[SWLUG] S4C use of wmv

[Steve Hill]

On Sun, 6 Jan 2008, Philip Barnes wrote:

> The BBC iPlayer does now work on linux, go to
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer
>
> The DRM ridden download service has been replaced by a youtube style
> flash player based solution.
>
> Its amazing how quickly they were able to do what they should have done
> in the first place instead of wasting time and money on the broken DRM
> download service. It didn't work on XP, I do have XP Pro running on a VM
> under linux, mostly to run Tracklogs and TomTom Home, but the old
> iPlayer just gave me the sound with a series of stills.

It appears that the BBC thought that writing a Flash player would get them 
out of their obligations to provide a proper iPlayer solution for Linux 
(thankfully the BBC Trust disagrees).  The following problem exist with 
the Flash player:

1. The quality of the streams sucks.
2. It doesn't work with Gnash
3. It isn't platform agnostic (Flash is only available for certain 
platforms - e.g. OS X and 32 bit Linux and Windows.  Notably you can't use 
Flash under 64 bit Linux without jumping through some hoops because there 
is no 64 bit version).
4. You can't download the media and then watch it at your leisure 
(possibly on a non-networked machine, such as when you're sitting on the 
train with your notebook).

Happilly, the BBC Trust is requiring the BBC to actually produce an OS X / 
Linux solution equivalent to the existing Windows one (good luck with 
that, given the DRM system they've chosen only works on Windows). 
Unhappilly, the BBC Trust seem to think that "platform agnostic" means 
"works on Windows, OS X and Linux".

I did draft a letter to the BBC Trust a few weeks ago, which I never got 
around to sending - maybe I should dig it out and send it.  It is 
interesting that the BBC Trust notes that the overwhelming opinion of the 
public during the consultation phase was that they didn't want the DRM, 
but went ahead and allowed a DRM-ridden solution anyway...


Some links:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7045123.stm
15 October - BBC indicates that they probably won't offer a full iPlayer 
download service for non-Windows systems.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7047381.stm
16 October - The BBC Trust says "you must be joking" and tells the BBC 
that wasn't part of the agreement.


Meanwhile, I'm afraid I can't see any reason for me to use the iPlayer 
service when I can download the content elsewhere (with questionable 
legality) which:
1. Works on my platform (iPlayer doesn't)
2. Has rather better quality than the streaming iPlayer
3. Doesn't have DRM, so I can choose when to watch the content instead of 
having to do it during a limited time period
4. Isn't limited to only programmes shown in the past 7 days

I'm afraid the whole media industry needs to learn that whilst they are 
intent on making their legitimate services suck as much as possible, the 
distribution of content over less legitimate channels is going to keep 
growing.

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

      Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence