BBC Begins Open-Source Streaming Challenge 373
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.
Only in the US (Score:5, Informative)
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:Good old Auntie! (Score:4, Informative)
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
I am glad this is what my license fee pays for! (Score:3, Informative)
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
In fact, I found a schematic for the network (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ogg Theora (Score:2, Informative)
This is one of the main reasons companies try to get software patents, as well as copyrights.
Re:Only in the US (Score:5, Informative)
14 times (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Good old Auntie! (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/licencefee/
and
http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/report2004/text/finan
Re:Good old Auntie! (Score:1, Informative)
The BBC does have other sources of income to supplement the fee, but that isn't directly used for radio only or anything, and is dwarfed by the fee.
World Service Radio is funded by the Foreign Office, however, but uses BBC resources. That's why, of all the BBC, it's the bit that is scandalously being decimated.
Re:open codecs? (Score:4, Informative)
Videolan (Score:3, Informative)
Project homepage (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Ogg Theora is alive (Score:5, Informative)
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:Darwin Streaming Server / QTSS (Score:4, Informative)
Re:From the article (Score:2, Informative)
Jeremy paxman (the interviewer) asked that question 14 times because the computer he was using to view his question list had frozen, and he couldn't get to the next one. It was still a great thing to do, but it's not quite the 'revenge of the BBC' that you suggest.
Dirac homepage (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Quicktime (Score:3, Informative)
Well, not the whole industry... (Score:1, Informative)
And Apple doesn't charge any per-stream or per encoded hour crap either.
Re:Good old Auntie! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Good old Auntie! (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:In fact, I found a schematic for the network (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The Future of Television (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Videolan (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Good old Auntie! (Score:3, Informative)
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 other people, while the bbc does that, it also makes shows itself, some of very high quality (some pretty crap admittedly).
sky just seems to be a huge rip off to me, how can they charge you a huge monthly fee for the posrts channel and then have the cheek to ask you to pay even moe to see some boxing match, and then not allow you to record it!
and then carpet bomb it with more and more adverts. ads, or subscription. pick one dammit. that just really pisses me off and I just won't sign up to it. but I suppose I don't watch a huge amount of telly now. I've got freeview (and a tivo*) and thats mostly enough for me.
dave
* please, give us a new UK tivo! I want a high quality dvdv/dvda/sacd player/dvdrw/tivo with huge HD, ethernet, multiple tuners etc. I'll pay a good fee for that
Re:The BBC (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:The Future of Television (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The Future of Television (Score:3, Informative)
It's patent-free (Score:2, Informative)
so how does it compete with current codecs at all?
DivX and XviD: heavily patented. Theora and Dirac: not patented. From the article:
Re:From the article (Score:3, Informative)
The reason he asked the same question 14 times was that he wanted a straight answer and the politician concerned (as usual for all politicians) wouldn't give one.
Explanation of name (Score:2, Informative)
The Dirac delta function corresponds roughly to a spike in a flat signal. Run a low-pass filter on it and you get the various scaling functions used in wavelet image coding.
You mean Ogg Tarkin (Score:3, Informative)
Ogg Theora is lurching towards an actual release, and is supported in a few tools like VLC, while Ogg Tarkin never really got very far along in implementation. Theora was meant to be the quick interim release while Tarkin was developed, although the schedule has slipped quite a bit since.
BBC Interactive Media Player (iMP) (Score:2, Informative)
Currently the BBC are trialing iMP (interactive media player), which allows users to download TV content from the last 8 days. It uses a peer to peer basis for downloading (like Bittorrent), and is currently using Windows Media 9 with its DRM to restrict the content. As I gather, it is a standalone application.
Cross platform compatibility is a fairly hot subject at the Beeb at the moment, and one of the developers hinted that WM9 is just a stand in for any other codec. Presumably when Dirac matures, we'll see Dirac being used.
It's currently in trials with up to 1000 users.
This [independent.co.uk] is probably the best public article about it.
For the lazy... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ogg Theora (Score:1, Informative)
Note that even Vorbis which has been version 1 released for a couple of years now and which was started many years ago is not properly documented. LibVorbis has no official documentation and this is the library which you need to use if dealing with asynchronous sources such as network connections. As far as I know the Vorbis encoding algorithm is completely undocumented.
You might notice that the source of the docs when they do appear isn't offtopic for this thread. The BBC do have one or two hackers
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.multimedia.og
Re:BBC Technology Sale (Score:1, Informative)
However the day to day running of the server farm and a lot control over that aspect is being outsourced so it remains to be seen how the products of R&D get used in the new structure.