Tag: bbc

This is frankly embarrassing if this is true…

I just read this on arstechnica.com.

Although SWF Verification is principally intended to serve as a barrier to piracy, it also blocks regular users from legitimately viewing content with open source video players. Fans of the popular XBMC media center application have discovered that the application can no longer be used to watch iPlayer content.

Yep I know all about this… But I never factored in this part…

The Totem BBC plugin, which was developed by the BBC itself in collaboration with Canonical and Collabora, is also apparently blocked.

If this is true, I’m frankly embarrassed. I will investigate whats happened on this front.

Is the BBC’s iplayer changes, pushing developers towards the dark net?

XBMC media centre

So to remind everyone, this is my blog and not the view of my employer (the BBC). If you’ve not seen the outbreak about the iplayer stream changes then I can recommend the BBC Backstage post and the internet blog post. You will see they both link to the register piece which highlighted the problems people are having.

Here’s the Register’s summary of the whole thing.

The BBC has quietly updated its hugely popular iPlayer with a verification layer that closes the door on open source implementations of RTMP (real-time messaging protocol) streaming, The Register has learned.

The Beeb applied the update to its online video catch-up service on 18 February, just four days after Adobe Systems penned a corporate blog post about its “content protection offerings”.

The tweak means that free RTMP plugins offered by the likes of the XBMC community – whose code is based on the GNU General Public Licence (sic) v2* – can no longer stream iPlayer content. The latest iteration of XBMC’s plugin was created in May last year and was being used by UK viewers to play TV and radio catch-up content from the BBC’s iPlayer service.

XBMC.org adds to this…

While we understand the BBC’s reasoning for the decision, we surely don’t agree with it. Add to that, a publicly funded media organization has far more obligations than a typical private one.

XBMC could easily be modified in a way that would allow playback of the streams, though it could never be included in the official binaries due to the wretched DMCA.

We hope that news of this change spreads quickly. Feel free to submit this story as well as the one from The Register to your favorite news sites. If anyone from the BBC would like to engage in a public discussion, we would very much welcome it; see our contact page for details. Also, be sure to take their online survey and tell them how you feel. Remember, this change affects far more than an XBMC plugin… all open-source BBC playback implementations are at stake.

*librtmp, the library used to access these streams, uses the lgpl license.

So to be clear, I also understand the reasoning but disagree with the need for this change. This change is easily fixable/hackable/reversed but doing so would break the DMCA or EUCD. So this is a very difficult position to be in because the change is forcing the hand of the developers to do something illegal. Now most of the developers don’t and won’t do it but there are those who don’t give a flying monkey for the law and will easily reverse whatever Adobe creates in the form of DRM. This is why there is such a outrage by most people who understand the situation fully. Verification layer protection is a joke, but a really bad joke which you can’t get rid off by simply shuffling it out the front door. Cory always says…

DRM only affects people who buy media honestly, rather those who nick, borrow or cheat their way to it. In turn that means that the people who ultimately bear the inconvenience, cost and insult of DRM are the paying customers, not the pirates.

And he’s right. The people who are most effected by Verification Layer are those who are the fans watching iplayer streams on their XBMC boxes at home with there friends and family. Worst still they are already license fee payers and early adopters who the BBC really should be spending more time with instead of marking them down as a irrelevant group. This group are very vocal and have the ability to really make the BBC’s future a living hell if its not very careful.

I’ve already seen evidence of a application which strips iplayer of all its content in a slightly questionable way being pushed as a replacement for XBMC’s iplayer script. Its worth noting this application which I won’t link to worked before the change and still works after the change, in actual fact there was no interruption to its service! And if you think thats questionable, I’m sure the usage of BBC content in Bit Torrent, Rapidshare, usenet, etc went flying through the roof as people scrambled back to the dark net to watch there shows. I do wish there was a way to prove this in numbers, just to show how much streaming from the BBC was having an affect on the dark net.

So where do we go from here?

Will the BBC ever turn off Verification layer? Honestly I doubt it and as Adobe creates even more technical hurdles they will also be added. Its a real shame because as we’ve already explored they only effect those who care enough to get there content from the BBC iplayer. Adobe’s measures have no ground in the dark net.

The Trust survey is very important, as that has a massive effect on what the BBC can and cannot do. So its very important that everyone takes part in the survey. Its also worth writing blog entries and telling more people about the issue. This doesn’t only effect xbmc but also all those mobile clients and other media centres. There’s been a lot of comments at the register, iplayer forums, internetblog, backstage forum and backstage blog but not nearly enough posts and twitters.

Finally the BBC needs to talk openly about this stuff, if it was announced this was coming and explained then I honestly I think the BBC wouldn’t get the kickback there getting now. Look at the iplayer forum, who on earth blamed the iplayer RSS terms and conditions for this problem? Yes I’ve been talking to the guys at XBMC and other projects, the BBC needs to build bridges with these communities and at least have a conversation about this stuff. No promises just conversation.

The Essential Mixes

Armin Van Buuren djing

Essentialmixes.net is a website where you can stream, download, view tracklists and rate every Radio 1 essential mix since it began in 1993. Wow, but its not flawless.

There are so many amazing mixes on the site… One which takes me right back is Force & Styles mix from 1997. Just check out the playlist from this sweet mix. The only tune missing is the Eyeopener by Dj Brisk.

  1. Force & Styles – “Paradise & Dreams” (Diverse)
  2. Force & Styles – “Apollo 13 Pt II” (UK Dance)
  3. Bang The Future – “Body Slam” (GBT)
  4. Force & Styles – “Cuttin’ Deep” (Diverse Recordings)
  5. DJ Quatro – “Musical Mayhem” (HecTec)
  6. Sy & Bunter – “Connect Your Step” (GBT)
  7. Sy & Demo – “Love & Devotion” (Quosh)
  8. DJ Stompy – “Body Rock” (Hectic)
  9. JDS – “Higher Love” (Stompin’ Choonz)
  10. DJ Eruption – “Don’t You Want Me” (United Dance)
  11. Demo
  12. Ham & Time – “Here I Am” (Jal Premium)
  13. Ramos & Supreme – “Gotta Believe” (Hectic Rewinds)
  14. Hixxy & Bananaman – “Together Forever” (Essential Platinum)
  15. DJ Eruption – “Let The Music” (United Dance)
  16. Force & Styles – “Pretty Green Eyes” (UK Dance)
  17. Force & Styles – “Your Love” (Happy Trax)
  18. Bang – “Cloudy Daze” (Next Generation)
  19. Force & Styles – “Shining Down” (UK Dance)
  20. DJ Demo – “Your Mine” (Universal)
  21. Slipmatt & Eruption – “Sunshine” (First Recordings)
  22. Billy Bunter – “Untitled” (GBT)
  23. DJ Eruption – “Reach Out” (United Dance)
  24. DJ Vinyl Groover – “It Doesn’t Have To Be” (Hectic Rewinds)
  25. DJ Vinyl Groover – “Time After Time” (Obsession)

The site its self is pretty impressive, it really celebrates the dj and the amazing mixes which is good thing. So I went to register and found out, registration actually costs money up front which is a bit cheeky, yes its only 2 pounds 50 but there should be a option to sign up without paying. Then if you want to download, you have to pay. There’s also no clear indication what kind of downloads will be available. I can’t actually tell if the downloads are mp3’s, ogg vorbis or something drm’ed like AAC/WMA?

Reading people tweets, there seems to be a lot of problems downloading mixes, so maybe they should adopt some kind of P2P system like bit torrent to ease the bandwidth problems there having. Something like P2Pnext would be perfect for this setup. Finally, it would be great to have a API or at least RSS feeds.

I’m sure someone is already writing a script/app for this site to go into XBMC/Boxee/other devices, if there not – I might just do it myself.

London nuked in Newswipe

You got to give it up to Newswipe, its a great show and if you’ve not already seen the How To Report The News piece and let’s go live to, where have you been? Great BBC programme which yes you can watch on iplayer or other places. Charlie Brooker is a genius and I can’t believe the first time I ever heard of him was when he did the Gameswipe during Christmas time.

R&D TV: Episode 1


So finally its been revealed what I've been working on recently.

R&D TV is a pilot project between BBC Backstage (which is part of BBC R&D) and BBC RAD Labs. The pilot is monthly technology programme made up of interviews from knowledgeable BBC developers, BBC project experts and experts from around the world. Its made of rights cleared assets so sharing of content is a core part of its concept from day one. When I say experts, I don't even mean in the traditional sense but more people doing interesting things which there very knowledgeable about.

There are three parts to the project,

  1. A brief 5 minute video, containing all the very best bits
  2. A longer 30 minute video, containing deeper conversations
  3. The Asset Bundle, containing everything we used and didn't use to make the videos above

They say good artists borrow and the best steal. Well you can think of what we have done as a combination of PBS's NerdTV and Microsoft's Channel9. The biggest difference is the asset bundle.

Releasing the assets as well as the 5min and 30min versions is something that's new for the BBC and to be fair both teams are not well known for. I mean R&D and Rad are not content creation departments. However we truly believe this is a exciting and possibly important experiment in creating media specifically to be shared and remixed.

Not only does the asset bundle include media but it also has all the extra media to create the show and stuff which didn't make it into the show. So you can duplicate the show or with a little more creativity do some remixing and show – legally.

We (me and George Wright) did a interview with Jemima Kiss of the Guardian on Wednesday. There's a couple of corrections like the project is half RAD and half Backstage plus Rain Ashford works for backstage and Hemmy Cho works for RAD. But otherwise Jemima does a good explaining the project and some of the thoughts behind it. I kind of wished we recorded the interview but who knows what might appear in the asset bundle one day soon.

Videos can also be viewed on YouTube and Blip.TV right now but expect even more places in the next few weeks. We created a ATOM/XML podcast file so you can suck down all the files in one go using a podcatcher. Hell we even did the MD5 hashes to confirm the files are correct if you get them from elsewhere.

One of the things which I believe will happen very quickly at the start at least is people asking us to interview certain people. We will take a lot of this on board but what I really want to see is people filming themselves and using our footage and combining it with there own. I already have looked into mixing MakerTV with our footage to create a more hardware driven show. Or even taking parts of the Socialweb.TV and using some of the Kevin Rose interview. The best part of all this is, you can all do the same! One thing I've been dying to do is combine Pop!tech footage with ours, because they also put there shows out under a creative commons licence.

There's more to come from R&D TV so look out for number 2 about May time. Looking forward to hearing all your thoughts.

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Beyond HD: 4k projection

Sunflower projected at 4k

A couple of my friends and family are very much into their True HD (1080p) content and displays. I'm not that bothered because, lets be honest I'm unlikely to buy a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player, my primary media player (xbmc) doesn't play back HD without dropping frames (nice looking frames that they are) and I'm honestly happy with 720p from the distance I would sit. Anyway, like always there is always something better that what you can buy. So feast your eyes on 4k projection (4mpx image every frame) Tony, Che, Lucas, Nico, etc…

Two 2k projectors side by side

3712 x 1080 @ 50fps progressive. Yes stitch two 2K projectors together, give them half the image and then using machine logic display them exactly side by side. Thats what our research and innovation team have done to create a panoramic picture with the density and richness only ever seen in DLP cinemas. The pictures I shot don't do it any kind of justice, but if you thought that was amazing. Just remember the sunflowers were shot with a 8k NHK super HiVision camera and scaled & cropped for this lower quality version. So if you want to be top dog, you'd better save up your money for one of these badboys and setup Super-HiVision-bits.org because HD-bits.org isn't going to cut it.

Rugby game on a 4k projector

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Ashley Highfield on iPlayer, DRM and Crossplatform Support

From the Backstage Blog, a frank discussion about DRM and Cross-platform support. It all started when I asked Ashley a few questions recently about the iplayer strategy. Ashley answered the question with quite a bit of passion and Matthew Cashmore thought hey wouldn't it be a good idea to get some of that passion in a recording. He is the result which you can judge for yourselves…

The iPlayer, no don't do a runner, seriously, it's taken over the mailing list, dominated our discussions and is something that many members of the backstage community care an awful lot about. So do we. We all know the questions. Why don't we stand up to the rights holders? Why do we insist on using DRM? Why did we sign a secret deal in blood with Microsoft?

So we finally decided that these questions needed answers, and the only person to talk to was the boss. We present 26 minutes of questions and answers about iPlayer, DRM and cross platform support with Ashley Highfield, Director Future Media & Technology.

In this frank discussion we cover the DRM issues, explain that iPlayer isn't a Microsoft only party and ask why didn't we use a non propriety solution.

You can get the file directly from Blip.TV under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence in Mpeg3, Ogg Vorbis or AAC.

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BBC.co.uk 2.0, why it will happen

Myself

So since my post in reply of Jason's post there's been a lot of discussion and conversation. Technorati as usual doesn't quite get as close as Google. Either way, its the emails and im's I've been getting which are also interesting. Most people have been really supportive, while others have been less that supportive. They felt I was slagging off the BBC and making things worst by talking about my own views. I mean how dare I express my own personal views on my own personal blog right? The same blog which has the subtitle, The views and thoughts of a dyslexic British designer/developer. Anyway, its late again but I'm going to finish what I was writing before as somethings were not explicit.

When out and about people ask me many things about the BBC, one of which is about the iplayer. Even in Boston, people once they know you work for the BBC wanted to know more about the decisions which formed to create the iplayer. They ask if I use it myself and I say no. Most ask why, and I try and explain my media consumption diet in a short period of time. But the main point is people ask, I'm sure all BBC employees get this? Its great, people are very interested in consuming BBC content and services but are very puzzled about the whole DRM issue. They ask why would a public broadcaster apply DRM to its content? Some more clued up people ask the same question and then point out that our analogue and dtv content has no such restrictions. Yes the BBC puts out press releases and has a official website with discussion boards (not indexed by google), but people still ask. So I put across the point of most of the content we play on TV, we only have broadcast rights to and that indies own a good proportaion of the content rights which goes out. However the question remains why DRM?

Some of my non-supporter, seem to think its just the geek world which are upset about this. Well we have to remember its the geeks which are fixing and installing stuff on their parents computer come Christmas time, geeks that are willing to test drive a beta service/product like iplayer and finally geeks who lead the way into the mainstream market. So thats a sure reminder not to just write off this stuff to geeks. However what also prompted my other post was this video by Robert Llwellyn. Its a rant and his own view but its interesting to note, like I have done up till now, Robert bundles the iplayer into one. Yes and that is the vision but has also wound people up royally. So to explicit here, when I say iplayer is a mess and I'm sure when most people say they hate the iplayer, its not because of the system behind it or the interface or the delivery system or even the quality of the video. No its all down to the DRM. The DRM is so attached to the iplayer, and because of it over 2mins of Roberts rant was about DRM in iplayer.

The iplayer team have worked damm hard on a good solid product/service and are hearing lots of negative comments about the iplayer when actually people mean the DRM. However, because the whole service is robustly built, I'm sure it will out live its current form and who knows whats around the corner?

Right to address, if I should be talking on my blog about this stuff. This seems to rub a lot of people up the wrong way., some seem to think I might be bigging myself up at the expense of the BBC. Well I'm not and I'm not going to let you guys bring me down. I love working at the BBC and love my job, its ground breaking and I go places and speak to people most never get a chance. So, I want to make meaning and I believe the BBC is capable of moving into the next curve with its unique funding model. Unlike Jason, I think its unique public funding model will be an advantage over the advertising or subscription models. Oh at the same time can I make it clear I was disagreeing with what Jason was blogging about. So why write anything at all? Its the Cluetrain effect. Things have changed. Take a look at the difference between the Newswatch and the editors blog. Its not so much about the layout but more the conversation or voice. So rather than talk any more, here's a few Cluetrains which sum up what I'm getting at.

#3 – Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
#10 – As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.
#12 – There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.
#14 – Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.

#34 – To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns of their communities.

Some good examples, Wikipedia entry on the iplayer, Imp's ultimate review of the iplayer, E-petition and Currybet's first 14 days.

So at the end of day, iPlayer is just the start (and in beta), over the next few months you will see a BBC which will silence its critics and launch a range of services which will impress. Transparency and conversation is important and it will take time for everyone to adjust but with time… BBC 2.0 it will happen. Look at projects like Backstage, Innovation Labs, TV Backstage, BBC Blogs, etc… to get a feel of the changes starting to happen.

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Full write up on the wealth of netwoks conference

The Wealth of Networks

I wrote my notes up here on Backstage.

The TTI Vanguard is one of those groups who run conferences you hear about but never get the chance to attend. In actually fact it might be membership or invite only like the Churchill Club. The people who attend and speak at the conferences are simply leaders in their fields and make a special effort to make such conferences. Boston plays host to the wealth of networks conference which includes great speakers such as Dr. Eric Miller (Zepheira), Clay Shirky, Dr. Henry Tirri (Nokia), Nicholas Carr, David Prior (general dynamics uk), Andrew McAfee (Havard) and Yochai Benkler who actually recently wrote a book which influenced the whole conference.

Read the rest here

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