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BBC to Trial Worldwide Multicast Streaming? 259

Posted by simoniker from the please-yes-please dept.
An anonymous reader writes "There are tantalizing hints, via The Inquirer, and other tech news sites, that the BBC may extend its multicast streaming services to non-UK citizens, for material where rights allows. There's details about how ISPs may peer to join the multicast trial network on an official BBC page." We previously covered the BBC's multicast streaming of the Olympics, unfortunately not available in the U.S.
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BBC to Trial Worldwide Multicast Streaming? More

BBC to Trial Worldwide Multicast Streaming?

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  • In the age of the internet... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AnotherFreakboy ( 730662 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @12:41AM (#10009359)
    In the age of the internet dividing rights up based on geographical regions makes little sense (if any). A more interesting idea, and potentially a big money earner would be to divide rights up based on target demographics. Not sure how well this could be done in practice, but I freel the idea has potential.

    • Re:In the age of the internet... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mat catastrophe ( 105256 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @01:09AM (#10009475) Homepage

      Oh, it makes sense all right. What it does not make is a good argument for even *having* an internet.

      Ten years ago, we'd have all shit ourselves to get streaming video from overseas or the ability to send it overseas. Now, we have so much corporate nonsense in the pipes that almost all meaningful content is restricted by this kind of crap.

      Yes, I know, I'm being unrealistic to what's going on in the Real World. But, then again, wasn't the Internet supposed to change the Real World?

      Instead, the World is now changing the Net. And not for the better.

      • Re:In the age of the internet... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by John Seminal ( 698722 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @01:25AM (#10009535) Journal
        Ten years ago, we'd have all shit ourselves to get streaming video from overseas or the ability to send it overseas. Now, we have so much corporate nonsense in the pipes that almost all meaningful content is restricted by this kind of crap.

        I remember when the net first went up and there was so much quality information. There still is. Problem is now if you try and do a search on any search engine with any word that could be a commercial term, it comes back with page after page of stores and re-directs. I try and limit searches to "site:edu" to try and eliminate that kind of crap, and hope someone with a university account has what i am looking for (which is often the case). I worry the internet will become so flooded with useless "middlemen" offering re-directs to stores and bullcrap, that it will become too much work trying to find usefull information. For example, I was trying to find a website that listed the reputation of used computer/parts stores in a certain area. I got everyone and their pet monkey trying to redirect me to a sales website outside my area. It is as bad as spam, and might be the next battleground. The search engines will have to become more intelligent and eliminate these worthless hits.

        I remember reading before the internet that France had some internet for their country. It was much like our gopher system in the early days of the internet. But everyone was identifiable, and they could remove useless content. I think I remember reading it is still popular and is in use. I wish I could remember the name of it.

        • Re:In the age of the internet... (Score:5, Informative)

          by Paul Jakma ( 2677 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @01:44AM (#10009610) Homepage Journal
          I remember reading before the internet that France had some internet for their country. It was much like our gopher system in the early days of the internet. But everyone was identifiable, and they could remove useless content. I think I remember reading it is still popular and is in use. I wish I could remember the name of it.

          minitel [minitel.fr]

        • Re:In the age of the internet... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Thursday August 19, 2004 @01:53AM (#10009647) Homepage Journal

          The internet paradox goes something like this: In the beginning it was more or less all useful information but you couldn't find it because there were no search engines, no spiders. Of course we all wanted it to grow, because it would bring such things. Now there's dramatically more useful information and tons of search engines but you still can't find it because there's so much crap around, because it grew.

          So basically, the basic facts of the internet have not changed - you have to know where to look in order to find things. It's the way we look that's different, and instead of bouncing from site to site we tease and cajole search engines until they produce the desired result. Actually the most effective strategy seems to be somewhere in between the two; I find a site that almost has what I want, pick up some new search terms that will help me, and run another search; lather, rinse, repeat.

        • You could search [google.com] other nations universities too, not just American

    • divide rights up based on target demographics

      This is a outcome of a functioning open market anyway. The Wall Street Journal online gets the financial types reading news. Slashdot gets us geek types, and The Onion gets everyone else... ;)

      • Re:In the age of the internet... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by halowolf ( 692775 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @01:51AM (#10009635)
        What must be remembered is that dividing broadcast rights up in this manner is the "traditional" way of managing such things. The content owners are used to being able to sell the rights to broadcast again and again to different countries to make as much money as possible.

        The age of the internet did blow all this out of the water with its ability to deliver information to anyone that wanted it nomatter where they are. What we are seeing now is content owners trying to reign in this free for all to get the value that they want out of their content, the value that they are "used" to getting.

        As always they try to do this after we the consumers have become used to getting what we want, when we want it, from who we want, from where we want. Of course these different ways of doing things are going to clash, from the consumers believing they are being ripped off and from the content owners thinking they are not getting the value out of their content that they deserve.

    • Uhh, what about the British taxpayer? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mosel-saar-ruwer ( 732341 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @01:56AM (#10009661)

      In the age of the internet dividing rights up based on geographical regions makes little sense (if any).

      In the age of the great Brusselian monolith devouring [formerly] free and independent states, I know it ain't exactly the fashionable point to make, but that BBC thang is [at least ostensibly] owned by [and operated for the pleasure of] the tax-paying British citizenry.

      If they don't want us to see it, well, they're the ones paying fer it.

      • Nationality is a demographic. However it is not the only one.

        If any other demographic were to put together the money to fund an information source exclusively for their use the legal and organisational structures would not be there to support it.

        There is no reason why Slashdot (assuming they wanted to) should not be able to buy the geek rights to the olympics, in much the same way the BBC has bought the British rights to the Olympics. No reason except for inertia on the part of the governing bodies of the

      • Re:Uhh, what about the British taxpayer? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        If they don't want us to see it, well, they're the ones paying fer it.

        I don't think many of us mind really - the BBC has always had an additional duty: to spread awareness of Britain, British viewpoints and British interests abroad. The whole BBC online thing does this excellently IMO.
      • > If they don't want us to see it, well, they're the ones paying fer it.
        On the other hand, nobody is forcing them to put it on the net. The 'raw' internet was designed for making information available to anyone, anywhere. If they want the information to be restricted to only a particular group, they should give them accounts and only let registered users in. Of course, the hard part is making sure each citizen gets his or her account - and doesn't simply post the username and password for public use.
        So

      • You should read it BTW, it's a right laugh.

        The very first object of the charter of the BBC is:

        "To provide, as public services, sound and television broadcasting services (whether by analogue or digital means) and to provide sound and television programmes of information, education and entertainment for general reception in Our United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man and the territorial waters thereof, and on board ships and aircraft (such services b

    • In the age of the internet dividing rights up based on geographical regions makes little sense (if any).

      Umm, do you know who pays for the BBC? The British taxpayer, that's who. Nothing it ever free, someone always pays somewhere. Why do you think that the overtaxed Brits should pay for your media?

    • Re:In the age of the internet... (Score:4, Informative)

      by tyndyll ( 653821 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @04:33AM (#10010212)
      ...we are governed by older organisations.

      The Register reported on this previously. The limitations on access is not put in place by the BBC but rather by Olympic Committee regulations [theregister.co.uk]. The BBC is pretty good about its content [slashdot.org] and is probably more interested in internet technologies [slashdot.org] than most...

    • I never quite understood the whole broadcast rights thing. Lets say you want to watch the badminton, because you're a fan of the sport. The BBC is showing it, but you live in the US, and NBC are only showing the basketball and athletics. Why shouldn't you be able to tune into the BBC feed to watch something that your home broadcaster is not showing?

      Broadcast rights seem to be about nothing except controlling which sports people can watch. How does that benefit anyone?

    • It does when the company providing the content is funded by the inhabitants of a specific country :)

  • non U.K. citizens? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "non U.K. citizens" .. so they check yo passport/citizenship papers in addition to your geographical location?

    Damn that totally sucks.

    Wish we had one world.

  • embrace this decision (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pvt_medic ( 715692 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @12:45AM (#10009383)
    I look forward to any possibility of getting bbc programing here in the states. I think they have excelent programing, and only wish we could get the same quality for what i pay for cable.
    • I'm really tired of people like you telling others what is and is not quality programming. [reason.com] I happen to enjoy watching many programs on the History Channel, TLC, Discovery, ESPN, AMC, Bravo (well, actually NBC aired "The West Wing", Bravo just plays old episodes I missed), and NESN (gotta watch the Red Sox) and believe they are quality programs. HBO occasionally produces some excellent movies though I have to rent or purchase them since I don't get HBO or the other movie channels. I wound up buying "Band

      • Re:embrace this decision (Score:5, Informative)

        by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @01:29AM (#10009550) Journal
        FYI, Band Of Brothers was co-produced by the BBC in partnership with HBO. So that's partially a British product too.

        In fact, the series was shot in Britain and much of the cast, including Damian Lewis who played Maj. Richard D. Winters, are British actors.
      • Look, there are ALWAYS going to be exceptions. But lets look at a couple things. First, we have VASTLY more channels than the BBC does (I'm not counting Sky). Now, the amount of crap per channel that we have when compared to the BBC is absolutely astronomical. Yeah, Big Brother is horrible reality tv at its worst, but over here in America, we are subjected to god knows how many reincarnations of the same reality tv.

        So, while I agree there are certainly some quality programs here in the states, if you lo

        • The BBC doesn't show Big Brother.. in fact, AFAIK they're not guilty of any "reality shows" except perhaps the occasional *choke* "Fly-on-the-wall-docusoap" as I believe the trendy media types like to call them
          • Well, my only experience with the BBC tv is from when I stayed in England for 4 weeks this summer, and as I recall Big Brother was on BBC 4. Is that considered part of the BBC?

            • No, Big Brother airs on 'Channel 4' and its sister satelite channel E4, both part of the Independant Television Network which is advert funded. BBC has BBC1, BBC2, BBC News 24, BBC3 and some others and doesnt advertise anything other than its own products.

            • No, Big Brother is shown on Channel 4.

              In the UK there are five so-called terrestrial channels (old analogue broacasts available via an aerial), they are: BBC 1, BBC 2, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5.

              You can also get something called a FreeView settop box which allows access to digital broadcasts via your aerial, and this gives you many other channels, such as BBC 3 (more light entertainment), BBC 4 (documentaries and more high-brow films -- BTW, this is proving to be an excellent dip in-out channel), and lot

          • Fame Academy.
    • A lot of the best BBC programming (together with other top-notch British television output) can be had in the US on BBC America.

      I'm not sure but I believe that the channel is carried by DirecTV and most cable companies. I'm sure you could find out easily yourself if your local cable operator is one of those.

    • Re:embrace this decision (Score:4, Informative)

      by DeepRedux ( 601768 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @01:37AM (#10009579)
      Many cable systems carry BBC America [bbcamerica.com]. It carries only BBC programming, but it is not the same as any actual BBC channel in Britain. It is missing some popular BBC programs. For instance, it does not carry EastEnders because "70 per cent of BBC America's viewers switched off when EastEnders came on". [bbcamerica.com]

      • Re:embrace this decision (Score:4, Informative)

        by Fred Or Alive ( 738779 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @03:31AM (#10010026)

        It carries only BBC programming,

        Well, apart from the odd Channel 4 [channel4.com] (Faking It, Father Ted) and ITV [itv.com] programmes (Prime Suspect, 60s stuff like The Avengers, The Saint and The Prisoner) as well. Although it's mostly BBC programming.

        It's a bit suprising how badly EastEnders does in the US though, considering it's the highest rated show on BBC One...

    • It seems like this would undermine one of the BBC's revenue streams. Don't they sell they programmes to companies like PBS? MI5 (a.k.a. Spooks) was on A&E. And of course they have commercial departments like BBC America and BBC Canada.
    • This is the answer [uknova.com]. Well, if you have broadband anyway.
    • Hi,

      You can get Newsnight, broadcast every week day. It's a very different take on world news than you will get from CNN/Fox/ABC.

      http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/ de fault.stm

      During the 9-11 attacks the BBC managed to keep a live video stream running the whole time, and keep their news site up. The only other news site I saw that stayed up was slashdot.

  • In the UK, "free to air TV" is not free:

    http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/

    • Re:Who'll pay? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @01:43AM (#10009606) Journal
      In the UK, you don't have to have annoying ads breaking up your programming. Imagine watching Star Trek, Farscape, The Simpsons, Buffy, Angel, The Office, sports or even just the news without any commercial breaks whatsoever. The BBC lets you do that.

      The average hour of American TV has almost 20 minutes of advertising. If you watch just 1 hour of TC a day, that's over 2 hours of ads per week. Now, the TV licence here in the UK costs me about 2 pounds a week, which is around $3 US. Wouldn't you pay $3 for 2 extra hours of your life back?

      Whichever way you look at it, the BBC is excellent value for money. Six TV channels, about a dozen national radio stations, arguably the world's best newsgathering organisation, one of the best websites on the web, etc.

      • Re:Who'll pay? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Malc ( 1751 )
        The magnitude of advertising in N. America becomes quite apparent when you watch the same shows in the UK. Star Trek TNG took an hour timeslot in N. America... running time on BBC2 was under 45 minutes. I guess that's one of the reasons why TV programmes start at odd times in the UK rather than at 00 and 30 mins past the hour.

        • Re:Who'll pay? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Looke ( 260398 )
          Yeah, one hour of "24" is 45 minutes in Norway :) It's more fun to watch David Letterman as well: "We'll be right back" ... logos and jingles ... fades to black, and back again!

      • Re:Who'll pay? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by FireFury03 ( 653718 ) <slashdot.nexusuk@org> on Thursday August 19, 2004 @03:41AM (#10010063) Homepage
        In the UK, you don't have to have annoying ads breaking up your programming. Imagine watching Star Trek, Farscape, The Simpsons, Buffy, Angel, The Office, sports or even just the news without any commercial breaks whatsoever. The BBC lets you do that.

        Err, no it doesn't - The beeb don't show any new Star Trek series (Channel 4 show Enterprise), nor do they show Farscape or The Simpsons anymore, they have never shown Angel (Channel 4 showed that) and any imported shows like Buffy are always a year behind because the beeb only show the reruns, not the premiers.

        Whilest I love the fact that the beeb are at the forefront of a number of very interesting technologies, their programming is absolute crap these days. Whilest they do have the occasional interesting documentary I haven't seen a good weekly science programme on the beeb since they cancelled Tomorrows World (whilest claiming they would be replacing it with similar science content that never appeared). And the last good comedy that came out of the BBC was Red Dwarf VI, which was *years* ago. (Sorry, The Office just makes me cringe).

        Rather than being forced to pay the TV licence I would prefer to have the option to pay a licence for the services I do use (the online content) and be able to buy the occasional BBC show that's worth watching on a pay-per-view basis. Over 120ukp a year is just too much money when a large chunk of it is paying for content that I'm not interested in which panders to the masses (no, oddly enough I'm not interested in hours and hours of football or "Fama Acadamy" just because 99% of the population seems to be interested in them - isn't the whole point of the beeb to provide content which _doesn't_ pander to the masses, i.e. stuff that's not feasable for commercial channels to produce?).

        The most worthwhile programmes I've seen on the BBC over the past few years are the survival programmes by Ray Mears, which are absolutely excellent but there aren't that many episodes.
        • Elsewhere in Europe the license costs more but you still get ads, albeit not so much on the public channels. The license is still compulsory whether or not you whatch the private channels. ACtually somof the better BBC content makes it offshore, but is dubbed into the local language though.

      • Re:Who'll pay? (Score:3, Informative)

        by rleyton ( 14248 )
        In the UK, you don't have to have annoying ads breaking up your programming

        Not true. Well, sorta not true. On the BBC it's certainly true we have no commercial breaks within programmes, but the Beeb has an increasingly annoying habit of trailing it's own programmess as if they were adverts. About the only way it can get an audience sometimes for some of it's offerings (anybody remember the BBC Tivo hoo-ha a year or two ago?). It's still miles better than the commercial channels (of which we have ITV, Ch

      • Re:Who'll pay? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by BenjyD ( 316700 )
        Interesting that only one program in your list is UK created and most of the rest either aren't on or never were on BBC.

        A few years ago I would have agreed with your point. But as the BBC has shown itself completely unable to produce much quality drama, documentaries or comedy for a long time, something needs to be done to shake up the BBC.
        They're still showing reruns of Only Fools and Horses from 20 years ago. The only decent drama they've done in recent memory was the one with Bill Nighey as the newspape

  • A lame substitute. (Score:5, Funny)

    by iamdrscience ( 541136 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @12:49AM (#10009400) Homepage
    Why would I bother watching olympic gymnastics on the BBC site when for only $9.95 per month I can watch naked gymnasts in streaming video with some uhh... "special moves" that the olympic committees frown upon.

  • Oooh... (Score:5, Funny)

    by iamdrscience ( 541136 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @12:52AM (#10009420) Homepage
    I would kill for BBC olympic coverage. I just cannot stand watching Bob Costas for one moment longer. For God's sake NBC, get another sports anchor!

    I don't have anything against the guy, I think he's fine, but when he's doing 80% of the coverage himself it starts to make my head swell.
    • The irony of this entire concept being that if the online coverage is anything like the BBC1/2 TV coverage, you will see nothing but totally biased coverage of british athletes. This isn't a bad thing, I know coverage in Oz, USA, etc media is just as bad, but why anyone else would want to watch it I don't know.

      Of course, if you can actually choose what to watch (yes, I haven't RTA'd), then this a great thing.

  • huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by John Seminal ( 698722 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @12:54AM (#10009425) Journal
    To be able to watch the Games online, you need to live in the UK and have a broadband connection at home.

    What is to stop someone from using a proxy from the UK? If porn can't stop proxies, what makes BBC think they can? LOL.

    With BBC Sport providing more than 1,200 hours of coverage on the web, you can make sure you do not miss out on your favourite events from the world's biggest sporting extravaganza.

    I am just tossing out this thought. Most countries sign a "cease hostilities" agreement paper for the duration of the olympics. How about if corporations also validated the purity of what the olypics are and not limit coverage by advertising or broadcasting rights. 1200 hours is alot. If NBC thinks basketball will have a large viewing audiance, then black that out. But why black out everything from the internet?

    • Re:huh? (Score:5, Informative)

      by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @01:27AM (#10009547) Journal
      What is to stop someone from using a proxy from the UK?

      I guess you've answered your own question... sorta.

      Nothing is there to stop someone from using a proxy - but there's plenty in place to keep people from using proxies. If you spend 6 hours at it, you *might* find an anonymous proxy that doesn't include headers that the great folks at the BBC could recognize to find that you are in the good old "bastion of freedom" US of A.

      But is that going to happen en masse?

      Definitely not.

      So, what will stop SOMEBODY? Nothing. Will it stop most people?

      Yep.

      For example, most proxies add additional headers to indicate who they're proxying for. For example, X-forwarded-for [squid-cache.org]

      So, in most cases, it's not too difficult to tell that: 1) You are using a proxy, and 2) You aren't in Great Britain.

      As Scott McNealy said, so eloquently: You already have zero privacy. Get over it. [unreasonableman.net]

    • What is to stop someone from using a proxy from the UK? If porn can't stop proxies, what makes BBC think they can? LOL.

      The proxy would have to be on one of the ISPs that the beeb peer with - they only offer "broadband" content to ISPs that peer with them, everyone else is stuck with "narrowband" (48Kbps) stuff. (Which you can kinda understand - the BBC were predicting that the online Olympic content would suck up over 10Gbps of their bandwidth)

  • Ironic that this is being discussed now... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Kris_J ( 10111 ) * on Thursday August 19, 2004 @12:55AM (#10009434) Homepage Journal
    ...given that rights related to the Olympics has shut down the BBC's normal international news feed, as well as Oz's ABC and a Canadian stream I found recently. In fact, the rights surrounding the Olympics is do draconian that I'm not sure I'm even allowed to make a post on Slashdot with the word "Olympics" in it.

  • Re: WTF is multicast?!?!? (Score:5, Informative)

    by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @01:11AM (#10009482) Journal
    You can find out about what multicast is and what it means by checking out this Cisco page [cisco.com] that explains what it actually is.

    As always, Google is your friend...

  • How are they going to get the funding for this? I realize that the BBC is funded by the British government but there must be some limits.

    • Re:funding (Score:3, Interesting)

      by newandyh-r ( 724533 )
      The BBC is funded mainly by licence payers, not be general taxation ("the government"). It also gets some income from commercial activities. This is a bit "nit-picking" as the licence comes close to being a poll-tax.
    • The BBC does ro at least did receive some support from the Foreign Office for the BBC World Service (not BBC World, which is commercially funded). This is just Radio and available around much of the world and translated into many languages.

  • Not available in the US. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 19, 2004 @01:33AM (#10009569)
    Do I see a pattern here?

    Streaming internet video,
    ---not available in the US.

    Free-to-Air DVB satellite
    ---not available in the US

    Cheap Broadband
    ---not available in the US

    DMCA chip free inkjet cartridges
    ---not available in the US

    Region code free DVD players
    ---not available in the US

    Looks like Asia and Europe are quickly becoming the new lands of the free. Funny how all we hear about in the US is how oppressive it is outside our heavily guarded borders.

    • Re:Not available in the US. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by AnotherFreakboy ( 730662 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @02:07AM (#10009702)
      Reminds me of the Empire from Interesting Times, by Terry Pratchett.

      They built a big wall around their empire, even along the ocean shores, and told everyone on the inside that it was for their protection, and that they would surely be killed by ravening hoards of barbarians if ever they left the safety of the wall.

      In the end, the Empire had done such a good job of brainwashing its citizens, that no-one bothered to question the continuing need for the wall.

      Of course the hoardes had never existed to begin with. The wall had always been about stopping the citizens from considering the possibility of leaving the Empire.
    • On the opposite:

      iTunes Music Store
      -- Only available in the US

      Can't think of much else though...

      • Re:Not available in the US. (Score:5, Informative)

        by Fred Or Alive ( 738779 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @02:25AM (#10009770)
        iTunes Music Store has been availible in the UK, France and Germany for bit now.

        In Europe we generally seem to get video games last (or never) as well though.
        • In Europe we generally seem to get video games last (or never) as well though

          For console games that's generally because doing a PAL conversion of an NTSC game is a non-trivial undertaking. On PS2, the PAL framebuffer is higher resolution so it needs more GS memory, and the framerate is different which causes many subtle issues, eg control feeling.

    • Europe "the land of the free"?

      - We're getting our own version of the DMCA.

      - HDTV? What's that?

      - Electronics cost 30-50% more than in the US.

      - TiVo? No chance, due to noncooperation from TV stations (who abuse copyright to protect revenues from selling programming information).

      Let's face it, we're all in the same boat.
    • That's just what it's like when you get media from other countries. You find out that sometimes the best X is somewhere else. We in small countries are quite aware that occasionally the best X is in our own country; but more often than not the best X is in Norway, or Switzerland, or the USA, or somewhere else.

      Welcome to the world.

  • leapfrog (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @02:07AM (#10009700) Homepage Journal
    For centuries Americans have laughed at "backwards" Europeans, so bogged down in the trap of monarchy that they couldn't even keep up with American innovations. Halfway along, Americans invented the corporation, an innovation as convenient in managing people in our economy as it is constraining. Are Americans doomed to watch Europeans move past us, working past our corporatism, building on its successes for new heights of human achievement, as we surpassed our monarchial predecessors?
    • What does BBC stand for.

      British ---- Broadcasting ----- Corpor..... uh oh!
    • What's the name of a politcal system where the main qualification of the head of state is that he is the son of the previous head of state ?
    • Backwards Europeans? Europe started the industrial revolution, and was responsible for the first cars, powered flight, iron ships, iron bridges, steam engines, typewriters, trains, radio, light bulb, tv, phone, computers and about a million other things. I'm not saying America hasn't invented its fair share, too, but please don't call Europe backwards. Without Europe, you'd be sitting in the dark scribbling your posts to slashdot on a post-it note ;)

      Anyway, I agree with you fully. America is too bogged

    • Yep, Europeans (and to some degree Canadians and Australians) have a better quality of life right now than most Americans.

      If you go to Europe or read about it, you will read about their relaxed lifestyle. How do they do it? Well, they can afford to relax--they have a strong social safety net. THey have universal healthcare, funded by taxes (although Britain is less strong in that regard than most other western european nations). THey have longterm unemployment (years worth) and welfare is available not

    • Halfway along, Americans invented the corporation,

      I think the Europeans had a headstart in money-grabbing corporations too - the East India Company (incorporated in 1600) had a monopoly on British-India 'relations' for 250 years.

  • Yes I could Google for it but I have to rush off to work in a minute.

    The BBC streams don't work for me. I am in the UK but I don't think my ISP (E7even) has an agreement with the BBC yet.

    Are there any other multicast streams out there that I could tune into using Real Player 10 (like the BBC ones) for me to see if multicast works where I am?

    What stops multicast working? Is it the ISPs just not bothering to implement it? Would my wiresless ADSL router block multicast?

    If so I hope the BBC really make a se
    • AFAIK the internet at large has no support for multicast at the moment, which is why your ISP needs peering with the beeb for it to work. So if the ISP's routers aren't set up to do multicast and they don't ahve peering with a multicast content provider then you won't be doing multicast any time soon.

  • finally makes Real Video look good. (Score:3, Informative)

    by martin ( 1336 ) <maxsec AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday August 19, 2004 @04:34AM (#10010215) Journal
    used is last night - 225kbs and it make the video stream look very nice - almost TV like. Unlike the normal 90kb or so I normally get which looks like one of those video phones TV journo's use today.

    More people need to get this stuff going, it will really help people adopt high bandwidth connections.

    Of course if they streamed in MP4 it would be nicer :-), but this sort of connection stream (>200kbs) really looks nice.

  • Not particularly happy.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Psychotext ( 262644 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @05:57AM (#10010583)
    You see... due to the unique way the BBC is funded (In other words rip off everyone in the UK who owns anything with a tuner in it) this means that us licence paying Brits are paying for this (Admittedly cool) technology to be provided to everyone. Screw that... you want access to it abroad? Pay. As far as I'm concerned, you shouldn't have access to anything the BBC does until you've entered your TV licence number (Yeah, I know that's not feasible). Grrr! Sorry, I know this is a rant, but this is the company that will happily jail people AND fine them heavily for not having a licence.

    The money, of course goes into massive director wages as usual and providing "dubious" programming for the masses (and now, not just for the UK masses).

    The BBC are not as benevolent as people like to make out.
    • tight git

      ever heard of PR ?

      Think of the BBC as our national PR agency. It does a pretty good job too. BBC's foreign broadcasts offset our worrying habit of invading other countries, reducing resentment against Brits leading to everything from better prospects for British companies to a reduced likelihood of vacationing Brits getting shot.

  • Top Gear?! (Score:3, Funny)

    by jrwillis ( 306262 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @08:24AM (#10011171) Homepage
    Does this mean I can get my weekly dose of Top Gear without have to load up the old Bit Torrent client? WOOHOO!

  • Outside UK access (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jjr23 ( 784123 ) <john@rGINSBERGimell.cc minus poet> on Thursday August 19, 2004 @09:38AM (#10011740)
    I'm a brit who lives in the US now. It would be really great if I had the option to buy a UK TV licence that also gives me some digital certificate that identifies me and that then allows me access to *all* BBC content.

    I currently buy the BBC's international broadband news service, but I've been disappointed by the amount of content. It changes regularly, but there are only 20 or so news storys and a repeating set of headlines that gets really annoying after a while.

    (BTW I'm a BIG support of the licence fee... if you had to suffer US TV, you would be too!)

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