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BBC Quietly Announces Linux/Mac iPlayer
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Oct 17, 2007 06:59 AM
from the no-downloads-for-you dept.
from the no-downloads-for-you dept.
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.'"
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craig1709 writes "10 Downing Street has responded to the petition to open up iPlayer access for those on other operating systems. While the wording is confusing, near as I can tell, they say they will make the iPlayer available to users of those operating systems. 'The BBC Trust made it a condition of approval for the BBC's on-demand services that the iPlayer is available to users of a range of operating systems, and has given a commitment that it will ensure that the BBC meets this demand as soon as possible. They will measure the BBC's progress on this every six months and publish the findings.'"
Submission: BBC quietly announces Linux/Mac iPlayer by Anonymous Coward
[+]
BBC iPlayer Welcomes Linux (and Macs) 259 comments
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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WTF??? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
WTF indeed: read the iPlayer small print! (Score:5, Interesting)
iPlayer offers other programs.
But at a price. I went to try it out the other day, having inadvertently deleted a program from my PVR before watching it. As always, I scanned the small print before installing new software, and this is what I found:
Assuming that I understand the agreement correctly and that it is legal, by installing the current version of iPlayer you agree to:
In other words, you agree to them doing anything they want on your machine and your network, specifically including using it as a distribution hub for transmitting potentially illegal content to and from unknown users while being monitored, at your expense, without any responsibility on their side and with full liability for any illegal activity resting on you.
Now, the BBC is usually a pretty decent organisation. They don't get things right all the time, but on the whole, I think they do a good job, and I don't think they're the kind of organisation that would deliberately try to screw people. But tell me, what person in their right mind would agree to the terms for using the current iPlayer software, with today's legal and file-sharing cultures?
If the new version is streaming, Flash-based, and otherwise no-questions-asked, then as far as I'm concerned, it will be a huge improvement for Windows users as well... not least, because you won't be opening yourself up to a wrecked system, unlimited bandwidth charges, and an expensive lawsuit, just for clicking "OK". I might even be able to use it, which as a licence fee payer would be nice.
Parent
flash (Score:5, Informative)
on one hand its not Linux client on the other hand its nice to see cross platform support. I know flash has its detractors but it is ubiquitous and it does work. On the plus side its not Silverlight.
Congratulations to the BBC/Government for listening and well done on at least allowing us to use their portal to view content.
Re:flash (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the things I like about the BBC is they are constantly taking a pounding from people over their coverage. They address criticism [bbc.co.uk] very directly, and often. As a result, you can have some kind of faith that they're exercising due diligence and trying to get things right.
The BBC isn't perfect and their coverage has been becoming a bit flashy and sensationalist recently. However, I trust them more than any other news source. I might even go so far as to say I trust them full stop, which must be a rarity in the modern media. If that's the only thing the license fee pays for, it might almost be worth it.
Peter
Parent
Re:flash (Score:5, Informative)
Unlike newspapers whose only income is from sales/advertising and have a desperate need to shunt embarrassing scoops and distorted news to sell copies. I think the newspapers have a hell of a lot to answer to.
3/4 of their income comes from the License fee, it pays for material, presenters, infrastructure, shows - without it there would be no BBC. Morons whine and bitch about it, but don't seem to realize that without it there would be either a stealth tax of the same value or a paid subscription of some kind - and they'd bitch and whine even more if there was only a wall to look at. I have no problem with the license fee. If only people would stop and think thats 37p a day and the majority of them spend four hours a day infront of the damn thing. 9p an hour is quite reasonable really.
For the interested, shamelessly cribbed from Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence [wikipedia.org]
In the United Kingdom, the current annual cost for a colour television licence (as of 1st April 2007) is £135.50 (about 200) and £44 (about 65) for monochrome TV (black and white).[32] The licence fee is charged on a per household basis. Therefore addresses with more than one television receiver only require a single licence. (However, this does not apply to sub-let rooms within a property where a the tenant requires a licence alongside the Landlord.) A similar licence, mandated by the 1904 Wireless Telegraphy Act, used to exist for radios, but was abolished in 1971. Therefore, those who only listen to radio and do not use television receiving equipment to watch or record programmes as they are being shown on TV, no longer have to pay a licence fee.
There are concessions for the elderly (free for over-75s[33]), the licence fee here being paid for by the government. Blind people get a 50% discount on their licence or completely free if only in possession of an audio only receiver. Residents of residential care homes (for the elderly and people with physical/mental disabilities) can apply for a special licence called the licence for Accommodation for Residential Care (ARC) which is £7.50 per year.
The licence fee can be paid annually, monthly or quarterly by Direct Debit, or monthly or weekly with the Monthly Cash Plan or Cash Easy Entry cards, which were introduced in the mid 1990s for those with limited means or no bank account. The Monthly Cash Plan works on the same basis as the Cash Easy Entry scheme and has been designed so as not to discriminate against those that do not receive benefits.
The licence fee represents approximately 75% of the BBC's income.[34] However, the UK's second public broadcaster, Channel 4, has claimed that it may need licence fee income if it is to continue with public broadcasting after the digital switch-over. To this end, on April 25, 2006, it was announced that Channel 4's digital switch-over bill would be paid for from the licence fee.[35] Some of S4C's programmes such as Pobol y Cwm and Newyddion, are made by BBC Wales and provided free of charge to S4C, meaning they are paid for by the licence fee.[citation needed]
Collection is enforced by criminal law. People accused of licence evasion are tried in a magistrates court. Violators can be fined up to £1000. Prior to 1991, the collection and administration of the UK licence fee was the responsibility of the Home Office. Since 1991, the revenue has been collected on behalf of the Government by the BBC and paid into Government's Consolidated Fund. From 1991 the fee was collected more directly by the BBC and was called the TV Licensing Authority. Since then collection has been contracted out and is now collected and enforced by TV Licensing Ltd, which is operated by Capita. As a consequence of the change the force of law in enforcing the licence has weakened somewhat[citation needed]. By 1994, 57% of all female criminal convictions in Britain related to television licence evasion [36
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"summer fires greece site:msnbc.com" - 18 hits
"summer fires greece site:bbc.co.uk" - 1320 hits
but I don't think that's the point you're making. Looking at the articles returned, I don't see anything odd about the BBC coverage; the key topics seem to be the same as other sites: lots of people and land affected, long-term environmental consequences, accusations of arson. I don't see what you're getting at.
Re:flash (Score:5, Interesting)
Make that table and fill it up for me. I can't find any articles that show any stand-out differences between coverage. I don't even know what we're supposed to be looking for. Basically you picked something that is hard to disprove your side, didn't you?
I also can't find any Greeks who are particularly pissed off at the BBC coverage.
The BBC is hardly a government lapdog; yes, they have strong opinions which sometimes are shared by those in power, but more likely than not, they differ just as strongly, and they can fuck things up for the government too - and sometimes, people even die because of it [wikipedia.org].
Parent
Re:flash (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact I prefer the idea of a flash based web player. The problem with an installed player is that it only works if installed (obviously), so I can't just watch anywhere when I want.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And, of course, there are always ways to grab video streams when you're running on an OS that doesn't tie you down with digital restrictions mangling.
Re: (Score:2)
its NOT "iPlayer for linux" - its flash based player for ANY OS that support flash.
Thank Chrom. I'm sick of them using RM.
A bash quote seems appropriate.
you have all the movies in .rm format, dont you?
rm blows goats
you don't want it
yes i do
it's the smallest format
and if i want it different, i'll use a converter
but i myself, PREFER rm
you *PREFER* Rm?
yes
best visual quality i've seen yet
okay, now this is some funny shit
i hate avi and asf and mpg
do you use a Mac?
Re:flash (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:flash (Score:5, Insightful)
The Flash video formats are well understood, and largely standard. I fail to see how Silverlight is any better.
The original standard for Flash video (FLV) used a slightly modified h.263 video codec with MP3 audio, which was quickly reverse engineered by open source players. Flash 7 added On2's VP6 codec, which is proprietary, but at least there are dual suppliers you can license it from.
Future versions of Flash (v.9+) will be switching to 100% standard video and audio formats, using h.264/AVC video, MP3 or AAC audio, and the MP4 container. You can just create a file in Quicktime with its default settings, and Flash (beta versions) will play it.
My objection to Flash video is not the format, but that the source of the video is heavily obfusticated thanks to needing to embed an SWF player app, and only it knowing where the file is. Meanwhile, every non-Flash video is directly embedded in the web page so 3rd party plug-ins can handle them all... JUST NOT FLASH.
If every web page author would simply provide an alternate way to access the video, a direct link to the FLV file (in addition to the embedded SWF player) I would have no objection to Flash. Instead, I just never watch videos on websites that use Flash.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Streaming = bad news? (Score:5, Informative)
You mean I can watch iPlayer content without that obnoxious bit of bandwidth stealing almost-malware Kontiki crap? Can I do this on Windows as well? Where do I sign up?
Basically, once you install iPlayer it runs a filesharing service - kservice.exe - even after you've exited the program fully (by default it starts on system boot as well). A solution to this can be found here [shef.ac.uk] but I am really disapointed in the BBC for installing this crap on peoples machines.
Version that has fewer features is unacceptable (Score:4, Insightful)
(note to non-UK readers: every household with a TV has to pay BBC a compulsory license fee of about GBP 120 per year)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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About the only things I've enjoyed watching this year were ATOM and that absolute zero programme.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Unless the versions are equal in terms of quality I will consider refusing to pay the fee in full. A bit of civil disobedience might be in order.
You'll consider it and then just pay your license, having realised that your position is untenable. If I was the BBC I'd ask Apple if they want to partner on an equivalent DRM-infested system and if they don't then what else are they meant to do over and above the Flash-based system? Next I'd just double-check that the existing iPlayer can't be made to work under Wine and if it can't ask the Linux community to come up with a DRM-infested system of their own for the BBC to use. If they can't then it's the
In other news (Score:5, Informative)
Stream only? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only difference between a "download" and a "stream" is whether the person who receives the data choses to save it or not. As far as the sender goes, either the transmit the data or they don't send the data. There is no physical difference between sending a "stream" and sending a download. If the person watching the video tells his computer to save the data, then it is a download. Period end of story. They just have to have their software instructed to save the data.
The idea that you can ever "send a stream"... that something can be "streaming only", it is a total fiction, physically impossible. Yet brain damaged idiots persist in ignoring or fighting the laws of physics. When you get in a battle with the laws of physics, you will always lose and the laws of physics will always win.
Streaming only. Idiots. It'll take about 1.3 minutes after it goes online before people start saving the "stream".
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Re: (Score:2)
With the BBC's RealPlayer streams, even if you have a high bandwidth connection, you can still only receive a stream at the stream's data rate. That means to download a 30 minute radio program that is offered via rtsp, you still have to wait 30 minutes as the data is sent at 45 kbps (or whatever) down your 4Mbps pipe.
(Yes, I realise that the main thrust of the parent's contribution was that the BBC cannot
Open Rights Group Commentary (Score:4, Informative)
As the Open Rights Group [openrightsgroup.org] reported yesterday
BBC U-turn: Full iPlayer service may never be available to Mac and Linux Users
Yesterday, the BBC announced that a cross-platform "streamed" version of its on-demand service the iPlayer would be available by the end of the year. According to this report [bbc.co.uk] from BBC News Online:
If the idea sounds vaguely familiar, that's because back in March, when the BBC Trust put the iPlayer out for consultation, the Open Rights Group gently suggested that streaming was a far better short term solution to on-demand services than DRM-restricted market-distorting technologies that would serve to widen the digital divide. We observed that:
You can read our full submission to the BBC Trust here [openrightsgroup.org]. But enough of the I-told-you-so-s. Is yesterday's move good news for licence fee payers who do not use Windows? Well, not really. Although they will now be given online access to content their licence fee has helped pay for, there are still fundamental inequities between users on different platforms, and this still leaves the BBC deforming the market in favour of Microsoft DRM and Windows. People on Macs, Linux, PDAs and other handheld devices are still losing out on all the features that make the downloadable iPlayer different from, say, the kind of streaming that the BBC has done for years with the RadioPlayer.
And that's not all. Ashley Highfield, director of Future Media and Technology at the BBC has now indicated that the full, downloadable iPlayer may never be made available to those who do not use the latest versions of Windows. When the iPlayer launched in June, Highfield was quoted as saying [bbc.co.uk]:
But yesterday, he admitted [bbc.co.uk]:
The BBC could avoid all this mess if it eschewed DRM and instead employed standard formats. The Open Rights Group believes that the BBC cannot be truly public service in the 21st century until it gives the British public access to the programmes that they have paid for without DRM or restriction. This is not a technology problem, but cuts to the heart of what the BBC is for and how it makes and commissions programming. ORG challenges the BBC and the BBC Trust to re-examine the BBC's commissioning and rights frameworks with th
Re: (Score:2)
Strange... I would have thought this would be much easier on linux. They can release almost any DRM scheme that they want and it will be broken in days - truly problem free. Even with the Vista hooks into the OS that they seem to be relying on they are only delaying the inevitable.
Quietly?? (Score:3, Funny)
No it doesn't (Score:2)
Oh, wait a minute. Maybe the goal is maximum cost per person and minimum reach.
YouTube? (Score:2)
I'm assuming that they aren't going to attempt to stream full quality?
Does the MS Windows iPlayer, the one they let the BBC use at the moment, have any torrent-ing ability to reduce the infrastructure demands of a few hundred thousand people downloading a giga-byte file from the BBC servers?
It's a perfect application for tor
The BBC Trust have just said streaming not enough (Score:3, Informative)
Good news, nice to see the trust appreciates the issues.
Why all the Fuss? (Score:2, Funny)
Yet another proprietary or streaming player (Score:3)
Embedded, streaming video in any format is evil. I want to view video in the player of my choice that I trust to be secure (for me), and to view it in that player at the size of my choice not the size you chose to embed it in the web page.
Flash video sucks for exactly those reasons. Yea.. I know it can be downloaded too, but why have to bother with it? Just encode it in MPEG4 and offer it for download. Users will be much happier in the long run.
Oh yea.. forgot, no one cares about the users.
Also for Mobiles (Score:2)
The BBC is also looking to being able to have users download content onto mobile devices over wifi, which is what the main jist of the article is about.
For those of you outside the UK, you can still obtain the content if you redirect your initial registration & download initialisations through a UK based proxy. Then you can download the content from the USA (like I do when I'm working at the US office and not at home in the UK)
Dont the BBC own all this great content they made? (Score:2)
Last I checked, the BBC own Dr Who, Red Dwarf, Antiques Roadshow, a whole pile of sitcoms and dramas produced by the BBC over the years, a large archive of BBC produced news content not to mention all the BBC radio content.
Re: (Score:2)
Move DRM to hardware? (Score:2)
So why not move the DRM into hardware? Have a device which plugs into
One Word Error (Score:2)
Actually it comes down to cost per license payer - that's a big difference.
whatever (Score:3, Insightful)
In any case, it is hard to understand why they don't simply make the stuff available as MPEG4. But, hey, maybe their audience will do it for them.
Its about all we can expect (Score:4, Interesting)
No it doesn't. It comes down to you wanted DRM and went with Microsoft.
Why they chose this option instead of going with podcasts on iTunes is beyond me.
cost per person (Score:3, Insightful)
For that reason the "cost per person" argument doesn't wash. As a public service broadcaster with a good history of technological innovation the BBC *should* be providing the same services to people who don't want/can't afford to use windows.
Define "Linux" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Equivalent? (Score:4, Interesting)
The bandwidth question has cropped up again. Given that they are not talking about access to their entire catalogue, but a small (1 week?) window of it - why don't the ISPs put a proxy on their networks so that it is only downloaded once, and the majority of the bandwidth is internal?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Given that today they are announcing swinging cuts in service and 2000 job losses dur to lack of funds, I'm happy they saved a bit to spend n important things, not names for some bit of software.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Or maybe they secretly did, and Apple got the contract?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The BBC don't have ads... that's their biggest plus point IMHO, especially given that ITV et al have said they are going to increase the amount of advertising per hour to something similar to US TV and we all know how shite that is.
Re: (Score:2)
Incidentally, there are a number of open media streaming and download platforms supported by both Windows & Linux so the BBC should, from the outset, have looked at this from a totally platform neutral and Open perspective.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That was the whole point of the Sony TV metaphor, poor as it was. The iPlayer is not based on open standards, it's software/protocol is locked in to Windows only. Rather like a hypothetical situation where you could only receive certain TV programmes on a TV made by a single manufacturer...