“The BBC’s plans for a TV catch-up service for licence payers is slowly transforming into a serious rival to iTunes, delivering music and video from a variety of broadcasters to a media-hungry world,” Tom Dunmore reports for Stuff Magazine. “The BBC is in a unique position in the UK: a taxpayer-funded broadcaster that can afford to produce best-of-breed TV and online services without the support of advertising.”
Dunmore reports, “The original idea behind iPlayer – known during last year’s trial as iMP – was to allow viewers to catch up with the last week’s BBC TV and radio shows by downloading them from the web or streaming them over iPTV. Now BBC Worldwide head honcho John Smith is inviting rival broadcasters like C4, ITV and Sky to participate in iPlayer, making it an online alternative to the Freeview digital terrestrial platform.”
“Fortunately, one of the findings of the BBC Trust’s initial report into iPlayer was that it had to be accessible through different platforms – including Mac and Linux, which currently lack the Windows Media 10 DRM used by C4 and Sky. Let’s hope that the BBC can find a less stringent, more open copy protection system that allows wireless streaming and transferring video to portable devices. If it works, it could force iTunes – and, more importantly, the studios and labels backing it – to ditch restrictive, product-specific DRM altogether,” Dunmore reports.
Full article here.
Related articles:
British citizens: e-petition Prime Minister regarding Mac compatibility for BBC ‘iPlayer’ – February 22, 2007
Ask the BBC make upcoming iPlayer on-demand service Mac compatible – February 01, 2007
More blood on Apple iTunes Store’s play button: AOL Music Now folds – January 12, 2007
More blood on Apple iTunes Store’s play button: Virgin shutters U.S. music service – January 05, 2007
More blood on Apple iTunes Store’s play button: MSN Music stops selling music downloads – November 03, 2006
More blood on Apple iTunes Store’s play button: Japan’s Oricon bows out – November 01, 2006
More blood on Apple iTunes Store’s play button: Tower Records liquidated – October 09, 2006
Apple’s iTunes Music Store has blood on its play button: BuyMusic.com is dead – March 28, 2004
Financed with tax payers money?
The BBC are a collection of utter idiots. The head of it got booted out, the head of their news division got booted out, and a lying dog reporter about the Blair Iraq business got booted out. An independent judge found that the stinking organization was biased, doing slipshod reporting, and basically liars.
Now this same collection of screw up clowns thinks they know how to do technology. The British taxpayer is going to be taken for another ride.
Time to disband the whole lot of assclowns and end this crap of an institution forever.
And it automatically transmits your viewing and listening habits to the ministry of information!
To “S”
Is “Time to disband the whole lot of assclowns and end this crap of an institution forever.” anything like “sell the company and give the money back to the shareholders”??????? LOL
N.
Remember the first Mac ad. The Beeb was all those maroons trudging along in unison..
I wish the BBC would do a deal with Apple and make its programmes available on the iTunes store, so that customers in the colonies could simply buy the material. Possibly UK customers would pay less if registered on the UK iTunes store, given that they are requiured to pay license fees already.
Please Apple Inc. get on this, because it would solve the distribution problem for both Windows and Mac users in places like the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand where there is tremendous demand for UK produced programmes. The BBC could even make a lot more money in this way, perhaps even the fees could be reduced.
No sense writing Apple because they just respond that their lawyers won’t let them take suggestions from outside the Apple tent.
No sense writing the BBC if not a UK citizen.
the global store vs. the local store
And BBC will lose.
S:
Andrew Gilligan of BBC said Blair’s report into Weapons Of Mass Destruction to justify war on Iraq was “sexed up”; this caused a storm as UK’s socialist government denied it was true, and set up a whitewash (sorry, Lord Hutton’s report).
Considering it later turned out that the Iraq Dossier had been downloaded from a students work on the internet, and then had ‘facts’ added like Saddam had capability to launch WMD at UK with 45 minutes notice.
Perhaps you should reconsider who the “liars” were.
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“Financed with tax payers money?”
No – LICENCE payers money. There’s a difference.
“An independent judge found that the stinking organization was biased, doing slipshod reporting, and basically liars.”
A tiny bit generalised when talking about a huge organisation such as the BBC, and as a BBC journalist with a strong sense of morals I highly disagree.
I wonder where they got the inspiration for the name iPlayer?
The BBC could be doing this to protect their agreements and working relationship with Microsoft. From Redmond’s perspective, if the BBC cannot use Windows Media Player for everything, any solution that minimizes (rather than utilize) Apple’s media tools would be the next best alternative…anything other than iTunes, a cross-platform solution that otherwise works for everyone…
Amazing. Governments working to protect the withering Microsoft monopoly.
In the long run, the BBC will be the big loser in this story. Once known and well-respected for independent, honest news reporting, the modern BBC in the digital media age will be known as a corporate lackey afraid to do what is best for viewers.
Well that’s an original name.
And to think I am forced to pay a licence fee (aka taxation) to this bloated organization.
The usual right wingnuts are foaming at the mouth at the bare mention of a publicly funded broadcaster.
How envious and upset you must get, to know that one of the most respected news and media organisations on the planet is … gasp … publicly funded!
Oh, the evil! Oh, the horror! Oh the ideological warts on your genitals this must trigger!
Wingnut idiots: Go away. Find somewhere else to leak spit and drool all down your shirt. You’re embarrasing yourself.
The rest of us, who actually like the programs and news the BBC provides, will happily go on our way.
Cheers!
LC,
I agree. There are a lot of very good journalists and creative programme-makers in the BBC, and I listen to the World Service and watch BBC World.
(I live in Berlin)
But some of the decisions that are being made in the tech ‘department’ take my breath away!
How stupid can you get? … doing a deal with Microsoft and excluding Mac-users!
Talk about backing the wrong horse.
I for one completed the BBC’s Public Consultantion on the iPlayer, and obviously highlighted that they need to be cross platform (specifically Macintosh) — there was a question about it.
There was also a question about distributing BBC content on Apple iTunes — I said that wouldn’t be a problem and would be preferable to Microsoft locked in DRM that only works on Windows.
So, you might get BBC content on iTunes. Especially in light of this week where BBC have signed a deal with YouTube and are putting content up for free on that service.
@LC
I disagree. The taxpayers are funding the start up of this service. The hope is that it will be self supporting after it starts collecting licence fees.
Ergo, the government is competing with private industry using taxpayers money. That is simply wrong. I work for the Canadian government in research. We are very sensitive to that sort of thing. We can help Canadian SME’s to get up and running BUT we cannot do it ourselves or compete with them as that is unfair.
UELCanadian: “No sense writing the BBC if not a UK citizen.”
And why not? BBC News and BBC programs are broadcast here in the states and that makes us consumers who have every right to make demands of the BBC.
Although I’m getting on in age, if I was still living in London, I’d try and organize a demo outside Broadcasting House.
What about it, British macophiles?
a license that if you don’t pay , you get fined £1,000 , for crap like garden diy makeover antique drivelathon and even that’s repeated
so much for the bbc’s take on ‘freedom’
the bbc is an outmoded institution
and as for only the bbc makes quality tv
sherlock holmes , brideshead revisited , poirot , jewel in the crown etc etc
all made by a commercial station
and what do the bbc have to show ?
newstwentybore with about 24 regular viewers
@S
The reporter, Andrew Gilligan was proved correct later, after the ‘independent’ Hutton report which appeared to be biased and didn’t address the issues. Evidence is still trickling out and some important items have been refused release under the freedom of information act.
Google “Hutton whitewash” for a few reactions. Here’s one for starters:
Almost half of the public thinks the Hutton report was a “whitewash” and that it is unfair the BBC has to shoulder all the blame for the death of David Kelly, according to a poll by the London Evening Standard.
The first major survey of the British people’s reaction to Lord Hutton’s verdict has uncovered widespread scepticism, with 56% of people saying the judge had been unfair to heap most of the blame on the corporation.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/kelly/story/0,,1134268,00.html
The BBC has been a leader in new technologies, like it has the world’s biggest website, or had, it certainly is one of the biggest. They led in computers too, like computers in schools but they aren’t perfect, far from it, and much less so since Hutton/Blair/Campbell de-fanged them somewhat. Nevertheless they are a decent broadcaster, it’s news programming that has really been compromised but no rosy glasses here, they always been the voice of empire.
If it is a choice between Murdoch and BBC for me there’s no contest.
Provided the BBC doesn’t suck up to Microsoft too much I’m all for iPlayer, rather BBC compete with Apple than much greater evil of Microsoft.
@Wingnuts Go Away
From another reluctant paying member of the license system, I wish the BBC programming could be better.
Given the choice I now would vote for an advertising subsidised model for the BBC. To be forced to pay for something that I so rarely watch is a scandal. The managements free ride should be stopped.
“iPlayer”? “iDoubtIt”
@flappo:
We’ve been sent a post from the past … “sherlock holmes , brideshead revisited , poirot , jewel in the crown etc etc” that was made by a commercial station (ITV) in the 1980s, TWENTY YEARS AGO!
ITV are a pile of s*** today, and a perfect example of why BBC shouldn’t be advertising driven.
How about ‘Life On Mars’, ‘The Office’, ‘Planet Earth’, ‘Bleak House’, ‘Doctor Who’, ‘Torchwood’, ‘Top Gear’, ‘Newsnight’, ‘Little Britain’, ‘Proms’, etcetera as quality BBC television. Then there’s the radio and internet too.
Surely only minions of Murdoch think BBC is bad?
BBC is supported by tax payer’s money not only subscribers. remember it’s PUBLIC tv. UK is wierd like that. they not only pay the queen via VAT taxes but support the bbc as well, IPLAYER!!