Re: [backstage] FYI: Open iPlayer
On 23-Oct-2009, at 01:14, Tom Loosemore wrote: There’s no (public) evidence, beyond the existence of Kangaroo, that other broadcasters are actually all that interested in a one-stop aggregation portal (I’d be tempted to say “more fool them”—right now, they need all the help they can get). coughs http://testtubetelly.channel4.com /coughs Oh, I take it back, “prototype” though it is! Some listings integration wouldn’t go amiss, but at least somebody’s doing *something*. M. -- mo mcroberts http://nevali.net iChat: mo.mcrobe...@me.com Jabber/GTalk: m...@ilaven.net Twitter: @nevali Run Leopard or Snow Leopard? Set Quick Look free with DropLook - http://labs.jazzio.com/DropLook/ - 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] FYI: Open iPlayer
Can you expand on that note about listings please Mo? Do you want more date/time information about when a programme was broadcast surfaced? Or a better interface for exploring back in time instead of by letter/source? At the moment we're just trying to keep it as simple as is necessary. We're on a shoestring, but we should be able to pipe in better TX information, at least. Admittedly we kind of buried the yesterday's telly feature too: http://testtubetelly.channel4.com/programmes/days/yesterday andy -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Mo McRoberts Sent: 23 October 2009 08:09 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] FYI: Open iPlayer On 23-Oct-2009, at 01:14, Tom Loosemore wrote: Theres no (public) evidence, beyond the existence of Kangaroo, that other broadcasters are actually all that interested in a one-stop aggregation portal (Id be tempted to say more fool themright now, they need all the help they can get). coughs http://testtubetelly.channel4.com /coughs Oh, I take it back, prototype though it is! Some listings integration wouldnt go amiss, but at least somebodys doing *something*. M. -- mo mcroberts http://nevali.net iChat: mo.mcrobe...@me.com Jabber/GTalk: m...@ilaven.net Twitter: @nevali Run Leopard or Snow Leopard? Set Quick Look free with DropLook - http://labs.jazzio.com/DropLook/ - 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/ # Note: Any views or opinions are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Channel Four Television Corporation unless specifically stated. This email and any files transmitted are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to which they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify postmas...@channel4.co.uk Thank You. Channel Four Television Corporation, created by statute under English law, is at 124 Horseferry Road, London, SW1P 2TX . 4 Ventures Limited (Company No. 04106849), incorporated in England and Wales has its registered office at 124 Horseferry Road, London SW1P 2TX. VAT no: GB 626475817 # - 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] FYI: Open iPlayer
Thanks Mo. Yes, agreed on all counts. But no, TTT is not a prototype of what's to come on Youtube :) andy -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Mo McRoberts Sent: 23 October 2009 10:43 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] FYI: Open iPlayer On 23-Oct-2009, at 09:36, Andrew Pipes wrote: Can you expand on that note about listings please Mo? Do you want more date/time information about when a programme was broadcast surfaced? Or a better interface for exploring back in time instead of by letter/source? At the moment we're just trying to keep it as simple as is necessary. The latter, although actual programme metadata is useful (because you dont necessarily know from a summary or title whether its the episode of something youre looking for, whereas you may well know that you saw last weeks broadcast). Primarily, it was the ability to browse by channel+day, both for things which have already aired, and the upcoming programmesmuch as iPlayer tries to do (though iPlayers UX quite often bugs me in this respect!) e.g., if somebody says did you see that documentary on More4 on Tuesday about how right-wing extremism is making its way into parish councils?, it should be trivial to track down based on the available informationat worst there are a limited number of programmes which would have aired on More4 on Tuesday, so even if you dont know the title, it should be easy to find with the aid of listings tie-in. Similarly, if you know a programme is airing at some point in the next 12 hours on a channel, being able to see (quite prominently) at a glance whether its available/coming soon/will be up later+ETA is quite useful. I know its tricky when you pull in solely on-demand content, but sheer popularity only goes so far as a useful metric for end-users. More metadata! ;) My expectation of a good aggregator is one which takes the best aspects of iPlayer+4oD+ITV Player+etc (and by that I dont just mean the raw content!) and presents a unified view of that. TTT certainly manages the latter, but my gut feeling is that its a more close fit with YouTubes fairly lightweight metadata than iPlayers (and presumably 4oDs) richnessand rather than using whats available wherever possible, it mostly seems to drag everything down to YouTubes level. I could be misreading it allI havent explored deeply, but then arguably I shouldnt have to in order to get a good idea of what it can do. What I dont get is why is it separate from 4oD and a strictly limited-budget experimental thing? Why not just have 4oDs web interface support multiple content streams? Political issues? (Actually, given the YouTube deal, is this a prototype for whats to come?) Er, hope that helps in some small way! M. -- mo mcroberts http://nevali.net iChat: mo.mcrobe...@me.com Jabber/GTalk: m...@ilaven.net Twitter: @nevali Run Leopard or Snow Leopard? Set Quick Look free with DropLook - http://labs.jazzio.com/DropLook/ - 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/ # Note: Any views or opinions are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Channel Four Television Corporation unless specifically stated. This email and any files transmitted are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to which they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify postmas...@channel4.co.uk Thank You. Channel Four Television Corporation, created by statute under English law, is at 124 Horseferry Road, London, SW1P 2TX . 4 Ventures Limited (Company No. 04106849), incorporated in England and Wales has its registered office at 124 Horseferry Road, London SW1P 2TX. VAT no: GB 626475817 # - 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] FYI: Open iPlayer
On 20-Oct-2009, at 21:51, I wrote: That said, it’s never entirely clear when people talk about “licensing iPlayer” whether they mean the front-end, with its myriad per-platform tweaks, clever Flash applet and AIR downloader, the back-end which ingests content, hooks it up appropriately, and transcodes it into a bunch of different formats, or both. I guess this may answer that question: Insiders said the proposal to commercially license the back end of iPlayer to third parties had only ever existed to support the “radical” iPlayer Federation, and that without the listings page, there would be no reason for the BBC to enter another new commercial market during a politically turbulent period. “The rationale for licensing the iPlayer on a commercial basis has gone. We are now of the view that this is something we won’t proceed with,” said a source. From http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/news/multi-platform/furious-bbc-to-give-up-on-open-iplayer/5007151.article According to that, the plan was one of less of licensing the back-end, and more consuming content from third-parties and feeding into the transcoding/metadata platform which already exists. I wonder how true it is :) M. -- mo mcroberts http://nevali.net iChat: mo.mcrobe...@me.com Jabber/GTalk: m...@ilaven.net Twitter: @nevali Run Leopard or Snow Leopard? Set Quick Look free with DropLook - http://labs.jazzio.com/DropLook/ - 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] FYI: Open iPlayer
There’s no (public) evidence, beyond the existence of Kangaroo, that other broadcasters are actually all that interested in a one-stop aggregation portal (I’d be tempted to say “more fool them”—right now, they need all the help they can get). coughs http://testtubetelly.channel4.com /coughs - 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] FYI: Open iPlayer
Sorry for the duplicate post. Kieran Kunhya wrote: What is so important about the content/metadata ingest and delivery system that is the iPlayer that it needs to be licenced as opposed to being developed in-house at a broadcaster? Standardisation, as Mo indicated, why reinvent the wheel, have several variations on a theme, or have several clients on the users desktop. Is this the same as the STB project (i.e was Open iPlayer also specifying the STB) ? It seems to me that with a separate business unit, commercial tie-ups, DRM the BBC is/was in danger of acting like a private company, while leaveraging it's public service position, in a way that was not in the public interest. This is a problem with BBC external revenue generation. Is it not in the public interest for the BBC to make the iPlayer technology available, to other public service broadcasters, or even all broadcasters, or just make H264/ACC, MPEG2, content directly available in several resolutions (avoiding the Flash wrapper). Why not make iPlayer Free Software (GPL v2), allowing others to contribute to it's enhancement, and allow it free deployment on any hardware meeting the requirements. This could work equally well for the backend, which I suspect already uses some open source software. Even if iPlayer is just details of the tweaks, the software stack, and how to implement iPlayer in Flash. This could be made publicly available in an updateable online (moderated) format. The work has already been undertaken to develop iPlayer, however it should be stripped of DRM. The signal is broadcast unencrypted, and this principle should be carried over to the internet. A simple fair, non-commercial basis, creating a standard public platform for the delivery of Free To Air, on demand video, open to all. Also Channel 4 are now on you tube, another possible approach. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/16/youtube_channel_4_content_deal/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_Video - 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] FYI: Open iPlayer
On 21-Oct-2009, at 08:42, David Tomlinson wrote: Sorry for the duplicate post. Kieran Kunhya wrote: What is so important about the content/metadata ingest and delivery system that is the iPlayer that it needs to be licenced as opposed to being developed in-house at a broadcaster? Standardisation, as Mo indicated, why reinvent the wheel, have several variations on a theme, or have several clients on the users desktop. Is this the same as the STB project (i.e was Open iPlayer also specifying the STB) ? That’s Canvas. This is Marquee. Project Big Top and Project Ringmaster have yet to be disclosed and are top secret. I’m not sure it’s about standardisation per se when it comes to iPlayer, we have plenty of standards in existence for the delivery of video to desktops, and most of them work quite well if you ignore the DRM red herring (indeed, several of the platforms which iPlayer serves receive unencumbered MPEG containers). I think it’s more a case of “we’ve developed this, it serves no useful purpose to keep it to ourselves”. I don’t have figures, but I have a feeling the AIR-based iPlayer desktop client is faring only marginally better than the Kontiki client did; I can think of quite a few reasons for why this would be the case, but the bottom line is all that many are seeing— that is, streaming over the web is the way forward and downloads are dead. I’m not convinced of this by _any_ means, but it makes life easier when it comes to the licensing argument. It seems to me that with a separate business unit, commercial tie- ups, DRM the BBC is/was in danger of acting like a private company, while leaveraging it's public service position, in a way that was not in the public interest. This is a problem with BBC external revenue generation. This was the big danger with approving Marquee as it stood: the BBC being an aggregator was a little *too* attractive to consumers. The commenters on the various news stories are tending to view it purely from this perspective, missing the point that such a move would effectively prevent anybody else from competing in that space, and— crucially—that knocking back Marquee doesn’t prevent anybody else from doing it. There’s no (public) evidence, beyond the existence of Kangaroo, that other broadcasters are actually all that interested in a one-stop aggregation portal (I’d be tempted to say “more fool them”— right now, they need all the help they can get). Is it not in the public interest for the BBC to make the iPlayer technology available, to other public service broadcasters, or even all broadcasters, or just make H264/ACC, MPEG2, content directly available in several resolutions (avoiding the Flash wrapper). I’d contend that it is. My argument is broadly that, thanks to the unique way the BBC is funded, it has a responsibility both to the public which it serves and to those producing output, and that runs to telling rights-holders (be they internal units or external production companies) when they’re making demands which (a) run counter to the public interest and (b) logically and demonstrably achieve the opposite of the desired outcome. This was the heart of the debate over the Freeview HD “DRM” proposal. With traditional broadcasting, the model the BBC has worked to for decades, the BBC didn’t _care_ what equipment everybody had in particular. Certainly, some thresholds would come into play occasionally (for example, when starting to broadcast in colour, in stereo, adding Ceefax, etc), but the programming itself was governed by international standards and regional variations of them. In fundamental terms, delivering content via the Internet isn’t conceptually much different unless you want it to be. Why not make iPlayer Free Software (GPL v2), allowing others to contribute to it's enhancement, and allow it free deployment on any hardware meeting the requirements. This could work equally well for the backend, which I suspect already uses some open source software. I suspect there are some tricky licensing issues with respect to patents (e.g., the MPEG stuff), and I’d hazard a guess that there’s a fair bit of stuff which is quite BBC-specific and wouldn’t really be worth anybody’s while in making generic unless _somebody_ was paying for it. There’s perhaps an argument here that such things should be considered part of the overall development and paid for by the license- fee payer, and that other things should have their budgets cut… but that applies to anything. Politically, it’s tricky. Probably the biggest reason, though, is one which has hit many organisations considering making something open source, and that’s that it airs dirty laundry—you can get away with a particularly horrible dirty hack if you don’t think anybody outside of your team is really ever going to see it. It may seem silly, but it’s embarrassing to the
[backstage] FYI: Open iPlayer
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/20/bbc_trust_rejects_iplayer_federation/ The BBC Trust has shelved a plan that would have allowed broadcasters such as Channel 4, ITV and Five to share the Beeb's iPlayer. The so-called Open iPlayer project was meant to establish a new commercial service separate from BBC Worldwide, that would licence the Corporation's hugely popular video-on-demand technology to third parties. We concluded that the open iPlayer plans in their proposed form, combining both commercial and public service elements, were too complicated, said BBC Trustee Diane Coyle in a statement today. http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/news/press_releases/october/open_iplayer.shtml The Trust is open to considering an alternative proposal for the licensing of the iPlayer technology to third parties if that can be done on a simple, fair and commercial basis, said Coyle. - 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] FYI: Open iPlayer
What is so important about the content/metadata ingest and delivery system that is the iPlayer that it needs to be licenced as opposed to being developed in-house at a broadcaster? --- On Tue, 20/10/09, David Tomlinson d.tomlin...@tiscali.co.uk wrote: From: David Tomlinson d.tomlin...@tiscali.co.uk Subject: [backstage] FYI: Open iPlayer To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Date: Tuesday, 20 October, 2009, 6:59 PM http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/20/bbc_trust_rejects_iplayer_federation/ The BBC Trust has shelved a plan that would have allowed broadcasters such as Channel 4, ITV and Five to share the Beeb's iPlayer. The so-called Open iPlayer project was meant to establish a new commercial service separate from BBC Worldwide, that would licence the Corporation's hugely popular video-on-demand technology to third parties. We concluded that the open iPlayer plans in their proposed form, combining both commercial and public service elements, were too complicated, said BBC Trustee Diane Coyle in a statement today. http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/news/press_releases/october/open_iplayer.shtml The Trust is open to considering an alternative proposal for the licensing of the iPlayer technology to third parties if that can be done on a simple, fair and commercial basis, said Coyle. - 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] FYI: Open iPlayer
On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 21:31, Kieran Kunhya kie...@kunhya.com wrote: What is so important about the content/metadata ingest and delivery system that is the iPlayer that it needs to be licenced as opposed to being developed in-house at a broadcaster? Possibly the fact that no other bugger is doing it in anything but a cack-handed way. That said, it’s never entirely clear when people talk about “licensing iPlayer” whether they mean the front-end, with its myriad per-platform tweaks, clever Flash applet and AIR downloader, the back-end which ingests content, hooks it up appropriately, and transcodes it into a bunch of different formats, or both. All credit to the front-end developers, who have done a bloody good job considering what they have to work with (I mean, seriously, Flash for HD video?), but the *really* clever and heavyweight stuff is behind the scenes, and—to the best of my knowledge—pretty much distinct from “iPlayer”. Would a broadcaster want to license the one without the other? (possibly) Would the BBC be licensing both out together, or as separate units? Am I wrong about all of this? ;) M. - 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/
