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BBC iPlayer Welcomes Linux (and Macs)

Posted by kdawson on Mon Dec 17, 2007 07:51 AM
from the audi-vox-populi dept.
Media Television Software The Internet Linux
h4rm0ny writes "After previously limiting their iPlayer to only the Windows platform (as we discussed earlier here and here), the BBC's content is now available to UK-based users of Linux and Mac OS X. From their site: 'From today we are pleased to announce that streaming is now available on BBC iPlayer. This means that Windows, Mac and Linux users can stream programs on iPlayer as long as their computer has the latest version of Flash. Another change is that you do not have to register or sign in any more to download programs ...' It seems that the BBC have listened to people who petitioned them for broader support and an open format. Well, Flash isn't exactly open, but its a lot more ubiquitous than Windows Media and Real Player formats."
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[+] BBC Quietly Announces Linux/Mac iPlayer 218 comments
Keir Thomas writes "When the BBC released its new iPlayer watch-on-demand service, there were many complaints about the fact it was Windows-only — the equivalent of current BBC broadcasts only being watchable on, say, a Sony television. The good news is that the BBC has announced a Flash-based player for Linux and Mac due by the end of the year. (The announcement is buried half way down the page.) The bad news is that it will probably only offer streaming, and not the ability to download programs, like the Windows client has. Quote: 'It comes down to cost per person and reach at the end of the day.'"
[+] Entertainment: Why the BBC's iPlayer is a Multi-Million Pound Disaster 152 comments
AnotherDaveB writes "As part of 'Beeb Week', The Register discusses the 'multi-million pound failure' that is the iPlayer. 'When the iPlayer was commissioned in 2003, it was just one baffling part of an ambitious £130m effort to digitise the Corporation's broadcasting and archive infrastructure. It's an often lamented fact that the BBC wiped hundreds of 1960s episodes of its era-defining music show Top of the Pops, including early Beatles performances, and many other popular programmes ... The iPlayer was envisaged as the flagship internet 'delivery platform'. It would dole out this national treasure to us in a controlled manner, it was promised, and fire a revolution in how Big TV works online. For better or worse it's finally set to be delivered with accompanying marketing blitz this Christmas - more than four years after it was first announced.'"
Submission: BBC iPlayer Welcomes Linux (and Macs) by h4rm0ny (722443)
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  • An Improvement (Score:5, Insightful)

    by benbean (8595) on Monday December 17 2007, @07:56AM (#21724194)
    For the purposes of just quickly catching up with a programme you've missed, in my (admittedly brief) testing since it went live, it's much more convenient to use the live streaming than have to go through all the fuss and bother of the proper Windows-based download client.

    Even if there were a Mac/Linux version available, I think I'd still lean more towards the Flash service for the odd times I need it since the downloadable version will get torpedoed after seven days anyway.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by benbean (8595)
        Given that they only let you watch downloaded programmes on your computer anyway it doesn't make much difference to me whether they're stored locally or streamed. As for watching them later, they self-destruct in a few days anyway, so it's still a moot point as far as I'm concerned.

        Obviously the ideal is to have a downloadable version that can be watched anywhere for any length of time, but that's not happening any time soon.
  • i use iplayer on windows, and while there are programmes i want to see that aren't in the catelog, i think they've done an awesome job of tv on demand given the current infrastructure of the internet.
  • ... I guess. So then, I'd just need Flash, my absolute favorite proprietary piece of software. And I need Linux or OS X; not FreeBSD, Plan9 or bOS.

    I don't know -- I probably won't be using the service anyway, and I'm not a British citizen anyway, so I don't really feel that I have the right to complain, but it still bothers me when public services don't actually make their service free for real. I know I'd be bothered for real if my own government did something like it, at least.

    • Re:Well, that's great... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by wwmedia (950346) on Monday December 17 2007, @08:21AM (#21724346)
      instead of moaning about it

      can you suggest an open source solution that the BBC can use instead of iPlayer that is not proprietary and works on Windows/Mac and Linux???

      • Re:Well, that's great... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by AusIV (950840) on Monday December 17 2007, @08:35AM (#21724426)

        can you suggest an open source solution that the BBC can use instead of iPlayer that is not proprietary and works on Windows/Mac and Linux???

        Exactly. Flash is probably on at least 95% of PC's, and probably 99% of the people who don't have flash can install it with a few clicks. The BBC could have used something like Ogg Theora, but then 95% of users would have had to download and install something to play it.

        The thing that always gets me about open source zealots who complain "Flash is proprietary" is that they offer no solution. There's Gnash, which is a re-implementation of Flash, but people complain about disseminating documents in MS Office formats even though they can read them with open source suites, so I can't imagine Gnash being full featured would stop the complaints about Flash. If people in the open source community want to complain about websites using flash for various reasons, they need to offer up an alternative that would be acceptable to them.

        For what it's worth, I'm a Linux user and avoid proprietary software wherever possible, but I've been taught not to look a gift horse in the mouth, and not to complain when you can't offer an alternative.

        • Not a gift horse (Score:5, Informative)

          by McDutchie (151611) on Monday December 17 2007, @08:46AM (#21724496) Homepage

          For what it's worth, I'm a Linux user and avoid proprietary software wherever possible, but I've been taught not to look a gift horse in the mouth, and not to complain when you can't offer an alternative.

          It's not a gift horse. Access is restricted (at least in theory) to UK citizens, who have already paid for this service through their TV licence fees.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by owlnation (858981)

          For what it's worth, I'm a Linux user and avoid proprietary software wherever possible, but I've been taught not to look a gift horse in the mouth, and not to complain when you can't offer an alternative.

          I hate this attitude. Corporations are full of people who spout this nonsense. It is the guaranteed path to mediocrity and dissatisfaction. It is a form of censorship and should be abhorred. It is a mechanism that the weak use to protect their mediocre ideas. It is a way of suppressing great ideas, better

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Ilgaz (86384) *

        instead of moaning about it

        can you suggest an open source solution that the BBC can use instead of iPlayer that is not proprietary and works on Windows/Mac and Linux???

        Just don't suggest any TV professional to use Ogg Theora format. They have given up VP3 (the actual format) some years ago. :)

        There are 3 issues here:

        1) Allergy to Real Networks who produces a media player down to AIX. Even after they opened entire source excluding codecs.l
        2) Apple's Allergy to Linux/BSD and not producing Quicktime for those platforms.
        3) Open Source Linux users allergy to closed source since Apple will want to keep Quicktime closed source binary.

        So it is Flash. Flash container became stand

        • And just how does Flash support BSD, Haiku and other BeOS derivatives and a bunch of other operating systems? No, Linux emulation still leaves a lot to be desired with Flash playback...
      • MPEG-4 + H.264
        • You need a fairly beefy PC to decode that and a lot of non-geeks just don't have that kind of power - and the BBC want the format to be readable on as many (UK based) PC's as they can.
          • My iPod Nano can decode MPEG-4 + H.264. Granted, it probably has some special chip, specifically designed to decode it, but I'm sure even a 5-6 year old computer could decode it. Now it might have problems with 1080p MPEG4 files, but for some reason I don't think that's the quality level we're talking about in this case. Flash video is extremely CPU hungry, even with it's terrible encoding quality. I can't imagine that MPEG4 would be any harder on a computer than flash video at the same bit rate.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by karmatic (776420)
            That's not entirely accurate - a lot of it depends on the codecs you use.

            I have a demo I like to do where I decode and play back 1080p HD using CoreAVC [coreavc.com], on a 1GHz laptop (downclocked - it's hard to find a PC with a native resolution of 1920x1200 and a clock speed of 1GHz). Yes, it drops some frames, but it's quite watchable.

            I also do 320x[240-320] H.264 (full screen) playback on a Treo 650. It's got a 312MHz ARM processor, and 32MB of RAM (~24 available).

            None of this is hardware accelerated.

            BenchMarks her [behardware.com]

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by WK2 (1072560)
        For video:

        theora (not recommended. not ready yet)
        x.263
        x.264
        whatever realplayer uses.

        For audio:

        vorbis (recommended. free, open, patent license is free for all)
        mp3 (almost everybody has it on their computers already. I prefer vorbis over mp3, but mp3 over flash)
        flac (much too big for downloads. just saying it is there)
        aac

        The real problem is DRM. The BBC does not want you to be able to keep the file on your computer. If they would forgo that requirement, then they could just use AV files, rather than using an

      • Re:Well, that's great... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by FrostedWheat (172733) on Monday December 17 2007, @10:34AM (#21725514)

        can you suggest an open source solution that the BBC can use instead of iPlayer that is not proprietary and works on Windows/Mac and Linux???
        How about the BBC's *own* open source codec ... Dirac [sourceforge.net].

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by MoonBuggy (611105)
      I think it comes down to pragmatism vs. idealism here. A Windows only client blocks a significant minority of users (Mac, Linux, BSD as well as various embedded devices such as phones or dedicated web terminals). A flash client is not ideal - it is still non-free and non-open as well as blocking a very small number of users - but is still probably the simplest and most widely usable streaming system using currently established technology.
    • O boy did the BBC do it wrong! Now there is still 0.1 % of the people left without iPlayer! Terrible! Let's all raid their headquarters and demand better service for our tax money.

    • Re:Well, that's great... (Score:5, Funny)

      by gsslay (807818) on Monday December 17 2007, @08:57AM (#21724590)
      It's like the whole PAL [wikipedia.org] outrage all over again! You should have heard me complain back then when I discovered that the supposedly free BBC service required that I buy a television equipped with the proprietary format PAL.


      So that meant I was denied access from my 8 track [wikipedia.org] simply because they refused to supply the broadcasts on it! Boy, was I mad! How was this TV service supposed to be free if they make you buy certain equipment first?!


      And now they're demanding that I go out of my way to download a free software package! Their thoughtless arrogance knows no bounds!

  • rippage (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Cally (10873) on Monday December 17 2007, @07:59AM (#21724212) Homepage
    ...and does

    mplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile $outfile.ra $thestream

    rip the stream like what the Real stream can be ripped? (Yes I'm talking radio, it's Radio Four Boy here and without being able to rip I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue [wikipedia.org], as I've been doing for the last few years, having migrated from the Mark II Compact Cassette Tape that worked so well throughout the 80s and 90s, life ain't gonna be worth living.) Samantha agrees - the wow and flutter of older technology is a real turn-off, although she does enjoy flicking through some favourite flash videos.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by caluml (551744)
      Or, if you have a DVB card [calum.org]: mplayer dvb://BBC\ ONE -dumpstream, and you get the pure MP2 that your TV sees. You can them encode it down to whatever you like.
      I've set up an email address that calls a script which takes the start time, duration, and channel name from the subject of the email, and schedules a cron job for that. Voila. I'm on the other side of the world, and I forgot that I wanted to record Peep Show [calum.org]? (Not from the Beeb, but..) A simple email from anywhere does it.
  • kudos to the BBC.

    Flash may not be open or perfect - but there are enough cross platform implementations to make it nearly ubiquitous. Given the choice between windows DRMware or Flash I would of made the same choice any day of the week. I am linux only at home, so I'm happy about this.
  • I think that this will be a lot more popular with everyone, not just Linux/Mac users. I haven't tried it myself (being a Linux geek), but by all accounts the iPlayer is a PITA. I suspect that in a couple of years time the iPlayer will be quietly dropped due to lack of interest leaving just the Flash player.

  • BBC Trust and OSC response (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    http://www.opensourceconsortium.org/content/view/80/55/ [opensourceconsortium.org]

  • Misleading summary (Score:5, Informative)

    by ebcdic (39948) on Monday December 17 2007, @08:09AM (#21724292)
    This is *not* the BBC making iPlayer available for non-Windows platforms. They are only providing a *streaming* service, instead of the ability to download programs, which is what they are using DRM for.

  • Dear BBC and other Tv netowrks or entities. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lumpy (12016) on Monday December 17 2007, @08:36AM (#21724446) Homepage
    Quit with the bullshit formats and half assed attempts. If you are really that desperate to protect your precious from the Evil consumers then get it on iTunes and be done with it. I am sick of having to go to random websites and having to use the half-assed players you guys think are acceptable.

    If you must have DRM in it, then have your crap in iTunes. if you are one of the few smart companies and dont care about DRM, then a podcast with a format that plays on an iPod will do nicely.

    This will get the largest possible market for your video. and 320X240 is acceptable on a ipod and not desired o be traded by pirates (yarr! It's low res, off to greener lands me matyes! yarr!)

    As a consumer that is interested in actually watching TV the way it should be here in 2007/2008 I dont want your website, I want it in a way I can download it and play it on my ipod or phone, not your crappy website.

    • I dont want your website, I want it in a way I can download it and play it on my ipod or phone, not your crappy website.

      Maybe you do, but the success of YouTube has shown that many people find a web accessible service easier to use than a download service. I just watched this debate [bbc.co.uk] and found it acceptable - the video quality seems better than YouTube. I think the BBC just killed their iPlayer download software; most people aren't going to bother messing about with p2p download software when the have a high quality streaming alternative.

      Now we just need an open source flash... gnash, anyone?

    • Re:Dear BBC and other Tv netowrks or entities. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by IamTheRealMike (537420) on Monday December 17 2007, @08:55AM (#21724574) Homepage
      How would having it in iTunes help Linux users? BBC would still lose. Flash is the only cross-platform solution to streaming video that has some kind of DRM in it.

    • Re:Dear BBC and other Tv netowrks or entities. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mpe (36238) on Monday December 17 2007, @09:46AM (#21725006)
      If you are really that desperate to protect your precious from the Evil consumers then get it on iTunes and be done with it.

      Or even accept that trying to use "DRM" is rather daft after you have broadcast it.

      I am sick of having to go to random websites and having to use the half-assed players you guys think are acceptable.

      It really disn't make any sense if these are harder to use than the "pirate option".

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by MrNemesis (587188)
        Or even accept that trying to use "DRM" is rather daft after you have broadcast it in unencrypted near-DVD quality full PAL resolution MPEG2 that can be saved to disk with a £30 TV card.

        There, fixed that for you ;)

        As a long time supporter of the BBC (or "TV tax" as most Americans like to call it), I'm not quite sure what the insistence on DRM is either. Auntie says their partners (NBC and CBC possibly) demand it for online content, but what pirate in his right mind will bother trying to strip the DRM

      • > As a consumer that is interested in actually watching TV the way it should be here in 2007/2008 I dont want your website, I want it in a way I can
        > download it and play it on my ipod or phone, not your crappy website.

        Dude, it's 2007 - why can't your phone stream video?

        My smart phones since 2002 can stream video thanks to Symbian and Realplayer. Phones can stream video, "i"Phones can't :) In fact, phones supporting DVB-H can actually be called portable TVs too.

        Hopefully that SDK announced will mean Helix/Real Player for iPhone. They already have significant expertise on ARM.

        • It wouldn't surprise me at all if adobe didn't do a binary for iphone like they did for symbian - it's in their interest for it to be available for as many platforms as possible (they make the money on the encoding.. the flash developer stuff costs many many $$$).

  • Good news (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tony Hoyle (11698) <tmh@nodomain.org> on Monday December 17 2007, @08:50AM (#21724518) Homepage
    I wasn't about to install kontiki based software on any of my machines, even the ones with Windows on them.

    Flash will suit me fine. Almost every device I have can play it in some form (except the iphone, but hopefully that's coming one day).

  • Not good enough. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mortice (467747) on Monday December 17 2007, @08:50AM (#21724524)
    Many people in the UK are subject to transfer limits, and certain periods of the day when they can transfer as much as they like without this contributing to their quota. Example: I am limited to 20GB of transfers each month, but can download without restriction between midnight and 8am. With the Windows client, it is (relatively) easy to set up a schedule to start and stop the program at the appropriate times. With the streaming content, it is much more of a pain.

    Just one reason amongst many why I hope this is not the end of the BBC's plan to open up the iPlayer content to other platforms, although I expect that it probably is.

  • Uk only (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mr Europe (657225) on Monday December 17 2007, @09:08AM (#21724670)
    Why on earth BBC makes a system to be used from UK only ?!
    "Can I download programmes from outside the UK?

    The BBC uses Geo-IP technology to identify where your are based on the location of your internet service provider (ISP). This ensures that only internet users in the UK can enjoy programmes on BBC iPlayer.

    If you download a programme to your laptop or a portable hard drive, you can watch this wherever you are in the world. However, you will only be able to download new programmes once you return to the UK.

    Why do I need to be in the UK to use BBC iPlayer?

    Rights agreements mean that BBC iPlayer is only available to users in the UK. However, BBC Worldwide is working on an international version, which we will make available as soon as possible."

    • Re:Uk only (Score:5, Informative)

      by Cally (10873) on Monday December 17 2007, @09:14AM (#21724716) Homepage
      Because Johnny Foreigner doesn't pay the TV license fee [tvlicensing.co.uk]. Yes, my stunned American friends, we UK-ers have to have a government license to legally watch TV or listen to the radio! We tend to think it's fair exchange for the fantastic programmes they've given us over the years, though, not least Blake's 7 of course ;)

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Sosigenes (950988)
        Actually, it is more likely the reason is what BBC state themselves. It's not to do with the license fee, but more to do with the fact that the BBC only have rights agreements to show things in the UK. The same reason us in the UK can't watch programs from American television networks and websites. If the BBC can't get the right to show it outside of the UK, then they can't legally allow people to watch it outside of the UK on its web based service. This is an entirely different issue to that of the license
  • Anyone notice that the volume control goes up to 11?

    That's for watching TV really loud :p

    • hear, hear! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I have a BBC Master 512k - that is a _BBC_ Master 512k. And -I- cannot watch these _BBC_ shows on my _BBC_ computer... I can download the file just fine using the 2400 modem, but then I can't play it back! They should support open content such as MPEG1 so that everybody should be able to view the content!

      Yes, this is sarcasm. There's going to be some place where they have to draw the line, and currently that line lays with whatever support Flash (sorry to hear the FLOSS coders haven't gotten to 64bit yet
    • From wikipedia:

      The codec is still not finalised, and thus regarded as still being under development. The immediate aim is to be able to decode standard digital PAL TV definition (720 x 576i pixels per frame at 25 frames per second) in real time; the reference implementation can decode around 17 frames per second on a 3 GHz PC but extensive optimisation is planned.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by IRGlover (1096317)
      This isn't really comparable to MPAA-type restrictions. In the UK there is a TV licence fee that goes to fund the BBC, this means that if you pay the fee then you have already payed to view the content. In this case the BBC is making the content available to its 'subscribers' via a different route - that's all. People overseas haven't paid the fee, so therefore the BBC doesn't feel obliged to provide access to the content (not to mention the money eventually made through global licensing agreements). The B

      • In addition the programs are a source of income for BBC Worldwide. The BBC sells rights to programs to foreign channels and DVDs, etc... Downloading bittorrents of BBC programs from pirate sites is still a fairly high barrier for many people whereas going to the BBC's website is a much lower barrier. The BBC are not going to jeopardise that income, at least not in the short term.

    • The issue is: Content BELONGS to BBC
      And the BBC BELONGS to their licence payers in the UK in an arrangement enforced by law through the UK elected parliament. This means the service is being paid for by residents of the UK.

      • The issue is: Content BELONGS to BBC

        And the BBC BELONGS to their licence payers in the UK in an arrangement enforced by law through the UK elected parliament. This means the service is being paid for by residents of the UK.

        and we would pay 2x price if it was offered to foreigners with "geo IP" technology rather than watching someone's sub optimized divx ripped from TV broadcast.

        They are lagging the real thing on purpose just to claim the multi platform changes were not needed. How hard is it to setup "World" site same time with added price?

    • I read your comment. What the devil are you drivelling about? MPAA? Clue: That last "A" stands for "America," which, last I looked, was several thousand miles West of here and getting further away all the time thanks to the mid-Atlantic ridge. Torrents? Honestly, do you even know what the iPlayer (with its associated Kontiki P2P back-end) and the associated Flash site are for? It's a catch-up service with a hidden agenda. Missed Eastenders? I've never missed it in my life. They could cancel it and I'd be blissfully ignorant of the loss of my ability to peer into the lives of fictional characters whose vocabulary seems to consist of the words "bloody," "fancy a shag?" "pint" and "caaa!" (cockney for cow, I'm led to believe) but should you be of that bent, you can watch it online.

      The BBC have done this for one reason and ONLY one reason: To back up their ridiculous stance that anyone with a 'net connection in the UK needs a TV licence. Wouldn't want the OSS hippies to find a loophole in that, now, would we? That's it. Nothing to see here besides another money grab on the back of new media and shared resources. The reason you're not getting iPlayer if you're a "Johnny Foreigner" is because you don't pay the Beeb tax. Congratulations. I wish I didn't either.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by mr_mischief (456295)
          Flash's SWF file format is documented well enough that several other products and open source projects can produce it and some are capable of playing it back. The FLA unpublished save format is basically a memory dump of how the Flash program works with the project, so it's considerably harder to develop outside software to save or load that format.

          I know ActionScript, but I prefer to write what little Flash stuff I do in HaXe, for example. There are also Rebol Flash dialect (RSWF), an ActionScript virtual

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