Well that's me told! Very interesting to have the thoughts of someone who
worked on Jam...
The reason I thought it was a bad move to make at the time was that it
seemed that all of a sudden, the BBC was having to vow to a sudden burst of
criticism from other companies, which seemed a little orchestrated, and
given that they'd invested so much time and expense it was frustrating both
for me as a user and for the people who worked on it to see it just get
shelved. I was just viewing this as a joe-regular licensepayer though, so
it's fascinating to get your side of the story. Never realised it used an MS
solution (never really used it that much, as I had little personal use for
it! I did have a little delve once or twice though but nowhere deep in the
minisite).
Reading what you say makes me think of the Domesday Project which, almost
doomed to fail before it even ever got off the ground, but that was probably
because of the technological constraints... My school had a copy of it for a
while though and I thought it was absolutely brilliant.
While I'm writing this, thought I'd reply to Vijay's comments re. Sky+ - you
were saying about how nobody in their right mind would get a Sky+ box... I'm
waiting 12 months and then most likely getting Sky+, because it's the best
of a bad selection of offerings - the interface is very nicely worked out
(going to any other digital platform from Sky is so frustrating), its PVR
functions don't delete shows unless you run out of space for new ones, and
the quality is far better than anything else. Although the drives are
crypted and locked to the box, I'm *sure* there has to be a way of
decrypting them... But at the end of the day, the Sky+ interface even offers
a feature to 'copy to tape' (or DVD recorder, I guess!) albeit via its
decent quality analogue connections, so it's still better than the iPlayer!
And, now that Sky have dropped their £10/pm fee for the Sky+ features for
all customers, the V3 box has gone down in price too and it won't be much
longer until it's £30/40/free! I'd love to have a TiVo setup for Sky, but
that idea died about a month after Sky started advertising TiVo for its Sky
Digital platform when they moved to their own system.
I can't live without Discovery Channel (and Nat. Geo... And Zone Reality...
And decent-quality digital terrestrial channels, too!) - and I just wish I
could timeshift for when I'm out, because all my mates have had Sky+ for
years (as does my housemate) (Soon, my precious!)
Part of me couldn't forgive myself for handing over more money to Murdoch
for a long time, but Sky is a closed system and you know that when you sign
up, so there really is no other *good* _standalone_ solution other than
getting Sky+ for PVR functionality (or getting a DreamBox and spending ages
fiddling to make it work on Sky, plus all the other associated costs).
Freeview on the other hand is an entirely different kettle of fish, but, and
it's suffering the same fate DAB suffered, the quality now is so dire I'd
rather get Freesat - or even get Sky with two mixes, as it'd only be
marginally more expensive for the first year than a Freesat setup!
-Original Message-
From: Deirdre Harvey [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: 02 August 2007 11:46
To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk
Subject: RE: [backstage] More iPlayer(/jam) protesting
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Christopher
Woods
Sent: 01 August 2007 22:21
To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk
Subject: RE: [backstage] More iPlayer protesting
rant
The BBC's been forced to bow to commercial pressures more
than once in
the past; anyone remember the Jam debacle?
I remember it well, being unfortunate enough to have worked
on it.
snip
-
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