Re: [Fsfe-uk] BBC News partnership with Microsoft

[Ian Lynch]

On Fri, 2006-09-29 at 13:30 +0100, Jon Grant wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> [...]
> > The BBC have got a media player for playing recently-broadcast
> > programmes, but unfortunately because of the way the programmes are then
> > passed over to BBC Worldwide to be "commercialised", the player is
> > DRM'ed to the hilt and actively destroys downloaded media after 7 days,
> > from what I've heard. I don't know which compression algorithms they're
> > using in the player, it /could/ be Dirac...
> 
> Sadly it was using WMP, and it didn't seem to be p2p in the end either. They
> did a deal with another company to provide the service, I forget which. The
> time limit was apparently coded in local JavaScript BTW!
> 
> Re-Dirac, they only had reference implementations last time I looked,
> and we need more than 2fps for it to be usable. They should re-write the
> codec in optimal C and have an option for multi-threaded decode. The BBC
> research guys said it was intended for HD content, so maybe something
> post-FreeView in 2015 or so.. I speculate...

Maybe scope to report them to the Office of Fair Trading if it can be
shown MS and BBC are colluding to block competition from the market. eg
Ogg format players or whatever. It could at least put pressure on to
force them to support technologies other than their own.


> Cheers
> Jon
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Fsfe-uk mailing list
> address@hidden
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-uk
Ian
-- 
www.theINGOTS.org
www.schoolforge.org.uk
www.opendocumentfellowship.org