http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4187036.stm

Sorry guys UK only apparently.

And not the cricket as they don't have the rights.

And Harmison is stumped

I think the popularity of this move will rely quite a lot on how they implement it. If it was just a case of "whatever's on TV right now is also available on the internet" then I can't see it catching on, but if they provided a "watch again" service (akin to their current "listen again" thing for radio -- pretty much anything broadcast in the past seven days is available in case you missed it) then it'd be genius. (And even better if the shows were downloadable rather than streamed, and DRM free would make the whole thing perfect. Never going to happen, obviously, but a man can dream...)

On the downside, geographic location of IP addresses isn't an exact science so there may be a lot of false negatives and positives (which may adversely affect (the other sort of) IP licensing issues), plus they use RealPlayer for everything, and it sucks. :)

From the article it looks like it will be limited to certain programmes, some of which will be available on the Internet before appearing on TV. You just know that it won't be exactly what we'd like though - some sort of rubbish viewer, no way to download it to watch over or save an entire series, poor quality.

At least it should be free to stream - we have paid our license fee already after all.

Well the Mighty Boosh goes up a week before it's on BBC3 and they plan to do that with some things, they're developing their own OSS compression system (called Dirac I believe) which is based and last I heard they were looking at BitTorrent.

I suspect it will be "watch again" with possibly some archive stuff going up for download (cf. podcasting Today Programme Interviews).

They're already doing the "some stuff on t'internet first" scheme, but the article gave the impression that, in addition to expanding that further, plans are afoot to get all their stuff broadcast on the web in the future.

I think it's a "one step at time" sort of thing.

The dream would be some sort of viewer that can be set to record it on set times like a computer based TiVo. Is there any software that can do that kind of thing already?

My Audigy2 came with an app that would allow you to record audio streams at pre-determined times, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were an equivalent for video streams.

Yet another reason to move to banner and product placement instead of interrupting ads. Be nice if they went with downloadable DRM'd content, too. (I hated the idea of DRM content at first, but to be dreadfully honest, I haven't had a problem with MSN Music songs - they've played everywhere I've needed them to)

Actually, what am I saying? The shows are paid for by advertising - MORE EXPOSURE = BETTER, right? Plus shows over the 'net could be considered loss leaders for series - watch a few episode via download and you might start watching them as they air.

AND - instant viewership feedback.

All visionary, of course.

So they won't do it.

Philo

Er, the BBCs shows are NOT paid for by advertising. We, the British viewing public, pay for them directly out of out own pockets via the TV license...

See, here we pay for TV and then we get ads, too. It's really win-win.

Well same difference then, right Mat? The point being they're not subscription.

Philo

We pay roughly £10/week per household.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/licencefee/

In a way they are - they're just a compulsory subscription;-)

But the BBC does make an awful lot of money from DVD/Videos IIRC, so they would surely be reluctant to allow people to freely download/record the programmes from the web unless the quality was markedly inferior.

477 all out then.

My cable bill excluding internet and DVR rental is $85/month.

On top of this, I get ads. Lots of ads. Even on the cable-only stations.

Why is it that more money from my bill payment isn't being passed on to the content providers, so that they don't have to interrupt their shows with advertisements every 5 minutes? You can't tell me that those eighty-five dollars are all needed to maintain their infrastructure.

As far as the BBC goes the very act of owning a TV means you pay for their shows, so "more exposure" is not an issue. There's some sort of charter that says they've got to provide a certain number of hours of X, Y and Z type of programming, and that it can't all be vapid crap, but from their perspective they get no more or no less money no matter how many people watch it, so unlike paid-for-by-advertising TV (where the network can charge more for an ad in a popular show than an unpopular one) the BBC wouldn't really gain by wider exposure.

mmm...they used to make a bundle out of videos at a time when you could record your own. I don't think the beeb really follows the music industry's line on this.

Nobody follows the music industry's line on anything, other than the movie industry...

The plan is to parallel the radio provision now which is to broadcast online simultaneously as broadcast time and to keep that programme available for viewing online for a week.

That depends on rights for some programmes but all the BBC's own output will be able to be broadcast online. Live events will probably suffer much as radio ones did at first.

It will be interesting to see if the BBC prosecute anyone mirroring the feed I don't think I'll be experimenting :-).

I'm hoping that I've just become a bit jaded with the music/film industrys and their complete disregard for their customers. I really want this to be a good service from the BBC.

How does the listen again service work for the radio at the moment? Can they be downloaded as mp3 files or something similar?

Some can some can't - mostly they're streamed in Real format *but* the beeb is letting some things go as mp3 on a trial basis (here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/downloadtrial/ ).

Cynic, it's £10 per MONTH per household. The licence fee isn't £500 a year (yet)!

yeah, yeah I know typo Ok...

I just whish theu finally abandoned the Real crap.