Posts by Ryan Morrison5 posts • joined Tuesday 19th February 2008 11:51 GMT
Big_Boomer - completely agree. Broadband should be closer to the mobile phone model. If it costs £1.50 (including your profit) per GB per user then charge that user £2.00 per GB.
An ISP could offer a £30 per month package that included 15GB data for high end users or a £10 per month package that includes 5GB of data for low end users.
Either way - we then pay for what we use and people realise the value of bandwidth.
Oh and Ashley Highfield will be missed as head of FM&T he's been good for the Beeb and was the man to put FM&T at the centre of the corporation.
The thing is the BBC don't own ALL the copyright to (more or less) any of their TV programmes.
The BBC buy the rights to show it on TV a certain number of times and have an agreement that lets them make it available for up to seven days online but their deal doesn't extend beyond that.
Basically for every TV show every piece of music played has several rights holder, the writer retains rights, the actors all retain the right to claim repeat fees - even conductors on musical score retain certain rights.
None of those groups would let the BBC offer any TV show without DRM as offering it without DRM is the same as offering it forever and that would reduce the fees they get for DVD sales.
The IP restriction is there to stop people outside the UK using the iPlayer - in the same way FOX, Disney, NBC, ABC et al stop me using their on demand services over here - it's not directly anything to do with rights.
I agree that the BBC would be better to create their own open source DRM solution that would work cross platform - maybe they could work with ITV and Channel 4 to create one all UK broadcasters can use?
Open Source 'fans' might be interested in this post on the BBC Internet Blog then - about a new P2P network being developed in part by the BBC to deliver Television over the internet.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/02/p2p_next.html
I've just downloaded an episode of Spooks and I'm impressed with the quality - it looks great and if it really is DRM free like this article suggests - well worth the £1.89 - still cheaper than the DVDs.
You can see a screengrab on my flickr feed (flickr.com/photos/upyourego/) and it starts playing straight away.
These Linux arses are getting on my nerves. About five people use your pokey little operating system compared to several tens of millions using Mac OS or a flavour of Windows - get over yourself.
It's like the five people complaining about a TV show because it uses a bad word. Sod off and go kick a penguin in the nuts.
Anyway - this is great news and the thing that exites me the most is the concept that we might start to get TV shows available for download that aren't economically viable as DVDs.
