BBC To Create 'Catch-Up TV Player' 146
grouchal writes "The BBC Trust (a semi independent regulator) has just approved the BBC's efforts to launch iPlayer (no new info on this link yet). This means that UK residents can watch broadcast BBC programs out of sync with the broadcast schedule by up to 30 days for free. The iPlayer will launch for the PC but is expected on Media Center, Xbox 360 devices in the near future. The approval also included some constraints." This would really have made my life a lot simpler when my tivo died a couple of weeks ago.
OS X as well... (Score:5, Informative)
TV is not dead, it just deserves to die (Score:2, Informative)
However just like their archive this has been hobbled by rights issues and silly rules about 'broadcasting' on the internet for 7 days, 30 days, or whatever their limit is now. If it wasn't for those rules, they wouldn't have to use DRM at all. Instead they're stuck in 1996, trying to create an ecosystem that their users couldn't care less about.
They've bought into this Microsoft DRM, and are now going to pay the price of becoming irrelevant to users of other platforms, like OS X, mobile phones, consoles which don't come from MS, Linux etc. Good job BBC. How they will move it to other platforms is anyone's guess - the BBC says it might be difficult within 2 years to move to OS X (which is what the trust wanted) - that's hardly a promising sign. Frankly, I don't think they'll ever make it with their 'iPlayer'. MS certainly has nil incentive to provide a working solution on OS X or Linux.
Quite apart from the DRM I don't want to download another player for every TV station that wants to go online - they should use the outlets currently available, like Microsoft Live and iTunes, to sell their stuff. Instead of using standard channels and outlets they've rolled their own player and bought in DRM. Channel 4 has pulled the same trick and their forum [channel4.com] is full of people complaining about how crap it is. The C4 player even installs a P2P client to serve their stuff for you without asking. Nice.
These media creators/outlets are obviously stuck in the 1990s, and they're not going to get the internet till they're dragged kicking and streaming onto it. The fact they still talk about broadcasting when they're actually talking about downloads says everything really. They're trying to hobble downloads to turn them into a broadcast.
What a service like this needs to succeed :
1. Offer downloads of files which will play on any modern video software, on computers, phones etc etc
2. Not time limited
3. Sell the damn content worldwide 1 year after first broadcast
4. Use any sales channel you can get, don't try to limit it to your 'iPlayer'
5. DRM not required, in fact it'd be a huge hindrance because it makes it impossible to do 1 above
6. Don't try to turn the Internet into TV - the obverse is inevitable, and the sooner you get used to it the better.
Re:OS X as well... (Score:5, Informative)
Not according to the BBC:
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6607083.s tm [bbc.co.uk]
iPlayer is built on top of Windows Media Player using Windows DRM - part of the BBC's stunning support for open standards and multiplatform development. Even if they do ship it for Mac the DRM issue will probably limit the programmes you can download.
Re:Linux? (Score:4, Informative)
Here in Denmark we have our public TV online already, and that plays on all operating systems, although linux is still playing in a lower resolution than under windows. All it requires is installing mplayer and getting the mplayer MS codecs (they are legal in EU).
Re:File format ? DRM ? (Score:3, Informative)
Even if it were added to iPlayer WMP is a container and can handle multiple codecs so there'd be nothing to stop the BBC encoding content using its own codec and still have it viewable in WMP. The codec is much less significant than the DRM approach chosen.
Re:Linux? (Score:5, Informative)
OS X probably has a better shot - since you could implement the APIs without much extra paranoia, but use the inbuilt TPM on Intel Macs to ensure the OS and running environment was in a known good state. Since you can't count on a Linux box having a TPM, you can't make reverse engineering of the DRM system more difficult.
For what its worth, the tech guys at the BBC are fully aware of Linux, and it is in their plan to support it via iPlayer. The best way of accomplishing this isn't through technical means, but political. It's important for people to understand why the BBC is using DRM. They don't want to - it just increases running costs and introduces new points of failure into an already complex system. But the programme makers (who are often not the BBC) together with the contracted personnel who produce the programs insisted that any attempt to broadcast content in the clear would count as unlimited repeat broadcast. Which is fine, but it would cost the BBC a fortune to pay out as per contractual requirements. Hence the DRM enforced limitations, which are a sort of contractual enforcement by proxy. A pretty crappy one, but one which the lawyers would accept.
It's a simple problem to state, but hard to fix at a technical level - because there's no real technical problem. Existing contracts for TV works are written in language which predates the Internet and the on-demand style of viewing. Thus, it's always expressed in terms of initial showings, repeat fees, differential media exploitation rates, etc. Recent contracts which the BBC is creating are far more encompassing of alternative distribution technologies. So the final solution is to get far more sane exploitation rights written into contracts, which accurately reflect TV watching habits of the 21st century, and to stop wishing that the Internet and its on-demand modes of use would just go away.
Of course, the ultimate stupidity of all of this is that the programmes are being broadcast in digital form completely unencrypted right now! DVB-T/C/S transmissions spit this stuff out in full resolution (whereas iPlayer doesn't) which a $200 PC card can receive and store the content on a persistent device. It's almost like the the lawyers put their fingers in their ears and sang "Lalala! Can't hear you!" when this gets mentioned.
End result: Build a MythTV box with a Freeview card. You can suck down as many channels as you like and keep it for ever. Transcode to H.264 and a 500GB hard disk will keep 6 months of programming easily.
--Ng
Re:OS X as well... (Score:2, Informative)