Be Excellent To Each Other

Let's talk about television.

Yes, that box in your front room that lets you play the Xbox. It's made out of pixels and light.

As part of the BBC's plans to roll out free to view, license funded HD programming in the UK, they made a request to Ofcom for permission to implement "content management". Ofcom then gave people 13 days in which to respond (which have now expired).

The letter from the BBC to Ofcom, and then the Ofcom response can be read here (PDF link).

Cory Doctorow from the Guardian then weighed in on this here, saying that this decision from the BBC is solely to benefit the "big rightsholder groups – US movie studios, mostly" not the people who pay for the running of the BBC. The BBC responded to Cory in a blog post here, and they seem to be a little confused more than anything.

The BBCs plans will make it impossible for hardware using open source software to play HD BBC content, and will make it difficult (or impossible) to transfer content from one format to another.

Essentially, all hardware on the market that wants to receive BBC HD content will have to adhere to a set of standards that is not determined by "what is best for the license payer", but "what do big studios want the to let them do".

Obviously what I would like is to be able to download whatever content (which I have paid for the creation or licensing of), in whatever format and resolution I want, when I want, without DRM and without having to resort to acquiring it from illegitimate sources, but I don't think the BBC will ever let me do that.

Bastards. Though the illegitimate sources are and always will be fine, the drm on this will last minutes. Pay your licence and take your fill of torrents.

"wah wah wah I want more free stuff".
If the BBC didn't copy-protect this stuff it would drive the cost of buying in foreign programs even higher, and everybody loses out.

Is the Internet actually ready for a HD iPlayer? I'm thinking 'no'.

Looks like plastic and metal from here.

I pay my TV license so a little DRM won;t hurt me..

*phone rings*
Me: "Hello"
Mam: "Hiya Son, I wonder if you could record (latest nature programme) and burn it to DVD for me?"
Me: "No."
Mam: "Oh."

Tell her to log on to iplayer

BBC HD carries Heroes. Without these moves, BBC HD wouldn't be able to carry Heroes, or any other high-profile US TV shows, and even more of them will go to Sky.

You pay your licence, so it's okay for you to get less for paying more. Gotcha.

Now that I've read it, I also think the BBC's response is prett good.

How am I getting less?

So do I. What's confused about it?

I don't think I understand the issue..

Without reading the links it seems from responses in this thread that you can't record the HD content?

So what about Sky+ HD box , watching BBC HD?

It'll have some manner of content scrambling on, with a proprietary decoder. So you won't be able to view it with software decoders under unsupported OSs, like Linux (assuming that the BBC don't support Linux; they used to support it for their RealMedia streaming though).

Devices that conform will be able to record, similarly to how Sky HD does now.

From reading the comments on the BBC blog, the only problem seems to be if you're usign MythTV.

Whatever that is.

So is that a problem really.. ( I am having a slow day today)

It's not free if you pay the license fee.



Maybe they should buy in less foreign stuff.



Well, I know that there are lots of ways of downloading HD video. They seem to work ok.



And what if I want to keep something for longer than the iplayer keeps if up for.



It's not just about mythTV, that's just a good example of something that it would break.

You know how back in the nineties everyone used VCRs to record stuff off the BBC. You could record something on a tape, keep it forever, take it round to a friends, do whatever you want with it. The BBC couldn't (and specifically weren't allowed by ofcom) to attempt to prevent you from doing whatever you wanted with it (although the law still applied, it would have been illegal to sell a recording that you didn't own, for example).

What is happening now is that this is no longer the case.

If you want to record something in HD from the BBC, you have to jump through the DRM hoops that they have established to appease big studios that they license content from (although all HD content will have this DRM, including BBC produced content).

You won't be able to move stuff from (say) your PVR to your iPod HD, copy it onto a PS4, extract audio or basically do anything with the recordings that you have paid for the creation of unless they allow you to.

Yes this is not a big deal to me, I will just pirate anything from the BBC that I want in HD, hopefully the uploaders will be on the ball. But this is essentially a load of pointless inconvenience for a lot of people.

you have never been meant too..

You were not supposed to keep VCR for longer than a certain length of time, people just did.

Is there anything stopping the makers of MythTV & the like adapting to fit this in other than a potential "fuck off" from the BBC.
I mean to get round the GPL requirements they could package the DRM bit as a Closed Source component surely.

You misunderstand - I don't think the Internet itself could actually cope with it. Hell, the SD one nearly broke it, and YouTube before that.


No you couldn't. You could watch it once, in the same house it was recorded in. People just didn't.
If the technology was around then to make this the case then they would have used it.

How about this:

I need a proprietary decoder to watch BBC stuff in future then, yes?

So how about, I just don't get one, and as it is now impossible for me to watch BBC stuff, I no longer pay the licence fee.

I'd be happy with that arrangement.

No the SD stuff will still be accessable, it is only the HD stuff, which you will need some form of box (Freeview HD, sky hd etc)to watch any way

No. Just the HD stuff. The SD will continue to be available on Freeview, Sky, and all the current places it is now, except for analogue.

woot teh Doc posted what I said....

Never mind then!

I'm sure he's just as excited

I'm postively tumescent.

i am happy as I am right for once....

*happy dance*

No, you're happy because people agree with you

same thing...

Not usually.

I don't get the stress about this either. I think the BBC does a pretty good job and so I never get involved with discussions about it usually but come one, this just seems like people getting worked up for no real reason.

let me have my moment

*sob*

Some sort of screen capturing software ought to do the trick. Either that, or wait 5 minutes and watch the re-run ad infinitum on Dave.

lol

I am kinda surprised no one else minds this.

I AM A LONE ANGRY INTERNET MAN, WITH JUST ME AND MY RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION TO KEEP ME COMPANY.

Indeed. Half the problem is a knee jerk reaction to DRM* & the other half is people not understanding what the BBC's restrictions are intended to be.
*DRM is not a bad thing in itself, though sometimes it's implementation can be horrendous. Yes, I'm looking at you here Sony BMG.If you ask me that seems pretty reasonable.

Ooster you use that tiny wee writing too much.

I can't read it and it's annoying, make it about 65 eh?

Okay dear. Do you need eye trumpets?

I keep forgetting that it's that small. I turned the minimum text size to 11 & everything is readable to me now, except Arabic & Kanji obv..

So use a VCR now.

not sure where mine is

Quite possibly

I don't watch all that much TV (probably 6 hours a week tops), but even I think I get good value for money from the licence fee. I think the Beeb has to protect its (or our) commercial interests for the benefit of all licence fee payers, especially if we want to see more quality home-grown programming. I'm not sure I buy the argument that because I've paid for the TV Licence I have the automatic right to keep and watch whatever the Beeb broadcasts - now that would be real value for money!

If you flip the argument slightly and say that because I pay the TV Licence I own the content, I'd want a much greater say in what gets produced. The Beeb do a great number of programs I have no interest in, don't watch and would rather they didn't make. East Enders, Strictly Come Dancing, Masterchef, Jonathan Woss - all of that crap would be gone were I in charge, replaced with programs on science (but not the dumbed-down rubbish we get nowadays - more along the lines of Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man), history, natural history, current affairs and politics, good quality news, the odd bit of comedy and decent, thought-provoking drama. I'd cut children's programming completely and make the little sods watch documentaries (my view being that children should be brought up on a strict diet of science, mathematics and literature and Tinky-fucking-Winky). I'd watch and enjoy TV a lot more, but I'm fairly certain only a small minority of people would agree with me.

No, I object to it too - not because I think it'll actually inconvenience me any personally (and if it does, I have... friends at the BBC but on the pure simple principle of the thing. I'm really not happy with the idea that, say, I couldn't watch some content using MythTV or whatever - I have no intention to actually do so, but the fact the restriction exists at all bothers me. It's not the same as needing a receiver, or a Freeview box, or whatever - in theory, anyone can make one of those; it's the fact that there's a "secret" component to the process now, only available to licensed manufacturers seems to be entirely counter to the BBC's mission to me.

It's going to be Freeview HD compliant, anything with the Freeview HD logo on will work.

If you want to watch BBC in HD, get a freeview hd box and it will work.

This is not the bbc's fault this is what DIGITAL does, it gives you the possibility to do these things, so big companies ask for them to be done. These big companies do not know what's coming. And what's coming is people like Richard Herring with his "as it occours to me" Shows like "Dr Horrible's singalong blog" these will be the main stay. But these big companies want to keep their hands on the pie, so they will scrabble around doing things like this for as long as they can.

Malc

Question:

Do the adverts for SKY HD come through the ether in HD form?
Can I get bbc HD with my sky+ box?

you will need a sky+ HD to recive any HD signal