[backstage] Hello
Hello, I was clearing up my site other day and came across over 8,000 samples of the BBC News site which I captured using my BBC Archive tool which was running at that time. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcbackstage/2010/04/prototype-bbc-archiver.s html Here's the combined video of the BBC News site over a few months in mid-2010 during which time they changed to the new design. Includes Ash cloud, moat, election and so on. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BfxExdXVmk Sad I couldn't keep it running but the disk use was huge. Best Jim. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] iPad iplayer app issue
I would say this issue is well known and well talked about: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbiplayer/NF13735683?thread=7951758skip=50 The problem still seems to exist up to end of May and there seems to be sporadic feedback from the BBC in this specific thread. Jim -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Alan Pope Sent: 20 June 2011 10:59 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: [backstage] iPad iplayer app issue Hullo! Sorry if this is not the right place for this, I have mailed mobileapps@, but thought other clever people here might have some suggestions/experience to share. Over the last few weeks I've been having right trouble with the iPad iplayer app on a 1st gen iPad. I'm on 30Mb/s Virgin connection which is working fine. Frequently I'll be watching programmes and they cut out after about 5-6 minutes. I have had this with various programmes over an extended period so it's not limited to one night or one programme. I got a bit desperate and moved my wireless access point to the bedroom, connected to the router via devolo ethernet over power things. Other devices like phones and laptops doing basic browsing, and a server doing sustained rsyncs seem okay over the connection, I only get an issue with the iplayer app on ipad. One person today suggested rebooting the iPad which (surprisingly perhaps) I haven't actually tried, but will tonight if it happens. I usually just get narked and listen to a podcast instead, or go to sleep :) Other suggestions welcome? Cheers, Al. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
[backstage] Backstage Ticker
I know good ol'backstage is taking its last few gasps but I thought I'd add my beeb inspired rss desktop ticker for Windows whilst people are still here! http://server-2.webcoding.co.uk/bbc_ticker_2010/ supported by BBC Backstage and all that blurb.
[backstage] Top 40 XML
Hey, Someone asked me to update my Top 40 page so the XML version worked again. I took the opportunity to slightly extend the feed to include a bit more information and add direct links to track via Spotify's Metadata API. Feeds are here: http://server-2.webcoding.co.uk/top40.xml http://server-2.webcoding.co.uk/top40albums.xml Example application written in C#: http://server-2.webcoding.co.uk/spotify/ Cheers. Jim.
RE: [backstage] Top 40 XML
Scrape and shape -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Patrick Sinclair Sent: 29 October 2010 18:42 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Top 40 XML That looks great! How are you getting the Top 40 data? Patrick On 29 October 2010 18:01, James Holden james_hol...@londonmarketing.com wrote: Hey, Someone asked me to update my Top 40 page so the XML version worked again. I took the opportunity to slightly extend the feed to include a bit more information and add direct links to track via Spotify's Metadata API. Feeds are here: http://server-2.webcoding.co.uk/top40.xml http://server-2.webcoding.co.uk/top40albums.xml Example application written in C#: http://server-2.webcoding.co.uk/spotify/ Cheers. Jim. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] BBC Archiver
Hi Jakob, Thanks for the comments. I wrote the screenshot tool in C# and it sits on a PC chugging away once every 30 minutes. Screen shot of the app here: http://server-2.webcoding.co.uk/uploader.png It's a bit of a work-in-progress so .. :) Jim -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Jakob Fix Sent: 14 July 2010 22:59 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] BBC Archiver James, cool stuff! What tool are you using to take the automated screen shots from the websites? cheers, Jakob. On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 13:34, James Holden james_hol...@londonmarketing.com wrote: Hi, Just a quick update about the BBC Archiver: The system which captured the screen shots was turned off by mistake for the last few days. Sorry about this and the new news site is now being archived. (Looks good, well done). http://server-2.webcoding.co.uk/BBCArchive/calendar.php Jim. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] BBC Archiver
I do like it, it's cleaner than before and probably better from a content management point of view but there are some odd bits about it. I'd move up (on homepage) More from the BBC News and get rid of the overly dark UK News Weather block which doesn't fit for me. One of the strangest choices is the inconsistent methods of navigation. Given the recent BBC Homepage alterations I'd of thought news would follow the home design but even the top line main sections don't match. The primary news areas with subset options is nice but again doesn't exist anywhere else on the site. Also, BBC Home has a pretty nice 5-6 pixel housing around the page body and the news loses this too. But hey, I'm not a designer or UI expert so what do i know? Jim J From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Davy Mitchell Sent: 15 July 2010 17:07 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] BBC Archiver I can't stand the new News page design - maybe it will grow on me? It's all cluttered with a weird empty column in the middle of the page for stories. Sorry, Davy
[backstage] BBC Archiver
Hi, Just a quick update about the BBC Archiver: The system which captured the screen shots was turned off by mistake for the last few days. Sorry about this and the new news site is now being archived. (Looks good, well done). http://server-2.webcoding.co.uk/BBCArchive/calendar.php Jim.
RE: [backstage] iPad and iPlayer
It's actually incredibly easy to get the iPlayer working on the iPad via safari. Additionally the video source is fully compatible with HTML5 video containers. So long as you ensure that requests come from iphone marked devices you can get Safari to work with it perfectly and indeed present HTML5 video containers with iPlayer video streams. The problem for a legit version is that they will a) have to buy some iPads then b) write a larger screen mobile version c) test it, make change and release I wouldn't bank on anything coming soon, corporate oil tanker :) Additionally, AFAIK not all videos are available for the iPhone so it's not a question of making a small shift to the main iPlayer website. http://img31.imageshack.us/i/ipadkg.jpg/ -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Paul Webster Sent: 20 May 2010 10:23 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Cc: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] iPad and iPlayer Can someone from BBC persuade someone else in BBC with the right powers to make a statement on this? FYI Apple have now enabled access to UK AppStore for iPad users Paul On Tue, 11 May 2010 08:33:03 +0100, you wrote: While the method below is still working fine - it remains a bit of a pain to use. Any chance that someone in BBC could make the change that I suggested nearly a month ago - namely to add the iPad as an alias for the iPhone (user-agent strings below). If BBC makes special format for iPad in the future then fine ... simply remove the alias at that point. Paul Webster On Thu, 15 Apr 2010 18:34:42 +0100, you wrote: Ah - good idea. I guess that means that the Apple webkit is statically linked - so it picks up the iPhone version. Just tried it by using the iPhone Facebook app - and became a fan of one of the BBC iPlayer pages ... which has a link in the info section. Worked well. Paul On Thu, 15 Apr 2010 15:11:26 +0100, you wrote: If you use an iPhone app with a built in browser (Files works well for me), you can access the iPhone iPlayer on the iPad. It looks reasonably good in pixel-doubled mode. Jamie. On 15 Apr 2010, at 12:33, Paul Webster paul-at-dabdig.com |BBC Lists/Example Allow| wrote: Ok - I admit it ... I have one. Any chance of adding iPad Safari user-agent to the list of things that look like an iPhone so that iPlayer works? Here are examples: iPad: Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B367 Safari/531.21.10 iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16 I realise that it could be optimised for the display characteristics - but right now it is useless because BBC site asks for Flash. Paul Webster - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] iPad and iPlayer
If you use an iPhone app with a built in browser (Files works well for me), you can access the iPhone iPlayer on the iPad. It looks reasonably good in pixel-doubled mode. Jamie. On 15 Apr 2010, at 12:33, Paul Webster paul-at-dabdig.com |BBC Lists/Example Allow| wrote: Ok - I admit it ... I have one. Any chance of adding iPad Safari user-agent to the list of things that look like an iPhone so that iPlayer works? Here are examples: iPad: Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B367 Safari/531.21.10 iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16 I realise that it could be optimised for the display characteristics - but right now it is useless because BBC site asks for Flash. Paul Webster - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
[backstage] iplayer css broken in chrome?
Don't know if it's just me, but the CSS files seem to be broken for the iPlayer in Google Chrome for the last day or two? (works fine in Firefox). Had a look and the stylesheet reference off to http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/r18179/style/style.css comes back as something that's definitely not a stylesheet! Thanks James --- James Crowley CEO, developerFusion - the global developer community web: http://www.developerfusion.com/ twitter: http://twitter.com/developerfusion tel: 0207 291 0783 mob: 07986624128 --- Developer Fusion Ltd is registered in England No. 04905407 Registered office 58 Sandringham Close, Enfield, Middx, EN1 3JH
[backstage] Grand Prix on iPlayer not available on all devices?
I hope someone here can answer my iPlayer question: It seems that I can only access the main Grand Prix coverage from yesterday (b00l8s2q and b00lllnf) on the iPlayer site on my desktop, not from my iPhone or Wii. On the non-desktop devices, only the qualifying and the highlights are available, not the main race coverage. It's unfortunate, because I usually use the iPhone connected to my TV to watch iPlayer on the big screen (which works great!). Is the omission intentional? Thanks, Jamie. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] RDTV launched
On 9 Apr 2009, at 22:57, Mr I Forrester mailbox-at-cubicgarden.com | BBC Lists| wrote: I hope you find the project useful as some of the footage is well worth looking through if you have the time. We are planning to have even more formats supported in the next week or so. So if Mpeg4 isn't to your taste, you should hold out for the Ogg Theora, Xvid and WMV versions once I crank up my Quad Processor PIII Xeon box :) The 30-minute .mov version seems not to be there? Also, count me in for wanting an RSS feed too. I'm interested, but lazy; I'll be much more likely to watch if I can just subscribe to it as a podcast with iTunes. Jamie. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
I think this is a false dilemma. Guys in my office have phones with 8MP cameras. My 18-month old phone has a 5MP camera. I suspect a good lens and skill with photoshop is vastly more important than the photographer being professional. Sure, some kid with a 10MP phone can take a 300dpi front-page-sized picture of a UFO crashing down into the village green – but when the alien crawls out and asks to speak to Gordon Brown for the first time, do you, as a news editor, send the kid with the phone, or perhaps someone who has a bagfull of experience, a ladder, good elbows, and a record of never ever fg up? - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
[backstage] Competition Commission bounces Project Kangeroo
See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7869181.stm A victory or a loss for consumer choice? -jeremy P.S. Also; opportunities for a marsupial pun thread. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Your ideas are now finally welcomed
On Wed, Dec 24, 2008 at 1:11 PM, Gareth Davis gareth.da...@bbc.co.ukwrote: It still still being made, just not for the tellybox :) http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/top_of_the_pops.shtml So, why doesn't it appear in http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00704hg/upcoming Surely it should - it's the same brand (owned by BBC ONE, but you still broadcast a radio version) -- http://james.cridland.net/ | http://notatallbad.ltd.uk/legal_info/
Re: [backstage] not quite in the Backstage spirit?
On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 2:50 PM, Martin Deutsch martin.deut...@gmail.comwrote: Just spotted this in the newest Private Eye (dated 26th Dec)... Being fair... use of the logo means official. No use of the logo means unofficial. That's what the Backstage licence basically says. Do a quick iTunes search for BBCReader - that app really concerns me, since it's rubbish and people think it's the BBC's. -- http://james.cridland.net/ | http://notatallbad.ltd.uk/legal_info/
Re: [backstage] Media Selector query
I'll look at what the media selector is doing: we'll be adding Windows Media files in there shortly (for wifi radios). It's not my team that does it, but I need to work on making it easier to understand! On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 5:48 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You never know how technical to go before people start falling asleep at their desks.. The latter idea (a separate feed) would probably be easier to implement in the short term - perhaps an international version of the mediaselector with a similar URL pattern to the current one (hypothetical example : http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/international/stream/p001hlts ) that just has media items that are available overseas? Longer term an attribute on the media item would make sense and would probably be a good move for future-proofing, as I'm sure long term much more audio and video content will end up being available internationally and it's bound to be useful in the future to distinguish between UK and overseas availability. Out of curiousity how is it done at the moment on bbc.co.uk/iplayer ? I presume there must be some code that chooses which media item to use, based on the geolocation data and preferred player settings? Andrew -- *From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *On Behalf Of *Ian Forrester *Sent:* 08 December 2008 17:06 *To:* backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk *Subject:* RE: [backstage] Media Selector query never feel sorry for being too geeky! Ah see what you mean, so some kind of attribute would be useful but currently the spec doesn't support it. Or maybe we should be producing two different types of feeds? One international and the other UK? -- http://james.cridland.net/ | http://notatallbad.ltd.uk/legal_info/
re: [backstage] Newstime on BanterTV
(first post to this list - hello everyone!) Previously known as the Live Mesh platform (Microsoft loves changing names every 30 seconds to keep us on our toes). You can find out more at http://dev.live.com/ . There's a whole load of services around online/offline synchronization, alert services, sharing data (such as contacts, calendars, photos etc)... and it all ties into the Windows Azure platform too, but still getting my head around it! --- James Crowley CEO, developerFusion - the global developer community Developer Fusion Ltd | 58 Sandringham Close | Enfield, EN1 3JH mob: 07986 624128 web: http://www.developerfusion.com/ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Stefan Richter Sent: 28 October 2008 19:20 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Newstime on BanterTV sounds interesting. What exactly is the Live Service or Framework? Stefan On 28 Oct 2008, at 18:08, Brian Butterworth wrote: Hi Stefan, Have you seen this? http://www.betanews.com/article/PDC_2008_Live_blog_of_the_Windows_7_keynote/1225207963 10:44am PT: The BBC is doing a demonstration of integrating the Live Framework with the BBC iPlayer. Users can see what their friends are watching, and see the most popular programs. 2008/10/28 Stefan Richter [EMAIL PROTECTED]mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Hi all, today I'd like to draw your attention to a site which I have recently launched. www.bantertv.comhttp://www.bantertv.com pulls in the currently available BBC simulcast streams and adds a chat interface. Sounds simple - and it is. However noone seems to have done it yet, and I think combining live TV with a channel for interaction between viewers is hugely attractive. So if you have nothing better to do at 1pm then head over and watch the one o'clock news there. If you like the idea - and the BBC is not too miffed about the project - then I'd like you to help spread the word. I have a few more 'social' features waiting to be switched on but quite frankly there's not much point in doing that until there's a core group of visitors bringing some traffic. Once that happens though I am sure that the conversations will be interesting to watch - imagine Eastenders (once the main BBC channels go simulstream), or Strictly come Dancing. A bit of background about myself (since this is my first real contribution to the list): I'm a Flash Platform developer specialising in Flash video, Flash Media Server and real-time capabilities in Flash. My company is www.muchosmedia.comhttp://www.muchosmedia.com and my personal blog is at www.flashcomguru.comhttp://www.flashcomguru.com I'm currently bootstrapping the development of some Flash based services, the first one being www.scribblar.comhttp://www.scribblar.com, an online collaboration tool. As you can see on BanterTV, I also build a lot of chat applications, some of which include live audio and video (via webcam/mic). I'm looking forward to getting more involved in this group (and I think I have something ping.fmhttp://ping.fm related to post soon). Best wishes, Stefan - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.ukhttp://backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ --- Brian Butterworth follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/briantist web: http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002
Re: [backstage] ping.fm
IMHO Ping.fm is good, but not great. Would be nice to see a bit of a preview of what a post looks like in various services. Some of mine have been truncated by twitter and facebook and look odd. And links sometimes come out all wrong for me, so tinyurl before submission? B On 27 Oct 2008, at 17:19, Stefan Richter wrote: Hi Ian, in your opinion, what would be a critical feature set for a ping.fm desktop app? Obviously you'd need to be able to post updates to the ping.fm service, but what outside the core functionality would you like to see? Regards, Stefan On 27 Oct 2008, at 16:29, Ian Forrester wrote: Yeah this is the thing I'm really worried about happening. Ping.fm currently is my preferred way to do microblogging. Without it, geez it would be bad news. Surprised no ones created a ping.fm type thing for the desktop. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html . Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] HD Videocamera advice please...
Simon Thompson wrote: The GOP length is the number of frames between successive I-Frames. A long GOP length will, for example, cause a delay on video appearing on changing channels on a STB or, as editing cuts can only start from an I-Frame will mean you can't do frame accurate editing. I disagree with can't - the Sony XDCAM EX1 is a serious camera intended for broadcast use that uses long-GOP MPEG2. However, editing is indeed harder since the software needs to be clever about how it handles the content. You potentially have to decode a fair number of frames to show the one you want, and (unless re-rendering) you need to keep up to the previous I-frame before any edits made in your source material throughout the editing process. Final transcoding is awkward too. If you intend to output to another MPEG-2 then you either have to totally re-render the content to have new I-frames (but with associated quality losses) or attempt to piece together the original GOPs for the edit, only generating new sections around edit points. The majority of production houses [1] are still using I-frame based systems - DV/Digibeta/HDCAM - but with the current trends towards MPEG2-based formats - HDV/P2 - it is going to be interesting to see how different types cope with the issues of non-I-frame editing. Some long-timeframe productions will have the opportunity to re-render to a I-frame format at ingest (typically MJPEG), others (current affairs / sports) will have to deal with the formats throughout their workflows as they are. -jeremy [1] Televisual Aug '08 Production Survey (Current usage: 70% Digibeta, 68% DV, 49% HDV, 45% HDCAM) - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] New Internet Radio
Pure are making a new DAB and Internet Radio. I have one of these (in a box just there, look). Next tonight, I'll be opening it and blogging the results on http://james.cridland.net/blog/ And this interesting bit: Crawford also said that there would be additional services coming online by the end of the year such as the ability to purchase a track direct from the radio as it was being played, and 'tagging', whereby additional information about an artist or track could be pushed to the online portal. Tagging is, in fact, part of the project that I and GCap Media are working on. I'll circulate the complete spec once it's updated in the next week or so. Eager Googlers might find an earlier version available on the web, but I'd like to keep my powder dry 'till the new version; it's changed quite a lot. Oh and this may keep Dave happy: We may later choose to expose the Linux platform fully, enabling others to add widgets and other extras. We didn't want to go with a closed, proprietary system. In fact, I spoke to someone from Pure during the launch. The processor is dual-threaded (at least); one thread runs the Linux platform (kernel 2.6 by the way), one thread runs a Pure proprietary OS. The Linux portion will be open source (i.e. you can download the source code). I've no idea how to do a firmware upgrade yourself, mind; it gets its firmware upgrades via wifi, so the opportunity for fiddling might be limited. But it's not quite as open as you might think; and I'm unclear which bit does what. (Apparently the interesting bit is proprietary). My little team in the BBC will shortly publish a recipe for making your own internet radio, by the way, which is totally open source; watch the Radio Labs blog. It's considerably more expensive than the Pure one though, at over £350. Now, let me open the box and start playing. ;) -- http://james.cridland.net/ Media UK - http://www.mediauk.com/ - the UK's independent media directory http://www.mediauk.com/advertise | http://notatallbad.ltd.uk/legal_info/
[backstage] BBC News iGoogle gadget
If you like iGoogle gadgets, then there's the rather nice BBC Weather unofficial gadget, which you can add by going to http://bit.ly/bbcweather_ig (and I've summarily broken the old one, since you can't simply forward it on). There's also now a nice new BBC News unofficial iGoogle gadget, which you can add by going to http://bit.ly/bbcnews_ig You can use edit this gadget to change from the UK news to the World news if you so wish. All feedback gratefully received. -- http://james.cridland.net/ Media UK - http://www.mediauk.com/ - the UK's independent media directory http://www.mediauk.com/advertise | http://notatallbad.ltd.uk/legal_info/
Re: [backstage] Radio now playing feeds
On Fri, Aug 1, 2008 at 2:48 PM, Chris Riley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So, I guess question number 1 is how supported is the publishing of now playing data to last.fm? Is it something that the BBC will provide their own supported feed for as part of the new music site (especially as you are showing playcount data as part of artist pages now?) or is it to remain something you push to last.fm only. Hi, Chris, last.fm (and hackday) are not supported services, simply best endeavours (i.e. if it falls over, sorry). However, this is a good bug report, and I'll make enquiries. Both /music and /programmes are/will-be replete with feeds. You may have spotted that tracklistings appeared then disappeared in /programmes this week - we aim to get them back there shortly, within a few weeks, once a few niggles have been sorted out. I might point you to www.getsatisfaction.com/bbc to give us further ideas about the feeds you might want. While getsatisfaction.com isn't an official BBC support channel (a few of us are just playing with it), it might be a good way to suggest new features and feeds you'd like to see. j
[backstage] BBC weather iGoogle gadget - v2
So, I did a BBC Weather iGoogle gadget last year. It was kind of nice, but sadly people are actually, um, using it - with over 20,000 impressions a day. Yikes. Think of the bandwidth and hassle that's causing my little server. So I've totally rewritten it, to sit on Google's own servers and work entirely through JavaScript. So, I'd appreciate feedback on... http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/114911897911800307567/bbc-weather.xml (add this to your iGoogle by hitting add gadgets (top right), then Add feed or gadget at the bottom of the left-hand menu, and finally pasting that in). Use the change settings button to choose a town near you. If people don't see any hideous bugs (I can't test this in MSIE yet), then I'll do some redirection shortly to the many users of my current gadget. And add a BBC News one. And possibly even a BBC Music one! ;) -- http://james.cridland.net/ Media UK - http://www.mediauk.com/ - the UK's independent media directory Advertise on Media UK in ten minutes: http://www.mediauk.com/advertise A Not At All Bad Ltd production - http://notatallbad.ltd.uk/legal_info/
Re: [backstage] So was *this* what Mr. Cridland was referring to recently?
On Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 4:52 PM, Christopher Woods [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Christopher Woods wrote: Tech question - what encoder(s) are you using? If it's software in realtime or close-to-realtime, please (please please) say it's Lame 3.97. If the backend is using the Fraunhofer FhG codec, I think I might contemplate going and banging my head against a wall for a little while. Currently we're using old servers held together by string and sealing wax, run on our behalf by Siemens, and being waited on hand and foot by trained engineers to eke the very last amount of life out of their tired motherboards. They use software from Digital Rapids: http://www.digital-rapids.com/ Coyopa goes live shortly (actually, shhh, it's live now, we're just not publishing the files yet) and it will be using software from twofour: http://www.twofourgroup.com/ - I don't know the actual codec we're using; it's a choice for our contractor. MP3 is not our longterm codec choice. I think many are of the opinion that Lame is a higher quality and more efficient software codec than the FhG codec. It certainly excels at VBR encoding and quality at lower bitrates (circa 128kbps, which is where the BBC is initially encoding their stuff). In fact, it's (from memory) 80k for 5live and 5livese, 128k for everything else, except 192k for Radio 3. Again, this is not our longterm bitrate choice neither. I refuse to be drawn! ;) A question / request to BBC techies who have sorted this out: VBR is widely supported across PC, portable and handheld devices. Is VBR encoding on the cards for the future / could it be? No, it's not; VBR is not a good solution for streaming files, which requires CBR to work effectively as I recall. While Coyopa will be creating files to download, given those same files will be used for streaming, we'll be using CBR for those. We're currently prohibited from using, say, progressive download techniques for our streams, due to rights reasons. The BBC Embedded Media Player buffers approx five seconds of audio as a result (which also enables us to offer full navigation throughout audio and video files). Hope all that's interesting to people.
Re: [backstage] BBC iPlayer - why the missing TV channel?
On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 10:09 AM, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: I'm still wondering why you can't download the radio podcasts from the new iPlayer... Coming soon. Some tech challenges, but also a UI challenge of how on earth do we signal that yes, you CAN download The Now Show, but no you CAN'T download the Chris Moyles Breakfast Show though you CAN download a highlights package. Rest assured, we're on it.
[backstage] BBC Music Beta launches
My team have produced another corker... http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/beta is a lovely looking site, and contains lots and lots of lovely APIs... more details at http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/developers#RESTful How splendid. Well done, chaps and chapesses. j
Re: [backstage] iPlayer 2 - wow!
On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 3:47 PM, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The new iPlayer looks great and seems to work exceptionally well http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayerbeta/ ...and it's now at www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer too. With one important addition: RSS FEEDS. Yes. Mmm. They auto-detect too, and there are lots of them. Links from BBC Radio will link to the older player (shortly to be renamed the 'BBC player' - catchy, huh?) for the weekend, and we're shifting them over gradually next week for reasons too boring to go into now. So. Good. Let's play. j
Re: [backstage] RealPlayer banished Toady!
On Sun, Jun 15, 2008 at 4:28 PM, Andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2008/6/13 James Cridland [EMAIL PROTECTED]: As the man in charge of the Coyopa project, which'll be fiddling with a lot of our streams, You mean this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2008/03/coyopa_takes_shape.shtml ? Yep. It's in BH now. I saw it last week, warming up one of the apparatus rooms. And it's even working. Hopefully we'll switch stuff on within the next month. Some niggles to sort out still though. 2. Flash streaming just works for most people, and as the TV iPlayer has shown, a tremendously popular way of consuming content. Not on mobiles. How about an Ogg stream with Cortado[1] for mobiles (or other people who dislike Flash). Agreed. We have plans on mobile also, though any solution must just work. Yes, we're providing a ton of extra streams in different formats for wifi radios and the like to use; no, Ogg Vorbis is not one of them. I refer the gentleman to the answers I gave here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2008/03/streaming_radio_online_your_co_1.shtml Not sure whether our streaming will work on Gnash or not, incidentally. I'd think, for a while at least, it will. 3. HTTP downloads are not possible I think the idea was to stream over HTTP. (or something that is similar enough to streaming that no one notices). RTMP or RTSP is streaming. Nobody (using Flash) will notice it's any different to any other experience they have. Again, it must just work. HTTP streaming is less good for Content Restriction And Protection. (Again, sorry we have to put crp in our streams in this way, but we do.) (Yes, the abbreviation is intentional). I'm sorry we have to use it. But we have to use it. Is there no a more open streaming protocol one could use? Again, back to the Content Restriction And Protection issue; but also coupled with the knowledge that a typical user wants something that just works. 5. A pop-up player will continue to be available in iPlayer when radio moves in. Unfortunately there is not much the BBC can really do about stay on top however. If the OS/Browser don't provide it then you're out of luck. Some OSes let any window stay on top. Yep, agreed. We can't provide stay on top with anything internet, without a software product, which people don't, generally, download. (Sweeping generalisation, but my experience). If only browsers supported video[2] and audio tags, and if there was actually some base codecs defined that would work on any browser. (chicken/egg?) Ye... to a point. There are some base codecs defined that work on any browser with Flash installed (ie virtually all of them); and that's the way that the world is going. Beer, anyone? Are you buying? ;) Nope. You? Mine's the guest ale. //j
Re: [backstage] More good news .. BBC to build web page for every TV show, says Jana Bennett
On Sat, Jun 14, 2008 at 10:33 AM, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes (a page for every programme, tv or radio) The bit I was really interested in is a page for every programme already shown. What a brilliant idea that is. Shame so many will have the word wiped on them. Agree. Of course, /programmes contains this info back to August-ish last year. Does much (or all or some) of this information already exist in a database already? It does, in a different structure. Wouldn't it be nice to import it into /programmes, though? j
[backstage] BBC blog RSS feeds go... full text! Yay!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/06/full_articletext_feeds_for_bbc.html I've been asking for months. No, years. Finally. Hurray! Well done Jem, Aaron, and the others.
Re: [backstage] RealPlayer banished Toady!
Enjoying this thread so far. As the man in charge of the Coyopa project, which'll be fiddling with a lot of our streams, could I pop in and make the following points (given you know we're making changes later this year)... 1. We are not removing internet-radio-compatible streams. Panic not. 2. Flash streaming just works for most people, and as the TV iPlayer has shown, a tremendously popular way of consuming content. 3. HTTP downloads are not possible: we don't own most of the content. That's why you've spotted RTMP being used - it's a form of non-invasive Content Restriction And Protection. I'm sorry we have to use it. But we have to use it. 4. In the minority of cases where HTTP downloads are possible, I would like to make those available for more programmes than just the podcasts. 5. A pop-up player will continue to be available in iPlayer when radio moves in. I love the idea of segmenting stories within the Today programme, and I've ensured that the right people see that idea. Good. (grin) Beer, anyone?
Re: [backstage] More good news .. BBC to build web page for every TV show, says Jana Bennett
On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 3:18 PM, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jun/10/bbc.digitalmedia BBC to build web page for every TV show, says Jana Bennett A brilliant idea by the sounds of things. Cough http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes (a page for every programme, tv or radio) On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 3:28 PM, Matt Barber [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yeh, this way it will also be easier (if they implement it, which I hope they do) to find iPlayer episodes via the programme page rather than iplayer interface. Cough http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/genres/childrens/entertainmentandcomedy/player(a page showing, for example, all childrens entertainment on the iPlayer, tv or radio) I must get this cough seen to
Re: [backstage] Re: [backstage] RE: [backstage] RE: [backstage] RE: [backstage] Re: Is it OK for BT Vision to charge £3 per month for the iPlayer?
I would pay £6 a month for pre-selected iplayer content delivered to me on a DVD here in Hong Kong. Could any of the the three Bs - BT, BBC or Brian - offer that service, legally? - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Radio 4 on Realplayer
@christopher: Ooo ooo oo oo oo oo oo oo, *FLAC streaming*? Lossless WMA? If you'd be happy trebling your licence fee, and explaining why everyone else has to... (grin)... but I've plenty of experience adding odd formats to radio stations which don't have many listeners, thanks. @briantist: Obviously I'm hoping that everything that's on the iPlayer Radio will come as MP3s and the existing podcasts will be better quality (I would personally prefer a VBR stereo In Our Time than the current mono one). VBR is something we've not actually looked at, as far as I'm aware. That's a good and interesting thought - I'll consult with the clever people to see if there are benefits for downloads. We are, though, not encoding everything that the same rate; it depends on what the content is; there are four different encoding profiles that we've identified. More though will need to wait for the blog - and don't read this into saying that we're making everything available as MP3 downloads; naturally, we're not. We can't. It's probably way, way too late to ask for this, but how about having pre-compression (audio compression that is) versions of BBC Radio 3 and 1Xtra as, at least, an option. I can listen to my classical and drum n bass at home with their piano to forte range, would be great to have the same range from BBC radio. I understand why DAB and FM need to have the analogue audio compression, but a clear version online would be cheap and satisfy the audiophiles. In fact, there are separate audio-processing techniques for all outputs - so FM is treated differently to DAB and to DTV. But, as you ask, we'll use the least-processed output for our higher bitrate streams. And honestly, you wouldn't want studio levels; they're a very unpleasant listen (says an ex radio presenter who used to monitor levels by ensuring that the red light didn't flash too much). Radio programmes are produced with the audio-processing in mind; indeed, that's what the presenters hear in their headphones. Also I'm pleased to hear that the word open is being used in BBC circles - and without being an expletive (I presume). I discussed part of the FMT (future media and technology) core values a few times with different colleagues - and always, without fail, open has been the most well-received word. j
Re: [backstage] An alternative iPlayer interface for the Wii
Possibly worth mentioning that the reason why iPlayer (and RadioPlayer) are not great on other platforms is that both product infrastructures currently force us to produce static pages rather than sensibly database-derived products. iPlayer v2.0 is less than a month away; the backend redesign means dynamically-generated niceness for Wii, iPhone, and other platforms will be much easier. J On 30 May 2008, at 10:20, Matt Barber [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't have a Wii so can't test, but great seeing this stuff happen, when platforms grow around 'open' content. (Not starting an open content thread here, you know what I mean) - I have a 360, and I wonder how difficult it would be to stream to that. It supports UPnP servers, so you'd need a PC with a server app and transcoder, not as efficient as the Wii. If they opened a web browser up on it, then that would be something. On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 10:01 AM, Andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Now that is awesome! On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 7:48 PM, Chris Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've been using the iPlayer on the Wii quite a lot recently and felt the interface could be improved to make navigation easier on the Wii's low resolution. Because of this, I've created an alternative interface that integrates better with the Wii UI and hopefully improves usability. To use it just point your Wii browser at: http://defaced.co.uk/wiiplayer/ More information and screenshots can be found here: http://defaced.co.uk/blog/index.php/2008/05/28/wiiplayer-the-better-way-to-view-the-bbc-iplayer/ There are still a few rough edges here and there but I think it works well overall. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Cheers, Chris - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html . Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Film Reviews
I have forwarded this good idea on. I've also commented that associated RSS feeds should return a 404 for sites we no longer maintain. On 30 May 2008, at 08:22, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Just a quick idea. How about a page on bbc.co.uk noting sections that have closed? 2008/5/29 Andrew Bowden [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I see the film reviews are nolonger being updated on the BBC site. Does anyone know why and will this mean that the film reviews xml feeds will no longer be updated. The Movies site (and it's associated section on BBCi) formally closed on 6 May 2008 - they've left the archive online, however there won't be any new reviews. As such, the feeds won't get updated. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html . Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002
Re: [backstage] Radio 4 on Realplayer
And to feed back to you (it's your BBC)... The issue here was a peculiar glitch in the signal received by the satellite receiving units at Maidenhead. (At present, all our national network online streams are re-encoded from satellite receivers by our technology partner Siemens). For a while, we switched over to DAB as a backup source of audio, which cured the issue on most stations. (I say 'most' - one of the DAB receivers developed a fault, but that was soon overpatched. Marvel at the detail I'm giving you here). This was successful, though made BBC Radio 1 slightly distorted (since DAB processing is slightly 'louder' than that via satellite); Radio 1 was switched back to satellite delivery on Monday morning and others have since followed suit. Currently scheduled for next month, we'll switch to encoding national radio (live, and on-demand) straight from the transmission chain within Broadcasting House (using the same processing as the digital satellite feed, which is the best-suited for the internet environment). You'll notice a slew of changes to our audio online over the next few months - and, we hope, a set of new, developer-friendly, formats. (I can reveal that our choices of audio codec does not include Ogg Vorbis. Yes, I was the man who installed it at another national station. No, it is not good value for money to attempt the same at the BBC.) The BBC's FMT team are committed to being as open as we can - indeed, earlier today I escaped from an exciting conference which used the word Open more times than is healthy - so I hope this is interesting to some. However, I'd reiterate that our web form, as linked to by my friend and colleague Alan Ogilvie, is the quickest way to alert us to an issue and get it fixed - little mutes in audio may not get picked up by automated checking systems, and we don't generally sit and watch Backstage (indeed, as you've spotted, I rarely pop in here but am very vocal once I do). j (on behalf of his employer just this once) On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 6:48 PM, Alan Ogilvie [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Brian - I have alerted our teams. Thank you. We are experiencing on-going problems with a few of our streams, you may notice issues on some listen again programmes (although I think we are down to the last few with a problem at the moment). In future the best way to contact us about streaming issues is via the contact pages: http://www.bbc.co.uk/feedback/ (there is a direct email address, but it's worth going through the web form as it will capture useful things like your IP address and things) Alan -- Alan Ogilvie [EMAIL PROTECTED] (IP) Interactive Platforms Producer Distribution Technologies | Audio Music Interactive Room 818, BBC Henry Wood House, 3-6 Langham Place, London, W1B 3DF From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brian Butterworth Sent: 30 May 2008 18:26 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: [backstage] Radio 4 on Realplayer Is it just me getting audio mutes every few seconds on the Real Audio stream of BBC Radio 4 FM. The LW feed is OK though... Who do you tell these days? -- Brian Butterworth http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002 - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- http://james.cridland.net/ | http://www.mediauk.com/ Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. http://notatallbad.ltd.uk/legal_info/
Re: [backstage] Zattoo - live streaming BBC channels
Gareth Davis wrote: Why would it be? SDI is the usual way we send SD digital audio and video round the studios. The bitrate may be high, but it is still interlaced SD resolution video. I can't remember the various different bandwidth figures for HD SDI, and I can't be bothered digging through my training notes from Wood Norton now - But I think they are measured in Gbps. Most HD-SDI (ie. 1080i50 or 720p50) is up to a nominal 1.5Gbps. Anything higher resolution (eg. 1080p50) needs cables capable of 3Gbps or dual-link existing cables. Note the rather nifty Dirac Pro solutions to avoiding having to upgrade cables - able to compress 1.5Gbps into 270Mbps to run over SD links with fairly low quality loss, and to compress 1080p or 1200p (up to 3Gbps) to run over a single 1.5Gbps link losslessly. Great work, Tim Co! -jeremy - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] iPlayer (unoffically) on the PS3
On 1 May 2008, at 11:15, David Woodhouse wrote: On Thu, 2008-05-01 at 10:39 +0100, David Johnston wrote: That's all very good - SWF is essentially the platform and FLV the format - but RTMP (the streaming delivery mechanism used by the flash-based iPlayer) is proprietary with no mature open-source alternative. Yeah, but we're getting there. http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/gnash/libnet/rtmp.cpp? root=gnashview=log -- dwmw2 - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/ mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail- archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ This is interesting work. A couple of months go I was talking to a colleague about trying to get something like this working in MythTV. I'm going to take a look at this. B - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Ashley Highfield leaves BBC (almost)
[totally off off-topic] Ertugrul defends BBC kettle plan Kent Ertugrul says there is no privacy issue with his concept of monitoring BBC kettles to target beverage advertisments to the kettle user. With a Phorm-BBC-PAT-approved kettle, the request for electricity is first sent to several switching stations and analysed by our state-of-the-art beverage hisotry algorithms, said Ertugrul. We can then determine the exact round of beverages the user is about to prepare, and offer our advertisers the chance to offer them something more suitable, he said. The technology was in its infancy, he said, because only four users had the talking kettles required to pass on the advertising message. But it's only a matter of time before we have a worldwide BBC kettle which says 'wouldn't you really prefer a strong smooth nescafe gold' just before the user tips the device onto a bland green tea bag, said Ertugrul. Or, if we've deteced a heavier usage pattern around management meeting times, we can kick in with the 'gold blend cafetiere' pitch. Sort of like those Lemsip adverts which threaten your career if you don't buy the product. Once we can link this up to our Phorm Urinal package, we'll have a pretty good idea of what goes in and out of the BBC, he said. When asked about accuracy of urinal data, Ertugrul said Most of the data gets aggregated into very very few hands. [Thank-you and goodnight :-) ] On 17/04/2008, Michael [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It has been properly PAT tested, etc yes :-D Michael. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] iPlayer and the ISPs - a solution
Brian Butterworth wrote: * ISPs provide rack space for BBC servers inside their network * Who pays for servers? * Who maintains servers? ISP? Siemens? * Who pays for power usage? * ISPs provide list of IP addresses to directed to said servers * How is this done? Manually? How many ISPs? Or as fun as those automatic emails to/from Nominet? * ISPs sometimes move users from one end of the country to the other on the same IPs, but via different (effective) POPs. How much information needs to be transmitted to allow closer proxies? * Is the mapping of IPs to logical network layout confidential? * BBC copies each new file (and deletes) to these servers * How much disk space required? * Standard protocols to copy files? (rsync? HTTP?) New ones? * How can you be sure ISPs delete the content when they are meant to? * iPlayer software detect and redirects to BBC servers inside ISP network * Big list of IPs to scan on a regular basis. Performance issues? * What if ISP proxy is dead? * What if it dies during playback? * What if it doesn't have the content yet/already deleted it? * Interim solution until fatter pipes purchased, say 2-3 years. * Agreed. Fibre FTW, as they say. * But who pays? -jeremy - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Is Freesat going to be HD only?
Further to all the discussion in this thread about HD, it would occur to me that what would be really cool is to see an 'Also in HD' overlay on an SD channel when the programme is being simulcast in HD. Hitting that colour (hey, use blue) and it'll pop over to the BBC HD channel. Neat. I don't think Sky allow you to switch TV channels using MHEG, which is a shame, so I guess I'll never get to see that on my box... J
Re: [backstage] 502 error
On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 9:24 AM, Andrew Bowden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi guys, does anyone else get a 502 error when trying to post to Justin Web's blog: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/justinwebb/2008/04/letting_it_al l_out.html#commentsanchorhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/justinwebb/2008/04/letting_it_all_out.html#commentsanchor There's a known issue with the BBC blog comments where this unfortunately happens sometimes. There's more about it here - including what is being done to solve the problem http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/02/leaving_comments_on_bbc_b logs.htmlhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/02/leaving_comments_on_bbc_blogs.html Without breaking too many confidences, as a man who posts to BBC blogs occasionally, I saw an exciting looking email recently with details in the next few weeks of a short period of don't post anything while we work on things, after which we'll see a new commenting system. So, that's good. j
Re: [backstage] Embracing the torrent of online video
On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 3:17 PM, Andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Anyone else find it odd *ALL* the BBC rights holders are demanding exactly the same thing? Sounds a lot like a Cartel to me. (I Am Not a Lawyer) They're not; we have a complicated rights situation which make things rather more difficult. Just in radio, there are different rules with live versus pre-recorded music as an example, which makes getting the rights correct for the Radio Player quite difficult. Indeed, we normally try to attempt to get all the rights holders to accept the same thing, to offer as uniform a service as we can (both how it looks to the user and how we do it internally). Normally this means compromise on both sides. 2. For those larger files that we do have rights to (like podcasts), the leading podcatchers, like iTunes, don't come with Torrent support That's iTunes problem isn't it. People with a lot less money than the BBC seem to have grasped how to provide multiple formats, it's not that difficult. What you need is some kind of script (you could even use make, apt-get build-essential on your eeePC should do the trick). People with a lot less content, yes. But we're not talking about formats here; we're talking about server infrastructure; and there is nobody with more content than the BBC. (Yes, Youtube, but that's different). Thanks for the info on tracking stuff; interesting. 5. We'd really not want to push people through hoops to download new software just to consume our content*, especially given that we've a lot of less tech-savvy users than an average site iPlayer, Kontiki, RealPlayer, Flash, WMP? iPlayer is not a download. Kontiki is, and yes, I don't understand that one. RealPlayer - agreed Flash is almost universally installed by every user; I think we're happy with that. Windows Media Player is pre-installed on every Windows machine (nearly). The future is something that just works with as few downloads as possible; which is what I'm aiming for. Visit virginradio.co.uk/listen, and the player will use Windows (if you're using MSIE and Windows) or Flash otherwise, just as an example - for most users it just works. It won't come as a surprise that I want something similar here. Give me time, I've got more content to deal with, and systems and processes that are a tad slower.
Re: [backstage] DVB-H finally gets formal adoption by the EC (oh and vista SP1!)
On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 9:49 PM, Christopher Woods [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you're interested in this stuff, then November should bring a really interesting day from The Radio Academy, called 'Radio at the Edge'. I'll be mentioning it ad nauseam later in the year, but thought I'd not turn down this opportunity. Is that going to be a lecture or something at a particular venue? What's the cost going to be? Could only find scant information about last year's event (I'd be very interested in attending that but the cost for these things is usually prohibitive for students). It'll be a day's conference. It's a paid-for event (but normally a couple of hundred instead of the more usual couple of thousand), but I like the idea of doing something special for students. More details on its blog - yes, it's got one (currently with one post!) - shortly. -- http://james.cridland.net/ | http://www.mediauk.com/
Re: [backstage] DVB-H finally gets formal adoption by the EC (oh and vista SP1!)
Don't confuse the DAB IP telly stuff from BT Movio with proper telly over DAB. That standard is called T-DMB and it's excellent quality. It's in use in various places, including South Korea. The cold, dead hand of Microsoft goes nowhere near T-DMB. DVB-H is fine, as long as you don't mind waiting ten seconds to change channels (!!!) or waiting until 2011 for the frequencies to be freed up in the UK. Given that DAB is not dying (don't confuse one radio group's short- sighted business problems with a death of the medium), it would make rather more sense to continue investing in its infrastructure. -- http://james.cridland.net/ | http://mediauk.com/ Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. http://notatallbad.ltd.uk/legal_info On 20 Mar 2008, at 10:26, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 19/03/2008, Sean DALY [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Here's the firsthand info: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/08/451format=HTMLaged=0language=ENguiLanguage=en Thanks for the links. The speech made me think ... if DVB-H gets adopted and used, which seems likely, it would probably be better to dump the whole DAB (and even DAB+) idea and use DVB-H instead. DVB-H's design has the datastream formatted with information that allows the reciever to turn off for those moments where the data is not required for a particular channel. Computed by the broadcast end, the design allows for the receiver to be powered off for over 95% of the time. This certainly would extend the life of any device that uses it. Comparing the quality of the DVB-H system I saw in London in June 2006 to the awful service on Virgin DAB-TV (why oh why did the BBC take part?), DVB-H seems like a proper service. http://www.ukfree.tv/fullstory.php?storyid=1107051125 http://www.ukfree.tv/fullstory.php?storyid=1107051279 So, can we pull another Freeview style rescue here? BBC+DVB- H=future relevance ! Also, would be a perfect fill-in for people who can't get Freeview after switchover because they have to use a portable set or aerial... Also Commissioner Reding's speech I alluded to in the DRM thread the other day discusses this: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/08/144format=HTMLaged=0language=ENguiLanguage=en - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html . Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth http://www.ukfree.tv
Re: [backstage] BBC Home Page broken
Those pages are as designed, incidentally: nobody will link to them that way (unlike a relocation). On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 6:16 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Also, www.bbcnews.co.uk Chris -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Fox Tucker Sent: 14 March 2008 13:01 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] BBC Home Page broken Seems fine now, but they should sort http://www.bbciplayer.co.uk -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Richard Lockwood Sent: 13 March 2008 12:06 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: [backstage] BBC Home Page broken 12.05 GMT - it's looking a little, shall we say, untidy. :-) http://www.bbc.co.uk/ Cheers, Rich. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- http://james.cridland.net/ | http://www.mediauk.com/ Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. http://notatallbad.ltd.uk/legal_info/
Re: [backstage] iPlayer DRM is over?
On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 9:41 PM, Iain Wallace [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You basically have to send the exact same headers that an iPhone does, along with the BBC-UID. Fortunately someone emailed me a plain-text log of successful requests sniffed from his iPhone. I've used curl instead of wget this time as it gives you finer granularity of control over headers. [snip] Hello. I'm a BBC senior manager; but posting personally as a fan of Backstage. It puts us (those that care about Backstage) in a really difficult position if it's used to share information on ways to get around content-restrictions on a BBC service. I don't want to see the end of the Backstage unmoderated mailing list. Posting this type of information threatens its future. Please don't. Anywhere else. Just not here. Thanks.
[backstage] Fun with your mobile
Here's a quick exclusive for the Backstage list. If you own a Nokia N95, or a Playstation PSP, you might wish to visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts on your device. This is in addition to our initial support for the iPhone/iPod Touch. And don't forget, access via The Cloud (in many rail stations) is entirely free. Now, I need to go and write a blog post. -- James Cridland | Head of Future Media Technology, BBC Audio Music Interactive Room 718 | Henry Wood House | 3-6 Langham Place | London W1B 3DF MSN/GTalk:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio | http://www.bbc.co.uk/music | http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/
Re: [backstage] Fun with your mobile
It's very nice on Opera Mini running on a Nokia E65 also. It would be really great if mobile offerings were designed to be less device specific though. I think it's probably time for the BBC to review the existing browser support standards and extend these to include mobile devices, as they specifically exclude these currently. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/newmedia/technical/browser_support.shtml for those interested in the current browser support standards. Quoting Owen Griffin [EMAIL PROTECTED]: It's a very nice site. Is it possible to get the podcasts added to the Nokia Podcast application, instead of to the web feeds? On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 12:55 PM, Matt Barber [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Just had a go on my N95 and it works very well. Downloading a podcast as we speak. On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 12:24 PM, Phil Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Here's a quick exclusive for the Backstage list. If you own a Nokia N95, or a Playstation PSP, you might wish to visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts on your device. Very nice! - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Owen Griffin - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] BBC Podcasts Programme Guide...
On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 4:12 PM, Carlos Roman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sorry, I don't work on iPlayer team so don't know if there is one or not. Maybe someone else on the list could. It's the desire of the iPlayer team to have an RSS feed on every page of the new UI, which is due end April and which will include both TV and radio programmes. It's all coming together... (grin) j
[backstage] A day in the life of a BBC Backstage widget
I posted here in September, talking about a BBC Weather widget I'd written using BBC Backstage data. If you're interested how it's done, I've just dropped a blog about it. (I believe dropping a blog is the new vernacular.) http://james.cridland.net/blog/2008/03/02/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-widget/ Hope some here find this useful. Geeks may like to see the picture which accompanies it, which shows my Asus Eee desktop. Comments (here or on the blog) are welcome. About the widget, not really about the Asus. (Which is very good, by the way). -- http://james.cridland.net/ | http://www.mediauk.com/ Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. http://notatallbad.ltd.uk/legal_info/
Re: [backstage-developer] random-human algorithm?
On 15 Feb 2008, at 17:57, ~:'' ありがとうございました。 j.chetwynd-at-btinternet.com wrote: random-human algorithm? does anyone have a - simple algorithm - for tessellating the window with images randomly? it's well known that human concept of random differs from the mathematical... for this instance: http://peepo.getmyip.com/~JonathanChetwynd/pets-svg.php about 30% is whitespace, whereas the average user would probably prefer something nearer 5% I've had success in the past when I've wanted to /cover/ a surface randomly by splitting it into a grid of 1/2 the size (on each dimension, so 1/4 of the area) of the smallest image, then putting one image at a random position in each cell. It does seem like there might be an algorithm that is less prone to almost-entire-overlap though. Jamie. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk developer discussion group. To unsubscribe, please send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe backstage-developer [your email] as the message.
Re: [backstage-developer] RSS Sliders
On Jan 8, 2008 3:16 PM, neil [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Questions include: Is this intuitive? Does the data shift as you might expect? Are two sliders too complex? Is a slider appropriate here, or should something else be used? Is the sorting algorithm right? What should we do about duplicate entries? A little bit of feedback from my previous team (with their permission): There were nice sliders on some of the pages on Virgin Radio's website (on http://www.virginradio.co.uk/vip/lounge/ , which you need to be logged in for) - allowing you to see something akin to Facebook's river of news, but enable you to tweak it. Similar to this, in fact. All usage of these sliders were logged (my team logged everything, I made a point of it). After monitoring it, only 2% of people actually ever bothered to use them. They've since been removed. So: very pretty and all, but I'm not sure they'll be used. Please go ahead and prove me wrong! :) -- http://james.cridland.net | http://www.mediauk.com Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. http://notatallbad.ltd.uk/legal_info
Re: [backstage] Fwd: [Gnash] Adobe EULA
On 08/01/2008, Martin Belam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think 10% or 20% time is a great thing to allow not just developers, but many areas of the BBC, and I wished it had happened whilst I was there. Just a shame that if people get to know more widely about it you can be sure that the press will be asking that everyone gets a 10% or 20% rebate on their licence fee! http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2008/01/ten_percent_time.shtml might be worth a read... //j
Re: [backstage] Fwd: [Gnash] Adobe EULA
On Jan 7, 2008 1:50 PM, Michael Sparks [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Responding to just one point in this: like a BBC software engineer spending his 20% time (supposing engineers at the BBC get that, I'm speculating there) on No, we don't get that, or any other fraction for that matter. All my team get 10% time. It's not taken up by everyone, but the iPhone podcast service is just one of the outputs of this so far (and the attendant framework to enable other devices to also have a similar decent podcast experience on a small screen). My own 10% time will be revealed shortly; it's something to help my team who work on podcasts. -- James Cridland | Head of Future Media Technology, BBC Audio Music Interactive Room 718 | Henry Wood House | 3-6 Langham Place | London W1B 3DF http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio | http://www.bbc.co.uk/music | http://www.bbc.co.uk/digitalradio
Re: [backstage] BBC iplayer on exotic devices
On Jan 4, 2008 4:59 PM, Andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 04/01/2008, Ian Forrester [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So if your building a iplayer for an exotic device platform, do get in touch. Quick questions: Adobe Flash is prohibited on non-PC systems, is the BBC suggesting we violate Adobe's EULA or just not use the streaming version? Andy, I'm awfully confused. Flash plays on a Wii (albeit not the iPlayer video content, since the codec used isn't in that version), on mobile phones (from Nokia to Windoze phones but not the iPhone yet), I think it's also on the PSP as well. (Oh, and naturally it's available on the Mac and Linux). Apart form the BBCs we hate people knowing how this works attitude I see no reason why it can't be done. Although others have also said this: this list (and this thread in particular) is precisely because we -do- want people knowing how as much of this works as possible: the Backstage team battle through some quite difficult beaurocracy to enable this to happen. I admire your negativity towards everything posted here, but do cut us some slack: we're trying to help as much as we can. If you want to bash the BBC, please do just drop me an email and let's keep that stuff off-list. j
Re: [backstage] Broadcasters to launch joint VoD service
On Dec 30, 2007 2:37 PM, Dave Crossland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Here's the full comment: It's sad to see that Linus Torvalds, one of the leading figures in the Free Software movement, doesn't really care for freedom. And it's even sadder that he resorts to insults, saying that those who *do* care about freedom are frothing-at-the-mouth. I suspect this poster is conflating two things: ideology, and the way it's promoted. This sentence of Linus's quote: I dislike the frothing-at-the-mouth ideology (to me, ideology should be something personal, not something you push on other people) ... is quite valid. To me, this chapter of the revered sayings of Linus says that people shoudn't push the freedom idea onto others in a frothing-at-the-mouth way - not that people shouldn't care about freedom, nor that it's not a valid point. But then, you can read his scriptures in a number of different ways... - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Broadcasters to launch joint VoD service
On Jan 2, 2008 12:07 AM, Dave Crossland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 01/01/2008, James Cridland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: To me, this ... says that people shoudn't push the freedom idea onto others in a frothing-at-the-mouth way - not that people shouldn't care about freedom, nor that it's not a valid point. Should people care about software freedom? Is the issue of software freedom a valid one? I think you're being deliberately argumentative now. I shall desist from feeding the troll further. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Broadcasters to launch joint VoD service
And more importantly, why did you just send a suspicious file in you email? What are you doing sending .dat files anyway? For the record, Google Mail (or Gmail, if you're in the US) automatically threads every message in Backstage correctly; you can also use its excellent filters to sort mails into a particular folder; and you can hit the m button, which mutes any conversation, whenever the conversation descends into DRM (rights) and open source licences. Highly recommended - it's what I use all the time. The thing that reminded me to have a quick read through Backstage was this interesting quote from Linus Torvalds, held within http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/12/linus-torvalds.html ... I dislike the frothing-at-the-mouth ideology (to me, ideology should be something personal, not something you push on other people) and I think it's much more interesting to see how Open Source actually generates a better process for doing complex technology, than push the freedom angle and push an ideology. An excellent quote which I will endeavour to use in 2008 every time the zealots start drowning out the conversation. (Curiously, it's also applicable, with a few word changes, to religion too). //j - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
[backstage] Random idea - On-demand Radio via TV
Hello All, I'm doubtful this is the right forum for posting an idea for the BBC, but I'll give it ago. Currently I make extensive use of the Radio4 listen again service via their website. I also use the watch again via Virgin media (telewest cable) on demand service. What I'm wondering is why do they only offer the TV on demand material via the TV. I would really like to be able to stream the Radio programs as well - there is a wealth of great stuff on the BBC's radio side of things. Am I missing some minor technical problem or is it simply that listening to Radio via the TV is a bad idea? Cheers, James ps - Happy Christmas/New Year. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] New BBC customisable homepage
Christopher Woods wrote: I'm glad to see that the clock has finally made a comeback (...) I'm a bit disappointed by the clock - or more generally, any web clock that simply uses the local clock time when it should really be getting a sync from the server (at the best it duplicates information that is likely to already be on the screen, at the worst it is misleading for users trying to check what programmes are currently on, if their clock is misset). The date being returned (to the nearest second) by the web server looks synced, so the flash could do a dummy GET or HEAD without needing any additional server-side support, then continue with a delta from the current time. Is it open source? :) Other clock points: * As a technical person, I preferred the smooth version second hand. :) * The rendering of the hour markers looks a little grizzly/inconsistent - see http://jeremy.publication.org.uk/bbcbeta_clock.png - is it not worth rendering if it always going to be shown at 65x65? Amusingly, just looking at the news headlines now I managed to get a slight Private Eye moment - showing the wrong picture for a mouseover the particular story headline, as per http://jeremy.publication.org.uk/bbcbeta_missingpicture.png - I'm assuming the alt text is appearing since the intended image failed to load. Browser is Firefox 2.0 running on Linux. There are some other slight rendering issues on this browser, but this may be due to other factors such as setting a minimum font size. -jeremy - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Please release Perl on Rails as Free Software
Oh my word this is all so tiresome - rehashed, insoluble debate points surrounded in prose which is itself quite retentively picked apart to needlessly point score - in a discussion I'm sure 90% of the list would prefer not to be cluttering their inboxes. I can visit Slashdot for this no ? Please... please more signal; less noise. Seconded. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dave Crossland Sent: 06 December 2007 11:30 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Please release Perl on Rails as Free Software On 06/12/2007, vijay chopra [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Personally I believe (as you seemed to agree) that code is an art form I disagree totally. Code functions; it does stuff. There is a craft to making code, and that can be compared to the craft of making artwork, but artworks themselves do not function. My position offers freedom without taking it away from others as people are free to not to buy Private-Eye, rap music or weaponry, just as people were free not to buy a TIVO. But its illegal (software idea patent and dmca-style laws) to make your own TiVO, and to make one and sell one. So you can not buy a tivo, but you can't buy a free alternative. To be blunt, I disagree that what TIVO did took any freedom away from anyone, they just did something I didn't like, Generally, users of proprietary software have given up their freedom. To say the company making the software took their freedom is only valid when they are forced to use the software - such as legal requirements to read documents in a format only readable by proprietary office software. my position is in fact more idealistic than that of the FSF, and as a result GPLv3 is not (as claimed) more idealistic than GPLv2 but less so as it is more restrictive. Your ideals do not seem to include freedom for all users; instead, power for developers. The point of the software freedom movement is that users and developers should have the same degree of power over the development of the software. -- Regards, Dave - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Please release Perl on Rails as Free Software
On Dec 6, 2007 2:23 PM, Dave Crossland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 06/12/2007, Deirdre Harvey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hurray for freedom. I'm sure you'll appreciate that that kind of disdain for users is not something the BBC is likely to go along with. Sadly the BBC has disdain for users when it goes along with DRM. HOUSE!! Licences, open-source, and now DRM, all in one thread! How splendid... ly tiresome
Re: [backstage] Please release Perl on Rails as Free Software
On Dec 6, 2007 12:16 PM, Andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 05/12/2007, Matthew Wood [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The delay is just a small-team-working-on-/programmes-and-trying-to-fit-it-all-in thing. Any chance of explaining what the BBC actually have to do when someone says let's open source Y? It's normally a relatively simple for a small individual project (simply adding the appropriate license file and copyright text to each file). However I assume it is somewhat more tricky for a large organisation. Does this have to work it's way up to high management or are individual teams given freedom to make these decisions themselves? Will you be accepting bug reports and patches from people outside the BBC or is this a release and forget kind of thing? (Unfortunately I am not a Perl coder so there isn't much I can do). I was asked, and readily agreed to it being made open-source. (Dunno if I count as high management - http://james.cridland.net/biography ). I trust my team to make the right decision. Chatting today, we think we'll release it quickly as a .tar.gz at /opensource, and then, depending on the reaction we get, put it on a Sourceforge-or-similar site, to allow bug reports, patches, etc etc. Please do give us time to release it; I'd rather this work didn't get in the way of delivering great tools and products. As a note, this will be the second time that a member of my team has released code to /opensource; the first was a bit of Java: http://www.bbc.co.uk/opensource/projects/tv_anytime_api/ Hope that helps. //j
[backstage] Google Charts API
Neat and possibly useful chart API from Google, released today: http://code.google.com/apis/chart/ If it's of any use, I've written a quick PHP encoding script for it, instead of the JavaScript version they offer: http://james.cridland.net/blog/2007/12/06/google-charts-api-using-php/ I've released it under the do whatever you like with my crappy code licence, which I hope is acceptable to those herein. ;) -- http://james.cridland.net | http://www.mediauk.com
Re: [backstage] Google Charts API
On Dec 7, 2007 12:15 AM, Michael Sparks [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: James Cridland wrote: ... As a note, this will be the second time that a member of my team has released code Third actually :-) (that I know of :) http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=122494package_id=176999 (python-dvb3 bindings) Also originated from Audio Music Interactive. (Paul Clifford) You're entirely correct. Apologies to Paul. //j
Re: [backstage] Please release Perl on Rails as Free Software
On Dec 5, 2007 9:06 PM, Matthew Wood [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello all - a quick word from the infamous Perl on Rails team itself Psst, Matt, nobody's reading these bits. They're too busy arguing about licences. Still, better that than nothing. Which reminds me - have we finished adding that DRM to our podcasts?* //j * the above was a joke. We are not adding DRM to our podcasts.
Re: [backstage] Please release Perl on Rails as Free Software
On Dec 3, 2007 12:48 PM, Noah Slater [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On 03/12/2007, Dave Cross [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
You don't need the BBC to release it.
Yeah, a lot of the comments on that blog post said similar things -
that notwithstanding it would be very helpful for the community if the
BBC shared the source.
Delighted to let you know that after discussion with my team, we *will* be
making Perl on Rails (we'll call it something different) open-source.
It'll be licenced as openly as possible. You asked for it, so we'll give you
it.
Please watch the BBC Radio Labs blog for more information; we'll post when
we're ready.
In terms of the posting linked-to by Tom Loosemore, I've a blog post waiting
to go up on the BBC Internet Blog (which may appear tomorrow); the gag from
the bottom is...
sub job_requirement {
my $target = shift;
$target = 'this' unless defined $target;
return You don't need to understand $target to work at the BBC\n;
}
print job_requirement(perl);
... so hasten yourself to www.bbc.co.uk/jobs now.
--
James Cridland | Head of Future Media Technology, BBC Audio Music
Interactive
Room 718 | Henry Wood House | 3-6 Langham Place | London W1B 3DF
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio | http://www.bbc.co.uk/music |
http://www.bbc.co.uk/digitalradio
Re: [backstage] BBC Podcasts Including Music
On Nov 23, 2007 12:20 PM, Dave Crossland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [quoting me in April] It's possible for all our podcasts to be produced in Ogg Vorbis automatically, too. Indeed, all our on-demand audio is already encoded into Ogg Vorbis, for when it becomes a popular codec (and we're still waiting). It will become a popular codec by influential people publishing audio in it, like Virgin and the BBC, and by people learning to value software freedom and requesting audio publishers to use the format. Chicken, meet egg. Given that Virgin's been broadcasting Ogg Vorbis for five years without (until I left, at any rate) any real user takeup, it's less likely that anyone else is going to start broadcasting it. Given, too, that the best-selling portable audio players don't support it, it's unlikely that broadcasters will add Ogg Vorbis versions of podcasts. It shouldn't be forgotten that, for Virgin's streaming, use of Ogg Vorbis was even in the minority among Linux users. [quoting me later] My Ubuntu box copes quite happily with an open source version of Real Player; This isn't true; to play RealAudio format audio, you need proprietary software that integrates with a piece of free software. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helix_project has the details. Apologies, if this is the case. https://player.helixcommunity.org/2005/downloads/ is not clear on this point. presumably this Puppy Linux box would too if I bothered to download it; and the Mac under the telly copes with both Real and Windows, thanks to a free plugin to Quicktime. So, free-to-the-user alternatives to Ogg Vorbis exist on all major platforms. Sadly free-to-the-user is not the issue; free-as-in-freedom is the issue. To you, it is. However, to most people the only issue is does it work on my platform, is it simple, and do I have to pay anything?. My experience supporting the Ogg Vorbis platform would rather tend to prove that point; Virgin's Ogg Vorbis stream was even the highest quality (at an average 160k). And, given that you acknowledge a need for people to learn to value software-freedom in this same message, above, I sense you agree with the reality. I do love a good mailing list troll, Dave. Don't let it border onto obsessiveness, will you? J -- http://james.cridland.net | http://www.mediauk.com Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. Company info: http://www.notatallbad.ltd.uk/
Re: [backstage] Muddy Boots on Backstage
Brian, I also missed the very subtle changes to the page- but I would say, hyperlinking scientists and headaches etc every other word is gonna give the reader sore eyes and thousands of hours of lost work as they educate themselves in mass trivia. And to Rob, respect for your project; from a user perspective, if I wanna follow up something I've read on BBC news I'll just do it through google.. are you able to make links to other media relevant stories, rather than just Wiki? EG BBC headline recently Karachi stock exhange falls 5% when in fact every Asian stock exchange had fallen by over 5% that day, but I guess some editor was trying to make the point Pakistan was a dangerous unstable place without any mention at all of the worldwide stock slide THEN we need Muddy Boot skill to pick out what's really going on. The history of the Karachi stock exchange from Wiki ain't gonna cut it... a link to that morning's Reuters Asian stocks slide story is going to defeat the sensationalist editor's plans right there and then. Also an idea I had on Brian's overloaded link example - some sort of spidery engine which grabs all such wiki links on pages viewed by the user, collates the entries into a monthly encyclopedia pdf, delivered to your door with fake leatherette burgundy cover for $9.99... cheers :-) On 22/11/2007, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Rob, This is an interesting - and very subtle - enhancedment to the BBC news pages. Took me a while to spot what was being added, so well was it done. I was wondering if you could modify it so that it could also add links to Wikipedia articles by adding hypertext links within the text. For example, in the first one you post there is some text... Scientists have discovered differences in the sensory areas of the brains of people who develop migraines. They found a part of the cortex is thicker than in people who are free from the debilitating headaches. What is not clear is whether the difference causes, or is the result of migraine attacks. The Neurology study, by Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, suggests the changes may make patients hyper-sensitive to pain in general. IMHO, it would be enhanced by adding in Wikipedia links, like this: Scientists have discovered differences in the sensory areas of the brains of people who develop migraines. They found a part of the cortex is thicker than in people who are free from the debilitating headaches. What is not clear is whether the difference causes, or is the result of migraine attacks. The Neurology study, by Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston , suggests the changes may make patients hyper-sensitive to pain in general. On 21/11/2007, robl [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Everyone, Just thought I'd accompany the latest post to the backstage blog ( http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/news/archives/2007/11/from_last_years_1.html) with some examples of muddyboots in action. For those of you who aren't aware of the project it's probably best to look at http://muddyboots.rattleresearch.com/cgi-bin/mb.cgi?action=more. Essentially we're attempting to use Wikipedia and other commons authored data sources to augment the meta-data around BBC news stories, this ultimately took the form of automated contextually relevant link recommendations based off data within Wikipedia and del.icio.us (although we have some other ideas about how this data could be used ...) It's still a prototype so it's not production ready by any means, there are still stories where we are unable to recommend links and there are others where ambiguity becomes a problem and identifying what context a story has can be difficult (although we have some ideas around using the disambiguation data within Wikipedia to improve this). Here are a few links to stories where I thought muddyboots added some interest and hopefully a little of that Wikipedia 'browse experience' : http://muddyboots.rattleresearch.com/cgi-bin/mb.cgi?action=pageid=646 http://muddyboots.rattleresearch.com/cgi-bin/mb.cgi?action=pageid=630 http://muddyboots.rattleresearch.com/cgi-bin/mb.cgi?action=pageid=622 http://muddyboots.rattleresearch.com/cgi-bin/mb.cgi?action=pageid=643 If you'd like to see how those recommendations were arrived at then each story has a 'View' action which can be used to get a breakdown of each stage of the muddyboots process, for example : http://muddyboots.rattleresearch.com/cgi-bin/mb.cgi?action=viewid=622 It's worth noting we only keep the last 50 story submissions in the system, so these links will eventually 'age' out. (Disclaimer : I worked on the project) Thanks, Rob - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ --
Re: [backstage] DRM duration?
On Nov 8, 2007 10:42 AM, David Greaves [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Of course this is a blog so not exactly a reference source: http://joyofsox.blogspot.com/2007/11/mlb-game-downloads-still-inaccessible.html So this DRM system seems to have lasted 2003-2006. Then a year later you lose any downloads. Yep, this is the kind of thing that makes honest consumers want to stay within the law. As a note: the (public service) BBC produces no DRM'd content which lasts longer than one month. This isn't a risk that those of us using iPlayer downloads need concern ourselves with, therefore. You might also enjoy http://james.cridland.net/blog/2007/08/11/when-content-restriction-and-protection-goes-bad/- the MLB aren't the first, nor will they be the last. -- http://james.cridland.net | http://www.mediauk.com Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. Company info: http://www.notatallbad.ltd.uk/
Re: [backstage] Use of Tinyurl in Emails
On 6 Nov 2007, at 00:07, Andrew Bowden wrote: From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of James Cox 'course, bbc.co.uk has had some kind of redirect magic for a while: http://bbc.co.uk/zanelowe/ First time I've seen a big fat httpd.conf called magic :) and there I was thinking you had some nice routing controller thin- app which had some clever logging, tracking and management of such urls :) though i suspect the problem (and usage of tinyurl) is that to get one of those nice urls hooked up, you gotta email someone a request, who needs to get approval from a manager Well lets just say there is a process and it has to be done sensibly else you'd get loads of random redirects. Although I still think bbc.co.uk/breakfast should go to a big portal page for all the BBC's breakfast shows :) -- James Cox, Internet Consultant t: 07968 349990 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] w: http://imaj.es/
Re: [backstage] Use of Tinyurl in Emails
On 5 Nov 2007, at 12:58, David Greaves wrote: Adam wrote: What does everyone else think. bbc.com/2e5u8e David PS it's smaller than tinyurl and it's a use for bbc.com too... (unless it's used internationally) 'course, bbc.co.uk has had some kind of redirect magic for a while: http://bbc.co.uk/zanelowe/ though i suspect the problem (and usage of tinyurl) is that to get one of those nice urls hooked up, you gotta email someone a request, who needs to get approval from a manager probably not all that efficient when all you want to do is send an email out and go home (or to the pub!) - james -- James Cox, Internet Consultant t: 07968 349990 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] w: http://imaj.es/
Re: [backstage] Wii News Channel
On 10/16/07, Barry Carlyon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I had heard that one of the student radio stations was building a flash player for their radio stream for the wii….. Cough http://www.playthree.net/2007/04/virgin-radio-available-on-ps3-and-wii.html Yes, April. //j
Re: [backstage] Voting data ideas
i would like a data feed of all the BBC Have Your Say responses which have a) been most recommended and b) feature a large amount of capital letters (eg BOYCOTT CHINA). That way, you could launch a very low cost newspaper to rival the Daily Express/Mail without any real journalism. And thank-you newsbiscuit.com for Pisswizard. Great name for a cat or a dog. On 28/09/2007, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 28/09/2007, Richard Lockwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That's possibly a bit of a sledgehammer / nut scenario for a poll like What should we call the Tikkabilla (Play School for you other oldies...) hamster?. :-) Cheers, Rich. You tell that to Socks and Cookie! I can't see how you can look for trends in the data and come up with a confidence level for a vote without all the data. On 9/28/07, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Martin, On 26/09/2007, Martin Belam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: No I hadn't, thanks for pointing it out. I used to be Senior Producer on Online Voting at the BBC for a couple of years, and so I have some quite strong opinions about when it is right to run an online vote and when the correct reaction is You did *what*? - most of those views are probably more suited to the pub than this mailing list ;-) I guess one reason you might actually want to release a version of the original data is that it could be put out to external scrutiny, that is to say *our* scrutiny. Perhaps it might be possible to detect the problems with each poll and potentially correct for them.For example: - if the referring page is listed, any links from other sites to the vote could be detected; - some form of IP-address-to-region (with a confidence-level perhaps) to detect location problems; - matching against botnet lists; - hashed reference to the bbc.co.uk login name; - hashed version of the IP address; - date and time of the vote; - hashed version of the bbc.co.uk tracking cookie; and - the vote data What you could possibly get back is a confidence level (as a percentage) as to the reliablity of the result... - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth www.ukfree.tv - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] TV Data Formats and Sources of Data
get a fast laser printer. On 28/09/2007, Andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi all I know some of you will find this question dull, but it's something that I would be interested in knowing the answer to (though a suspect there is no definitive answer the discussion would help with making informed design decisions). I am writing what was originally intended to be a small desktop application (in Java), though it's looking not so small any more. It hopes to provide both listings for traditional T.V. channels and more importantly allow people to download content from T.V. channels created by other users (quite how much of this I can achieve at this time is questionable, but it's more a proof of concept and learning experience to be honest). Obviously the actual data transfer will be using open standards such as HTTP and Bittorrent, mainly so I can avoid having to write much server code. However I have got to the point where it is necessary to store data about programmes. This is where I hit a snag. As far as I can tell there are 2 competing formats: XMLTV http://xmltv.org TV-Anytime (aka TS 102 822) http://www.tv-anytime.org/ As part of the application will be based on user defined programming it provides more freedom to choose a format based on the formats qualities and not what format the data providers choose. XMLTV is a much simpler format, which means I can code a parser for it, and more importantly understand how all the elements link together much easier. Unfortunately XMLTV doesn't seem to provide much provision for fetching a program, although there is a URL element within the programme element. On the other hand TV-Anytime appears to provides much greater depth of data and appears designed to handle Download T.V.. Unfortunately the specification is much harder to understand (hundreds of pages, compared with 10 for XMLTV), but more importantly the standard uses other standards which I can not seem to find available for less somewhere in the region of £250, which is a lot to pay when developing a free application. Although the TV-Anytime specification says the references should be found in a certain location on the ETSI site, they are missing. What is iPlayer using to hold it's Meta data? Another question I have is about where to find TV listings. Radio Times provide data (though I can't seem to find the link on their site) (and it's for personal use only) The BBC provide TV-Anytime listings but only for BBC channels. How detailed is the data from the BBC? Does it utilise all the features in the TV-Anytime format or is it just the basics? This leads me onto the question: Do we need a good provider of TV Meta Data? According to the TV-Anytime documents it is possible to list things like whether a TV show has been nominated form or won awards. Is there anyone who actually provides such data or does it go unused? Do we need a Wikipedia for TV Meta Data (is there one already that I don't know about?) According to the standard you can also provide grouping of channels, are there people who provide custom groupings of channels? Maybe having a My Favourite Programmes link on your website that points to you XMLTV group definition. The only problem with it is what do you do with it? The state of British Download TV is horrific. You can't setup a handler for such a file because it would need to invoke iPlayer* for the BBC channels, 4OD* for channels 4's channels and maybe another program that provides live TV listings or the ability to record from TV-cards. *This assumes iPlayer and 4OD would even be willing to handle such user submitted information, I do not know if they are capable of this. Of course the easiest way to fix this is a unified standard and then you can use any application you want to get all the channels, which should make it possible for people to provide a list of there favourite shows and other people could add them for downloading. (Was TS 102 822 meant to do just that?) No one seems at all interested in that kind of thing though I am sad to say. Quick thought popped into me head just now. On Facebook it is possible to list your favourite TV programmes, is there any way to leverage this information? Could you add a button that would invoke iPlayer (or 4OD, of your TV Recording Software, or a TV Listings application) and tell it to search for those programmes and add the ones it has for downloading (it should be possible with TV-Anytime if I understood all those flow charts about where data goes and comes from), does iPlayer use TV-Anytime or could it be altered to accept input in that format? We are missing out on some interesting usage right here, it's a pity the only people who can fix this won't. (Maybe we need the IETF to do something, they seem much more helpful people, they allow free bulk download of their standards without any registration, so kind of them). Discuss. As an after
[backstage] the economics of BBC content
Hello This has bothered me for some time but the picture and caption on this page were the final straw http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7005206.stm How much should the BBC be paying for that page, aside from the journalism and broadcast? It really shouldn't need to pay for such a pointless picture, there must be thousands of beautiful lightbulb pictures available for free (although the beeb was accused of nicking them off Flickr a whiles back, perhaps it's all stricter now...) But with some clever feeds, the pictures could be free, just as pretty, just as relevant, and the corporation saved enough to buy a researcher to oomph up the story. cheers! James in HK - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
[backstage] iPod touch // iPhone development
Those of you who might be keeping an eye on the next big thing, and who are in London, might want to know that the Apple Store in Regent Street has a slew of iPod Touch units available to play with. There are developer kits available on the web, but if you want to give your new app a quick test on a real iPod Touch, they are all connected to the instore open wifi. You might have to queue to have a quick play. They're really *very* nice. The screen is incredibly good, and the user interface is stunning. (They're sold out, mind, until early next week. They'll be in all Apple UK stores on September 28th, and available online for then.) http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamescridland/1413260855/ shows my first, blurry, test of a media website near you. It almost displayed perfectly. Worth mentioning that many companies have a corporate deal with Apple allowing you money off. For those within the BBC, a flash of your ID card when purchasing will suffice; I believe the government have similar, as do bona-fide Virgin employees. There are also discounts for students. -- http://james.cridland.net | http://www.mediauk.com Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. Company info: http://www.notatallbad.ltd.uk/
Re: [backstage] Can't cannot to BBC radio streams
Thanks for this bug report. It's very interesting, and my team are looking at it as we speak. We are aware of some issues with the BBC Radio streams on Windows Media Player. Yours has possibly been the most useful bug report we've seen so far! //j On 9/17/07, Mark Hingston [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I'm in the process of creating a linux-based, lightweight RTSP client for listening to internet radio and have run into problems with connecting to the BBC's radio stations. I am using live555 libraries (www.live555.com) to provide RTSP support and have done a fair amount of work getting my client to receive mms streams via RTSP. My RTSP client can connect to most mms urls if you change the mms:// to rtsp://, but has problems downloading BBC radio stations in this way. So I was wondering if anyone can shed any light on the problems that I'm having. For eg. when i try to connect to: rtsp://wmlive.bbc.co.uk/wms/bbc7/hi_s1 the RTSP conversation that fails is attached in the file named MarksPlayer-rtsp-to-bbc.txt. The problem seems to be that whenever I issue a SETUP command, I receive a response of 400 Bad Request Other streams that show the same problem include: mms://wmlive.bbc.net.uk/wms/radio5/5Live_int_s1 mms://wmlive.bbc.co.uk/wms/1xtra/hi_s1 where simply replacing the mms:// with rtsp:// creates a stream that I can not connect to. The version string shows that the BBC is using WMServer/9.1.1.3814, and in the past, I have successfully connected via RTSP to other servers running that version. (eg. mms://media.hostdepot.com/334479-02). What is especially confusing for me is the fact that Windows Media Player 11, running on Windows XP successfully connects to the server, using a very similar pattern of RTSP commands (the messages sent during the WMP11 exchange are attached in the file named wmp11-rtsp-to-bbc.txt). I have tried altering my own RTSP client (which runs on Linux) so that it uses an identical sequence of commands to WMP11, but this still results in a failure to connect - I can successfully issue the OPTIONS and DESCRIBE requests and get meaningful responses, yet every time i try to issue a GET_PARAMETER or SETUP request after this, I receive a response of RTSP/1.0 400 Bad Request. My own rtsp client is not able to download mms streams, as I haven't and don't plan to implement mms as it's a deprecated (and proprietary) protocol. I can connect to other WM Servers via RTSP, so I'm curious, is the BBC's Windows Server special in some way? Are the BBC's internet radio broadcasts DRM encrypted or something? Or is there any reason that anyone knows of that would be preventing me from connecting to the server via RTSP? If I'm asking these questions in the wrong place, please let me know where would be more appropriate to ask (N.B. I've already asked these questions to the live555 developers, who told me to ask the BBC or Microsoft). Thanks in advance, Mark Hingston.
Re: [backstage] Amazon EC2
It is in use within the BBC, I believe; though the hack day stuff used a different virtualisation thing. I use S3 personally and at mediauk.com, incidentally. -- http://james.cridland.net | http://www.mediauk.com Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. Company info: http://www.notatallbad.ltd.uk/ On 9/11/07, Jason Cartwright [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've not used it, but I read an interesting article comparing it with a product called Flexiscale (http://www.flexiscale.com/) over here... http://uk.blognation.com/2007/09/11/fowa-expo-exhibitors-announced/ J On 9/11/07, Sean Dillon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Afternoon. Anyone here using this at the moment? I've only started to venture into it after having been mightily pleased with their S3 stroage system. Seán - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Fwd: Government response to petition 'iplayer'
On 9/6/07, Gordon Joly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 19:48 +0100 6/9/07, vijay chopra wrote: I saw that as well. though I signed the petition, I'm not really bothered any more. I just use my windows partition and just strip all my iPlayer downloads of their DRM with the help of the guys over at doom 9: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=127943 http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=127943 . That way I can watch them wherever I like. Is that legal? My viewpoint: yes, provided it's for personal use (UK law); no, regardless of if it's for personal use (US law). //j
Re: [backstage] BBC Radio Icon on MediaBank DAB
Reported; thank you. Any more these web pages aren't updated type emails, please feel free to forward these to [EMAIL PROTECTED] where I will prod the people responsible. I have a collection of quite large res logos, on white, which I've used for www.mediauk.com ; shout if you need them. On 9/4/07, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Good morning... OK, so we have the new BBC Radio icons on the website http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/ But they are not on DAB yet ... can someone please sort them. If you need them cropping and resizing, just let me know - I know Auntie short of cash these days... Any chance the Media Bank people could get the high-resolution version too. Some of like promoting BBC services online for free, you know ;-) http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/mediabank/ap.cgi?action=recently_added Brian Butterworth www.ukfree.tv
Re: [backstage] Release: BBC Weather iGoogle gadget
Sorry, have replied offlist to this. Any chance you could make it provide the old weather symbols (as stilled used on bbc.co.uk homepage) as an option? Every chance, but I'm unclear of whether we're allowed to. -- http://james.cridland.net | http://www.mediauk.com Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. Company info: http://www.notatallbad.ltd.uk/ On 9/2/07, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: James, Very nice - simple to use too. Any chance you could make it provide the old weather symbols (as stilled used on bbc.co.uk homepage) as an option? On 01/09/07, James Cridland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: A little bit of relaxation coding, and I'm proud to bring you my very first BBC Backstage iGoogle gadget. http://ig4bbcweather.notlong.com Edit the settings to choose your UK placename - it's nice and small, and uses the official BBC weather feed. Clicking the name of the place you've chosen will bring up the full page from the BBC Weather website. Coded in PHP, using the SimplePie library for RSS feeds. -- http://james.cridland.net | http://www.mediauk.com Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. Company info: http://www.notatallbad.ltd.uk/ -- Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth www.ukfree.tv
Re: [backstage] Release: BBC Weather iGoogle gadget
Well, as a thought... if you add-by-URL http://james.cridland.net/code/bbcnews.php then you'll get a BBC News iGoogle gadget. It's quite pretty, I think. It scrapes http://news.bbc.co.uk/text_only.stm and rewrites the linking URLs, so you get the natty pictures. Now - I think this is against the news copyright message, which states... you are not permitted to ... adapt or change in any way the content of these BBC web pages for any other purpose whatsoever without the prior written permission of the BBC. Similarly, the main site's copyright message states You may not ... use bbc.co.uk content in any way except for your own personal, non-commercial use. You also agree not to adapt, alter or create a derivative work from any bbc.co.uk content except for your own personal, non-commercial use. I don't think I can use the nicer graphics for the weather map; and that my iGoogle BBC News gadget can't be released for others to use, therefore. Anyone disagree? -- http://james.cridland.net | http://www.mediauk.com Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. Company info: http://www.notatallbad.ltd.uk/ On 9/2/07, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I would have thought it would be fine you use the BBC URLs rather than copy them and rehost them. On 02/09/07, James Cridland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sorry, have replied offlist to this. Any chance you could make it provide the old weather symbols (as stilled used on bbc.co.uk homepage) as an option? Every chance, but I'm unclear of whether we're allowed to. -- http://james.cridland.net | http://www.mediauk.com Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. Company info: http://www.notatallbad.ltd.uk/ On 9/2/07, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: James, Very nice - simple to use too. Any chance you could make it provide the old weather symbols (as stilled used on bbc.co.uk homepage) as an option? On 01/09/07, James Cridland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: A little bit of relaxation coding, and I'm proud to bring you my very first BBC Backstage iGoogle gadget. http://ig4bbcweather.notlong.com Edit the settings to choose your UK placename - it's nice and small, and uses the official BBC weather feed. Clicking the name of the place you've chosen will bring up the full page from the BBC Weather website. Coded in PHP, using the SimplePie library for RSS feeds. -- http://james.cridland.net | http://www.mediauk.com Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. Company info: http://www.notatallbad.ltd.uk/ -- Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth www.ukfree.tv -- Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth www.ukfree.tv
Re: [backstage] Later data
http://bbc-hackday.dyndns.org:2825/ - the whole thing's stitched together with MusicBrainz artist ids Theoretically, it should be possible to stitch www.bbc.co.uk/music/ into this, too. That uses Musicbrainz data, but I've no idea where the odd IDs come from. The Coral, for example, is http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artist/m3qv/ but if you Google m3qv and Coral, it just returns that page, so it looks like an ID arbitrarily made up by the BBC. I shall endeavour to find the relationship out if you'd be interested; benefits are that /music links to all music content throughout the BBC, which is therefore a Good Thing. -- http://james.cridland.net | http://www.mediauk.com Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. Company info: http://www.notatallbad.ltd.uk/
Re: [backstage] BBC iPlayer Protest tommorow, Tuesday 14th, 10:30AM, White City
They're not mine, but both are listed as CC Att-NonComm-ShareAlike on the site. shorttermmemoryloss.com Brian Butterworth wrote: Can I use one of these photos on my site? Are the CC licenced? On 14/08/07, *Matthew Cashmore* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Photos already up on flickr over here http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattcashmore/sets/72157601436583881/ And here http://www.flickr.com/photos/cubicgarden/sets/72157601430492360/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/cubicgarden/sets/72157601430492360/ m On 14/8/07 13:07, David Greaves [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ian Forrester wrote: Yep we were there along with about another 20 people. So were they making a point or trying to make a difference? David - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk http://backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ ___ Matthew Cashmore Development Producer BBC Future Media Technology, Research and Innovation BC5C3, Broadcast Centre, Media Village, W12 7TP T:020 8008 3959(02 83959) M:07711 913241(072 83959) - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk http://backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth www.ukfree.tv http://www.ukfree.tv
[backstage] iPlayer on Intel Mac
[New thread] I'm getting the same on my Mac Pro, booted in XP SP2 - 'Sorry, something's wrong' even though all boxes are ticked. Will have a look at the browser's ident. If anyone wants to send me the exe, I'd be very grateful. I have a login and all, so I don't think there's anything wrong with that... Christopher Woods wrote: What's your browser's user-ident? Maybe one of the Mac-supplied drivers in their driver package is altering the user-agent somehow and the bbc site isn't authorising access on that basis. Only a guess... Is your XP install updated to SP2? If all else fails, I'm sure someone could send you BBC-iPlayer_Setup.exe (which updates to the latest version periodically anyway)... *From:* David Wood [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* 28 July 2007 09:30 *To:* backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk *Subject:* Re: [backstage] iPlayer Today? On 7/27/07, *James Bridle* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Looking forward to seeing what it looks like in XP on my Intel Mac... Doesn't appear to work on my MacBook, both booting into an almost freshly installed XP SP2 and through XP via Parallels on Mac OS, through Internet Explorer, or through Firefox with IE Tab. When I come to download, the site is giving me the rather odd message of: Sorry - to use the BBC iPlayer you need the following - Windows XP - Internet Explorer - Windows Media Player ...where all the requirements are ticked. (Using with non-IE Tabbed Firefox or directly from Mac OS turns the relevant ticks into crosses, which is what you'd expect.) According to the instructions, this is when the kontiki app should kick in and install... I can vaguely see why it might not work through Parallels, but I'm not sure why booting directly into XP doesn't. Hrmmm.
Re: [backstage] iPlayer Today?
On 7/29/07, Andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (boring DRM invective deleted) Also why does the BBC trust's report not mention the fact that not only is iPlayer Windows only, it is IE only? Did the BBC not tell them they where doing this? Why can't it work with Firefox? iplayer:// can be made to run iPlayer from Firefox it's not exactly tricky is it? Or do you use some dodgy way of invoking iPlayer from IE? (or is it no longer IE only?) I asked just this question; and the answer is the invocation of the iPlayer is some kind of ActiveX nastiness. Everything else works just fine with Firefox, but the team made the sensible decision to make the entire site not work, rather than allow you to get all the way to choosing a programme and then be told you can't. It *is* on the roadmap to be sorted, though; as is the Mac/Linux issue. On 7/30/07, Nico Morrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But for heavens sake BBC - put a proper forum up, not this manky 'messageboard'. The manky messageboard is the BBC's DNA system, which talks correctly to the single sign-on service, and does other useful fancy things. There's a lot of work going on behind the scenes; much of what I see of the BBC's current web infrastructure (now I'm inside) is very Web0.5, but that's being sorted. Don't panic. (That previous sentence was, I note, an unintended pun, given that 'DNA' is actually based on the H2G2 engine.) //j http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] Can we have a developer mailing list?
On 7/29/07, Adam Leach [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is there any chance of a separate developer list for discussion of APIs, services, Geek events, etc. The BBC with the encouragement from Ian Matthew are providing some great sources of information for doing mashups and organising some great events like Hackday, but this mailing list is just becoming a BBC Bashing list. Good plan! Might I recommend (having run many a mailing list in my time) that we, the users of this list, do not accept wildly off-topic conversation and mail people, off list, to enforce this? //j
Re: [backstage] iPlayer Today?
How are the accounts being allocated? I signed up this morning, and like Owen I'm wondering when I'll hear. Looking forward to seeing what it looks like in XP on my Intel Mac... shorttermmemoryloss.com Owen Griffin wrote: On 7/27/07, Jonathan Tweed [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 27 Jul 2007, at 09:08, Steve Jolly wrote: Phil Winstanley wrote: Any idea what time it'll be available? This press release [1] says it'll be available from here on the 27^th : - http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer When I go to that link I see a Find out more and register... link that takes me through to the signup page. I'm connecting from within the BBC though - perhaps a different page is presented to external visitors? No, that's what appeared last night. What's been launched today is an 'open, closed beta', i.e. it's still only available to users of the beta but anyone can register their interest and at some point receive an account. Has anyone tried using the iPlayer on Linux using wine? I could wait for the Linux version but I'm quite impatient. :) Also, does anyone have any idea how long you have to wait before you receive an account?
Re: [backstage] About our API
On 7/17/07, Jonathan Tweed [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's a shame it's internal only. I'd love it to be on Backstage. I second your thoughts... //j
Re: [backstage] feeds with icons or pictures?
On 7/23/07, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you want BBC images to use on other websites (from Wikipedia onwards) just visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediabank/ Register, download and use to your hearts desires. Gosh. A search for all images related to BBC Radio (ten national networks, another 50 nations/regions stations, a tremendous choice of talent, an unrivalled amount of content) gives me... ...some pictures of Russell Brand. From June last year. And, um, that's it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've a chocolate teapot to buy, which might be of more use. //j
[backstage] Tivo StopWatch beginner questions...
Interesting news from Tivo, it has been measuring 20,000 users second-by-second viewing habits. The results show people actually like the direct response ads better... more interesting i thought was how StopWatch managed the 20,000 CRID/URI-style info streaming in every second for two months (that's a lot of data no?) and how it measured and identified each program, and, since this was primarliy for advertisers, how they identified each advert? by the station's output listing/time - surely unreliable? So do adverts have URIs? what about the promo snippets on BBC? intellecutal curiosity is starving the dog... - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Links to video/audio for specific shows
On 7/16/07, Tom Coates [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hey - as the person who developed the URL stuff for the programme information pages project (PIPs - hence pip in the URL), I can assure you that the one you're proposing is not generally better. That's me told! Though thank you... ;) In terms of music artists (I rediscovered the great band Bliss this weekend, and found three different Bliss's within the same last.fm page, of which I was only interested in one, and the pictures and everything is all really very messed-up) then perhaps disambiguation pages work like wikis. www.bbc.co.uk/music/artist/bliss/ is a disambiguation page, leading to www.bbc.co.uk/music/artist/bliss_1/ www.bbc.co.uk/music/artist/bliss_2/ ...etc This also has the benefit that you don't need a database call to link to an artist page on /music - just call *str_replace( ,_,strtolower($artist)); * instead. Not that it's quite that easy, of course. On 7/16/07, Kim Plowright [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: James - an aside - you need to talk to the programme info people in FMT, and maybe the person in VMPS who is looking after the work done for drama/comedy TV on this kind of stuff. There's a good four year history on this one! I don't doubt it. The nice thing about being in a new job is that you can ask damn stupid questions, and then be told the sane and sensible reasons for why things have been done the way they've been done. Generally - though not always - there are sensible reasons why, and that's cool. -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] Tivo StopWatch beginner questions...
On 7/16/07, James Ockenden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: more interesting i thought was how StopWatch managed the 20,000 CRID/URI-style info streaming in every second for two months (that's a lot of data no?) and how it measured and identified each program, and, since this was primarliy for advertisers, how they identified each advert? by the station's output listing/time - surely unreliable? So do adverts have URIs? what about the promo snippets on BBC? If you know an accurate time (broadcast on all DTV/DAB systems, and analogue with teletext at least); and you know the channel being watched, you can look-up what was on. No need to broadcast any URLs or CRIDs or anything.
Re: [backstage] Links to video/audio for specific shows
On 7/13/07, Jakob Fix [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 7/13/07, Steve Jolly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There's some confusion over CRIDs IMO - even in RFC 4078 they get referred to as URLs. I think it's best to think of them as URIs, designed to be unique and location-independent. TV-Anytime defines the concept of a CRI service that (amongst other things) provides mappings between CRIDs and locators, which could include http, rtsp etc *URLs*. This gives you the benefits of both time-invariant identifiers and time-varying locators, at the cost of an extra lookup. welcome to CRIDland! Wha? Huh? Eh? But now you've woken me up - I (as others are in here) am a big fan of human-readable URLs. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/breakfast/pip/jrjen/ - good. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/breakfast/archive/07/07/10/ - better. The 'jrjen' in this URL (no idea, but I suspect it's an internal ID for the PIP system) isn't easily guessable. A date (in this case, a backwards one) is more guessable. Another example (from the same area): http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artist/x9qv/ - good http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artist/elton_john/ - better Of course, other benefits are that Google will love these URLs more. Having said that, after five days I'm understanding the reasons for why the URLs currently work the way they do. And I think it might be partially my job to fix that. Just hoping nobody notices quite yet. (In other news, on Friday I found Matt Cashmore's desk. But he wasn't in. I left him a bizarre sticky note on his monitor, though.) j -- http://james.cridland.net/
[backstage] data streaming into video
Hello Backstage, thinking about how wonderfully modular our web/information has become (eg google home page, blogger web site creation, mambo/opensource CMS web pages), is it conceivable video content goes likewise? i'm picturing a corporate or training video i make for someone. the core content is timeless* so i'd love whoever's watching it to be also getting a bloomberg style modular/ticker approach fed with up-to-date data while they're watching it. eg latest company news from XYZ inc tickering along the bottom and live market data spewing down the right column while the why invest in XYZ core content is churning along. Even if timeless is a six week shelf life, this would be impressive during an investor roadshow with no extra work required. of course that effect is easily done on a webpage/screensaver/dog toy right now... but a video player which is more like a browser, with a Video ML language relating to module positions and data source, whether its video or 15-min-delayed FTSE data... it assumes that every web or disc media player will be connected to the web. what do you think? i'm not much up on these things apart from what i read here, so if it's already done/unworkable/crazy/annoying then apologies! best James * although in ten years everyone's gonna be laughing at our waxed eyebrows and black suits... leggings and perms will be back by then i tell you - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
