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BBC Brings DRM-Free Content To Linux Users

Posted by timothy on from the gnu-linux dept.

eldavojohn writes "The BBC is planning to release some of its programmes to users of GNU & Linux. You won't see Doctor Who or Dragons' Den on there anytime soon, but they have been working with Canonical & Collabora on getting this out there for Totem users. The developer blog mentions that the sheer number of options in the open source world actually makes this difficult to accomplish."

2 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. BBC World Service by photomonkey · · Score: 3, Informative

    Would it be too much to ask to get BBC World Service in something other than WMP/Real format?

    Right now, Vermont Public Radio has a transcoder that takes the Real and rebroadcasts it in streaming MP3, but even after donating to them, I still feel bad that the burden is on them to re-encode the stream.

    I'd transcode the stream myself but, a) don't want to go to the trouble and b) suspect it's against their TOS anyway.

    I'm sure the Beeb poured a ton of money into the Real platform years ago (to the extent that they may still be locked-in), but I'd really love to see such an important service be more accessible.

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  2. Re:what is so hard about it? by David+McBride · · Score: 3, Informative

    The BBC is using open formats, protocols and systems to provide this service.

    See:

    http://uriplay.org/
    http://open.bbc.co.uk/rad/uriplay/availablecontent
    http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=555823

    This is a source plugin for content made available by the BBC, kindly sponsored
    by the BBC and Canonical. It's still quite basic, but functional.

    (Note: this has nothing to do with the iPlayer, it mostly just makes content
    available in totem which is already available in some form or other on the BBC
    website now, at least for the time being; server-side things are also still
    work-in-progress, so expect the occasional hiccups and problems with the
    content in the feed.)

    The totem plugin's implemented in open-source python. Go play!