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BBC's Open Player Claims Not Followed Through
ruphus13 writes "BBC's iPlayer was originally built on Microsoft's DRM-protected technology, and has never really been liked by folks like the FSF. The BBC is trying to play nice, though, recently claiming, 'the BBC has always been a strong advocate and driver of open industry standards. Without these standards, TV and radio broadcasting would simply not function. I believe that the time has come for the BBC to start adopting open standards such as H.264 and AAC for our audio and video services on the web.' This article argues that actions speak louder than words, and this is where the BBC falls short. 'The fact that both AAC and H.264 are encumbered with patent licenses that make their distribution under free licenses problematic flies in the face of this definition. It's good to see a major organization like the BBC switching from closely held secretive codecs to more widespread and documented ones. But it would be even better to see them throw their considerable weight behind some truly open formats.'"
h.264 patent licencing applies to devices (and even that is low cost):
http://www.dspr.com/www/technology/technology.htm#H.264 Licensing Fees
Which is developed by BBC, a cutting edge video standard on the level with H.264 and is free as in speech? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_(codec)
Wasn't it supposed to be used in Beijing Olympics?
You're reading 2 different quotes there, point and counter-point, something that should have been clear if you happened to click the links instead of being trigger happy about grabbing first post :P
I had some email correspondence with a BBC tech shortly after they'd experimented with streaming ogg vorbis. He said they'd concluded that it wasn't sufficiently "scalable". I've never implemented anything on a scale like BBC World Service, so I don't know if there's anything to that or not, but perhaps there are slash dotters with the experience to comment.
When a lot of people complained about CBC pimping for Microsoft they set up streaming ogg vorbis for Toronto, but they haven't expanded it beyond that. I suppose they figured that was enough of a bone to throw us.
Loose lips lose spit.
There are no ads whatsoever on BBC iPlayer or any other page on bbc.co.uk.
I have no idea what you are talking about?
Are you, by any chance, british? My understanding is that BBC doesn't run ads for domestic users, since they already pay for it; but does for international freeloaders. I can't say, of course, I'm an international freeloader with adblock.
As the BBC must have a competent legal department I really wonder what the real reason for their reluctance to use certain codex is.
Personally I'm even more pissed off the Dutch public broadcasters have elected to use some Microsoft product called Silverlight in addition to the existing .wmv streams.
And that with taxpayers money!
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
The BBC is *not* government run. They are publically funded, but the government has no direct control over their output.
It's not so much that you don't pay the license fee but that the various 3rd parties who produce programming for the BBC don't want their foreign market profits affected by allowing people outside the UK to view their shows on the BBC website, rather than on their 'local' TV stations.
Whilst its impossible (given the broken nature of patent law) to declare OGG Vorbis 100% free, when OGG Vorbis support was added to WinAmp, the legal team at AOL Time Warner did a through due diligence to look for anything that could be an issue for the format. If the legal team of one of the largest media companies on the planet says the format is free, thats about as good as its ever going to get.