BBC Signs 'Memo of Understanding' With Microsoft 190
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has signed a memorandum of understanding with the BBC for 'strategic partnerships' in the development of next-generation digital broadcasting techniques. They are also speaking to other companies such as Real and Linden Labs. Windows Media Centre platform, Windows Live Messenger application and the Xbox 360 console have all been suggested as potential gateways for BBC content. It is unclear how this impacts on existing BBC research projects such as Dirac, although it is understood that the BBC would face heavy criticism if its content was only available via Microsoft products."
I wonder what the BBC will get from this (Score:3, Insightful)
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Microsoft is always the big winner. I don't want to give too much detail but I just attended a conference at which the keynote speaker was supposed to be a guy from microsoft's hospitality division. He was coming on second, after some people from the company holding the conference. Each of them (three I think?) mentioned the Xbox 360 even though it really had no relevance WHATSOEVER to what we were talking about - obviously a blatant Microsoft advertisement. Well the Microsoft guy didn't bother to show up
The first in a long line. (Score:4, Funny)
Dirac... (Score:4, Funny)
It is unclear how this impacts on existing BBC research projects such as Dirac...
Is this the Dirac project that's being run by the Duke Nukem team?
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Dirac is out there and has been for a long time
Oh yes indeed. There's even a video [sourceforge.net] to watch while you're waiting...
BTW, more info on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_(codec) [wikipedia.org].
I'd welcome WMA (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'd welcome WMA (Score:5, Informative)
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The first time you watch an avi --> real media variable bitrate reencode (at half the size) you might be in for a surprise.
Go find a torrent & do your own comparison.
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And forget about the torrent, bbc content will be shipped with DRM'd WMV and yes some people will be able to copy it but most people will sooner or latter be left behind.
And then it will be Microsoft and/or the FCC that will decide for the BBC.
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Oh great. So either I install a crappy Real player or a crappy Microsoft player. Or a crappy CODEC for Quicktime that screws up every other app and/or freezes my machine for 30 seconds every time I open a real/windows media file.
Screw all this, the BBC should simply use the real current standard: H.264 with AAC audio. And don't tell me "that's an Apple-only thing" just because Apple happens to like H.264/AAC.
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A video is worth several thousand words...
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We're closer to having FOSS wmv3 support than we are RM support. Either way, it doesn't matter, RM sucks.
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The BBC need to get off their asses and get their video content moved over to a format that is properly cross platform- at the very least Flash video; I know there is trouble with Linux at the moment, but Linux Flash Player v9 should be ready soon.
Firefox Ad (Score:2)
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Issues of access? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the last word there which is giving me qualms. Just how does signing agreements with the most proprietary business on earth qualify as extending access?
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or downright impossible for Non-MS software/OS users to partake
in their media experience. Hasn't history repeated itself enough
for our generation to catch on to this?
Microsoft has a bad habit of making other companies proprietary
to suit their own portfolio.
This may be all that MS has to grasp on to, once they are out of the
PC O.S. business.
Becoming their new business model for the next decade or 3.
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Because everyone's sick and fucking tired of all the crashes, BSODs, virii and spyware. The privacy invasions help, too.
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when that business has a 95% share of the home PC market and a very substantial presence in other consumer markets.
Explanation (Score:4, Informative)
It's a trap! (Score:2)
Whenever Microsoft gets whatever it signed this agreement to get, probably to stop something potentially competitive, then *something* will go awry that will allow Microsoft to get out of the deal without having giving anything in return.
Just ask Stac, Burst, Pointcast, Intuit, Apple.....
graveyards? (Score:2, Funny)
Is this anything like Stephen King's pet cemetary, cause that would be really cool.
{in creepy, fresh from the grave voice} I'm cooomming to geeettt youuuu Billll Gatteesss...
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how annoying, (Score:5, Insightful)
*which they largely squander on stupidly high pay for the executives whilst sacking many of the people responsible for content - Damn them.
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One reason is that if the BBC does anything that damages commercial interests, it gets into trouble. It is part of the 10-yearly charter review process that the BBC needs to avoid damaging the marketplace. It nearly go
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Did you actually mean this? Helix is a player created and maintained by Real. They'd only have themselves to blame if Helix put them out of business...
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The Helix player is an empty framework. To make it do much of anything useful, you have to add propritary audio/video codecs.
Audio is a straight forward, as Vorbis isn't bad, but Video is tough.
Theora is perpetually unfinished, and it's no better than the decade-old VP3 codec.
VP3 is extremely CPU-intensive (think: H.264) if you use resolutions that (uncompressed) are larger than your CPU cache... That means VCD resolution MAX for any decent
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Complain to them! (Score:2)
Not really an option (Score:2)
Although I suppose you could put it in a faraday cage in your basement and just evade the tax -- I heard once that they used to drive around in detection vans, listening for the RF signals of TVs, and then compare that to the list of people who paid. Rather creepy, if you ask me.
I wonder how they would deal with a computer that had a TV tuner card installed? You could definitely 'watch TV' with
Re:Not really an option (Score:4, Interesting)
If you have a TV tuner card, that counts. If you don't have a licence then you can be prosecuted. The TV licencing folk are like pitbulls, and they have some similar rights as baliffs the way I understand it.
I hate the TV licence. When I first moved out from home, I did not own a TV but the licence people still sent me letters saying "You don't appear to have a TV licence, please get one." I phoned them and said I don't have a TV, they still sent letters. I replied to these letters, but there is no convincing them you don't own a TV. A few more letters and they were threatening to send the inspectors round. I found this link [marmalade.net] which has some various experiences of the TV Licencing strategies.
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You need to have a TV Licence to watch TV, or I think to own any equiptment which can be used to watch tv. For a TV tuner for a PC you need to fill out a form to say that you have a licence before you can buy one (or at least I did when I bought one). They do have vans which go round and look for people without licences who are watching TV, although in the first instance they just send threats t
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There is the same system in France, but the French public television company is not worth a damn...
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Windows Media Player 11 (Score:3, Interesting)
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My argument against too much M$ intrusion is that it prevents finding a solution that can run on all platforms. The BBC does have an obligation to make itself as accessible as possible for the licence payer.
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Who the BBC is (Score:2, Informative)
As a result, one of the main activities of magistrates courts in the UK is to jail single mothers for not subscribing to the BBC. One conjectures that neither these ladies nor their children h
Re:Who the BBC is (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it's only illegal to own a receiver on which you receive public broadcasts without paying a license.
The fee is not small. It is well north of $150 a year. It rises every year, faster than inflation. It is probably one of the most regressive taxes ever devised, and falls most heavily on those who can least afford it.
You could say the same about road tax. Much like road tax, it is only paid by people who own and use cars on the public roads. However, most of us realise that the roads are a sufficiently useful public service that this is necessary. Many of us also realise that the same applies both to the TV and the radio.
The BBC also does a very good job of keeping down the number of adverts on commercial TV, too. If you don't believe me, come spend some time over here (the US) and watch some cable (which costs more anually than the license fee). A whole heck of a lot more ads than Channel 5, that's for sure.
What we in the UK need more than anything is to make subscription to the State Broadcaster optional, and to stop jailing poor people for the crime of wanting to watch some other TV channels, while not subscribing to it.
It is. Don't pick up broadcasts, and you won't have to pay the tax. Of course you'll be a bit of a hipocrite if you ever listen to one of the BBCs many radio stations, or ever use its website, but it isn't illegal to be a hipocrite without a license.
And you're also forgetting the final thing. The BBC seems to have the ability to
piss off the Government more than any other organisation in England. That is a public service which would be cheap at twice the price.
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What you really meant to say is "The BBC do not have commercial advertising on their channels".
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Why should people who want to watch TV, but who do not want to watch the BBC, be obliged by law to fund the BBC in order to be able to watch TV?
This has nothing to do with whether its a great British institution, whether British TV is better than US TV, and its nothing like general taxation, and especially nothing like the road tax. And no, it
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Why should people who send their kinds to private shcools be obliged by law to pay taxes which fund state schools?
Because that is what tax is about. The government taxes to provide things for the good of the population. Loke roads, schools, public boradcasting services, etc. And TV tax is just like road tax. It's the same for everyone and if you don't own the requir
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You only have to pay road tax if you want to take your car out on the public roads. If you only drive it on private roads in your estate, you don't need road tax.
The EU agricultural subsidies lead to cheaper food in the shops. I personally would prefer that the EU govt scrapped them and reduced taxes by the same amount. However, I don't think they could get the Fre
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I don't know, but they aren't. You only have to pay the license fee if you receive public terrestrial broadcasts (analog or freeview digital). If you don't want that, you can get cable or satellite in most parts of the UK and not pay the license fee (depending on your contract, you may or may not be able to pay to receive the BBC channels over these services).
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Yes, under the current system, most people want to help fund the BBC. However, tv licences are a very bad way of doing it.
If taxes are indeed essential, is there any reason not to use means testin
Re:Who the BBC is (Score:4, Insightful)
Since an organization's revenue stream will ultimately determine its biases, the BBC is funded independantly of the tax system. Charging a license fee in a "one-viewer-one-vote" fashion avoids conflicts of interest in covering both the private sector and state affairs. This helps dispell greed and political interference in how it goes about its job.
If the BBC received significant funds from tax revenue, then it would be a state-controlled broadcaster.
If they scaled the fee according to an individual's means, then their bias would slant toward serving the interests of the wealthy (which is what many anti-licensing activists very badly want).
A flat fee may not be a good model for many services. But for an organization that is supposed to serve the entire public without bias, to reflec that society which it serves, and to serve as a watchdog, IMO you cannot do better.
By just being in the wider broadcasting market, they change it for the better.
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How so? People who pay more taxes don't get extra votes. Richer people do benefit from the current politicial system, but only because peerages are proportional to donations.
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People who pay more taxes are richer. Richer people get extra votes (the normal one, plus all the politicians they can afford to bribe/lobby). If the BBC was tax-funded then the "no taxation without representation" thing would come in and the politicans would gain direct control over the BBC (which they do not currently have - the BBC operates under an independent charter, which is very difficult to modify).
The British public does not want parliament screwing
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That is not to say they won't ever try to put one over on the British public.
Here in the USA, we have PBS which is beholden to the federally-funded CPB and is chock-full of sponsorship announcements/ads. The result is a particularly pallid, toothless news bureau. We occassionally see informative and critical programming in the form of NOW or Frontline, but
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It's pretty much a tax right now, and I get no explict representation. Saying that if we made it means-tested, we'd need to have proportional representation doesn't follow.
Richer people get extra votes
While this does tend to occur in Republics, it's not like someone gets extra votes for every £10k extra they earn. Bribery is reserved to the extremely rich, and it most likely goes on right now, even with the BBC. Bias is something that is very easy to create.
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It's actually stronger than that AFAIK: you need to pay a license fee if you own equipment for receiving television signals. Doesn't matter if you swear blind that you never switch it on or that it's for research purposes etc.
Re:Who the BBC is (Score:4, Insightful)
Dude. That's *12* dollars a month... 12 dollars! And it's on a f'ing luxury (yes, TV is a luxury... if you're a single mother who can't spare $12/month, you've got other problems and should probably just sacrifice the damn TV). In exchange, you have world-class media coverage on multiple formats, and online content that's only just being seen in other countries, and most of it without commercials! Seriously, you don't understand how great you have it.
If the alternative is that I have to pay more money for crappier content *and* have to watch 20 minutes of commercials per hour... I'll pay the damn $12, thank you very much.
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The BBC isn't state-funded. It's a public corporation funded by a flat amount that each viewer pays in the form of a license fee.
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Now, I return all mail from them unopened, and when they arrive at my door, I inform them that I am withdrawing their implied licence to stand on my door step, and that unless they have a court warrant, they should leave immediately. There is no point in being nice to them.
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That paragraph is laughable, if you own a TV you must pay for a TV license, its a bit like a tax, but only applied to people who can afford a TV and want to make use of that "luxury", you can
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The alternative (Score:2)
In fact, IMHO, Radio 4 is worth the license fee in itself.
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Sky used to regularly sign programmes late night (although I can't remember any recently). I never memorised days and dates when exactly, as I'm not deaf, but Relic Hunter was signed last year
What is a "Memo of Understanding"? (Score:2)
Almost doesn't seem like news.
My thought exactly (Score:2)
for reference for some folks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorandum_of_unders
Linden Labs (Score:2)
...still no word if a fiddle contest was involved (Score:2)
"only available via Microsoft products" (Score:2)
probably add another 75 pound tax per CPU ;) (Score:2)
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The bbc isn't actually a private company that can be sold. It's a state owned (but not state controlled) organisation with a charter to serve the public, that also fulfills, as part of it's charter, essential services, shipping forecasts, world service etc.
It's not like other tv companies, certainly not like american tv companies. The term company isn't apropriate either.
There is no way microsoft could assure the uk public that they could or would maintain these services, some of them make n
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ITV was, and remains, a privatelly owned company, not publically owned. They operate in a very different way to the bbc.
Not that all publically owned companies were good. I happen to think that we benefitted from the sale or closure of many, not because it was nice to do, it wasn't, but because it clo
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The BBC have two types of content:
You might be right for the bought-in content, but for the home-grown content, the contracts they'd be breaching would be with BBC Worldwide, who, if I'm not mistaken, get the distribution rights to all BBC-produced shows a few days after broadcast. This was the main reason for the BBC's iMP destroying downloaded content after 7 days.
It seems i
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They should start refusing those contracts. They're a public broadcaster. They have a responsibility to act in the interests of the public.
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No. Between the BBC and Microsoft. Not the UK.
the forces of Evil (M$)
Fucking hell, you've reached a whole new low.
I don't see a need for co-operation with M$ on this one
Um...most people have the ability to play Windows Media files at some level (yes, even on Linux, try VideoLAN). That might be why. Maybe Microsoft will help with Dirac? Long shot, but stranger things have happened. We know nothing about what's in the memo, so speculation on this front is more or less unfounded anyw
Google has turn key search boxes. (Score:2)
Google has a package [bbc.co.uk]
they can drop on any library. Having the content is nice, but most libraries also like an index. Google, in case you have not noticed, is a search engine others don't seem to be able to match.Re: (Score:2)
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Every time I think there's no way in hell you could sink lower and surprise us with this type of pointless crap, you go and do it. It's just amazing.
don't see a need for co-operation with M$ on this one
On "which one" did you "see" a need for cooperation with "M$", twitter? Would you point "it" out so we can compare your recommendations?
Why don't they just allow and encourage librar
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I find it inappropriate, too. (Score:2)