BBC to Try TV On Demand 533
Shevek writes "The UK Independent newspaper is reporting on a new BBC trial: 'Later this month, the BBC will launch a pilot project that could lead to all television programmes being made available on the internet. Viewers will be able to scan an online guide and download any show. Programmes would be viewed on a computer screen or could be burned to a DVD and watched on a television set. Alternatively, programmes could be downloaded to a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) ... By launching iMP, the BBC hopes to avoid being left at the mercy of a software giant such as Microsoft, which could try to control the gateway to online television.' Yet more proof that the BBC license fee is an unmitigated Good Thing(TM)."
TV on demand is the future... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Hot deals! [retailretreat.com]
great gravy (Score:0, Interesting)
so yeah, this technology isnt exactly new. well mabye for the bbc anyways.
They already have... (Score:2, Interesting)
Been there, done that (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:TV on demand is the future... (Score:5, Interesting)
I was able to watch them without interruption, in great quality (as I refuse to subscribe to CATV or buy a double-fucking digital receiver), at my choice of when to watch it.
I really think that it would be an excellent idea for it to be brought here and used by the major networks. I suppose they would never accept it because of the possible loss in ad revenues... Sad really.
Great idea! (Score:3, Interesting)
No more paying for Video Tape or DVD copies of BBC shows and waiting for them to ship. Just pay and download, and then burn my own copy to a Video CD or DVD disk. I guess they have controls so that only one copy can be burned?
Video Rental stores ought to get into this gig, get the license to distribute the movies digitally and sell them on their website.
Might as well, would be a much better quality than those idiots who bring video cameras to movie theatres and then upload those videos to file sharing networks.
what happens about the licience fee? (Score:5, Interesting)
This will raise some intersting questions: Apart from resulting in nonTV owners (and hence non licience payers) accessing the BBC it would this not lead to much wider dissemination of the BBC TV outside the UK. Wouldn't this damage the existing syndication relationships that the BBC has set up. I am amased that any broadcaster risk distribution over the internet. Certainty thinking outside the box.
Read Slashdot Often? (Score:3, Interesting)
Will this be availabe to non-UK citizens? (Score:2, Interesting)
bit torrent (Score:5, Interesting)
is it because it's harder to advertise?
would people be offended by short adverts played at the beginning of the video files? (eg This Bit Torrent file is brought to you by...)
networks could distribute the seeds across their affiliates to reduce bandwidth cost, etc.
Re:Mirror , just in case (Score:3, Interesting)
Please Please Please Succeed! (Score:2, Interesting)
If it doesn't, I'm going to set up a home-made video box over there just to record stuff, so that I can download it to my PC. "Footballers' Wives", here I come.
Re:TV on demand is the future... (Score:5, Interesting)
Because you can fast-forward through commercials, over time I've gotten in the habit of never bothering to watch TV "live". Instead, I just let it record and whenever I feel in the mood I go catch up on some of my TV watching. While this is not TV "on demand" is is definitely the next best thing. I always have a huge selection of things in the library to watch. It's more like "on demand with limited selection based on configurable preferences".
All that being said, I can place a dollar value on on-demand television, based on what I pay per month for my cable service and how many shows I watch per month. I would happily pay $1 per hour of standard network/cable network TV if I could have it on demand and commerical-free, $2 per episode of premium-channel series shows (like Dead Like Me or Deadwood or Carnivale), $3 for a movie, and $4 for a new release movie.
Great but a pity (Score:3, Interesting)
Just a pity they can't leave people the fuck alone if they don't want it. [marmalade.net]
ms drm (Score:4, Interesting)
http://p2p.weblogsinc.com/entry/672947338275913
The most significant revelations were concerning the protection of the content. All content will be DRM'd, only available for a limited period time, once downloaded. As expected, it will also only be available to UK broadband users. In a break with the BBC's long-standing support of Real, Microsoft DRM will be used for the technical trial, but it appears that no final decision has been made.
As was known previously, the EPG (Electronic Programming Guide) will cover fourteen days; seven looking forward and seven backward. The programs that have been broadcasted will be downloadable to the computer simply by clicking on them. A preview of a piece can be watched before committing to download a complete show.
Re:I would happily pay the license fee (Score:3, Interesting)
BBC America is a joke. It's like PBS with commercials.
Definitely a Good Thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Individual cable broadcast companies taking this initiative will bring about the same effect as the a la carte cable service many Americans have been asking for. Anyone with broadband Internet access will have access to only the shows they want, on demand, and priced individually.
Re:me too. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, (Score:3, Interesting)
Firstly the qualification: I'm a Brit - and I'm far from an anti-American one, although that sort of thing is definitely on the increase over here.
As flippant as it was, the parent poster actually has a point. On top of my taxes I pay a license fee so that the BBC can provide its (undeniably) excellent services to the world. Its largely English language services of course benefit the U.S. as much, if not more than they do the U.K. Perhaps all the more so given the ubiquity and uniformity of corporate media power on that side of the pond.
And so to the rant: At the moment my country does pretty much exactly what the Whitehouse (and Whitehouse-friendly corporations) want or tell it to do. But I can't vote for the president. So, since us Brits can't vote for our 'president' and, in more ways than this simple example, pay taxes and provide services for the whole English-speaking world, with very little in the form of reciprocation, is it any wonder that people over here are beginning to question the so-called 'special relationship'?
Someone on
Right, that's the rant over - thanks for your indulgence.
Now back on-topic:
That's great! But even if every one of the UK'S 60 million or so individuals (including kids etc.) paid a license fee, that still wouldn't pay for hosting the BBC's entire video output at broadband quality for the entire global English-speaking world. Hopefully non-U.K. based clients will have to pay some form of fee, perhaps even a subscription, to help pay for these services.
Umitigated "good" thing!? (Score:1, Interesting)
I think I speak for (Score:2, Interesting)
*But* stop wasting the license fee on silly shit like this and get us Premiership Football back on our screens. When I can settle down to Liverpool vs. Middlesborough without having the dread hand of Robert Murdoch in my wallet, then we can talk innovation and about a shiny bright little future.
The BBC have no sense of what the priorities of 30 million of their customers are.
Re:All TV programs are already available on the ne (Score:3, Interesting)
I want my EastEnders (Score:3, Interesting)
BBC - PLEASE make EE available via a pay-for mechanism (reasonable pricing please!) to those of us outside the UK. Your namesake BBCAmerica has seen fit to cancel it last year, ensuring that pretty much everything on that channel is something they can rerun 100 times a month (changing rooms, ground force, etc). If they could rerun one month of news programming for a full year to keep costs down they'd probably do that too.
I'm sure there are *many* people outside the UK willing to pay $150/year for downloadable EE.
(I can't believe Laura just died either!)
What I don't get is with programs like EE, why *not* sell them online? They're just sitting on a shelf. It's just something which is costing them money to archive, and it's never replayed again (maybe on UK Gold now, but certainly not anywhere outside the UK on a regular basis).
Re:I think I speak for (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Pax Britannia (Score:2, Interesting)
In other words, the UK practiced lassez faire capitalism (which an astonishing number of people on
"Fighting two costly world wars that the United States waited until the very end to jump into."
The US supported both sides of more precisely. IBM, Ford, GM, Coca-Cola are all companies that traded with Germany at the same time as the Allied countries.
"The rise of the US as a superpower."
Which was only possible because the USA never suffered any damage to the countrys' infrastructure (apart from Pearl Harbour) and was thus able to loan money (at exhorbtant rates) to the Eurpoean countries, including the UK.
"Colonial unrest."
Translation: realisation that the dumb white folk from across the sea aren't here to help us at all but to exploit us. For a contempory example, see Iraq.
"The constant flirtations with socializing industry post WWII."
As alluded to above, what you're describing isn't socialism but fascism.
Writers Guild Problems (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Pax Britannia (Score:4, Interesting)
No. German fascism built better quality cars than the Jaguars and the MGs of the 1970s. Lumping the British experiment under the various Labour governments pre-Thatcher gives the German experiment (Mercedes-Benz, VW, BMW) a bad name if that can ever be possible (excluding all the other tidbits - war crimes and all).
"Translation: realisation that the dumb white folk from across the sea aren't here to help us at all but to exploit us. For a contempory example, see Iraq."
Not at all. If the end of colonialism proved one thing, it was the British Empire's administrative skills were better than the native populaces that it ruled for the most part. See the nuclear problem that is the India/Pakistani dilemma. India's population boomed under British rule because of the advent of Western medicine and technology. Then look at the economic slide the country took after independence and the application of Stalinist economic principles up until the tech boom and the appreciation of capitalism in the 1990s. How about in Africa? Are the people of Zimbabwe better off under Robert Mugabe than they were under British administration? What about Hong Kong under the People's Republic of China? After all, if the PRC were so good to Hong Kong, the Taiwanese populace would be demanding reunification now.
The areas the Empire "effed up" were with Palestine and the place formerly known as the British North American Colonies that is now known as the United States. Losing the colonies to the radicals known as the "Sons of Liberty" (SOL) has to be Britain's greatest cluster f*** since the SOL didn't have a leg to stand on when weighing the evidence. Palestine was a no-win situation following the discoveries of the Nazi attrocities in WWII. I'll also add the failure to adopt "Home Rule" in Ireland as the third biggest mistake and the area Benjamin Disraeli was incorrect on.
"In other words, the UK practiced lassez faire capitalism (which an astonishing number of people on
No. That's not what I am saying. Germany was not fascist prior to WWI. Sure, businesses tied to military procurement did do well following German unification under Bismarck, but it was not fascist. Great Britain was a free-trader at the time, but Germany preferred enacting heavy tariffs on foreign goods so that German industry would be protected. That's the textbook definition of protectionism in application. The same goes for the US during that same era. Couple both those countries with the outpouring of British capital looking for the next area to profit, and that is what created the two largest trading competitors to what had previously been known as the "factory of the world," Great Britain. That is also how the railroads of Germany and the United States were funded. It is ironic that British capital funded two of the major reasons why the British Empire no longer exists. Of course, that is what the "Little Englanders" wanted all along.
Re:I wanna work for the BBC (Score:3, Interesting)
Somehow I doubt I'll be one of the 500 to get a free PDA though, however I look forward to a surprise email when I get into work
Re:The Roman Empire is back - UK and EU (Score:2, Interesting)
The EU needs to be large in order to be effective. However, the enlargement drains the larger economies to benefit of the smaller ones. At this moment, the UK economy is the strongest in Europe (Germany is still struggling with the deadweight of reunification).
Previous attempts at economic glue - viz the exchange rate mechanism - placed enormous strain on the UK and showed just how unbalanced things are.
Another problem to manifest is the ludicrous inflation Ireland experienced (which they appear willing to endure as they really *do* benefit from the EU slush funds they're using to build roads).
The very *last* member of the EU to "cry foul" when things are going seriously wrong is the UK - too much of this stiff upper lip nonsense.
The EU *needs* the economic resources of the UK but very few other members (particularly not the French, who're the ultimate driving force behind the EU) will think twice about enacting legislation which hurts the UK if it benefits themselves.
Increasing numbers of people in the UK are simply brassed off because this is *supposed* to be a two-way street.