News - BBC plans to charge for watching archived iPlayer content

[shaithis]

This does irk me.

As others have said.....we have already paid for it!! I always expected iPlayer to archive.....but a few times recently I've decided to watch stuff I had missed from the beginning (Dr Who, Torchwood, Shameless)......connect to iPlayer, search, nothing found.....

It seems the unique way the BBC is funded means we can pay for a series to be made and aired but we then have to pay for it again if we want to watch it streamed or on physical media (DVD, BluRay etc)

[Biscuit]

iPlayer doesn't produce content either, it delivers produced-for-broadcast TV after broadcasting.. And I think the fact that if even the simpletons who use Youtube can figure out how to upload a video, I'm pretty sure 'professional' admins can handle it as well.

The BBC and iPlayer are part of the same entity, youtube is simply not the same. The analogy doesnt work... simple as that. Comparing it to 4od as a service would be more apt, they manage to keep archived footage permanently online however in the most part, its not as widely appealing as BBC material is so their viewing figures are probably a lot easier to manage.

Pretty easy when you have stacks of made-for-TV content ready to upload.

The BBC doesn't have stacks of material ready to upload, it has stacks of material stored in a near lossless format (probably between 25Mbps for low end SD upto 250Mbps for really high end HD) which would need to be transcoded down to between 0.5-5Mbps then stored again in another location. Im not even convinced they have finished digitally archiving everything dating back to the beginning of the BBC yet. But just for a second... think about how much that actually is. Youtube doesnt keep higher res copies of anything, all they have is the low bit-rate, over compressed material that you see.

That's actually very recent. For the longest time they were merely operating with the investment capital they had, and other such deals.

Surely Youtube was created and funded by investors with the plan that it would move into a profit making organization. The fact that it was bought out and has now made that transition by advertising is the only important factor, it's pretty unlikely it would have continued as a service without it so YouTube's history is pretty much irrelevant.

That's a bit harsh now isn't it? The range of quality of video is as vast as the quantity of video on it.

All true. However Youtube still pumps much more video to much more people. That's raw data which has to be handled by machines, which you say is a challenge for iPlayer, my pointing out that Youtube does much more for much more nullifies the hardware complexity angle of streaming video.

And scaling it up to an entire planet is impossible, right?

No but its difficult. Even on youtube, when a popular uploader uploads a new video, he/she usually posts to twitter and then the volume of people means that you struggle to stream it smoothly. You occasionally get the same issue on iPlayer with shows like Top-Gear however the BBC (rightly so) have a lot more pressure on their backs to prevent such things happening than youtube do. Added to which, as i mentioned and you agreed with(i think), the issue with iplayer is that its people simultaneously accessing the same material at the same time creates a massive amount requires a massive amount of bandwidth and processing from the begging to the end of the distribution chain. The scaling issue when you take this worldwide is a pretty big task in my opinion.

It just has to have a working tuner, connected or otherwise. It's a tax.

Thats strange because through university i had a TV but only used it for DVDs/Playstation and the License guys said that was fine and stopped sending me letters. My friends living in Chorlton, up until recently, didn't have a TV license and they let the guy into their house to inspect, and he had no problem with them owning a TV that was only connected to games consoles and a DVD player.

The problem with streaming to a bunch of mates is crap broadband service, not technological.

Quite easily. It's a content delivery model for 100 year old technology.

Not if it's packaged right. New doesn't have to mean complex. People's heads didn't explode with the transition to DVB-T, did they? BT Vision already offers a service of this nature.

How is a crap broadband service not a technological issue? Your reading too much into the analogy. What im trying to get across is that the actual costs of running their dedicated high speed lines are astronomical and the amount of storage and processing that needs to be running is not your average IT server farm, its a lot lot more than that.
The british telecom infrastructure is nowhere near ready for a transition into IPTV as a replacement for over the air carrier based TV. Most people dont have internet speeds fast enough and even if they do, most will be crippled by FUP or monthly caps. This isnt an issue when watching the occational catchup show but its totally different when running your entire entertainment stream over IP.
Heads explode? No but it took more than the originally planned time to make the transition from analogue to digital, a lot more! Hell my gran will probably still be switching back to the analogue channels right up till the moment all she is presented with is static!

As I often do as well. bbc.co.uk/news makes BBC News (the channel) redundant.

For me and you yeah i guess it does, other people, for example my parents, who are far from technologically dumb, like to watch the news and i dont see whats wrong with that or why they should be forced into anything else.
Point being you might not like it and it might not work for you, but it still works, i like it and as do a lot of other people. Deal with it.

Regardless, like i said before i still dont think we should pay for it. I just get really irked when people bang on about the license fee like its a rip off and when people go on about BBC services like they have any clue how much money actually goes into/is required to make it.

[BlauLicht]

so why do we still pay for a tv license bbc are some gready gits like not even funny they had that idea

[crossy]

I will agree that there are better options for the news on the internet but even then i will go to the Beeb. Yes there is alternative non-biased options however their main prerogative seems to be proving how biased traditional news reporters are.

Same here - first port of call is Hexus for tech news with the Beeb online being first for everything else. I've often thought about one of those news aggregators, but I've not found one so far to suit me.

Thanks for the tip, but I've already seen Fox and Sky and for the reasons you mentioned, I don't watch them. When the BBC strike was on, there were fresh-faced people happy to cover for the likes of Huw Edwards for a fraction of the cost doing the same job if not better.

Ah right, I'd picked you up wrong. So corrected, I'd agree wholeheartedly that we could really do with seeing some new blood in for the late night news - although I suppose I could always start watching BBC News 24. Actually now I think about it, the local news seem to fixate on one chosen "star" too. PS: Huw Edwards really annoys me - it's not some anti-Welsh thing, I just find him pompous and patronising.

so why do we still pay for a tv license bbc are some gready gits like not even funny they had that idea

Hmm, I said the same earlier. Here's a question - how difficult would it be for the Beeb to restrict access to iPlayer to the UK only (as far as I'm aware it's currently globally available). Once that's in place then surely it'd be possible to impose some kind of subscription for non-UK subscribers, UK subscribers who were out of the country (on holidays perhaps) could use their TV license number in lieu of the subscription (because they'd already paid for a subscription). Surely that'd get some revenue, and if they wanted to increase the current subscription by a fiver to cover some of the shortfall then fine by me.

At what point is someone going to dig up that old "Not The Nine O'Clock News" sketch ... you know this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lzS8yW8INA? Over 30 years old and still relevant today...

[Biscuit]

Hmm, I said the same earlier. Here's a question - how difficult would it be for the Beeb to restrict access to iPlayer to the UK only (as far as I'm aware it's currently globally available). Once that's in place then surely it'd be possible to impose some kind of subscription for non-UK subscribers, UK subscribers who were out of the country (on holidays perhaps) could use their TV license number in lieu of the subscription (because they'd already paid for a subscription). Surely that'd get some revenue, and if they wanted to increase the current subscription by a fiver to cover some of the shortfall then fine by me.

They already do, iPlayer is only available to UK based IP addresses.

[BlauLicht]

tbh we should pay a tv license anymoar its only the bbc like, how many of us watch that like most of the time i gaming on my 360 or pc like so i hardly watch tv and wen i do its normlly sky+ anyway so i skip the adds. they should just cancel tv licenses and play adds on bbc then they can charge for iplayer, waste of money i personally think

[Biscuit]

tbh we should pay a tv license anymoar its only the bbc like, how many of us watch that like most of the time i gaming on my 360 or pc like so i hardly watch tv and wen i do its normlly sky+ anyway so i skip the adds. they should just cancel tv licenses and play adds on bbc then they can charge for iplayer, waste of money i personally think

I watch BBC TV quite a lot, I listen to BBC radio when im in the car, I read the news on the internet. I dont have sky at all, let alone sky + and i see no reason why i should.

Do my and the millions of others who actually like and enjoy what the BBC provides for this country requirements, desires and pleasures not matter?

[BlauLicht]

I watch BBC TV quite a lot, I listen to BBC radio when im in the car, I read the news on the internet. I dont have sky at all, let alone sky + and i see no reason why i should.

Do my and the millions of others who actually like and enjoy what the BBC provides for this country requirements, desires and pleasures not matter?

suppose that on living styles i guess, i prefeer cds in the car, currently listening to the gta radio stations loli no ironic, anyway only reall reason i use bbc is for news on the net and actualy on my htc i got the news up on my front page, but still i recon they should scrap tv licenses n just lay tv adds, it wont make much of a difference, we still watch top gear on dave dont we lol.

but to sum up i guess its personal preference and choice of lifestyle as we have to different styles of media influence, if u know what i mean

[Biscuit]

But when you bring in advertisement and sponsorship it means the news and content will often be created with a heavy bias towards that of the sponsor. So many things would change about media in this country if we got rid of the BBC and im sorry if this comes across a bit insulting but you, along with all the other people moaning about the few quid a month it costs us seem to have no understanding of it at all.

[BlauLicht]

never said get rid of the bbc just the concept of paying em, they should get their money through other means, i dont mean to insult anyone like

[Biscuit]

But what other means? The only other option really is subscription and advertisement which it seems come hand in hand

[BlauLicht]

But what other means? The only other option really is subscription and advertisement which it seems come hand in hand

by that logic it would mean that as soon as they start charging for iplayer that they should start advertise.

ps dont mean to b so confronting like bout this so sorry if i offend u

[Biscuit]

You dont mate seriously, i was apologising if I was coming across that way!

To be able to fund the extra grunt needed to make iPlayer viable worldwide, i think their plan is to start putting advertisements on, the same way that if you got to the BBC news website from somewhere outside the UK, there is advertisements plastered all over it. Its a weird experience seeing it if you haven't already seen it.
I see what you mean about my logic but i think the way the BBC see it is they are offering a subscription to view archived footage, i think (as yet another analogy) they see it more as you are renting the DVD, if that makes sense? This doesnt have an impact of any of the other BBC online (or otherwise) services.

[BlauLicht]

You dont mate seriously, i was apologising if I was coming across that way!

To be able to fund the extra grunt needed to make iPlayer viable worldwide, i think their plan is to start putting advertisements on, the same way that if you got to the BBC news website from somewhere outside the UK, there is advertisements plastered all over it. Its a weird experience seeing it if you haven't already seen it.
I see what you mean about my logic but i think the way the BBC see it is they are offering a subscription to view archived footage, i think (as yet another analogy) they see it more as you are renting the DVD, if that makes sense? This doesnt have an impact of any of the other BBC online (or otherwise) services.

yep makes sense, i c what u mean, im just against this whole tv license cause its only beneficial to bbc nd not other channles being broadcasted in the uk nd tv adverts really piss me of lol hence why i sky plus everything i watch

[Biscuit]

Well with the exception of channel 4 which i think does still have some ties to the licence fee (although I'm happy to be corrected) for certain parts of its content creation, other channels are completely independent and pay for everything using the money brought in by advertisements. I'm totally with you on the adverts side of things, hence why I don't watch much TV myself and I tend to watch box sets of series instead however without the BBC, I suspect the situation with advertisements on other channels, including Sky ones, would become a lot more Americanised to the point were there is more adverts than actual television.
Another thing to fear is the infomercial. In this country we have channels specifically for it (QVC and the like are basically that) but in america they throw them in in between shows... i REALLY don't want this but im pretty sure it would happen!

[BlauLicht]

Well with the exception of channel 4 which i think does still have some ties to the licence fee (although I'm happy to be corrected) for certain parts of its content creation, other channels are completely independent and pay for everything using the money brought in by advertisements. I'm totally with you on the adverts side of things, hence why I don't watch much TV myself and I tend to watch box sets of series instead however without the BBC, I suspect the situation with advertisements on other channels, including Sky ones, would become a lot more Americanised to the point were there is more adverts than actual television.
Another thing to fear is the infomercial. In this country we have channels specifically for it (QVC and the like are basically that) but in america they throw them in in between shows... i REALLY don't want this but im pretty sure it would happen!

yeah i c where ya coming from i have seen american tv nd its littered in advertising but i swear they have shorter but moar frequent breaks making tv less boring not sure nd is it me or does american tv look like its been shot 20 ys ago cause it just looks old fashioned