[ubuntu-uk] Petition against BBC iplayer

Rob Beard rob at esdelle.co.uk
Sun Jul 15 23:36:42 BST 2007


James Dalley wrote:
> 
>  > Chris Rowson wrote:
>  > > On 13/07/07, Josh Blacker <jkblacker at gmail.com> wrote:
>  > >> You may all be interested in this article:
>  > >> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6897050.stm "BBC to hear
>  > >> open source concerns"
>  > >>
>  > >
>  > > Oooh very good - 'tis a pity that someone has to threaten the BBC
>  > > with litigation before they'll listen though!
>  >
>  > Optimism! I hope also that although they will have a meeting that they
>  > will actually 'listen'.
>  > Listening is also fairly low cost. Action requires a little more
>  > commitment
>  >
>  > --
>  > alan cocks
>  > Kubuntu user#10391
>  >
> 
> I got this reply from them, but as you can see it's the usual...
> Probably automated..
> 
> Dear Mr Dalley
>  
> Thank you for your e-mail.
>  
> The BBC has a responsibility to distribute it's content to as many license fee payers as possible, but we must seek a cost effective way to do this - especially whilst there is no single audio-visual standard. At present the cost of providing multiple formats is prohibitively high. 
>  
> We currently feel Real Player is the most appropriate solution, since it is freely available on the internet and can be installed on most operating systems. We also have a large archive of real format material and a resilient technical infrastructure necessary to support it. 
>  
> However, the BBC is actively assessing new ways to distribute audio-visual material across the internet. We have initiated a number of trials and we are planning a new technical infrastructure which in the future will increase flexibility of our output. For instance, you can now listen live to all of our major national networks in Windows Media Audio format
>  
> Thank you once again for contacting us.
>  
> Regards
>  

No mention of OGG format then.  It's a shame that the community can't 
redistribute the streams in OGG format on behalf of these media 
companies.  Doesn't take much to do it, I manage to distribute streaming 
internet radio around my network by downloading the stream in mplayer 
and piping it to Ices which streams it out in OGG format so I can listen 
   on any computer on my network without using double the internet 
bandwidth.

Rob



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