BBC To Create Internet Protocol TV Standard

Robadob sends word that the BBC has been granted approval for Project Canvas, "a partnership between the BBC, ITV, BT, Five, Channel 4, and TalkTalk to develop a so-called Internet Protocol Television standard." The approval came with several interesting requirements: "Project Canvas must always remain free-to-air but users 'may be charged for additional pay services that third parties might choose to provide via the Canvas platform, for example video on demand services, as well as the broadband subscription fees.' Access to Project Canvas must not be 'bundled with other products or services' and 'listing on the electronic program guide will be awarded in a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory manner." In addition, a preliminary draft of the tech specs for the project must be published within 20 working days, in order to allow broadcasters and manufacturers of set-top boxes to adopt the new standards. Significantly, "Other broadcasters and content providers must have access to the platform."

Comments

Note to BBC

[gillbates]

You might want to consider this very thing was done with the likes of MPEGII-TS, ISDB-T, DVB-H etc... more than 5 years ago. You don't need to invent a new standard, but merely use the ones already in existence. And these standards are already open, implemented, and well understood.

Nobody wants a BBC-only internet tv.

Re:Note to BBC

[Nerdfest]

Nobody wants a BBC-only internet tv.

Sounds like the BBC does (or certainly doesn't mind).

Re:Note to BBC

[mister_dave]

From El Reg:

The problem? There's already an industry standards body for British digital TV, and the BBC is a member - along with Pace, Microsoft and Sky. The DTG (Digital TV Group) publishes the "D Book", the product it says of 4,000 man hours of work developing detailed technical specifications for digital broadcasting standards. The Sixth Edition of the D Book came out in March.

By contrast, Canvas specifications are © of the BBC. The DTG asked the BBC Trust this year to release from BBC copyright crucial parts of the Canvas spec including the presentation engine, metadata, IP content delivery and many other key parts of the spec

.

Re:Note to BBC

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no idea why this is modded +5. The standard is not about replacing video codecs, it is about a new platform. It's really a replacement of MHEG rather than MPEG.

"You don't need to invent a new standard, but merely use the ones already in existence."

There aren't good standards (modern ones) that deal with the problems at hand.

The change will make developing applications for IPTV's far, far easier by shifting to a better known and used language, as well as a far more powerful processor (there are specifications for exactly how powerful a box must be for it to call itself a canvas box).

"Nobody wants a BBC-only internet tv."

No, that's why this isn't a BBC-only production.

Disclaimer: IAMA dev in the BBC working with these boxes.

Re:Note to BBC

[Alsee]

A quote from a few months ago: The BBC has indicated that third party content owners are seeking to ensure that reception equipment will implement ... copy protection. Because [these] requirements are not mandatory, representatives of content owners have asked the BBC to take steps to ensure that reception equipment will implement the specified content management arrangements.

The "standards issue" is that certain parties want the government to define and impose a DRM system and for the government to make it MANDATORY for all hardware to include and enforce this DRM system.

The guardian.co.uk story contains a link to dtg_bbc_trust_canvas_response.pdf were they say they want a new Digital Rights Management expert working group (diagram on page 2), and where they want a "high integrity receiver conformance regime" for receivers. That is a fancy way of saying want all receivers to the securely welded shut and they want circuitry and software securely locked down to prevent device owners or third party services from unscrewing the box to upgrade them in unapproved ways. And most of all it means strictly prohibiting any open platform such as MythTV or or a generic GPL Linux PC reception where people can modify the software. On page 10 they have a section explicitly titled "Conditional Access and DRM" where they explicitly state their concern is for Canvas to ensure the inclusion of DRM components in receivers.

The EFF has a good article discussing how it's the same thing that went on in the U.S. with the same people demanding the "Broadcast Flag" and demanding the FCC to make it mandatory for all receivers to include a government imposed DRM system on the entire public. There were the same demands for "high integrity receiver conformance regime" to lock down the hardware and software against modification by owners or third party services.

-

Re:Note to BBC

[Anonymous Coward]

So they're going to pour tax money into DRM, even though DRM has been proven, both theoretically and practically, not to work? I kind of feel cheated. I thought the licence fee was intended for the production of quality television.

Re:Note to BBC

[jwdb]

I have no idea why this is modded +5. The standard is not about replacing video codecs, it is about a new platform. It's really a replacement of MHEG rather than MPEG.

Because none of the three examples he listed - MPEGII-TS, ISDB-T and DVB-H - are video codecs. All are ways of packaging A/V streams together with program and other types of data for transmission. This is an integral part of any TV distribution platform and will definitely be part of what the BBC is working on.

Standards must be open.

[Aladrin]

Standards need to be COMPLETELY open, even to those who don't want to follow your rules, if you want them to do well. Restricting this to companies that wish to play by your rules is a great way to ensure that others will create a competing standard and basically nullify any real forward progress this might have.

Also, this line is screwy:

"In addition, a preliminary draft of the tech specs for the project must be published within 20 working days, in order to allow broadcasters and manufacturers of set-top boxes to adopt the new standards."

What the hell kind of timeline is that? What broadcaster or manufacturer is saying "We're making new boxes in 20 days, so you had better have the draft ready by then." That's a ridiculous amount of time for such a massive standard. In addition, a preliminary draft of the tech specs for the project must be published within 20 working days, in order to allow broadcasters and manufacturers of set-top boxes to adopt the new standards.

Unless, of course, the standard is so generic as to be useless. If so, let me write it for you:

Equipment or software rendering this service must support video with synchronized audio delivered via internet protocol.

There, saved you 20 days.

Re:Standards must be open.

[91degrees]

The BBC does have a lot of clout. If the BBC doesn't support a UK TV standard then that standard is not going to catch on in the UK.

And the BBC is a big international name. If the rest of Europe is looking for a solution they're quite likely to go for the same one simply for compatibility as long as it's a reasonably decent system.

Re:Standards must be open.

[mister_dave]

If the rest of Europe are looking for a solution, then OpenIPTV is likely to be attracting their attention.

Re:Standards must be open.

[jadin]

Makes a whole lot more sense if you read it as:

"Any changes to the standard must be published in a preliminary draft within 20 working days, in order to allow broadcasters and manufacturers to adjust to the new changes."

And yet, I see zero evidence that they intended anything other than what they wrote. Oh well, Just a thought I had reading your post.

Re:Standards must be open.

[petermgreen]

Standards need to be COMPLETELY open, even to those who don't want to follow your rules, if you want them to do well.
How about HDCP? Getting the stuff needed to implement the standard requires you to agree to enforce thier rules. That hasn't stopped nearly all HDTVs and a lot of monitors from supporting it.

BBC, ITV, C4 and Five are the main free to air broadcasters in the UK and all of them have ondemand services on computers. For a TV or STB vendor selling in the UK access to ondemand TV from all the major free channels is a pretty attractive feature and one i'm sure they would be prepared to sign a fairly restrictive agreement to get.

And once the installed base of hardware starts supporting the system I'd expect it to spread to broadcasters in other countries.

I wish comcast used a standard like this

[NotSoHeavyD3]

I mean look, my Tivo is basically a computer and I can use it to watch youtube. However the one thing I really want to do is use my tivo to watch on demand stuff. You'd think all they'd have to do is write an app to use the "IPTV" standard and then have my Tivo connect to one of Comcast servers to request an on-demand program. I mean seriously, my Tivo is hooked up to the ethernet, that's hooked up to the internet through Comcast so I'm inside their network and I'm using their cable cards on top of it. They can't have a stupid server that would let me watch stuff on my tivo and instead they've got to hack together some stupid switched video system to implement on demand?

Waste

[Wowsers]

So the BBC have found a new way to waste my BBC tax money. This is not their business.

Re:Waste

[gbjbaanb]

Yeah, 'cos we all need a channel stuffed full of soap operas, reality TV shows and sensationalist documentaries all pandering to the lowest common demoninator.

Fortunately, the BBC can have BBC 2, 3 and 4 all of which serve a more 'niche' marketplace of cultural, artistic, youth and intellectual programming. I don't think forcing the good stuff you find on there and replacing it with ad-driven crap would be beneficial to society.

Same goes for Radio - Radio 4 is the ultimate (check it out, fellow nerds). If we had 1 radio station, it'd be the mass-market pop and talk that is radio 1. That wouldn't be good at all.

Re:Waste

[Anonymous Coward]

Where does this bizaro other-universe idea that what the BBC produces is crap, yet what the likes of ITV & Sky produce is some sort of golden age child of television? Hour for hour the BBC produces vastly better programming than either ITV or (*snigger*) Sky, and even Ch4 aren't looking too smart these days.

I can't take seriously anyone who suggests we should get rid of the license fee, or scale back the BBC, and then go on to use ITV and the Murdoch media as an example to follow. It's nothing but pure ideologically driven bullshit.

Re:Waste

[gbjbaanb]

We get all that crap from the BBC because it has a mandate to produce TV to appeal to the mass market - ie, if it suddenly dropped Eastenders, viewing figures would drop too and people (like you perhaps) would say that the BBC was pointless as nobody watched it.

They can balance the crap that the sheeple want to watch with the ability to fill programming with other good stuff. The commercial TV stations do not bother - they just want viewers eyeballs for their adverts.

Live TV is so passe

[mrsam]

What's really needed is some sort of organized access to downloadable broadcast content. I rarely watch live TV. I really don't care when the shows are on.

Right now, if you want a particular show, you have to figure out where to download, if it's even available for downloading. But usually, all you get is a postage-sized streaming window.

Many new TV sets coming out today can grab video contents from a small collection of online content. This needs to be scaled up, so that people can simply ditch the old-style cable and satellite monopolies. I want to turn on my TV, and select from a choice of live streams, from the news channels, or available list of archived shows.

Oh, and since most folks have multiple sets, it would be nice to have a standard by which your server in the basement can retrieve the shows on your behalf, and your TV sets fetch the video from it, instead of having all your TV sets waste bandwidth downloading the same show.

As it's the "British Broadcasting Corp"

[Kupfernigk]

I rather think it is precisely their business. The idea that the BBC should be restricted to radio broadcasting is ridiculous. I guess that when FM started, people like you would have suggested that the BBC be limited to AM broadcasting. And when the first video was transmitted, that they should be restricted to audio only.

Re:As it's the "British Broadcasting Corp"

[Wowsers]

Using your example, the BBC and other UK broadcasters have been pushing to get rid of FM in favour of DAB radio (digital audio broadcasting). DAB has terrible audio quality, terrible error correction, and pretty bad reception compared to FM. The rest of the world is dumping or not implementing DAB and implementing DAB+ instead. DAB+ is a more up to date CODEC which is more efficient, better audio quality, better error correction, cheaper to transmit than DAB, etc. etc. So the BBC are trying to get people to accept inferior technology (just like the DVB-T "Freeview" system).

The BBC have long since given up the pretense of quality transmission, the last decent innovation of theirs being the contribution to the NICAM 728 project.... Stereo transmission of audio in the analogue TV signal....

Re:As it's the "British Broadcasting Corp"

[BasilBrush]

Your example does't help you. DAB was not developed by the BBC. If it is a failure, then perhaps thats a good reason for the BBC developing it's own standard this time, rather than adopting an existing standard. It certainly not any kind of argument that the BBC shouldn't be in the standards development business.

DAB has been under development since 1981 at the Institut für Rundfunktechnik (IRT). In 1985 the first DAB demonstrations were held at the WARC-ORB in Geneva and in 1988 the first DAB transmissions were made in Germany. Later DAB was developed as a research project for the European Union (EUREKA), which started in 1987 on initiative by a consortium formed in 1986.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Broadcasting

Re:As it's the "British Broadcasting Corp"

[evilviper]

DAB has terrible audio quality,

DAB use MPEG-1 Layer2 audio at any bitrate. DAB is indistinguishable from CD audio at 192kbps. Admittedly, many DAB broadcasters IN THE UK use lower bitrates, but that's a simple question of how much money each broadcaster wants to spend on their digital transmissions...

terrible error correction,

See above. The level of error correction is selectable. If it's not enough, complain to the broadcaster that they need to select a higher level.

and pretty bad reception compared to FM.

I expect this is mostly related to the above. Though I will note that DAB uses a slightly higher frequency than analog FM. However, DAB+ will do the same, so there's no relevant difference there.

The rest of the world is dumping or not implementing DAB and implementing DAB+ instead.

Much of the rest of Europe is indeed broadcasting in DAB right now. The adoption rate was just so slow that after a couple decades, something better came along, and the installed base is small enough not to hold up migrating to something entirely non-compatible... Would you advise never adopting anything, and just sitting around hoping something better will come along?

And why are you complaining about DAB, and not about DVB? After all, you're stuck with MPEG-2 codecs, instead of the newer and better H.264... Shouldn't all of Europe have held-up on that one, waiting for MPEG-4?

DAB+ is a more up to date CODEC which is more efficient, better audio quality, better error correction, cheaper to transmit than DAB, etc. etc.

DAB+ uses HE-AAC, which does a better job of compressing audio to somewhat lower bitrates, without as many apparent artifacts. At high bitrates (192kbps) HE-AAC is no better than MPEG-1 Layer2. In-fact, maximum sound quality will be slightly worse (but probably not enough for the general public to care).

The error correction isn't really inherently much better, either. The only reason they changed it was because the old method that worked on CBR wouldn't work on VBR... The only reason you can say it's improved is that they require more of it, and that is only to make-up for deficiencies in HE-AAC versus MPEG-1 Layer2.

DAB+ is no cheaper to transmit than DAB. It's really the same technology on the back-end there. In fact the added ECC overhead would make it a bit more expensive. The only thing that will make it "cheaper" is the ability to use lower bitrate HE-AAC audio, and therefore smaller channels.

However, any way you look at it, you're really stuck at the same problem... Broadcasters were interested in cutting costs, so they reduced quality to just tolerable levels. Even if DAB+ was adopted in a day, what makes you think they won't do the same thing, and reduce quality to barely tolerable levels?

I don't blame you for having no clue, though. This is pretty much what happens when people get their information from heavily biased articles Wikipedia, of which the DAB article is one of the worst I've ever seen. Of course there are other interested parties who stand to make a lot of money on DAB+, who are also loudly spouting an impressive amount of misinformation, sadly much of it from within the EBU.

Thoughts from the USA

[bradgoodman]

I thought BBC had already standardized on Bittorrent :-O

Re:set-top boxes available to access iPlayer and I

[MickyTheIdiot]

As a U.S. BBC fan this doesn't sound good AT ALL, actually. You can almost guarantee that somewhere in there is region control... the exact same problem U.S. fans have with iPlayer.

Region control on the Internet is a step BACKWARDS.

Re:set-top boxes available to access iPlayer and I

[MickyTheIdiot]

I understand the issue with the License, but there are big fans (like me) in the U.S. that would gladly pay for a British TV License so they could see their favorite shows at broadcast. The fact is the BBC (and some of the government bureaucracy) so far has simply just cut off other fans around the world when the technology is there.

Plus, as someone else has mentioned already, region encoding is simply an artificial way for broadcasters to keep their advantage from the time when NTSC to PAL conversions cost thousands of dollars and physically had to be shipped to the U.S. There is no reason for the time lag any more...

Re:set-top boxes available to access iPlayer and I

[gbjbaanb]

sure, but if you could embed paid-for content in there too, the BBC Worldwide (or BBS America) could then legitimately sell the content to you. Currently, the standards don't allow for that which means they have to block you entirely.

Re: Region control ... a step BACKWARDS

[Peet42]

Maybe that lesson will sink in to bloody American video hosting sites that region-lock the clips people post in Slashdot and Techdirt. There's nothing more annoying than a post to the effect of "Look at this - it's AWESOME!!!!" above a black box saying "This video is not available in your area". What *is* the point of region locking a trailer? I can understand region locking a whole movie, even if I don't agree with it, but locking people out of a trailer is just plain perverse.

PC users liable for TV licence?

[phil holden]

I do not pay a TV licence. I do not own a TV. About once a year there is a program that everyone is talking about that I would like to see. I emailed the BBC to ask if it was legal for me to use iPlayer if I did not have a TV licence. They said this was perfectly legal, a licence is only needed if I owned a device capable of receiving live broadcast quality TV. They said I would only need a TV licence for my Internet PC if the BBC started live streaming the signal to the Internet. I am guessing there are a good number of people who do not have a TV and do not pay licence fee because they do not like what the BBC produces. It is important for us to be able to opt out of 'being able to receive' live BBC TV without having to disconnect from the Internet. I know this announcement is about on demand content but the format may pave the way for live Internet broadcasts. If the BBC make it 'free' to access what they may really mean is they are making all UK internet users liable for a TV licence.

what this is

[DaveGod]

Just to clarify, since the description isn't exactly clear, basically they're doing for IP TV what they did for free-to-air digital television with Freeview.

That is, bundling it together for convenient free access on a cheap box to go under the TV.

Like Freeview, this is not "a BBC project", but a coalition between all the major broadcasters in the UK plus a few others on the technology/infrastructure side. Again like Freeview, a company (apparently "YouTV" is most likely) will be set up to manage it and each broadcaster will have a share and board representation. BBC will probably take lead, because they initiated it and because the other broadcasters trust it more than they trust each other.

They have stated that it will be an "open standard", but no, not "open" in the sense of what /. would call open with respect to internet standards. They mean open in that any manufacturer can make the hardware and relatively light editorial controls over standards of the TV on it (no, don't expect channel 4chan to be on there). That probably doesn't matter much though since this is a TV box-set thing: consider it more a relatively open consumer product rather than a relatively closed internet standard.

Personally I think it's about time. Just like they did with Freeview (and iPlayer, and well, quite a lot of TV/radio throughout history), the BBC have sat back, given capitalism the first opportunity, saw the lacklustre efforts going nowhere then stepped in to get the job done. It's really quite absurd that a non-commercial entity is consistently the one pushing media technology forward in the UK with any enthusiasm, and even more ridiculous that they are the one that comes across as consumer-focused. Don't get me wrong, I still think they do things around the time I would expect a non-profit "me too" organisation would, what is strange is that capitalism isn't already there. Nearly all the traditional media companies seem to just crap their pants at the sound of the word "internet".

Not sure exactly where this leaves the cable and satellite operators though, what with this + Freeview HD all that infrastructure is starting to look redundant.

There's some apparently independent wiki-type site with lots of info here.

MP4 does it all

[StandardCell]

The MPEG-4 Part 12 standard or MP4 container is capable of nearly everything that one needs from a standards perspective to set up any kind of streaming A/V media. The metadata boxes/atoms are totally customizable and extensible even to the point of custom device application delivery. All major CODECs are supported within the container. It can be muxed in real-time (with some trickery). All one needs to do is choose the audio and video CODECs and to define the custom metadata if/when necessary, gear your tool set to your choices, and you're done. You can even do DRM and live ad splicing if you want and your system supports it. There's a reason Adobe uses it in their .f4v variant, and why online streaming content providers and even now Microsoft in Expressions are using MP4 and its variants.

MPEG TS is higher in container overhead than MP4. Vudu happens to use it in their service, but it's a cut down version and was used primarily because the set of targeted devices for playback used it(i.e. TVs and STBs). I'd never choose it if I was starting any kind of streaming media service or defining a standard. There are even plenty of tools from companies like Rhozet and Digital Rapids to be able to batch re-mux and re-encode any content from MPEG TS to MP4.

By the way, you're all over the map with your standards. ISDB-T and DVB-H are broadcast standards that encompass much more than the media container specification, like the modulation scheme and receiver-level RF tests. MPEG TS is a container format defined in MPEG-2 Part 1 and is completely agnostic to broadcast standards and that physical medium, even though it is used almost exclusively in that domain.

The BBC is the best!

[gavron]

I'm so glad that the future "Internet Standards" will be put together by the BBC. I hope they get good input from the MPAA, RIAA, BSA, etc.

Good things we don't leave Internet Standards in the hands of those pesky idiots at the IETF, NANOG, or vendors like Cisco, Juniper, et al.

I was going to say more but I think I'll go write a Broadcasting Standard.

Ehud
Tucson
P.S. Please don't mod me down. It's my birthday.

Note to TV Show Producers.

[Nyder]

I'm not ever paying for anything you produce.

Just thought you should know.