BBC interrogated over iPlayer

The BBC Director General, Mark Thomson, is interrogated by House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, over why they wasted over 130 million UKP on the iPlayer.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• BBC
• Microsoft
• iPlayer
• Corruption
• DRM
• defectivebydesign

[clitmint]

20 million or so to make a site which hosts pre recorded tv shows? WTF? thats bullshite!

Stop making excuses to hide your purchases of learjets, property and roll royces you fucking pile of scumbags.

and for everytime you say "Ah ah, uh uh" i should shove a fucking TV licence letter down your throat.

[Homer101010]

@clitmint

Actually the cost was more like 130 million. See Groklaw article 20080120181708684 for details.

[MrBabies123]

Could Mark Thompson please instruct his staff who run the I Player to adopt some courtesy towards license payers and actually flash up a message on screen saying sorry when they can't download a programme because it is too busy? Otherwise one is left wondering if the problem is the I Player itself!

[Homer101010]

@MrBabies123

The iPlayer service has been getting worse and worse each day. HD content is published inconsistently, programmes appear then magically disappear immediately without explanation, radio programmes are all over the place - it's a stinking mess. That's what you get for allowing this PUBIC corporation to become annexed by an American private company like Microsoft.

[blimey2]

They should see exactly what it feels like to run 32 bit crap code of Flash on a 64 bit Linux machine. What assholes the BBC are. The Windows media codecs are just a bunch of lock-in codecs so you use Micro$oft.

[ziggyzaggy06]

Who's this guy questioning them. He's rather unusually well informed for someone from the house of commons. Suggesting bittorrent, the thing wrongly seen as a massive hub for piracy is quite refreshing!

[clitmint]

@Homer101010 The point is still the huge and insane price to host pre-recorded TV shows, on a basic style app, dont forget it comes out of our pockets to pay for this bullshite.

[Homer101010]

And another thing I find appalling, is the BBC's claim they need to use DRM to satisfy their "content providers" demands.

What "content providers"? I thought the BBC was it's OWN "content provider". When did this happen, exactly?

Why do we pay a BBC tax, if they're just going to give those public funds to private contractors? Shouldn't that be illegal? If the BBC is now just another private corporation, then they should only receive private funding, and not a mandatory "license" tax. Simple.

[Homer101010]

@Corrupt5358

It's not just the site that sucks, it's the Windows-based back-end technology, and the BBC's attitude. Many useful projects have been neutered by the BBC's Draconian policies, including MyPlayer (Android), get_iplayer (multiplatform), and MythTV (Linux).

The BBC's charter is supposed to guarantee uninhibited access, so I really don't understand how they can be allowed to use DRM, or prevent other software accessing the site.

[Corrupt5358]

The iplayer site sux btw, the layout is appauling + who the fuck wants to "watch" a radio programme.

If they got rid of DRM + streamed everything ever made it would be awesome.

[Homer101010]

@userblue

You're a bit late with your comment. This video was uploaded before full GNU/Linux support was offered.

And even now iPlayer is still proprietary software using patent encumbered codecs and Digital Restrictions Management, so lacks the flexibility of watching programmes on other devices (e.g. transfer to an iPod).

The BBC developed their own patent-free multimedia codec called Dirac. Why aren't they using it, instead of supporting Microsoft's intellectual monopoly racket?

[userblue]

iPlayer is actually pretty bloody good, why the bother?