[SWLUG] New protest and petition against BBC's Windows-only iPlayer

[Steve Hill]

On Fri, 3 Aug 2007, Vladimir Zlatanov wrote:

> Let's take the TVs as a tired and tested argument vehicle
> PAL is a way to encode and transmit colour to TVs. SECAM, NTSC are others. I
> can watch PAL programs
> on any TV set by any manufacturer. Not only Philips, or Samsung.

Not only that, but PAL, NTSC, SECAM, etc are all published standards - 
with the (freely available) technical know-how, you can construct your own 
TV receiver, VCR, PVR, etc.

The same goes for DVB - it's a published standard and there's nothign 
stopping you from constructing your own device.

And if you don't want to construct your own device from the ground up, you 
can buy DVB receiver cards from a variety of manufacturers, which will 
give you the content stream for you to do what you want with.  I've not 
looked at iPlayer, but I'm pretty sure it won't have a "stream this 
content into $other_application" option.

I think the current position BSkyB is in is a perfect example of why 
propriatory is bad for the consumer: Sky have control over the monopoly 
DVB-S platform.  When a broadcaster wants to set up a channel, in order to 
get any viewers they generally need to be added to the Sky electronic 
programme guide.  This costs several tens of thousands of pounds.  If they 
agree to be encrypted (but still provided at no cost to the customer) Sky 
often give them a big hefty discount.  The result is that a lot of the 
"free" TV channels distributed over DVB-S are encrypted.  Also, the 
subscription channels are also encrypted.

This shouldn't be a big problem though - there is a system used througout 
the world known as the common interface - this allows the channels to 
provide hardware conditional access modules (CAMs) to decrypt their 
content (with the prerequisite viewing card which you pay a subscription 
for) on any DVB-S receiver.

Unfortunately Sky, who own the encryption system, refuse to produce a CAM. 
Which means if you want to watch a large chunk of the satellite channels 
available, you are required to use Sky's own hardware.  No third parties 
can produce a DVB-S PVR, for example, and compete with Sky Plus since Sky 
will never let them decrypt the channels (this includes channels like 
Channel 4, Channel 5, etc).

I can't help but feel that the iPlayer is just another example of the 
broadcaster having too much control over the whole platform, which 
prevents 3rd party innovation.

-- 

  - Steve
    xmpp:steve at nexusuk.org   sip:steve at nexusuk.org   http://www.nexusuk.org/

      Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence