[ubuntu-uk] The BBC Launches Wiiplayer??? WHAT!?

[Rob Beard]

Jason Liquorish wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-04-09 at 20:38 +0100, Rob Beard wrote:
>> Jake Bunce wrote:
>>> Maybe someone should make the BBC aware of their Purpose and Values 
>>> statement. As per http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/purpose/
>>>
>>>
>>>       Public purposes
>>>
>>> The BBC is a unique institution, owned by the British people and 
>>> independent of political and commercial interests.
>>>
>>>
>>> By only allowing users of a certian operating system, which has to be 
>>> paid for, does that not constitute as a "commercial interest"?
>>>
>>>
>> I guess you could say that.  If the beeb made the video available in a 
>> standard format, say MP4 (due to the fairly good quality and small file 
>> size), or even better using their own video codec then I'm sure it would 
>>   not be in any commercial interest especially as a whole load of 
>> devices (PCs, Macs, Linux machines, mobile devices, even the Nintendo DS 
>> with the right hardware) can play MP4 video.
>>
>> If they can make it free to air over the airwaves and also on satellite 
>> when why not to residents in the UK.
>>
>> Rob
>>

> Content creators and publishers are overly paranoid about what
> technology is going to do to their profits and sales, and I do not feel
> that is going to change any time soon.

Shame really.  Take the Beeb for instance.  Yep, I've watched Little 
Britain and I think I even have a recording off the TV, but I recently 
bought the entire 3 series of Little Britain on DVD.  So technically 
I've already made payment towards it with the licence fee and I'm paying 
again to buy the DVDs (was only £3 a series from Sainsburys in their 
sale).  So even though I could get it by other means (downloaded from 
the net in xvid format, recorded from BBC Three when it's repeated every 
couple of weeks) I still went out and bought it.

> 
> Also note the BBC have agreements with third parties about protecting
> the content they publish so it is not necessarily the beeb who are
> pushing the DRM.
> 

See I don't understand what the third parties get so fussed about.  The 
programmes can be recorded off air onto DVD and duplicated in much 
better quality than what you get on the iPlayer.

Just tried the ITV catchup service, didn't seem to want to work on Hardy 
Beta with Firefox 3 Beta 5 and Flash on AMD64.  Still I'm not fussed, 
I'll just watch the corrie omnibus at the weekend.

Rob