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

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.

[mister_dave]

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

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"

[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: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.

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.

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.

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