok, you could only support x86 and x64 and have shared and static links. But that's still four more platforms to test on for 1% market share between them.
So you can see the why people distribute closed source application for one OS - the costs of supporting more platforms far outweighs the benefit. Or why people don't bother with Win9x (or Vista!) support, or only support Red Hat x86 instead of Linux. All those things save money and don't affect the number of possible users much.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
One of the stumbling blocks to having iPlayer on other OS's is the DRM required to 'protect' the content being distributed. By choosing DRM that is linked to a particular OS the BBC makes it very difficult to transfer the player to Mac, Linux etc. It can, therefore, reasonably claim that it's going as fast as it can at every 6-monthly review, without ever actually achieving anything.
Technically speaking it's not difficult to have something working on pretty much every OS by the end of today, so long as you don't have to impose DRM on it. Hence any further clarification from the government is just a bunch of Charley Says
I agree that the player should not have been launched yet, but for a different reason. The BBC has made is virtually impossible to port to Linux because the DRM is based on Windows Media.
How is the BBC going to port Windows Media to Linux, and more specifically non-x86 platforms? Worse still, how will they decide which platforms get ports? How about AmigaOS, or RiscOS? *BSD? AppleTV? Cowon A2?
What I can't understand is why DRM is required at all, when broadcast TV has no DRM and can be freely recorded and shared over the internet (and indeed is, Doctor Who episodes appear online hours after broadcast.) Given that there was no protection before and the DRM will not stop anyone archiving the shows for longer than a week, what is the point?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
WE are the rights-holders.
OK, for HBO content we aren't but then again, this doesn't have to be made available on iPlayer. For dual-sourced (BBC and HBO joint ventures, for example), then have something like "after five years have passed after final original viewing, the content can be viewed on iPlayer (DRM free)". If the partner doesn't like the terms, they can pay for it all themselves.
It was always going to be cross-platform. I can't remember exactly but I think it was supposed to be about 6 months till the Linux release. This is why the previous fuss about the iplayer was so strange, people just couldn't wait.
Now all that's happened is the government have agreed with the BBC about a timescale.
I see no news here...
And it can only support 64 and 32 bit windows with either
a) a fat binary
b) statically linked 32-bit libs
And if it isn't worth pandering to the 4% Mac/ 8% Linux crowd then don't take the BBC money from me. They don't lose a significant ammount of money if it isn't a significant number of people. If the money loss is significant, then it must be a significant portion of the population.
Xenu Smack Your Ass !!
I refused to sign this petition not because I am anything other than a Linux fanatic but because it calls on the PM to instruct the BBC to do something. Short of a national emergency the PM should not have any such powers. So, the whole thing was flawed and mis-directed.
Not everyone in the UK pays "TV tax". If you own a device capable of receiving TV signals, you should pay. If you do not, you do not have to pay.
The BBC is providing people with the content. There is currently an entry level requirement that certain people do not wish to meet - Running a Windows box. This is the equivalent of me bitching that I cannot receive the BBC's digital-only channels because I do not own cable/satellite/etc. and demanding that they provide me with means of receiving them on alternate equipment of my choice, at everyone elses expense. What, no OS/2 version of the player? That's it, I want the project cancelled!
They have to have some sort of DRM because some of the stuff they broadcast is not theirs and they only have rights to broadcast it in the UK.
DRM is not required to limit the broadcast to the UK only - that can be done simply by filtering based on IP address. I don't really see a big difference between broadcasting un-DRM'd content to UK residents over IP (which they allegedly "can't" do), and broadcasting un-DRM'd content to UK residents over DVB (which the BBC campaigned for the ability to do and have been doing (along with a load of other channels) for several years now).
Sure, the content producers don't like this idea of broadcasting to the public without DRM, but the BBC does it already over DVB and has enough muscle to push the content producers into letting them do it over IP.
So you can see the why people distribute closed source application for one OS - the costs of supporting more platforms far outweighs the benefit
Weighing up the "benefits" isn't really the issue. The BBC has a mandate to distribute their content in a platform agnostic way - this is something they are now refusing to do. This is pretty similar to saying "You can only receive BBC TV channels on Sony TVs". And frankly, just extending support to a limited number of platforms isn't good enough. Sure, they might support Windows, OS X, Linux on x86, but what happens if I want to use a Symbian device to watch the content? Or Linux running on an ARM?
Using propriatory formats and only allowing 3 platforms (windows, os x, linux) to play them does _not_ constitute "platform agnostic" - platform agnostic means that there would be no artificial limitation preventing me from writing a player for *any* platform using publicly available specifications.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
WRONG!!! Hah, hah.
The Linux crowd are just raving because someone won't kiss their ass. They've created a system that doesn't play nice with IHV's who release binmary drivers and support creator mandated DRM. All this crap about quality and freedom is just so much shit. Eyeballs don't mean a damn thing and open up more risk of vulnerabilities, and opensource drivers are just an open door to anyone who wants to freeload off copyright content. Tell everyone it's NOT true. You can't.
It is, yes. Paid for by the BBC out of your money and mine. The BBC only have to make it a condition of commissioning work that the work can be made available on the Internet, problem solved.
Except, of course, that the BBC now needs to make money by selling the programmes it makes to foreign broadcasters, and later to make money by selling DVDs, etc. If all it's content is made available on the Internet for free, us licence payers are going to have to pay more. But I don't see any particular problem with the BBC releasing restricted-quality content on the Internet for free, because the foreign broadcasters are still going to want to pay for high quality content to broadcast.
Indeed. Sticks in the gullet, doesn't it? The thing is anything American was so far up Tiny B Liar's arse that they could get away with anything. Yes, Mr Bush. Of course, Mr Rumsfeld. At once, Mr Gates. Hopefully Gordon may be a little more prudent.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Nope, it's always been that if you USE it for receiving TV signal, you need to pay the license, otherwise you don't.
I don't plug my TV into an aerial and only use it for DVDs. I don't HAVE to prove to the authority that I don't use it to watch TV - they have no right to do this unless they gain a warrant to search my house (and then would find nothing incriminating - how embarrassing for them); it just so happens that they word it very carefully as if to extort people.
'Innocent until proven guilty' applies here.
video content on the BBC site is covered by the TV Licence. The licence fee is required for receiving any kind television broadcasting by UK Channels, even if it's over the internet.
I've uninstalled it, it keeps using my bandwidth to distribute my downloads to other viewers.
They should provide a tiny "windows media player 7" uninstaller immediately since that crap does create OS/browser problems on PPC Macs too.
Of course to trick people that they are multiplatform, they keep that junk downloadable and sadly it always ends up at top 10 Apple most downloaded applications at apple.com
If anyone runs OS X 10.4.x and didn't pay for Broadband radio etc., they should get rid of it immediately. If it creates problem, _all_ browsers will have problem thanks to central "Internet Plugins" arch of OS X.
If one is paranoid enough, you can think they keep that junk online on purpose so Mac users who believes in official software releases will live hell on their competitor OS. Sadly I can imagine there are lots of people who uses it under Rosetta emulation wondering why their $1400 laptop can't play a video smoothly or why their browsers keep crashing.
BTW, I hear they use Universal (Intel) as excuse, it took Real Networks 1 or 2 months at most to release a working Universal binary Realplayer. MS can't really code? I bet they have more tea serving people than Real Networks developers.
I don't see why the BBC doesn't just rebrand VLC. After all, they are giving the player away for free and I'm sure that the VLC developers wouldn't mind some more support for their work.
The BBC and the VLC people really need to talk about this.
The hard part of a media player is the guts that takes the encoded data and makes it into moving pictures. VLC has got that part right. The easy job is to put a pretty GUI interface around the player and the BBC has the resources to do that part well. It's a match made in heaven!
Will it cost more to persue and protect the material from unauthorised use (scales linearly for licensing of format) than expected profit (not just revenue) from the paying customer, then it's a waste of money using a DRM/propriatory scheme. Using a propriatory system just syphons the money I pay the BBC to licensing and development costs rather than reducing the cost of the BBC.
Nobody has done that analysis, though.
Maybe if the DRM system is implemented, they could have a look at how much money they are spending, subtract from the money they are making from the works and then remove the DRM and see if they are making more, less or the same ammount of money.
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As a UK citizen I acknowledge that the BBC is restricted as to what it CAN provide by those who in turn supply it.
Why do you accept that just like that? It seems to me the BBC is in a position to say "we're paying you to make this work, turn over copyright to us or we'll take our business somewhere else". And then the BBC can do anything they want with it.
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Someone needs to go back and do some research.
This statement is the same boiler-plate reply they gave in the Spring when the whole thing came up for the first time. This is not even anything *new* let alone any real news AFAIK.
The UK government position is (and has been for a while now), that because the BBC has agreed to support all platforms "somewhere down the road" that the principal of universal access has been saved, and that there is no problem. As foolish a dodge as this is, they have been saying this since the first protest about it.
Not news at all.
That's just like a certain segment of the American population who seems to think that "freedom of religion" means "you can be any kind of Christian you want."
They should sell the content worldwide - it would generate revenue and allow them to reduce the licence fee - there's certainly a demand (huge demand in the US it seems for some shows), and they already syndicate worldwide. Hell, they're one of the few media companies that could actually get away with selling a subscription to their news service round the world (world service is currently paid for by UK govt. grant, not the licence fee).
The shows are already all over Bit-torrent without DRM, so why not supply that market?
They could offer free downloads to people in the UK restricted via the TV licence number, though I'd be inclined if I was them to go for a reduction in the licence fee and just sell the content in the UK too, for 50p an episode or something (with reductions for a full series). It'd still be available free over the air, but you could could pay for the convenience of having what you want on your terms; just as people currently do in the UK with DVDs, which sell quite well, even at outrageous prices. I'd rather pay for completely open content than download some half-broken DRM player that times out after 30 days - I mean why bother with that, why not just watch TV with a DVR?
In many ways the BBC is hobbled by the licence fee - that's why the trust is constantly going on about them not encroaching on the territory of other commercial broadcasters. The trust should be disbanded - they've done nothing but restrict the BBC and constantly narrow their remit online, and by the time they wake up to the internet it'll be too late, and the BBC will be a ghost of its former self.
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