Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

BBC Begins Open-Source Streaming Challenge

Posted by michael on Fri Aug 13, 2004 07:50 AM
from the fear-factor dept.
Media Programming The Internet IT Technology
bus_stopper copies and pastes: "The BBC is quietly preparing a challenge to Microsoft and other companies jostling to reap revenues from video streams. It is developing code-decode (codec) software called Dirac in an open-source project aimed at providing a royalty-free way to distribute video. The sums at stake are potentially huge because the software industry insists on payment per viewer, per hour of encoded content. This contrasts with TV technology, for which viewers and broadcasters alike make a one-off royalties payment when they buy their equipment." We've mentioned this project before but this story goes into a bit more depth about the goals and motivations of the developers.
+ -
unknown
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

BBC Begins Open-Source Streaming Challenge 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Good old Auntie! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jdtanner (741053) on Friday August 13 2004, @07:53AM (#9957561) Homepage
    It just proves that you get a hell of a lot for your 125 GBP license fee!

    John

    • Re:Good old Auntie! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Shisha (145964) on Friday August 13 2004, @08:17AM (#9957731) Homepage
      On the other hand, it could be argued, that many people benefit enormously from the BBC, despite not paying the TV license. Me, for one, I don't have a telly and so I don't pay, despite listening to BBC radio, reading the website etc.

      My point is that by developing this code, _eventually_ and _slowly_ less and less people are going to have a television in the house and hence less and less people will pay the license.

      Which means that the UK government will have to figure out how to finance the BBC. I would hate to see them deciding to sell it. It would be really unfortunate if this project marked the beginning of the end of BBC as we know it.
      • This is an old hobby horse of mine. I'm not a big fan of mandatary licensing fees, and the point made by parent (among others) is a good illustration of why.

        I think the future of TV will involve less and less advertising and licensing fees. Instead, big content producers like the BBC will sell their archives on a pay-per-view basis. Yes, I know they are planning to offer them for free, but if they have any sense they'll bag the license fees and attach a small, reasonable price to each download.

        Everyone

          • Re:The Future of Television (Score:5, Informative)

            by MikeDX (560598) on Friday August 13 2004, @09:13AM (#9958306) Journal
            It annoys me that I have to pay even if i own a set, regardless of what i watch, even if I only use if to play my XBox.

            If you do indeed only use your TV in the UK to play DVDS or consoles, you can apply to be EXEMPT from a TV license as I did for 3 years. When you get the letter advising you have not got an up to date Television license, simply call the number on the bottom of the form, and advise them that you use your TV for console and DVD use and they will add you to the exemption list.

            Of course when they show up at your door or sit outside and see if your TV tuner is actively tuned to broadcasted television channels instead of playing the XBOX or watching DVDs then you can expect to get heavily fined and rightfully so.

            So if it bothers you that much about paying £125 for quite easily the best broadcaster in the world, I'm sure you will find my advice useful.
            • Lots of companies make such devices - they're monitors with SVHS/composite inputs. Perfectly capable of displaying the output of DVDs and consoles, but devoid of the tax incurring UHF receiver. Most mid to high-end LCD monitors have at least a composite input. Failing that you can buy VGA output boxes for all the major consoles at Lik Sang.

        • Re:Good old Auntie! (Score:4, Informative)

          by tialaramex (61643) on Friday August 13 2004, @09:08AM (#9958264) Homepage
          ITV's shows are dire, as atested not only by critical failure (not winning many awards these days are you, ITV?) but also by poor audience figures. Some ITV regions are supported by the taxpayer indirectly, but it's true that the large part of programming and broadcasting is funded through the obnoxious advertising.

          Channel 4 is partly government funded, and seeks grants for its, uh, unconventional programming from European projects which are themselves... government funded. Whether it means sending film crews to Italian beaches to film topless women, or showing 30 year old obscure Dutch movies about bicycling in 16:9 with subtitles, C4 reads the latest funding trends from Brussels and incorporates their needs into its schedule.

          Channel 5 is entirely pointless and should never have been launched on analog. The government (the one you think shouldn't be interfering) forced them to add the movies and news bulletins which break up their otherwise relentless schedule of old material bought from other networks. In some cases the BBC (which you don't like) paid for this material (which you apparently DO like) to be made more than 20 years ago. Didn't you notice how the average C5 program seems kinda... retro?

          In general I'm not in favour of government interference, but it's the reality we face. The technology for everyone and their dog to try to run a TV station doesn't exist yet, and might not for another decade. In the absence of that situation the invisible hand of market forces cannot operate properly, so the government inevitably must REGULATE broadcasting activity or we'll experience the spiral of reduced expectations. Once the government actively regulates the activity you're going to pay those taxes, and you might as well get something useful out of it. I think the BBC is fairly good value for money, and would support direct taxation rather than the "license fee" to support it until better means are available, despite the fact that this would inevitably mean that I personally wind up paying more for the same service.
          • Except they have just as many sodding adverts as the other channels. Yeah, you don't get 10 seconds of "This show sponsored by Creamsicles", but who cares about that? They're much less annoying than the tripe that gets served up every ten minutes just after you've sat down with you're cup of tea....
            • I have to utterly disagree with you. After getting used to satelite TV ad breaks, moving back to BBC leaves me barely enough time to get a drink and get back to the tv, and I live in a modest sized flat. I think the BBC is fantastic, and if you've seent he volume of ads on American TV, you'll thank the BBC and the ITC for keeping the UK tv in check.

      • Re:Good old Auntie! (Score:4, Informative)

        by jdtanner (741053) on Friday August 13 2004, @08:00AM (#9957614) Homepage
        Nice comment! For 125 GBP you get...

        8 channels of television
        11 radio stations (not including local radio)
        BBCi (http://www.bbc.co.uk) including live streams of all of the radio content and 'listen again' facilities
        BBC research labs contributing to the open source community.

        I would say that the license fee is a bit of a bargain!

        John

        • Re:Good old Auntie! (Score:4, Insightful)

          by skaffen42 (579313) on Friday August 13 2004, @08:12AM (#9957693)
          8 channels of television

          Even better, you can usually find something worth watching on those 8 channels. Since I moved to the US I have 20 times as many channels, and the best thing on is still British comedy reruns on public access TV.

          • Since I moved to the US I have 20 times as many channels, and the best thing on is still British comedy reruns on public access TV.

            The only stuff in the UK worth watching these days are the British comedy reruns...
          • So I'm coughing up £125 for the priviledge of *owning* a telly

            well, to be fair, you're paying for thr priviledge of receiving broadcast TV. you don't need a licence just to own a tv if you only use it for video's, dvd's, consoles and the like (ie no broadcast tv at all).

            not that it should make you feel any better mind you :)

            actually, what I dislike about people like sky tv is that they charge you the earth for alot less service (or so it seems). sky seems to spend it's time just buying shows from

      • Re:Good old Auntie! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Omni-Cognate (620505) on Friday August 13 2004, @08:54AM (#9958119)

        It looks like the BBCs intention is absolutely not to compete with the likes of Real. All they are saying is that the license fees for the existing codecs do not scale, and that it will be cheaper from them to write their own. There is nothing in the BBC's remit that requires them to spend the license-payer's money on overpriced software they can more cheaply write themselves.

        While it is true that dirac may reduce the amount that Real, etc, can make from their codecs, once again there is nothing in the BBC's charter which requires it to prop up commercial software markets at the license-payer's expense.

        The BBC is not selling dirac. It is simply a tool they feel they need to do their job. However, they are releasing it under an open-source license. You may feel that this is anti-competitive as it undercuts Real, but Real et al are not the BBC's competitors. ITV, C4, etc are the BBC's competitors (though in an ideal world, the BBC is supposed to be about pulic service, not competition). By making the codec open-source, the BBC is freeing these other stations from the requirement to pay Real and its ilk. It is freely giving the products of its work to its most direct competitors, along with everyone else. This seems to be a very fair and competition-friendly way of going about things.

        As for public service, a primary use for this new technology is to provide a huge, free, online repository of BBC content. This is an extraordinary project, entirely in the service of the public, which would be absolutely impossible for a commercial broadcaster to attempt. Whatever else people may have to say about the BBC's scorecard in living up to its remit (and I certainly think it's gone too far on a number of occasions) this is an absolute bullseye.

  • Ogg Theora (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SWroclawski (95770) <serge@NOSpAm.wroclawski.org> on Friday August 13 2004, @07:53AM (#9957563) Homepage
    It seems to me that the best way to support Free codecs would be to throw support at an existing project such as Ogg Theora [theora.org]. Does anyone know why they're not throwing support behind it?

    • Re:Ogg Theora (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Gilesx (525831) * <gil.foresightlinux@com> on Friday August 13 2004, @07:58AM (#9957595) Homepage
      Perhaps because they are attempting to develop a broadcast standard codec from the ground up, which I would speculate would require different goals and optimisations to the Ogg Theora project.
      • This is a great news as we really need open standard codec for broadcast streaming. BBC is already influential in the broadcast business. Once their new codec is acknowledged by SMPTE [smpte.org], it's matter of time that the new codec will be used widely by media conglomerates in the US. It may take some time to catch up, and/or there may be attacks by proprietary codec providers, but open standards will eventually prevail (...hopefully).

        As a non-Windows OS user, compatibility is extremely important for me. I'm si

        • Ogg Theora is alive (Score:5, Informative)

          by tialaramex (61643) on Friday August 13 2004, @08:36AM (#9957906) Homepage
          Theora is a conventional (block, motion, color transform, throw away bits, then ordinary compression) 2nd generation video codec, it is alive and well, and it reached bitstream freeze just a couple of months ago. Presumably beta and then final releases of the software & associated documentation will follow in good time.

          Tarkin is the Ogg wavelet codec. You're correct that work on Tarkin has more or less stalled, but wavelet codecs are a legal quagmire today, in part because so many people have conflicting patents in this area and are just waiting for the chance to litigate. Are any of the images on your website JPEG2000 instead of regular JFIF? Thought not.

    • Re:Ogg Theora (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Maybe because the trouble of making certain that no patented technology found its way into an existing project could easily become greater than the value of using that existing project.

      The started with a clean slate with much attention paid to keeping the IP clean. I think this was necessary, any excuse for MS or Real or whoever to shut down or slow down the project should be avoided.

        • Well, they said that Dirac is sticking to techniques published at least 20 years ago, so patents shouldn't be much of an issue.

          Daniel

    • Re:Ogg Theora (Score:5, Interesting)

      by meringuoid (568297) on Friday August 13 2004, @08:04AM (#9957639)
      From what I read last time this was covered... Dirac kicks Theora's arse, and xvid too.

      IIRC, it takes forever-squared to encode, but once done it beats just about anything in terms of file size and picture quality. Since the BBC's model is going to be encode once, then let the public download at will, this is fine by them.

      • Looking at their info [bbc.co.uk] I'm wondering about Our algorithm seems to give a two-fold reduction in bit rate over MPEG-2 for high definition video (e.g. 1920x1080 pixels), its original target application. Now assuming that MPEG-2 is DVD quality then the bitrates tend to be quite high, around 8000kbps. Divx gives reasonable quality at only around 1500kbps. If their quote is true then I'd expect Dirac to use about 4000kbps on broadcast video - so how does it compete with current codecs at all?
        • Divx gives reasonable quality at only around 1500kbps. If their quote is true then I'd expect Dirac to use about 4000kbps on broadcast video - so how does it compete with current codecs at all?

          reasonable quality != broadcast quality.

          If Dirac had a 'reasonable quality' mode, then you'd likely see it at 2000kbps which is getting close. They say they are still optimising it, so perhaps they can come to within a gnat's whisker of Divx compression.

    • Re:Ogg Theora (Score:5, Interesting)

      by akb (39826) on Friday August 13 2004, @08:50AM (#9958090)
      Theora (vp3) competes with current generation codecs, Dirac is a next gen technology. Dirac is also just a codec, so one should be able to use the Ogg container format or any other one for that matter. Since the BBC's stated goal is a royalty free system and they seem to be FOSS friendly I would assume they would be considering Ogg strongly.

      By the way, I haven't seen a link to it so far, here [bbc.co.uk] is a link the a BBC info page on Dirac and here [sourceforge.net] is the Source Forge page for those wanting the code.

  • From the article (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Megaweapon (25185) on Friday August 13 2004, @07:55AM (#9957573) Homepage

    It can be used for passing video round home networks, rights-managed peer-to-peer file sharing, or playing media in handheld devices, as well as for web streaming.

    And this is why it will be fought against on the political front. How much you want to bet that the feds will want to require some sort of keying/user tracing mechanism in order for this "free" technology to be made publically available? Big media will argue that in order for the government to protect copyright, they shouldn't allow technology that can subert other's copyrights.

    • Re:From the article (Score:5, Funny)

      by jimicus (737525) on Friday August 13 2004, @08:00AM (#9957609) Homepage
      I would imagine that the British Broadcasting Corporation doesn't much care about the feds.

    • Re:From the article (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Bill_Mische (253534) on Friday August 13 2004, @08:08AM (#9957666)
      The BBC is the biggest media organisation in Britain and goes regularly goes one on one with governments including our own.

      If the "feds" were to ask the BBC not to release it we'd end up seeing one of your politicians getting an unexpected kicking in his next interview. A few years ago a BBC interviewer asked the Home Secretary (in charge of the police, prisons, immigration, "Homeland Security" etc.) the same question *14* times, when he wouldn't answer the question.
    • And this is why it will be fought against on the political front. How much you want to bet that the feds will want to require some sort of keying/user tracing mechanism in order for this "free" technology to be made publically available?

      Let the feds scream like stuck pigs.

      Now that the Bush administration has completely gutted our diplomatic clout to such a degree we can't even rally people against emerging nuclear threats (remember the boy who cried wolf?), no one but no one is willing to blindly go alon

  • Go BBC! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tdvaughan (582870) on Friday August 13 2004, @07:55AM (#9957576) Homepage
    Another reason why I'm glad to be a UK citizen - every time I start to wonder if it's really worth having a 'public service' broadcaster the BBC goes and does something like this. I'm hoping they'll be able to make a stand when someone tries HDTV regulations over here.

  • Only in the US (Score:5, Informative)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane (209368) on Friday August 13 2004, @07:57AM (#9957589)
    This contrasts with TV technology, for which viewers and broadcasters alike make a one-off royalties payment when they buy their equipment.

    Again, there are other [tvlicensing.co.uk] countries [zdnet.fr] in the world where things don't happen that way. In most of the EC in fact...

    For your information Michael, the Beeb is in the UK where your statement doesn't apply.

    • Re:Only in the US (Score:5, Informative)

      by JaredOfEuropa (526365) on Friday August 13 2004, @08:07AM (#9957656) Journal
      Again, there are other [tvlicensing.co.uk] countries [zdnet.fr] in the world where things don't happen that way.
      A TV license is a payment against royalties on content, not royalties on TV technology. In contrast to existing TV technology, users of commercial streaming video applications pay a per-viewer/per-hour fee for the technology. That is what the BBC wants to avoid by developing their own streaming solution.

  • The BBC (Score:5, Interesting)

    by payndz (589033) on Friday August 13 2004, @07:59AM (#9957603)
    Another good reason (among many) why the BBC should remain a non-commercial operation. Yes, paying the licence fee is an annoyance, but everyone gets a lot out of the Beeb, not just TV (BBC Online has all but replaced daily newspapers for me, and after having grown up with BBC radio, I find commercial radio unlistenable). And they're even bringing back Doctor Who!

    Sure, it has its problems, but I'd trust the BBC over any politician, especially ones who make threatening noises about its charter every time it does its job by being independent and embarrassing the government of the day...

    • Re:The BBC (Score:4, Informative)

      by CarrionBird (589738) on Friday August 13 2004, @09:34AM (#9958540) Journal
      All in all it's probably a better deal than we get here (US). We have "free" TV, but it is Ad laden and restricted by what the ratings will support.

      Our public TV has some good stuff (and some HD too), but it gets minimal federal funding and has to beg for donations all the time. (AFAIK, the congress mandated push to HD is reaming their budgets too, they won't survive this decade)

      The pay options are ok, but still ad driven and you can end up with a $100+ a month TV bill if you get any "top tier" stuff.

      As for me, basic cable is bundled in my rent, so there's little choice in it.

  • I am glad this is what my license fee pays for! (Score:3, Informative)

    by McCall (212035) on Friday August 13 2004, @08:02AM (#9957623) Homepage
    I have paid for ten TV licenses in my life, and I have to admit that I am glad the the organisation that gets some of this money is developing something like this...

    ...although I have to admit, the BBC would have probably have been better off using my money to become the "offical" sponsors for an existing open source project such as Theora [theora.org], rather than starting from scratch.

    The link is the story is dead, I found the home page here [bbc.co.uk], and the SourceForge site here [sourceforge.net].

    Thanks,

    Andrew McCall

  • A bit of politics (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Maljin Jolt (746064) on Friday August 13 2004, @08:23AM (#9957786) Journal
    "...a bit more depth about the goals and motivations of the developers."

    Freedom of information is not about paying or not paying for commercial content. Freedom of information is about politics, human rights, rulership and ideology manipulation. BBC is on the side of freedom for some time, and currently under heavy pressure from the conservatives.

    Letting free codec technology to public now may help in some near future, when independent journalists will be hunted to underground or illegality.

  • Videolan (Score:3, Informative)

    by Hi_2k (567317) on Friday August 13 2004, @08:32AM (#9957868) Journal
    Why develop your own streaming software when VideoLan [videolan.org] is already out there and working great? I regularly use it for any media viewing, and I've had great sucess with the streaming features.

    • Re:Videolan (Score:3, Informative)

      by elandal (9242)
      VideoLan is not a codec but an application. Dirac is a codec. You could stream dirac-encoded video with VideoLan I presume.

  • Project homepage (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 13 2004, @08:33AM (#9957874)
    no KW required

    BBC Dirac [bbc.co.uk]

    The Dirac Project

    Dirac is a general-purpose video codec aimed at resolutions from QCIF (180x144) to HDTV (1920x1080) progressive or interlaced. It uses wavelets, motion compensation and arithmetic coding and aims to be competitive with other state of the art codecs.

  • Do it quickly before Blair kills it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NigelJohnstone (242811) on Friday August 13 2004, @08:37AM (#9957924)
    There's a green paper due on the BBC later in the year. A pre-report has already been critical of the BBC's online activities, suggesting it does too much itself.

    From an investigation in August 2003:
    http://www.culture.gov.uk/global/publicatio ns/arch ive_2004/BBC_Online_Review.htm

    You can bet MS (or Microsoft lobbyists the BSA) will try damn hard to kill this project.

    I wish the BBC would stop dragging its feet and do it, start releasing the archive now with their codec, before the politicians kill.

  • Dirac homepage (Score:5, Informative)

    by flyhmstr (32953) on Friday August 13 2004, @08:44AM (#9958011) Homepage
    Dirac homepage [bbc.co.uk] and the Sourceforge [sourceforge.net] pages

  • Dirac? (Score:3, Funny)

    by NiceGuyUK (801305) on Friday August 13 2004, @08:58AM (#9958157)
    I think the BBC is using the name Dirac in the wrong document - shouldn't it be the name of a villain in their new series of Doctor Who?

  • Serious problem for conferences (Score:3, Interesting)

    by thrill12 (711899) * on Friday August 13 2004, @09:21AM (#9958388)
    This could be a perfect solution for conferences such as HAL 2001 [hal2001.org]. I remember there was a need for sponsorship by a professional television broadcaster to provide licenses for realtime streaming of conference speakers back then.
    A good alternative to Real and Media encoder that is free is definitely wanted in these areas.

    Offtopic: I wonder why the DV's of this conference are still not encoded...

  • "Dirac"? (Score:3, Funny)

    by mikeee (137160) on Friday August 13 2004, @09:27AM (#9958461)
    Sure, the compression is really good, but the problem is that it makes everybody look like they have really bad hair...

    (Only physics geeks will get this. Why am I bothering?)

  • Ogg Vorbis streams (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rikkus-x (526844) <rik@rikkus.info> on Friday August 13 2004, @10:20AM (#9959080) Homepage
    Right, so the BBC have the resources to _develop_ a whole new codec, but not to set up Ogg Vorbis streaming of their radio programming, alongside the existing RealAudio streams?

    The BBC, IMNSHO (as a licence payer), should be champions of open communications, and this extends to the openness of their distribution formats. I wish they'd stop wasting resources from crappy little mini-sites with gossip and games relating to soap operas.

    Rik

    • Re:Darwin Streaming Server / QTSS (Score:4, Informative)

      by SlamMan (221834) <(moc.liamg) (ta) (tigiuqs)> on Friday August 13 2004, @08:39AM (#9957949)
      None of the above. Darwin SS is free (source and usage). To encode sometihng to it, you can use Quicktime Broadcaster, which is free (but not source), and only runs on a mac. You can of course encode with other solutions. The one of best ones on the market is Live Channel by Channel Storm, which runs about a grand as a one time price.
    • Really? First off, Quicktime is an application/api, not a video codec. Secondly, they're looking for an open source and royalty-free way to do this. Quicktime most definitely isn't open source, only runs (officially) on two platforms, and the best codecs included with it are definitely not royalty-free.

        • Could be worse. :)

          C:\>egrep '(processor|Hz)' /proc/cpuinfo
          The name specified is not recognized as an
          internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.