BBC Quietly Announces Linux/Mac iPlayer

Keir Thomas writes "When the BBC released its new iPlayer watch-on-demand service, there were many complaints about the fact it was Windows-only — the equivalent of current BBC broadcasts only being watchable on, say, a Sony television. The good news is that the BBC has announced a Flash-based player for Linux and Mac due by the end of the year. (The announcement is buried half way down the page.) The bad news is that it will probably only offer streaming, and not the ability to download programs, like the Windows client has. Quote: 'It comes down to cost per person and reach at the end of the day.'"

Comments

WTF???

[Anonymous Coward]

wtf is this all about? They already offer rtsp feeds of various programs, downloadable with mplayer -dumpstream.

Re:WTF???

[mike2R]

Yes you can stream a number of BBC programs - mainly news and current affairs stuff that I imagine the BBC own full rights to. iPlayer offers other programs.

flash

[apodyopsis]

its NOT "iPlayer for linux" - its flash based player for ANY OS that support flash.

on one hand its not Linux client on the other hand its nice to see cross platform support. I know flash has its detractors but it is ubiquitous and it does work. On the plus side its not Silverlight.

Congratulations to the BBC/Government for listening and well done on at least allowing us to use their portal to view content.

Re:flash

[pzs]

One of the things I like about the BBC is they are constantly taking a pounding from people over their coverage. They address criticism very directly, and often. As a result, you can have some kind of faith that they're exercising due diligence and trying to get things right.

The BBC isn't perfect and their coverage has been becoming a bit flashy and sensationalist recently. However, I trust them more than any other news source. I might even go so far as to say I trust them full stop, which must be a rarity in the modern media. If that's the only thing the license fee pays for, it might almost be worth it.

Peter

Re:flash

[rucs_hack]

I'm not really concerned that this player doesn't allow you to download the content. After all, the content expires on windows after a while anyway. Current bcc streaming options include the option (on those I use) of resuming where you left off listening/watching beforehand. That's more than adequate for my needs.

In fact I prefer the idea of a flash based web player. The problem with an installed player is that it only works if installed (obviously), so I can't just watch anywhere when I want.

Re:flash

[apodyopsis]

Indeed.

Unlike newspapers whose only income is from sales/advertising and have a desperate need to shunt embarrassing scoops and distorted news to sell copies. I think the newspapers have a hell of a lot to answer to.

3/4 of their income comes from the License fee, it pays for material, presenters, infrastructure, shows - without it there would be no BBC. Morons whine and bitch about it, but don't seem to realize that without it there would be either a stealth tax of the same value or a paid subscription of some kind - and they'd bitch and whine even more if there was only a wall to look at. I have no problem with the license fee. If only people would stop and think thats 37p a day and the majority of them spend four hours a day infront of the damn thing. 9p an hour is quite reasonable really.

For the interested, shamelessly cribbed from Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence

In the United Kingdom, the current annual cost for a colour television licence (as of 1st April 2007) is £135.50 (about 200) and £44 (about 65) for monochrome TV (black and white).[32] The licence fee is charged on a per household basis. Therefore addresses with more than one television receiver only require a single licence. (However, this does not apply to sub-let rooms within a property where a the tenant requires a licence alongside the Landlord.) A similar licence, mandated by the 1904 Wireless Telegraphy Act, used to exist for radios, but was abolished in 1971. Therefore, those who only listen to radio and do not use television receiving equipment to watch or record programmes as they are being shown on TV, no longer have to pay a licence fee.

There are concessions for the elderly (free for over-75s[33]), the licence fee here being paid for by the government. Blind people get a 50% discount on their licence or completely free if only in possession of an audio only receiver. Residents of residential care homes (for the elderly and people with physical/mental disabilities) can apply for a special licence called the licence for Accommodation for Residential Care (ARC) which is £7.50 per year.

The licence fee can be paid annually, monthly or quarterly by Direct Debit, or monthly or weekly with the Monthly Cash Plan or Cash Easy Entry cards, which were introduced in the mid 1990s for those with limited means or no bank account. The Monthly Cash Plan works on the same basis as the Cash Easy Entry scheme and has been designed so as not to discriminate against those that do not receive benefits.

The licence fee represents approximately 75% of the BBC's income.[34] However, the UK's second public broadcaster, Channel 4, has claimed that it may need licence fee income if it is to continue with public broadcasting after the digital switch-over. To this end, on April 25, 2006, it was announced that Channel 4's digital switch-over bill would be paid for from the licence fee.[35] Some of S4C's programmes such as Pobol y Cwm and Newyddion, are made by BBC Wales and provided free of charge to S4C, meaning they are paid for by the licence fee.[citation needed]

Collection is enforced by criminal law. People accused of licence evasion are tried in a magistrates court. Violators can be fined up to £1000. Prior to 1991, the collection and administration of the UK licence fee was the responsibility of the Home Office. Since 1991, the revenue has been collected on behalf of the Government by the BBC and paid into Government's Consolidated Fund. From 1991 the fee was collected more directly by the BBC and was called the TV Licensing Authority. Since then collection has been contracted out and is now collected and enforced by TV Licensing Ltd, which is operated by Capita. As a consequence of the change the force of law in enforcing the licence has weakened somewhat[citation needed]. By 1994, 57% of all female criminal convictions in Britain related to television licence evasion [36

Re:flash

[Ed Avis]

Flash is just as much a proprietary standard as Microsoft Windows (and more proprietary than Silverlight). Unless the BBC commits to using the subset of Flash that has been reimplemented by Gnash and other projects, I don't think it's a big step forward.

Re:flash

[Thwomp]

its NOT "iPlayer for linux" - its flash based player for ANY OS that support flash. I really hope the player is compatible with the Wii's Opera browser. Assuming there is a full screen option I can watch the shows on my t.v! Yay.

Re:flash

[arivanov]

Just do not get me started there. The Beeb nowdays is a well behaved and obedient UK govt lapdog. Just read the coverage of this summer fires in Greece on the beeb and in other non-UK media and spot the differences. They are very interesting.

Re:flash

[morgan_greywolf]

Actually, most Flash-based content can, in fact, be downloaded. if you're wiley enough. There are even Firefox extensions that help you with this (i.e., VideoDownloader and so forth)

And, of course, there are always ways to grab video streams when you're running on an OS that doesn't tie you down with digital restrictions mangling.

Re:flash

[ray-auch]

The requirement on the BBC is to be cross-platform (platfrom neutral) not non-proprietary. This is a big step forward in meeting that requirement.

Re:flash

[mykdavies]

Well here's one difference:

"summer fires greece site:msnbc.com" - 18 hits
"summer fires greece site:bbc.co.uk" - 1320 hits

but I don't think that's the point you're making. Looking at the articles returned, I don't see anything odd about the BBC coverage; the key topics seem to be the same as other sites: lots of people and land affected, long-term environmental consequences, accusations of arson. I don't see what you're getting at.

Re:flash

[NekoXP]

I'm both curious and lazy.

Make that table and fill it up for me. I can't find any articles that show any stand-out differences between coverage. I don't even know what we're supposed to be looking for. Basically you picked something that is hard to disprove your side, didn't you?

I also can't find any Greeks who are particularly pissed off at the BBC coverage.

The BBC is hardly a government lapdog; yes, they have strong opinions which sometimes are shared by those in power, but more likely than not, they differ just as strongly, and they can fuck things up for the government too - and sometimes, people even die because of it.

Re:flash

[Anonymous Coward]

They've been that way for a long time.
During the 1980s miner's strike, they backed the government to the hilt. During the Battle of Orgreave, this extended to doctoring video footage shown on the 9 o'clock news to make it look like the miners had attacked the police, when in fact the opposite had happened. They later conceded a "mistake", but never apologised for having clearly doctored the story for political reasons.

Only a fool trusts news from an outlet wholly owned by a corporation or a state.

Re:flash

[Ed Avis]

Yes, they should be platform neutral. That surely means not depending on a single proprietary platform such as Flash.

Re:flash

[evilviper]

Flash is just as much a proprietary standard as Microsoft Windows (and more proprietary than Silverlight).

The Flash video formats are well understood, and largely standard. I fail to see how Silverlight is any better.

The original standard for Flash video (FLV) used a slightly modified h.263 video codec with MP3 audio, which was quickly reverse engineered by open source players. Flash 7 added On2's VP6 codec, which is proprietary, but at least there are dual suppliers you can license it from.

Future versions of Flash (v.9+) will be switching to 100% standard video and audio formats, using h.264/AVC video, MP3 or AAC audio, and the MP4 container. You can just create a file in Quicktime with its default settings, and Flash (beta versions) will play it.

My objection to Flash video is not the format, but that the source of the video is heavily obfusticated thanks to needing to embed an SWF player app, and only it knowing where the file is. Meanwhile, every non-Flash video is directly embedded in the web page so 3rd party plug-ins can handle them all... JUST NOT FLASH.

If every web page author would simply provide an alternate way to access the video, a direct link to the FLV file (in addition to the embedded SWF player) I would have no objection to Flash. Instead, I just never watch videos on websites that use Flash.

Re:Equivalent?

[smallfries]

If they did would it fair to close down the market and say "Sorry, you can buy Sony if you want to use the service that you've already paid for"? Don't forget that the BBC is publicly funded, and supporting a commercial monopoly is not in its charter.

The bandwidth question has cropped up again. Given that they are not talking about access to their entire catalogue, but a small (1 week?) window of it - why don't the ISPs put a proxy on their networks so that it is only downloaded once, and the majority of the bandwidth is internal?

Streaming = bad news?

[mike2R]

The bad news is that it will probably only offer streaming

You mean I can watch iPlayer content without that obnoxious bit of bandwidth stealing almost-malware Kontiki crap? Can I do this on Windows as well? Where do I sign up?

Basically, once you install iPlayer it runs a filesharing service - kservice.exe - even after you've exited the program fully (by default it starts on system boot as well). A solution to this can be found here but I am really disapointed in the BBC for installing this crap on peoples machines.

Version that has fewer features is unacceptable

[Shisha]

I don't quite believe the BBC is serious. If the Linux / Mac player has fewer features than the Windows player, then maybe BBC will let people with only Mac / Linux computers at home to pay a lower license fee? Unless the versions are equal in terms of quality I will consider refusing to pay the fee in full. A bit of civil disobedience might be in order.

(note to non-UK readers: every household with a TV has to pay BBC a compulsory license fee of about GBP 120 per year)

Re:Version that has fewer features is unacceptable

[speaker of the truth]

What about people who don't own computers connected to the internet? Can they get their license fee lower?

Re:Version that has fewer features is unacceptable

[Shisha]

Good point. At the moment, if you don't own a TV you don't pay. But the license fee will be extended in a few years time to cover PC ownership. So once that happens you'd expect that you won't be forced to use a computer with an OS from a particular vendor, to get the most out of your fee.

In other news

[oliverthered]

The BBC has been required to make a Linux/Mac version of the IPlayer that allows for downloads.

Stream only?

[Alsee]

There's no such thing as "sending a stream". Physically impossible.
The only difference between a "download" and a "stream" is whether the person who receives the data choses to save it or not. As far as the sender goes, either the transmit the data or they don't send the data. There is no physical difference between sending a "stream" and sending a download. If the person watching the video tells his computer to save the data, then it is a download. Period end of story. They just have to have their software instructed to save the data.

The idea that you can ever "send a stream"... that something can be "streaming only", it is a total fiction, physically impossible. Yet brain damaged idiots persist in ignoring or fighting the laws of physics. When you get in a battle with the laws of physics, you will always lose and the laws of physics will always win.

Streaming only. Idiots. It'll take about 1.3 minutes after it goes online before people start saving the "stream".

-

Re:Stream only?

[CubicleView]

Not the entire story. Yes you can record a video "stream" and call it a "download", it'll give you the same file. But you can't download a video and start watching it before the download is complete. Streaming a file implies that the data is been sent in a specific order to allow for this.

Open Rights Group Commentary

[rimberg]

As the Open Rights Group reported yesterday

BBC U-turn: Full iPlayer service may never be available to Mac and Linux Users

Yesterday, the BBC announced that a cross-platform "streamed" version of its on-demand service the iPlayer would be available by the end of the year. According to this report from BBC News Online:

"At the end of the year users of Windows, Mac or Linux machines will be able to watch streamed versions of their favourite TV programmes inside a web browser, as well as share the video with friends and embed programmes on their own websites, sites such as Facebook and blogs."

If the idea sounds vaguely familiar, that's because back in March, when the BBC Trust put the iPlayer out for consultation, the Open Rights Group gently suggested that streaming was a far better short term solution to on-demand services than DRM-restricted market-distorting technologies that would serve to widen the digital divide. We observed that:

"Such an approach is cheaper, lower risk, more inclusive (it works for example in libraries) and more flexible than the current BBC proposal. It may not appeal to consultants looking to make huge profits at public expense however, precisely because it is simple, clean and low-risk.

"It does not, of itself, address the desire for users to obtain content in DRM-free downloadable form for any platform, but it provides a basis until the BBC is able to identify more open solutions for the download of content, preferably ones which do not depend upon DRM... The Open Rights Group considers it is quite possible that, as already is clearly happening in the music world, the use of DRM will soon be abandoned by the market itself."

You can read our full submission to the BBC Trust here. But enough of the I-told-you-so-s. Is yesterday's move good news for licence fee payers who do not use Windows? Well, not really. Although they will now be given online access to content their licence fee has helped pay for, there are still fundamental inequities between users on different platforms, and this still leaves the BBC deforming the market in favour of Microsoft DRM and Windows. People on Macs, Linux, PDAs and other handheld devices are still losing out on all the features that make the downloadable iPlayer different from, say, the kind of streaming that the BBC has done for years with the RadioPlayer.

And that's not all. Ashley Highfield, director of Future Media and Technology at the BBC has now indicated that the full, downloadable iPlayer may never be made available to those who do not use the latest versions of Windows. When the iPlayer launched in June, Highfield was quoted as saying:

"I am fundamentally committed to universality, to getting the BBC iPlayer to everyone in the UK who pays their licence fee."

But yesterday, he admitted:

"We need to look long and hard at whether we build a download service for Mac and Linux. It comes down to cost per person and reach at the end of the day."

The BBC could avoid all this mess if it eschewed DRM and instead employed standard formats. The Open Rights Group believes that the BBC cannot be truly public service in the 21st century until it gives the British public access to the programmes that they have paid for without DRM or restriction. This is not a technology problem, but cuts to the heart of what the BBC is for and how it makes and commissions programming. ORG challenges the BBC and the BBC Trust to re-examine the BBC's commissioning and rights frameworks with th

Quietly??

[violet16]

That's it! I can't take it any more! Every second Slashdot story tries to make something seem more evil and mysterious by saying it's been done "quietly." Now you can be quiet even when you make an announcement?

The BBC Trust have just said streaming not enough

[ChrisRed]

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7047381.stm

The BBC must deliver an online TV catch-up service that lets users of all computers download programmes, the corporation's regulators have said.

It comes after the BBC said a download service for Mac and Linux users was not 100% definite and would depend on cost.
A spokesman for the BBC Trust said it had approved the iPlayer on the condition of "platform neutrality", including a download service.

Good news, nice to see the trust appreciates the issues.

Re:It's not cost per person, it's a different mark

[clickclickdrone]

>then sit through 10 minutes of ads for 5 minutes of program
The BBC don't have ads... that's their biggest plus point IMHO, especially given that ITV et al have said they are going to increase the amount of advertising per hour to something similar to US TV and we all know how shite that is.

Yet another proprietary or streaming player

[rtkluttz]

Why the hell do web sites not just provide downloads in standard formats.

Embedded, streaming video in any format is evil. I want to view video in the player of my choice that I trust to be secure (for me), and to view it in that player at the size of my choice not the size you chose to embed it in the web page.

Flash video sucks for exactly those reasons. Yea.. I know it can be downloaded too, but why have to bother with it? Just encode it in MPEG4 and offer it for download. Users will be much happier in the long run.

Oh yea.. forgot, no one cares about the users.

Re:Equivalent?

[threaded]

I watch British TV, not in Britain though. I refuse point blank to have any Sony products in the house. So do quite a few people I know. Too many pieces of intelligent electronics that may get infected if attached you see. So if forced to watch TV on a Sony brand product I think I'd probably just stop watching TV altogether.

Re:Only Sony TV?

[mattpalmer1086]

Whoosh!

That was the whole point of the Sony TV metaphor, poor as it was. The iPlayer is not based on open standards, it's software/protocol is locked in to Windows only. Rather like a hypothetical situation where you could only receive certain TV programmes on a TV made by a single manufacturer...

whatever

[m2943]

The BBC seems a bit out of touch if they think that Flash isn't downloadable.

In any case, it is hard to understand why they don't simply make the stuff available as MPEG4. But, hey, maybe their audience will do it for them.

Re:Equivalent?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wasn't saying whether it was right or wrong, just pushing my finger through the big gaping hole in the analogy. But, hypothetically, if NTSC (US style) TV sets were a small percentage of the market (5-10%) and PAL (European style) sets were the other 90%, I don't think it would be unreasonable for BBC to devote more resources to the PAL viewers. I say that as I write this on a Mac.

Re:Why the "i"

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Surely with all the tax money they collect (and yes the license fee is a tax), they could have come up with a more original name for thier online digital video player.

Yes, some things truly are better left to the private sector. The government should have set up a contract bid for companies to come up with original names for this player.

Or maybe they secretly did, and Apple got the contract?

Its about all we can expect

[jocknerd]

'It comes down to cost per person and reach at the end of the day.'

No it doesn't. It comes down to you wanted DRM and went with Microsoft.
Why they chose this option instead of going with podcasts on iTunes is beyond me.

cost per person

[aristolochene]

I pay > £120 for my TV licence - and live in a major city. If I lived in the middle of nowhere I would receive the same TV shows for the same price. Yet the "cost per person" of delivering TV to remote ares is far higher.

For that reason the "cost per person" argument doesn't wash. As a public service broadcaster with a good history of technological innovation the BBC *should* be providing the same services to people who don't want/can't afford to use windows.

WTF indeed: read the iPlayer small print!

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

iPlayer offers other programs.

But at a price. I went to try it out the other day, having inadvertently deleted a program from my PVR before watching it. As always, I scanned the small print before installing new software, and this is what I found:

Assuming that I understand the agreement correctly and that it is legal, by installing the current version of iPlayer you agree to:

• join a third-party P2P network and pay for any amount of bandwidth required to use that network
• accept all liability for any material sent over that network using your computer, though the BBC offer you no guarantee that any of it will be legal
• allow the BBC to monitor your use of the P2P network, and anything else they put in a policy on a web page somewhere, which they can change without you knowing about it
• allow the BBC to automatically install updates to their iPlayer software on your computer, without your knowledge or consent, with no restriction on what they may do
• allow the BBC's software to automatically change your network configuration in ways that are unspecified but that you are explicitly warned may break it
• not hold the BBC responsible for any damage done to your system etc. etc. etc. including via the above-mentioned updates and network configuration changes
• allow the BBC to terminate the agreement at any time, but
• have no right to terminate it yourself.

In other words, you agree to them doing anything they want on your machine and your network, specifically including using it as a distribution hub for transmitting potentially illegal content to and from unknown users while being monitored, at your expense, without any responsibility on their side and with full liability for any illegal activity resting on you.

Now, the BBC is usually a pretty decent organisation. They don't get things right all the time, but on the whole, I think they do a good job, and I don't think they're the kind of organisation that would deliberately try to screw people. But tell me, what person in their right mind would agree to the terms for using the current iPlayer software, with today's legal and file-sharing cultures?

If the new version is streaming, Flash-based, and otherwise no-questions-asked, then as far as I'm concerned, it will be a huge improvement for Windows users as well... not least, because you won't be opening yourself up to a wrecked system, unlimited bandwidth charges, and an expensive lawsuit, just for clicking "OK". I might even be able to use it, which as a licence fee payer would be nice.

Define "Linux"

[ozbird]

"Linux" covers a multitude of sins... Which architectures exactly does the new Flash-based iPlayer support? (Given my own negative experiences with the amd64 Flash plug-in for Firefox, I suspect the answer is more or less just "x86".)

So, change it.

[malevolentjelly]

I find it disturbing that- although the most popular consumer linux distro is London-based Ubuntu- the player is targeted only at windows users.

"We need to get the streaming service up and look at the ratio of consumption between the services and then we need to look long and hard at whether we build a download service for Mac and Linux..." So push up those numbers, people. If you're running Linux or mac, make sure to use that web-based iPlayer. Show the BBC that you're not a fringe market. Let your numbers be heard. I assure you they will pay attention to where their hits come from.

It's funny that they switched from one closed source unaccessible technology to another. Flash is just barely linux compliant- even Silverlight will likely beat it in interoperability. If they want to use Microsoft's technology solutions, they should use Silverlight, so Ubuntu users will at least have Moonlight.

Windows only makes sense

[Brix Braxton]

In my industry, we have a demographic sample representation of most households for which we maintain a list. We know what browser, OS, connection speed all of our panel is comprised of. Believe me, Mac use is barely a blip when you take a balanced sample. This has been true in the mac world for years, only popular PC games get ported, and usually some time later, Tivo supports the PC side of it's server software first (video came to Mac a long while later), SlingMedia developed their Mac player almost last (and it's still in Beta as far as I know)... What makes this so unusual?

Re:Equivalent?

[Oktober Sunset]

PAL tvs can support NTSC signals, but they look like dogshit, kinda like they do on an NTSC set actually.