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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.'"
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.
The BBC isn't the rights holder to most of the stuff it broadcasts, so it isn't really up to them.
Err not quite - the television license is a license to own and operate a TV receiver. Even if you can only receive Sky One you STILL NEED A LICENSE.
Technically you would still need a license if all you owned was a video recorder but had no screen to watch it on.
Under the Communications Act 2003, you need a television licence to receive or record television programmes. This applies if they are received by a satellite, cable or land based transmitter. If you are watching any satellite service, controlled from within or outside the UK, you must have a television licence.
You may have been informed, in the past, that a television licence was not required if you received television program services from outside the United Kingdom. This was changed in the Communications Act 2003, and if you are using your TV to receive or record television programmes broadcast by satellite from outside the UK, you are now legally required to have a TV licence.
http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/gethelp/faqs.jsp
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.
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 think it's wrong to use a format that is integrated into the "most popular operating system" and can't easily (and possibly not legally) be used on anything else.
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
OK, I see we're talking at cross-purposes, and in any case this is an interesting subject so I'm going to expand a lot of my earlier comments here.
When I say I have no problem with open formats, I mean I have no problem in principle with using documented, standardised formats for which anyone with the programming knowledge may write a player.
However, this comes into conflict with another requirement here, which is that the BBC's other commitments mean it can't just stick Ogg files of all its programmes on a web site for anyone to download. This is just the way things are right now, and the choices appear to be some people having the content with some restrictions, or no-one having anything more than today at all. The option many here would no doubt prefer — everyone getting the content without restriction — doesn't appear to be on the table at this time. And here's why:
It seems a pretty straightforward question to me. They are using open formats on their other broadcasts (PAL, DVB-T, DVB-S, DVB-C, DAB, FM, AM) which has allowed a large market of receivers to develop. Why must content delivered over IP be treated so differently?
Because broadcasts within the UK are, give or take, restricted to the UK community who are paying for the material. They do not impact significantly on the ability to sell BBC productions to foreign markets, nor dramatically increase the price the BBC must pay to show productions it buys in.
If you make the material available to everyone, everywhere — and let's be fair, an unrestricted download in an open format is doing exactly that — then suddenly the BBC gets into all sorts of licensing difficulties buying in content (basically, everything it buys in has to be excluded from the on-line facility) and it dramatically reduces the market for BBC shows abroad. Given that these correspond to two relatively large numbers on the BBC's accounts sheet, that just isn't going to happen any time soon, and for reasons the BBC don't have much control over.
If you don't yet appreciate the significance of this, please Google for one of the discussions where someone works out the impact on the licence fee to support this fully open approach in the current economic climate. It's pretty much game over at that point.
I am a licence fee payer, and yet they have imposed artificial technical measures for no good reason which prevent me from accessing this service, that my licence fee has paid for. Since the BBC has a mandate to be platform agnostic, why are they allowed to spend my licence fee in this way? Why can't I get a discount since they are intentionally locking me out of the service?
That is a straw man argument, for several reasons.
Firstly, you already pay the licence fee for the existing facilities. It's not going up significantly to support the new offerings, so you're not losing out.
Secondly, even if you do, it's not intentional. The BBC distributes vast amounts of content in many media, and almost no-one benefits from all of it. Where do you draw the line on how far they must go to be making a reasonable attempt to allow access to those entitled to it?
Thirdly — and this is the thing many in this discussion don't seem to appreciate — it's not your licence fee that is paying for the content. Licence fees represent a surprisingly small part of the BBC's income. It's enough to meet the BBC's primary mandate as a public service broadcaster, but a lot of the really popular (and really expensive) content is actually paid for using other sources, such as selling those foreign rights to the BBC's own productions. If you significantly undermine that revenue stream, we won't need to have this conversation in five years, because the BBC won't be showing much content that people want to download — or view live, for that matter. You can't beat the economics, copyright exists for a reason, and until the world'
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.