BBC Trial of TV Show Download Service

Little Hamster writes "Five thousand households with broadband access has been selected for a trial of the BBC's new interactive Media Player. The trial will run from September to December, and users can 'time shift' and download selected BBC TV shows, radio programmes, regional programming and feature films. After seven days, the content will be automatically deleted from the user's computers. BBC will use this trial to iron out any outstanding rights issues and resolve teething difficulties with the technology ahead of a full launch next year." The BBC Press Office has a release about this as well.

The Office?

[FriedTurkey]

Hopefully they will allow downloads of the "The Office". It is a great series. Although as an American, I have to turn on the subtitles to understand what they are saying. Also I didn't understand any of the British pop culture references except the Benny Hill ones.

Maybe BBC should allow downloads of Benny Hill too?

Re:Sweet!

[Golias]

You can.

The new-ish group for it is alt.binaries.doctorwho (IIRC)

Call me weird

[c0ldfusi0n]

But with that headline, i first thought it was refering to a lawsuit. Trial and Music in the same headline, and it's not a lawsuit?! Expect a letter from the RIAA soon, guys!

Time-shifting

[RealProgrammer]

Dr. Who fans will note that their house now looks a lot smaller on the outside than it really is on the inside.

FTFA:

[oneandoneis2]

Commercial rivals have already voiced fears that the BBC's substantial investment in iMP and the Creative Archive could damage their chances of making money from the concept.

[rant]Well, maybe they should have been worrying about that for the last bloody decade then, instead of spending all their time & money trying to legislate the whole bloody concept out of existance!![/rant]

*ahem*

Yay, BBC! It's times like this I don't object to paying my license fee!

Okay, trial period? Get your debuggers ready...

[pla]

BBC will use this trial to iron out any outstanding rights issues

So remember, kids, even if you come up with a totally trivial means of defeating their DRM, don't release it until AFTER they have irreversably committed to this!