Re: [backstage] BBC local radio still has Olympics blocks on international listeners
On 17 Aug 2012, at 14:31, Paul Webster p...@dabdig.com wrote: Just in case someone knows someone who knows someone who can get this resolved ... The streams of BBC Local radio are still blocked (replaced with the standard content not available at this time message). The iPlayer FAQ entry about content not being available during Olympics has been removed .. so I presume that the block should have been as well. Will it be imposed again during Paralympics? I verified using IP address in France and tried BBC London, Devon and Mersey - to their WMA streams. hat class=bbcI don't know the answer but I've asked someone who should./hat Sucks dunnit? Apologies. -- Andy Armstrong, Hexten - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Ping...
On 3 Jun 2011, at 16:49, Brian Butterworth wrote: If the list was really being used I would be asking why the BBC News Android app doesn't work on Ice Cream Sandwich tablet... Gimme a bug report and I'll attempt to do something with it :) -- Andy Armstrong, Hexten - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Ping...
On 2 Jun 2011, at 21:18, Adam McGreggor wrote: (looks like I chose the wrong week^W^W^W^Wmanaged to get a good day to notice backstage mail) (saving the intertubes from bloody forums, one-post at a time) It would be ungracious of me to bitch about majordomo's eccentric reluctance to include much in the way of a header to identify this as traffic? :P -- Andy Armstrong, Hexten - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Ping...
On 2 Jun 2011, at 22:43, Andy Armstrong wrote: It would be ungracious of me to bitch about majordomo's eccentric reluctance to include much in the way of a header to identify this as traffic? :P ^list traffic Didn't think I'd get my comeuppance /that/ quickly :) -- Andy Armstrong, Hexten - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] BBC online outage? Error 500 - Internal Error 19:00 ~:'
I was getting a similar error message, and downforeveryoneorjustme.com was reporting bbc.co.uk, appears to be working again now. Touch wood. Andy -- $ fortune bug, n: A son of a glitch. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] API into iPlayer content
On 28 September 2010 12:47, Ant Miller ant.mil...@gmail.com wrote: Can you give me a pointer to the blog post please? There have been some discussions around APIs, but I can't be sure which one you're thinking of, This blog post http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2009/11/bbc_iplayer_standard_products.html ( http://tinyurl.com/yhanpx8 ) makes reference to defining an API for accessing media resources by third parties. It is nearly a year old though. On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 12:24 PM, Alex Cockell a...@acockell.eclipse.co.uk wrote: Anyone heard whether this api is to be made open? Also whether it might be straight H264 and aac? Just that I would like to be able to watch content on my 900 again... You can probably make a Freedom of Information request for the API, either via http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/new/32 or directly to the BBC via: f...@bbc.co.uk The BBC may refuse it but must specify a reason, except in specific circumstances. Is the bbc starting to see sense? We can hope, but I wouldn't recommend holding your breath. Andy -- $ fortune bug, n: A son of a glitch. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Canvas specs
On 10 September 2010 19:29, Mo McRoberts m...@nevali.net wrote: http://www.projectcanvas.info/index.cfm/technology/technical-documents/ IP Content Delivery – Draft A and IP Content Delivery: Content Protection – Draft A point to files with identical content (but different file names). Is this a mistake or is it supposed to be like that? Seems a bit odd listing a file twice with different names if they are supposed to be identical. Haven't had a chance to read all the docs yet. Anyone seen anything good in them? Andy -- $ fortune bug, n: A son of a glitch. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] linked data and world cup
I found this fascinating and its amazing what the sport team has achieved here. Any news on when the RDF views will be published? Regards, Andy On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 11:57 AM, Nick Reynolds-FMT nick.reyno...@bbc.co.uk wrote: Hi - people on the backstage mailing list may be interested in these blog posts http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2010/07/bbc_world_cup_2010_dynamic_sem.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2010/07/the_world_cup_and_a_call_to_ac.html Nick Reynolds (Social Media Executive, BBC Online) BBC Future MediaTechnology ext: 80934 mobile: 0780 162 4919 address: BC4 D6, Broadcast Centre, White City W12 BBC Internet Blog http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/ My internal blog: http://bbcblogs.gateway.bbc.co.uk/reynonp1/ Future Media Technology: http://home.gateway.bbc.co.uk/fmt/main.asp?page=4282 My personal twitter: https://twitter.com/nickreynoldsatw - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Podcasts feeds not working in Rythmbox
On 12 March 2010 13:18, Scot McSweeney-Roberts bbc_backst...@mcsweeney-roberts.co.uk wrote: Has something been done recently to the podcast feeds as I just noticed Rhythmbox is having an error with all the BBC podcasts I'm subscribed to I have just tried http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/iot/rss.xml on Rythmbox and it seems to be working fine for me. (Rythmbox version 0.12.5, on Ubuntu 9.10). Added it as a new feed and it downloaded the March 18th Episode (I'm assuming this is the newest episode). Of course that doesn't mean it updates properly. Will have to wait till Thursday to know if that is working. What version of Rythmbox are you running? Is it listing episodes and but not downloading them or is it not listing any new episodes at all? Does opening the feed in Firefox show the newest episode correctly? Thanks Andy -- $ fortune bug, n: A son of a glitch. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
[backstage] BBC Google Calendars
Hi, Have just joined this list in order to find out what has happened to the BBC Google Calendars. They seem to have disappeared. I, for one (perhaps the only one!) found them very useful. Can anyone shed any light? Best Rgds, Andy
Re: [backstage] BBC Google Calendars
I mean the BBC program guide calendars which were a prototype developed by Davis Buxton. http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/prototypes/archives/2007/04/icalendar_versi.html e.g. http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/prototypes/archives/2007/04/icalendar_versi.html webcal://gasmark6.com/guide/bbc/BBCRFour.ics webcal://gasmark6.com/guide/bbc/BBCRFour.ics On 1 March 2010 11:06, Ian Forrester ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk wrote: I'm not totally sure which ones you mean but the backstage one still exists (although I got to say I've not updated it much recently) http://ideas.welcomebackstage.com/calendar or if you prefer - http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/q7frqh0v016rki1769l9d7jlro%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/q7frqh0v016rki1769l9d7jlro%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics Secret[] Private[x] Public[] Ian Forrester Senior Backstage Producer BBC RD North Lab, 1st Floor Office, OB Base, New Broadcasting House, Oxford Road, Manchester, M60 1SJ -- *From:* owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] *On Behalf Of *Andy Smelt *Sent:* 01 March 2010 10:25 *To:* backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk *Subject:* [backstage] BBC Google Calendars Hi, Have just joined this list in order to find out what has happened to the BBC Google Calendars. They seem to have disappeared. I, for one (perhaps the only one!) found them very useful. Can anyone shed any light? Best Rgds, Andy
Re: [backstage] dot.life, windows 7 ubuntu
2009/10/23 Scot McSweeney-Roberts bbc_backst...@mcsweeney-roberts.co.uk: What's really sad about this statement is he could have had audacity installed in seconds - I guess he didn't know about the package manager. The is an Add/Remove entry on the applications menu. However some people may think this adds entries to the menu instead of adding or removing applications to the system. Maybe it should be renamed it to Install/Uninstall Applications? The odd thing is Windows refers to the same thing as Add or Remove Programs doesn't it? Andy -- $ fortune bug, n: A son of a glitch. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] The Final Digital Britain report
On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 12:28:54PM +0100, Brian Butterworth wrote: East Midlands Counties (Notts/Derbys/Lincs/Northamptons/Leictersh/Rutland) Norfolk and Suffolk Cambridge and Bedford Whilst a more local news service is the solution I think that some of your breakdowns will need more thought. I live in Peterborough and the sensible area for news would probably go down to Huntingdon, March and Chatteris in the south, up to past Spalding in the North, out to past Wisbech in the east, and west as far as Oakham and past Oundle. Ideally a local news service should cover that area - I shouldn't have to switch between the three local stations you've suggested (and I've quoted) to get the right coverage of things going on in my area. So what is needed is indeed a number or news stations, but also have the areas overlap and a culture and process of local stations sharing news gathering, and even VT packages, with neighbouring news stations. There should be no need for Norfolk/Suffolk to go out and film an interview at the western edge of their area, and then the next day for a Cambridgeshire station to go and repeat the interview because it is at the eastern edge of their area. -- Andy Leighton = an...@azaal.plus.com The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] [Fwd: [ubuntu-uk] bbc listen again anomaly]
2009/5/28 Tim Dobson li...@tdobson.net:
Anyone got any ideas here? It might be Ubuntu or Flash on Ubuntu related but
any thoughts would be welcome. :)
When I open the link specified I get the following error message:
Could not find an appropriate hxplay or realplay in the system path
to use as an embedded player
Oddly part of the page is actually Flash.
If it helps the Flash App identifies itself as:
BBC Media Player v.2.12.8812.8903
FF Version is 3.0.10
Ubuntu 8.10
Flash Version (according to about:plugins)
File name: libflashplayer.so
Shockwave Flash 10.0 r22
It is NOT in low quality mode either.
I have tried a different programme, still launched from /programmes
and it plays (but the Flash player crashed when I click the name of
the player, but it didn't happen once I rebooted, odd). Of note is the
fact then with the working stream (i.e. Flash not Real), the Flash
player displays the PID and media type in the right click menu,
(b00kgfb0 | aac | LI),however he stream that tries to launch real
fails. (although I have Real player installed at some point).
I have also observed this problem after launching the programme in
iplayer directly (i.e. not the popout version):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00kkdkm/The_Michael_Bentine_Show_22_05_2009/
In the source to that page is the following Javascript:
iplayer.semp.setMetaFiles({
flash: {
playlist: ,
mp3: false,
aac: false
},
real:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/aod/playlists/fx/ck/k0/0b/RadioBridge_uk_1130_bbc_7.ram;,
wmp:
});
Is this a simple case of the file not being transcoded to MP3/AAC and
only being available in RAM.
Has the transcoding server fallen over or are some programmes just not
available in non-Realplayer formats?
So the problem appears to be 2 fold,
1. The BBC are only supplying real media format
2. FF can't seem to handle these files.
I can't actually tell what is looking for Realplayer, is it FF, or the
BBC Flash Media Player?
If the later then this isentirely a BBC problem and should be fixed
(although they may just wait 20 hours and fix it by removing the
programme, till it happens to something else, at which point they just
repeat).
If it is an FF problem it's exceptionally hard to fix, we have 20
hours to find the cause and get it fixed and tested before the stream
is killed, any chance the Beeb could remove this limit to allow the
problem to be investigated?
FF claims it know about Real Player as a plugin, however I don't have
'hxplay' or 'realplay' in the system path. Is the BBC player looking
for the specific binaries instead of a plugin?
I wonder what happens if you make a shell script called hxplay or realplay?
I appear to have a realplay file, but not on the system path. I'll try
adding it to the path, however it will probably require restarting FF.
Thanks
Andy
--
$ fortune
bug, n:
A son of a glitch.
-
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Re: [backstage] [Fwd: [ubuntu-uk] bbc listen again anomaly]
2009/5/28 Andy stude.l...@googlemail.com: FF claims it know about Real Player as a plugin, however I don't have 'hxplay' or 'realplay' in the system path. Is the BBC player looking for the specific binaries instead of a plugin? My bad Turns out the .so realplayer plugin invokes the realplayer binary, and does so by searching the system path. It doesn't seem to look in it's own directory though! Still not sure why the Beeb require on Real Player though. If it helps you can look through the source of the iplayer page, find the .ram url and play it in totem media player. Far from ideal, but it works. And it doesn't require proprietary realplayer. Andy -- $ fortune bug, n: A son of a glitch. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Another week, another launch - OpenLab
2009/4/22 Ian Forrester ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk: We're launching a new project called OpenLab today. http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/openlab/ I quick correction. The home page says it's open source which means it can be modified for non-commercial use. That is not correct. Open Source means it can be modified. There is on Non-Commercial restriction in Open Source. (Although some companies provided commercial support). The following is from the Open Source Definition: 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research. Rationale: The major intention of this clause is to prohibit license traps that prevent open source from being used commercially. We want commercial users to join our community, not feel excluded from it. http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php Beebit sounds interesting, I think I shall have to look into what this Metadata services API when I find some free time. Also is there any docs on the Learning Resource Finder? This e-mail is: [x] private; [] ask first; [] bloggable :( Does this mean I (or anyone else for that matter) can't forward this email to other malling lists (such as Schoolforge UK)? Thanks Andy -- $ fortune bug, n: A son of a glitch. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] RDTV launched
2009/4/18 Phil Lewis backst...@linuxcentre.net: You had also better watch out with the new HD (720p) BBC iPlayer streams I noticed the 1hr Doctor Who special notched up 1.3GB when I streamed it! Looked fantastic though :-) At the risk of going off topic, what did you use to measure how much bandwidth iPlayer was taking up? I only ask because a member of my family was worried about using iPlayer because they have quite a low bandwidth cap and where worried about hitting it. Their ISP doesn't to display how much bandwidth has been used, so has to guess what their remaining bandwidth allocation is then guess how much bandwidth a single iPlayer episode is going to use up. This is why we need to scrap bandwidth caps, the average person does not understand them!!! Back on topic, could anyone explain what the 3 different .mov files for the 5 min version on the FTP server are for? I can guess what uncompressed is but I haven't got a clue what the _2.mov file is. Perhaps a README[.txt] file with details of the encoding parameters of each file would be useful. And just because I'm curious could you tell us what software you use for transcoding and whether you have to do each format by hand or whether you have auto build scripts? Cheers Andy -- $ fortune bug, n: A son of a glitch. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
On Sunday 15 March 2009 07:45:27 Dan Brickley wrote: On 15/3/09 02:32, Andy Halsall wrote: I concur with his viewpoint that business models are being broken faster than new ones can be invented. Business models and distribution methods, the demand for high quality content however remains constant Really? Do we have metrics...? I'd love to see evidence for this intuition. I suppose whatever numbers one had, a chart over time could be made to look constant by making sure the definition of high quality was relative to some notion of current context. Ha, no. I think it is something that would be rather difficult to determine statistically in any case. So it would seem that I have made the claim based on a mixture of intuition and hope... That being said, I have found, when reading certain social networking sites, that mixture of decent journalism and sensationalism seem to ensure that others read and positively comment on any given article. Of course in those cases decent journalism has to compete with things like cute pictures of kittens, but still, it might indicate that people are still prefer to read things that are well written and researched rather, even if they do on occasion lack the substance and importance one would hope for. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
On Sunday 15 March 2009 14:55:43 Dave Crossland wrote: 2009/3/15 Kevin Anderson global...@gmail.com: As for Clay's piece, it's one of the best of a kind. I would say that much of the discussion here is confusing public funding with a business model. I think the phrase business model is colloquially used as funding model for people for whom the Internet is dissolving the funding model they previously relied upon rather than profiteering scheme for shareholders I think business model is the right term when talking about how something is going to make money, to me it seems to include distribution, revenue generation, and operations in general. What people seem to miss is that when they want to take advantage of a new method of distribution, they need to make allowances for it in other areas. The classic example of this is the Music business, when moving from a physical distribution model (CD's) to an online one (downloads) they, initially at least, assumed that they could continue to do what they were doing in the physical sphere, charge £9.99 for a singe, £20+ for an album, only allow one copy (utilising whatever DRM scheme was flavour of the week) and pass on the same money to the artists (less breakages...) and no one would care. They were clearly wrong, people didn't want to pay inflated prices for something that only worked under certain conditions, especially not when they could rip their existing music collection (which hadn't really been easily possible in previous changes, from Record to tape, or tape to CD). So rather than being able to charge everyone to gain access to their existing record collections again (as they had essentially been able to do previously) they were faced with a decline in sales, and a model that was being challenged by the fact many people were happy to swap copies of music without restriction. They failed to adjust their business model along with everything else, and failed to deal with the threat they faced from outside. It is the same with almost anything that can be distributed electronically, and, I fear it will be along time until businesses realise just how different the world is when a perfect digital copy can be provided to thousands if not millions of people, with little or no investment. Of course in the music industry's case, the solution they sought was one of legislation, not something that endeared them to their previous and potential customer bases. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
I concur with his viewpoint that business models are being broken faster than new ones can be invented. Business models and distribution methods, the demand for high quality content however remains constant, as long as that doesn't change there will always be a need for journalists, writers, photographers and all the people who support them. However problem with generating revenue from this work, beyond recognition at least, will only get harder. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Programatic searching of /programmes
In case anyone was wondering I did go for parsing the results of /programmes/a-z/by and everything appears to be working fine. I ran into a slight problem where I forgot to convert HTML entities found in the page source, but tat' mostly fixed (it can't fully handle all named entities but the Beeb seem to using numeric ones anyway). $ java ui.ShowSearchResults 'doctor' Search Term: doctor -- b0072v72Doctor in the House b006q2x0Doctor Who b006q2xbDoctor Who Confidential b006mh9vDoctors $ java ui.ShowEpisodes 'b006q2x0' Programme ID: b006q2x0 -- Title: Doctor Who - Series 2, Doomsday Synopsis: As the human race is caught in an intergalactic war, the Doctor faces a greater dilemma. Episode URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0074frg Availability: 2 days left to watch [SNIP] All I have to do now is write the program logic and the GUI ;) Thanks again for all the help. Andy -- $ fortune bug, n: A son of a glitch. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Slightly bias view maybe?
Some of them have no pensions and need this money, he said. You are either gifted or good at business. It's rare to be both. Perhaps they should have worked for more of their life and made NI contributions, then they would get a state pension! Or they could have taken out a private pension scheme? You seriously expect us to feel sorry for people who worked for a few years then sat on their arse doing nothing? (They couldn't have worked for much of their working life or they would have paid NI and be entitled to a state pension). Do you really need to be good at business to pay tax and get a private pension? I also like: An industry source told the BBC that record companies were determined to lobby for a 95-year copyright extension, arguing it would harmonise Europe with the US. Wouldn't lowering the US limit also achieve the same effect? In fact technically changing all copyright durations to be 1 year would also harmonise everything. There is no logical reason why you can only harmonise upwards and not downwards. Andy -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Programatic searching of /programmes
2009/2/17 Jonathan Tweed jonat...@tweed.name: I wouldn't write off the A-Z so quickly, it's actually pretty clever and does find partial matches, e.g.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/a-z/by/top%20gear/all returns Best of Top Gear, Top Gear and Top Gear Take Two. Wow, I didn't realise A-Z could do that, I assumed it just listed programmes by the first letter. Clearly it's much more than that. The HTML on /programmes is also easy to parse. I don't call using an XML parser and XPath screen scraping :) Not really sure what XPath is but the HTML does look quite simple. Should be able to extract what I want with a Regex or two. Thanks for your help Andy -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Minor bug in /programmes xml availability tag
2009/2/8 Michael Smethurst michael.smethu...@bbc.co.uk: Sorry about that. It's a known bug and I *think* fixed in the next code deploy. In the meantime there's the expires element and the format attribute so you can always roll your message: Thanks for the info. It's good to know there is a fix in the pipeline and it shouldn't be too hard to work around until then. All I have to do now is find the time to actually write some code ;) Thanks again Andy -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
[backstage] Has mobile downloads for iPlayer being scrapped?
Hi all I'm almost certain the BBC had OMA downloads for mobile devices (with the license included in the file) but I can no longer seem to find this for any programme. I can't even see any download link. Has the BBC scrapped this feature, if so why? Andy -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
[backstage] Minor bug in /programmes xml availability tag
Hi Just found a minor bug. When using the /programmes XML for a TV programme the availibility tag under the media tag contains text such as: 6 days left to listen. This of course makes sense for radio programmes but not really right for a TV programme that includes video. An example URL is http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00dj086/episodes/player.xml; Cheers Andy -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] free software from ground up home-grown alternative to AIR/Silverlight
2009/2/1 Ant Miller ant.mil...@gmail.com: based on google webkit, pyjamas is a cross-browser _web_ application development API. /Quote Probably a typo, It means Google Web Toolkit, http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/ (which is where the words Google webkit links to), licensed under Apache License 2.0, third party code has other licenses, see http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/terms.html Do not confuse with WebKit http://webkit.org/ Andy -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Mozilla to support open video natively
2009/1/26 Dogsbody d...@dogsbody.org: Mozilla Firefox 3.1 will include native support for video in the browser and they have chosen Theora as the format of choice. And contributed $100k to fund it's development http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/01/mozilla-contributes-10-to-fund-ogg-development.ars So does that mean we can have iplayer in as a Theora stream now ;-) It would be nice, but the Beeb claim Ogg is too expensive (at least that's what they said when asked about offering Ogg Vorbis Audio streams). Andy -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Events of interest
2009/1/23 Ian Forrester ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk: The subscribable ical - http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/q7frqh0v016rki1769l9d7jlro%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics HTML Version: http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=q7frqh0v016rki1769l9d7jlro%40group.calendar.google.com -- I forgot what I wanted to have as a signature. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] If you had a ton of content to freely distribute
2009/1/19 Ian Forrester ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk: Say, we had a ton of media assets from a BBC programme which we owned all the rights to and wanted to distribute widely. Not just video, but images, sound, subtitles, metadata about the programme scripts, etc. A ton? Assuming you mean metric tonne (1000kg) and you are using Seagate 1.5TB disks[0] that would be over 2 Peta Bytes of data. :D How would you 1. Package it? Something Open and Standardised obviously. If you just want to get the files to someone's machine then tar should be fine. Compression can be done with Gzip or Bzip but Media files don't compress very well! If you intend to update the files maybe some kind of Rsync or CVS, SVN (but these work best with isolated changes to the files). 2. Distribute it? Almost certainly BitTorrent. Works on any platform. 3. Licence it? (this isn't such a worry) Public Domain or something like CC-by-SA or GFDL (GPL for software). I wonder how long it took to actually build the zip files and upload them? Depends on what kind of compression is used. Tar uses no compression (unless you Bzip or Gzip it) so should go about as fast as your Hard Drive can manage. If you really want to compress and you are worried about time, run command before you leave work, it should be done by the next morning easily. We were considering MXF - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MXF but it looks difficult and time consuming to build, however the BBC did help build it so we could get help. Matroska, Nut and QuickTime are also look worthy. Never heard of it. You have to pay to rent the standard (the EULA is very clear about it being leased not sold). Also have to surrrender rights to an unamed Arbitrator and submit to sole US jurisdiction. Not going to do that so I can't read the standard so can't say how good it is. It certainly has a lot more hoops to jump through just to read the thing. I can read RFCs so much easier (if it's not very knew I have it on my HD, ah bulk download). Distribution wise, Bit Torrent, P2Pnext, Edonkey2k, Usenet, Archive.org, Blip.tv, rapidshare (joking!) who knows, but YouTube isn't going to cut it. BitTorrent or Archive.org (preferably both). What do you guys think? Are you sure you want to know what I think about? ;) Andy [0] http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_barracuda_7200_11.pdf -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] If you had a ton of content to freely distribute
2009/1/19 Matt Barber m...@progressive.org.uk: Packaging should be done in a viable format - as in useable... or popular, that's the right word? Some would say use the most free, some would say use the most popular - is there one that fits into both categories? The closest you're going to get is probably MPEG4, not entirely free due to Patents in some countries. Ogg Theora is more Free but less popular (although it can be played on most PC Platforms, but less popular on portable devices). Of course we can do subtitles on WMV, but that's locking in somewhat I think Ogg also does subtitles. What's the audience? If it's technical or editing people, then use some open, good quality format that can convert to many others. Then package the subtitles in a nice non-cryptic standard - you could have an XML base for the metadata. Is there any meta format that the big editing suites share? I'm not sure about the big editing studios but Wikipedia has a list of common subtitle formats[0]. MPlayer also has a list of formats it supports[1], VLC also has a list[2]. Andy [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtitle_(captioning)#For_software_video_players [1] http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/subosd.html [2] http://www.videolan.org/vlc/features.html -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Is DRM on its last throes at last?
Is DRM on it's last legs? Not according to this news story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7825428.stm When we people learn that trying to stop people copying or playing Audio/Video after a certain date is not possible due to Replay Attack[1]? I'm not sure whether they intend to deploy this both for video and music. However with DRM Free Music already legally available will people really stand for not being able to do things they could before? Andy [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replay_attack -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] iPlayer caching
2008/12/18 Brian Butterworth briant...@freeview.tv: And with Adobe's AIR on Linux. [ducks again] It's NOT on Linux. It's on 3 specific distribution versions of Linux. Fedora Core 8, Ubuntu 7.10, openSUSE 10.3 From http://www.adobe.com/products/air/systemreqs/ Ubuntu 7.10 isn't the newest version, neither is it a Long Term Support version, support for 7.10 will be terminated in April 09[1]. This rules out most Ubuntu users who will not be on this version. The newest version of Ubuntu is 8.10[2] (2 versions newer than 7.10). Fedora Core is now up to version 10[3], not version 8. openSUSE is now at version 11.1[4]. Additionally it doesn't run on all CPU architectures Linux (or even Ubuntu) supports. To say AIR supports Linux is very misleading. It supports an old version of 3 distros on a specific CPU architecture. Did the BBC not bother reading the release notes? Or is it hoping that no one else would? If so, tough luck, I read them!!! When is the actual platform neutral iPlayer coming out? Andy REFERENCES: [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases [2] http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download [3] http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora [4] http://software.opensuse.org/ -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] iPlayer caching
2008/12/18 Andy stude.l...@googlemail.com: When is the actual platform neutral iPlayer coming out? Apparently this is the platform neutral version The cross-platform nature of Adobe AIR means the iPlayer will work with Open Source and Apple Mac computers out of the box on 18 December, said Mr Rose. It fulfilled the Trust's demand that the iPlayer be platform neutral, he said. Can someone here by me a better dictionary for Christmas, that doesn't match with what I thought neutral ment? The most appropriate definition for neutra I found is not supporting or favoring either side in a war, dispute, or contest[1]. Whats the BBC's definition of neutral? Can someone please explain how this is not favouring certain platforms? Andy REFERENCES: [1] http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=neutral -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Iplayer the best video experience online?
2008/12/11 Mr I Forrester mail...@cubicgarden.com: Don't forget you can all take part in the iplayer birthday celebrations. I'm almost certain that iPlayer was released sometime in the summer (not December)? archive.org has a copy of iPlayer dated 13 Oct 2007[1], it also has a copy from Aug 07 but that doesn't load (at least not for me). Are you guys certain iPlayer was released in December 07, is Archive.org wrong? Andy [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20071013100045rn_1/www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/ -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Linguistic discrimination?
Of course you've also limited the debate to those who have the capability and the inclination to participate in such a debate on a foreign broadcaster's website, whatever language(s) it's hosted in. Very good point, although I don't know how prevalent internet access is in Venezuela and how common internet cafe type establishments are. -- Andy Halsall Director ICTSC LTD, The ICT and Security Company. Direct: +44 (0)114 335 0392 Mobile: +44 (0)750 511 1705 Non-Geo: +44 (0)845 224 2591 Sales: +44 (0)845 224 2305 Web: www.ictsc.com --- This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify [EMAIL PROTECTED] and the sender. Please note that any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The sender accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email. This email should be digitally signed, if it is not, it is probably not from who it claims to be from. Please report any abusive or unwanted email content to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Registered office: 26 Cleveland Street, Upperthorpe, Sheffield, S6 3JB. Registration Number: 5667864 This email and any attachments were created and sent using Open Source software, ICTSC Ltd believes in open standards and the freedom to innovate. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Linguistic discrimination?
On Monday 08 December 2008 11:42:24 Brian Butterworth wrote: Interesting point of debate. This logic says that it is possible only to have an opinion if you speak the language of the country that you have a though about. No, the logic seems to be that requiring comments in a language that only a certain demographic of a country speak will illicit responses only from people of that demographic, if, as in this case that demographic also have a moderately uniform political view (as much as that is possible) you have essentailly closed the debate to those outside of a particular political grouping. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
[backstage] Facebook API..
Chaps/Chappesses, I'm having a few problems, my java app using facebook used to work fine. Just pulled it outta CVS and now its not... bugger I just keep getting a 104 Incorrect Signiture.. Anyone got any experience with 1) The Facebook Java Client (code.google.com) 2) Infinite Session Keys 3) DESKTOP apps. Cheers me dears. Andy Andy Mace FM TVP Support Engineer BBC Future Media Technology # BC5 A3, Broadcast Centre, 201 Wood Lane, W127TP ( 0208 008 2346 (x82346) ( 07766 043 100 * [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [backstage] BBC iPlayer on a map
Thank you. Yeah, sometimes it will miss things which is a shame. The chaps from OpenCalais blame the small synopsis, which is understandable. As for different markers, yes colours are needed. I might do it based on genre though to match the rest of the site. I think I'll also convert it over to KML so we could view it in Google Earth which might be rather fun. Regards, Andy On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 10:32 PM, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: Andy, What a great mashup! I'm shocked by how few pins there are though. All seems good... some things like Stephen Fry's London Taxi gets a pin in London and I note that London to Brighton Side by Side - London to Brighton Side by Sidehttp://iplayerlist.mibly.com/map/# In 1953 the BBC made a point-of-view film from the London to Brighton train. In 1983 they did the same again. This is a film made of both runs at once with every bridge, siding, tunnel and station didn't get a pin for Brighton! How about colour coding the pins for the channel they are on? Also, yeah, loving Stephen Fry doing his Last Chance to See trip on Twitter. 2008/10/19 Andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hello again, Bereft of any real ideas I asked myself if you took all the BBC TV shows that are currently on iPlayer and plotted them on a map would it be any use what so ever? The result.. http://iplayerlist.mibly.com/map/ Now, I should explain what's going on with this mashup. First of all, from my old iPlayerlist project I scrape bbc.co.uk/iplayer for all the current TV shows (a-z atom feeds help). Then I extract the synopsis from /programmes for each episode. I then throw the episode synopsis at the Beta Open Calais API. This API will extract a ton of concepts, including some geographical information that it thinks the synopsis relates to (don't ask me how, I assume some sort of magic elf reads it). This geographical information (states, countries, towns etc) now includes longitudes and latitude info thanks to Open Calais chatting to Freebase. It works best with the larger synopsis I'm told. Have a look along the east coast of the US to see Stephen Fry (of twitter fame) making his way through each state. Later tonight we should see some more of his journey. I'm still questioning if this is any use to an non techy user. Would my dad like to see a map showing TV shows which relate to them? Anyway, in the future I might add a bit of colour coding on the markers for program type (childrens, factual, comedy etc). Regards, Andy -- Brian Butterworth http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002
Re: [backstage] BBC iPlayer on a map
Oh man, thats an awesome idea! The system stores each episode with a brand, series and so on. So technically they could be linked up. The oddness is guessing which series are actual tours. I could just enable it for all series, but I don't think it would be much use for Cash in the Attic. Time to have a think. Regards, Andy On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 11:22 PM, Iain Wallace [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 9:03 PM, Andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello again, Bereft of any real ideas I asked myself if you took all the BBC TV shows that are currently on iPlayer and plotted them on a map would it be any use what so ever? The result.. http://iplayerlist.mibly.com/map/ Now, I should explain what's going on with this mashup. First of all, from my old iPlayerlist project I scrape bbc.co.uk/iplayer for all the current TV shows (a-z atom feeds help). Then I extract the synopsis from /programmes for each episode. I then throw the episode synopsis at the Beta Open Calais API. This API will extract a ton of concepts, including some geographical information that it thinks the synopsis relates to (don't ask me how, I assume some sort of magic elf reads it). This geographical information (states, countries, towns etc) now includes longitudes and latitude info thanks to Open Calais chatting to Freebase. It works best with the larger synopsis I'm told. Have a look along the east coast of the US to see Stephen Fry (of twitter fame) making his way through each state. Later tonight we should see some more of his journey. I'm still questioning if this is any use to an non techy user. Would my dad like to see a map showing TV shows which relate to them? Anyway, in the future I might add a bit of colour coding on the markers for program type (childrens, factual, comedy etc). Regards, Andy Nice work! If a series has a different location for each episode, would you be able to draw lines between each one in episode order? There've quite a few series in the past which are filmed in the form of a sort of tour. Iain - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
[backstage] BBC iPlayer on a map
Hello again, Bereft of any real ideas I asked myself if you took all the BBC TV shows that are currently on iPlayer and plotted them on a map would it be any use what so ever? The result.. http://iplayerlist.mibly.com/map/ Now, I should explain what's going on with this mashup. First of all, from my old iPlayerlist project I scrape bbc.co.uk/iplayer for all the current TV shows (a-z atom feeds help). Then I extract the synopsis from /programmes for each episode. I then throw the episode synopsis at the Beta Open Calais API. This API will extract a ton of concepts, including some geographical information that it thinks the synopsis relates to (don't ask me how, I assume some sort of magic elf reads it). This geographical information (states, countries, towns etc) now includes longitudes and latitude info thanks to Open Calais chatting to Freebase. It works best with the larger synopsis I'm told. Have a look along the east coast of the US to see Stephen Fry (of twitter fame) making his way through each state. Later tonight we should see some more of his journey. I'm still questioning if this is any use to an non techy user. Would my dad like to see a map showing TV shows which relate to them? Anyway, in the future I might add a bit of colour coding on the markers for program type (childrens, factual, comedy etc). Regards, Andy
[backstage] BBC Music Store
Apparently BBC Worldwide is making a music store: http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/841648/BBC-Worldwide-launch-ad-backed-online-music-service/ http://tinyurl.com/bbcmusicstore According to the article it will allow free streaming (supported by ads) and payed downloads. Here is the interesting bit: BBC Worldwide will then levy charges for any audio or video music content that consumers want to download to rent for a limited time period or that they download for permanent ownership and all such downloaded content will be DRM-free So is the rented stuff going to just have a notice saying Rent till ../../.., please delete it when your done on the download page? Or is the DRM-free bit only going to apply to the permanent ownership downloads? Apparently this still has to pass Trust approval, which it may fail (unlikely, but theoretically possibly). Not sure I particularly like the idea of ads being inserted, I thought the BBC was prohibited from doing that or does that prohibition not apply to worldwide even though it's using the BBC's content? Andy - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Google Chrome
It's here people: http://www.google.com/chrome now works! Haven't downloaded it as I am using Linux, but I have signed up for email alerts so should be one of the first to know when they get the Linux version working. The Google code URL doesn't appear to be working yet though. Andy - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Google Chrome
Brian Butterworth wrote: And when your plugins crash... http://www.ukfree.tv/styles/images/misc/crashed_plugin.JPG Well that's certainly better than it crashing the entire browser! Andy - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Date-specific iPlayer RSS feeds
Brian Butterworth wrote: I think you are right about the search results, I was going to make a iPlayer search gadget, so you could create say a Doctor Who one for a fan site, or do a Stephen Fry one for his, would seem a great little marketing gadget for the iPlayer.. You could screen scrape the search page. I wrote some code to do this back when I was thinking of trying to get iPlayer running on an Android Phone (I gave up after realising I set my targets a little high!). Helpfully the code I wrote is now broken, but has been partially fixed (yay). Oddly the program used to fetch data from http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/metafiles/episode/[PID].xml but that returns a 404 now, any ideas what's changed? You can get the list of PIDs returned by a search using a few simple REGEXs, the only thing you have to be careful about is when results are split across pages. Andy - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Audio/Music dataset - Genres for set of MusicBrainz Artists: License terms?
Nicholas Humfrey wrote: The MusicBrainz website has been updated and so the answer is: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ (Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic) That link is for the 3.0 version, not the 2.0 version. Surely you mean: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/ ? Andy - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
[backstage] New Internet Radio
Just saw this via Google. Pure are making a new DAB and Internet Radio. http://www.itpro.co.uk/605631/pure-launches-linux-powered-radio From the article: connect to the wealth of internet radio stations, as well as providing access to online services such as the BBC’s Listen Again content and podcasts And this interesting bit: Crawford also said that there would be additional services coming online by the end of the year such as the ability to purchase a track direct from the radio as it was being played, and ‘tagging’, whereby additional information about an artist or track could be pushed to the online portal. Oh and this may keep Dave happy: “We may later choose to expose the Linux platform fully, enabling others to add widgets and other extras. We didn’t want to go with a closed, proprietary system.” Some pictures of the unit are available from: http://stuff.tv/blogs/cool/archive/2008/08/21/unboxed-pure-evolve-flow.aspx It's expected to be released sometime in September, however their are rumours that a version supporting video will be released in 2009, http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news/news.phtml/17088/18112/pure-digital-dab-radio-video.phtml If the Linux platform has been exposed by then then it might (with some careful bodging, praying and swearing) be possible to coerce it into playing iPlayer TV streams? (not sure if the screen would actually be big enough to make it worthwhile) Andy - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Radio now playing feeds
Brian Butterworth wrote: Backstage people might enjoy this thread: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/31/internet.internetipos Unfortunately what this guy fails to mention is the detection method used is so poor it allows anyone with a Web Browser or other device capable of sending HTTP requests to frame ANY IP of their choice[1]. Unfortunately the customers who get these letters may not know that they may have been framed, and I doubt ISPs will be admitting it. I feel sorry for the children who get in trouble because their parents assume it was their doing. Maybe someone should have thought the security matter through a bit? The innocent definitely have something to fear. Incidentally the reference at the end of this email makes quite an interesting read. And it's from a proper Academic Institution, unlike the work cited by the article's author! Andy Reference: [1] Michael Piatek, Tadayoshi Kohno, Arvind Krishnamurthy. Challenges and Directions for Monitoring P2P File Sharing Networks. 2008. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Dave's going to love this one...
Brian Butterworth wrote: BBC set to name Erik Huggers as Ashley Highfield's successor It's now official: Press Release http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2008/07_july/18/huggers.shtml BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7513513.stm Nick Reynolds Blog Post http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/07/erik_huggers_is_new_director_o.html He starts his new job on the 1st of August. He will also be in the BBC Executive Board. Andy - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2008 16:40:58 +0100
I agree whole heartedly with Michael here, Personally, I prefer competitions that have a goal based upon the end user experience rather than technologies the application utilises. So build an app which encourages the over 60s to listen to BBC 1xtra rather than build an app using AIR. Again, the focus is on the what, rather than the how. Andy (positively personal opinion, surely) On Fri, Jul 4, 2008 at 6:39 PM, Michael [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thursday 03 July 2008 16:41:00 Ian Forrester wrote: .. If we ran a competition which required the final prototype to be in Adobe Air, how would people feel about that? Suppose Blue Peter ran a competition for a new toy, but required that children only use Lego, what that be reasonable? I think the discussion has gone off at a tangent (largely due to political ranting presented as fact and the One True Truth). It strikes me that you're asking how would people feel we ran a competion that required a particular vendor's technology. I'd personally feel that the vendor should run the competition myself. (just feels like free advertising otherwise) That's obviously my personal views though. /Personally/ I think it would be more appropriate to suggest a competition where the result was a cross platform desktop application which should work on (say) Windows, Mac os X and Linux (and ideally not limited to those, but they're the most common). That opens up the doors to a variety of different things, including Adobe Air. I suspect you'd get a lot more interesting variety - since you'd also open it up to all sorts of things (including tech from the BBC...). ie focus the competition on the what, rather than the how. Regarding Alia's question I think you'd need to clarify if this is a competition without a prize which would probably mean BBC people could join in, or whether it was competition with a prize, in which case we probably couldn't... (cf competition rules in even things like Doctor Who Adventures magazine :-) That said, any competition is better than none - after all, its the taking part and having fun that matters... :-) Regards, Michael. (all personal thoughts) - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
[backstage] Fwd: [sf-uk-discuss] Ashley Highfield of Beeb reviews Linux after Jono Bacon visits him
Hi all Saw this on the School-forge UK malling list, might be of interest to some here. The message to schoolforge only had Jono's blog linked directly. Ashleys post is at http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/06/linux_ubuntu_blog.html (in case you don't want to go via jono's blog). -- Forwarded message -- From: Steve Lee [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2008/6/20 Subject: [sf-uk-discuss] Ashley Highfield of Beeb reviews Linux after Jono Bacon visits him To: Schoolforge-UK Discussions [EMAIL PROTECTED] Honest account makes Interesting reading http://www.jonobacon.org/?p=1204 -- Steve Lee -- Open Source Assistive Technology Software web: fullmeasure.co.uk blog: eduspaces.net/stevelee/weblog --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Schoolforge-UK Discussions group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sf-uk-discuss?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~--- -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] RealPlayer banished Toady!
2008/6/13 James Cridland [EMAIL PROTECTED]: As the man in charge of the Coyopa project, which'll be fiddling with a lot of our streams, You mean this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2008/03/coyopa_takes_shape.shtml ? 2. Flash streaming just works for most people, and as the TV iPlayer has shown, a tremendously popular way of consuming content. Not on mobiles. How about an Ogg stream with Cortado[1] for mobiles (or other people who dislike Flash). 3. HTTP downloads are not possible I think the idea was to stream over HTTP. (or something that is similar enough to streaming that no one notices). I'm sorry we have to use it. But we have to use it. Is there no a more open streaming protocol one could use? 5. A pop-up player will continue to be available in iPlayer when radio moves in. Unfortunately there is not much the BBC can really do about stay on top however. If the OS/Browser don't provide it then you're out of luck. Some OSes let any window stay on top. If only browsers supported video[2] and audio tags, and if there was actually some base codecs defined that would work on any browser. (chicken/egg?) Beer, anyone? Are you buying? ;) Andy [1] http://www.flumotion.net/cortado/ [2] http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#video -- No one reads the signature anyway. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com
Etienne Pollard wrote: You might be interested to learn about a new project that has just been launched by TheyWorkForYou.com - an online video archive of the House of Commons, with video clips posted in Flash video format alongside the text of speeches from Hansard. Just tried it out. I did notice the text from Hansard was not actually the same as what was said, is this common? For instance Hansard text says: I am a little worried by the example that the hon. Gentleman has just given But the video says: I am a little worried by the example that he's highlighted See: http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debate/?id=2008-06-06a.1050.2 All in all though an excellent service and let's hope this can get more people interested in politics. Keep up the good work! Andy - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
[backstage] Re: [backstage] RE: [backstage] RE: [backstage] RE: [backstage] Re: Is it OK for BT Vision to charge £3 per month for the iPlayer?
Gavin Pearce wrote: The way I read it was ... They are offering it as part of another service, so they're not charging for the BBC channels, you get those free, if you buy this other service. I might be wrong?? According to the BBC News article someone provided a link to earlier: In line with other TV platforms where BBC programmes are made available on demand, the BBC requires that all public service content should be accessible via the lowest cost subscription tier. It is possible BT have some agreement with the BBC so that wouldn't necessarily mean you could do BBC+1 (or BBC+2, or BBC+24 (Monday's TV on Tuesday etc.)). Still plenty of loop-holes here to setup a free BBC+1 if a user subscribes to your members only website:-) I would check with a lawyer first, and be prepared for the bandwidth cost as well! Im just guessing here though lol me too Andy - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] BBC Look East HTML rich newsletter
On Thu, Jun 05, 2008 at 08:33:27AM +0100, Adam Hatia wrote: Brian, For example, you can't use the class operator to format items. I have used this rather basic function to translate my class items to the more basic style items: Actually, CSS stylesheets are fully supported by Outlook, Outlook Express, and Thunderbird at least, and I am using CSS to generate size-efficient HTML emails that use the stylesheets from the website (though obviously, the path to the css file needs to be a full absolute URL) - do you still have an email client that doesn't support CSS, if so, what is it? As I read email using mutt on Linux it doesn't even support html let alone css. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
[backstage] Re: [backstage] Is it OK for BT Vision to charge £3 per month for the iPlayer?
Brian Butterworth wrote: Is it OK for BT to charge for access to the free iPlayer? They *may* claim they are charging for the other things included in the service. It's not as if they are charging per item you watch on iPlayer or charging for iPlayer access on it's own (I assume their not). It's similar to Virgin Media where one still has to buy the Virgin package to watch iPlayer. (I don't actually have Virgin Media but did notice they had the BBC iPlayer logo in one of their newspaper adverts so I assume Virgin Media has iPlayer, it could have been a coming soon thing though). Andy - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] An alternative iPlayer interface for the Wii
Now that is awesome! On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 7:48 PM, Chris Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've been using the iPlayer on the Wii quite a lot recently and felt the interface could be improved to make navigation easier on the Wii's low resolution. Because of this, I've created an alternative interface that integrates better with the Wii UI and hopefully improves usability. To use it just point your Wii browser at: http://defaced.co.uk/wiiplayer/ More information and screenshots can be found here: http://defaced.co.uk/blog/index.php/2008/05/28/wiiplayer-the-better-way-to-view-the-bbc-iplayer/ There are still a few rough edges here and there but I think it works well overall. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Cheers, Chris - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] iPlayer download client for the Mac
Jeremy Stone wrote: Sorry fellas. The BBC supports Gender discrimination now?[1] Can we have this discussion somewhere else ? Why? Is this some kind of cover up? Didn't the Trust tell the BBC to produce download clients for other platforms as soon as possible? Wouldn't someone else building a client before you indicate that the BBC is not complying with the terms laid down by the Trust. Have you told the Trust you are not complying with their instructions? Is that not running the risk of being considered as fraud, maybe someone should ask the SFO to look at it! This makes life harder for the iPlayer team who will have to look again at what they're doing. You mean they will actually have to comply with the Trust's ruling that iPlayer be Platform Neutral, oh dear people have to do their job how tough for them. this makes life harder for the backstage team who want this list to carry on as unmoderated. To quote John Gilmore The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.[2] Maybe you should go ask all those other people who have tried to censor the internet how well it went. Andy [1] http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?c=1sub=Changeo2=o0=o7=o5=o1=o6=o4=o3=i=-1h=0s=fella [2] http://www.chemie.fu-berlin.de/outerspace/internet-article.html - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] iPlayer download client for the Mac
Ryan Morrison wrote: You say Didn't the Trust tell the BBC to produce download clients for other platforms as soon as possible? But didn't the Trust also set the conditions for DRM? It doesn't say how secure the DRM has to be. And security wise it doesn't really need to be secure at all. After all the Beeb are blasting the programs out of transmitters, in digital form, at higher quality. Security is defined by weakest link. So as long as you make some small effort you're fine, you can't lower the security any more than it is now because their is none. The BBC keeps saying we need someone to write DRM for us, stop being such a bunch of lazy people and do it yourself. Helpfully the BBC pre-knows all the restrictions they want (so no need to actually encode the rights data ;)). A *very* simple method: 1. Assign client software a key or set of keys (symmetric or asymmetric doesn't really matter) 2. Take MP4* file prepend the files broadcast date(s). 3. Chose random symmetric encryption key 4. Cypher that data 5. Prepend a copy of the symmetric key encrypted with each client encryption key 6. Client decrypts with it's key and checks the broadcast date, if it's over 7 days old it refuses to play. 7. Job done, go to nearest pub (additionally actually test the software ;)) C = E_c1(k),E_c2(k),...,E_cN(k),E_k(T,P) Where C_x donates encryption under key x. c1,c2 to cN represents client keys 1 2 and N (repeat as needed) k is the item (or episode key) P is the item (or episode) T is the broadcast timestamp Decryption is left as an exercise for the reader^. As long as you don't use a Stream cypher the user will need to know the items key to tamper with the broadcast date, and if they have that key they can decrypt anyway! Might want to use some more complex method for encoding rights data. Weakness is the client key or item key could be compromised, but all DRM schemes have this weakness. It's stronger than plaintext so no less secure the Digital TV. Could probably code that in a few days (provided you have some kind of cryptography library available) * or any other format. ^ if you really can't work out how to do it then ask, but you really should have at least one person capable of understanding this The point here isn't so much that someone has made a download client but has made a download client that allows for the download of DRM free iPlayer files - which is against the terms the BBC have agreed for the iPlayer (I think that's right). The point is the BBC could have added a very simple DRM scheme and have done the same thing. Whether you agree with that or not - it is simple fact. Haven't seen the rights that the BBC have agreed. But if it says Windows DRM Only I would strongly suspect that the agreement may be illegal, particularly given EU vs Microsoft's ruling about tying. Would the BBC care to show us all this alleged document that is tying their hands? And Jem isn't trying to censor the internet - just asking that you talk about 'getting around the DRM on iPlayer files' somewhere that isn't run by the BBC. Trying to restrict discussion of certain topics isn't censorship? What precisely do you call it then? Andy - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Open Flash
Dave Crossland wrote: I look forward to the day when the BBC stops requiring proprietary software and stops imposing DRM :-) And on that day the devil will skate to work! (Can't remember which programme I heard that quote on). The BBC will pick proprietary solutions even if they are technically inferior to the open standards alternatives, just look at Kontiki, Bittorrent would have worked far better, at least most clients support some level of user controllable throttling, many even support scheduling. Andy - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Ashley Highfield leaves BBC (almost)
On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 10:58:49AM +0100, Tim Duckett wrote: But hold on - you're confusing two issues here. Erik Huggers no longer work for Microsoft - he works for the BBC. So either we say that working for Microsoft at some point in his past has made him fundamentally untrustworthy for all time, and therefore unqualified to make these kind of decisions for another organisation in the future; OR we take the view that he will work on behalf of the organisation that he's being paid by, in the absence of evidence to the contrary. Promoting closed formats in the face of all the arguments was doing the right thing as far as Microsoft was concerned - so if he's got a track record of doing the right thing by his employer, it's reasonable to assume that he's going to try to do the right thing for the BBC - whatever that happens to be. I have noticed that a number of people (and not just people associated with Microsoft) do sometimes tend to pick solutions with which they are somewhat familiar. I have coped with projects where that has happened on more than one occasion. Nothing sinister, just that they think they are doing the right thing due to a disparity in their level of knowledge between competing solutions. That isn't to say that Huggers (or anyone else) will do that but it does require careful thought when bringing in someone who might have such an inbuilt preference. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] iPlayer and the ISPs - a solution
Brian Butterworth wrote: 1. so the great evil here is probably the BT wholesale provision which seems to be behaving somewhat monopolisticly, which is a tendency that I know BT has. Abuse of dominant position is prohibited under Section 18 of the Competition Act 1998[1]. If BT are behaving somewhat monopolisticly shouldn't Ofcom do something about it? 2. Use transparent or non-transparent PROXY SERVERS. As stated earlier it is unsafe to cache protocols you can't understand. Thus the BBC is blocking the ISPs from using this course of action. The BBC however should immediately cease this practice and use a protocol that ISPs can cache if they want. (HTTP has support for caching built into it, how forward thinking of them). but my experience of them is that transparent proxies reduce overall performance because they need to get in the way of each and every HTTP transaction. I wouldn't have thought that the small increase in latency would be noticeable for a several hundred megabyte file. 3. Store and forward: Locate MIRROR SERVERS inside the ISP network. This seems a much better idea. It sounds a lot like some kind of Cache. And another question is *who* is going to pay for the servers that speak RTMP? This sounds like some kind of revenue driving scheme for the BBC's commercial friends. the ISP provide the BBC with rack space 'inside' their networks for mirror servers. A generic cache would be much more scalable, if the servers only mirror BBC data then this does nothing to solve problems with other sites. How does one mirror this data? Will it be available via rsync? Will it be mirrorable by *anyone* or does the BBC intend to pick and chose commercial ISPs to provide better access to. Again very shaky ground. - change the main BBC iPlayer to redirect requests for the content to the Mirror Server located in the ISPs network. Really unscalable, how is the BBC going to know which ISPs have mirrors and which do not? This would require each ISP to notify the BBC. Just seems wrong. Having every Content Provider have to speak to every ISP seems to go against the core of the Internet. If a pipe on the Internet is not running at 100% it is being underused! Andy [1] http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1998/ukpga_19980041_en_2#pt1-ch2-pb2-l1g18 - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] BBC tells ISPs to get stuffed
Mr I Forrester wrote: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/03/bbc_highfield_isp_threat/ The saga continues courtesy of the Reg. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/09/bbc_tiscali_iplayer/ (BBC vs ISPs: Bandwidth row escalates as Tiscali wades in) ISPs seem to be upset by the idea they should provide customers with what they pay for! If I buy an Unlimited plan from an ISP why shouldn't I connect my machine and transfer data full speed for the entire month? (Which technically still isn't unlimited because I am capped by the fact that I can't transmit at an infinite speed). ISPs exploit customers ignorance to make money. As I stated earlier the average man in the street has no idea what 8 GB a Month actually means. Maybe we should just re-nationalise the communications infrastructure? Andy - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
[backstage] iPlayer in Wii
In case anyone hasn't seen the news: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7338344.stm Discuss. Andy - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] iPlayer in Wii
Oh that's it. I need a wii now! The javascript fun you can have with wiis is awesome. I had a little hack around with them before (oddly within iplayerlist). Its all on the opera website. Think I might have to pursue this a little further. On 9 Apr 2008, at 15:04, Andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In case anyone hasn't seen the news: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7338344.stm Discuss. Andy - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html . Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Web Semantics - Slicing The Cake
On Tue, Apr 01, 2008 at 01:57:28PM +0100, A Agutter Pineapple Blue wrote: Fearghas has pointed out a valid issue and before I wrote my comments, I knew the Mobile factor would come into the equation. The Mobile platform after careful research and with comments emerging from W3C is to conclude that the Mobile environment is a completely different standard and services need to be developed, solely dedicated for Mobile user audience. The factors steam from not only delivery using and authoring in wml as opposed to Xhtml, Html etc, but in respect of revenue streams from advertiser agency programmes and scripting. Really? I assume that Fearghas was talking about stuff like the Asus EEE (and the new Elonex One) rather than mobile phone like content. The EEE/Elonex/Cloudbook group of machines have fully functional OSes and fully functional browsers. They are far more like a PC than a mobile phone. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Embracing the torrent of online video
On 26/03/2008, James Cridland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 1. Rights issues actually mean we've nothing really to put onto BitTorrent iPlayer uses P2P, why not bit-torrent. Does your secret rights-holder agreement say Kontiki only? Would that not be against competiton law? Anyone else find it odd *ALL* the BBC rights holders are demanding exactly the same thing? Sounds a lot like a Cartel to me. (I Am Not a Lawyer) 2. For those larger files that we do have rights to (like podcasts), the leading podcatchers, like iTunes, don't come with Torrent support That's iTunes problem isn't it. People with a lot less money than the BBC seem to have grasped how to provide multiple formats, it's not that difficult. What you need is some kind of script (you could even use make, apt-get build-essential on your eeePC should do the trick). 3. Actually, we've a ton of bandwidth available anyway; and because of the way our bandwidth is charged (and used), it doesn't actually reap an awful lot of savings for us anyway So why Knotiki? If you have the bandwidth use HTTP! 4. BitTorrent adds complexity for reporting and monitoring usage of our content, Last time I read the specification for BitTorrent it appeared that BitTorrent clients reported when they had finihed a download. In fact the official protocol specification states: event This is an optional key which maps to started, completed, or stopped (or empty, which is the same as not being present). If not present, this is one of the announcements done at regular intervals. An announcement using started is sent when a download first begins, and one using completed is sent when the download is complete. No completed is sent if the file was complete when started. Downloaders send an announcement using stopped when they cease downloading. From: http://bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0003.html Is there a good reason why the Tracker can not just count the number of Completed's it sees? It's not that complex now is it? 5. We'd really not want to push people through hoops to download new software just to consume our content*, especially given that we've a lot of less tech-savvy users than an average site iPlayer, Kontiki, RealPlayer, Flash, WMP? Andy -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] OPML feed available - aggregation of podcast feeds.
On 14/03/2008, Phil Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For what it's worth, the N95 podcast client only supports OPML URLs which end in .opml Could you trick it with a 302/301 redirect or does it check the *destination* URLs name? e.g. if you had http://yoursite.example.com/bbc_podcast.opml issue a 301 (or 302) redirect to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/opml/bbc_podcast_opml.xml would the N95 load it ok? (this is likely to be the case if the N95 is only checking that the URL you input is an opml file) I don't have an N95 so can't try it myself. Andy -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] iPlayer DRM is over?
On 14/03/2008, James Cridland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm a BBC senior manager; but posting personally as a fan of Backstage. I thought I recognised the name. It puts us (those that care about Backstage) in a really difficult position if it's used to share information on ways to get around content-restrictions on a BBC service. I don't want to see the end of the Backstage unmoderated mailing list. Posting this type of information threatens its future. Are you advocating state censorship here? Are you saying that discussion of security matters is inherently wrong and bad? Is analysis and discussion by independent 3rd parties not the tried and tested method of verifying the security of a protocol? Does this mean I will be banned for posting a link to http://portal.acm.org because it contains papers that detail weaknesses in security systems? (Hmm, what would happen if I wrote a paper on the BBC's security? It probably wouldn't be published, journals don't often publish papers on stating the obvious). I thought the BBC was supposed to support education and one way of educating the next generation of security protocol designers is to highlight the mistakes in previous protocols and teach them how to avoid them. The problem with the BBC system was either it assumed the User Agent was confidential despite being transmitted plaint text to any site an iPhone user visits. Or they assumed the attacker could not alter the user agent. This is a common mistake, the attacker should be assumed to be bale to transmit anything they like, be it falsified data or even malformed packets. Attackers can craft custom HTTP requests it's not difficult. Basically your trying to generate security from nothing. What you need is some method of identifying iPhone that can't be spoofed. You where simply looking at information transmitted with the request. This was prone to replay and was known to anyone who wanted it. What you need is some cryptographic method. You need to use something that is ON the iPhone, but only transmit data available on it. A more secure method would be to transmit something derived from it. A simple (naive) approach would be to use a one-way cryptographic hash. (Denoted H) e.g. transmit H(T + SECRET),T Where T is a timestamp. This reduces replay but it can still be used within a certain time frame. Another method is to use a Nounce, (Number used ONCE) However this requires the BBC to actually transmit the value. The Nounce does not need to be secret however BBC User N__ - ___-N,H(N+SECRET) But the BBC would have to remember the Nounce in a secure way. Maybe maintaining state in a database server side. DO NOT check the Nounce against a cookie as the attacker will just send a cookie with a Nounce he has seen before. The only real problem is how to get the iPhone to run this kind of code and where to derive the secret from. The code could be implemented in Java or Javascript so all we need now is to get the secret from somewhere. Unfortunately anything your java/javascript can access so can anyone's and they can just load there own code and transmit secret back over the wire to their site. And of course the BBC can not provide SECRET from the server as a non-iPhone would also get the secret. What you need is the iPhone to be able to do certain things for you. I.e. it uses a key not accessible to remote sources. Something like client side SLL certificate perhaps? Of course Authentication is pointless if you continue to transmit the rest of the stream unencrypted, but that's trivial to do. Another approach is to go lower level, identify the OS by the TCP/IP stack. However this breaks with certain proxying techniques, isn't secure either and may be blocked by firewalls (it often works by sending unusual traffic to see how the client responds, many firewalls block unusual traffic as it is seen as a threat). Admittedly this could all be academic if the regulators weigh in. Let's play a new game. Guess the fine. Guess how much the BBC will be fined in the event it is fined! Anyway why *are* you trying to lock iPlayer to an iPhone only? What about other mobiles? And don't give me that BS about biggest platform first, turn off your checking and it works on all MP4 compatible mobiles. -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Guardian article about iPhone iPlayer
On Thursday 13 March 2008 12:25:38 Steve Jolly wrote: Thought that people might find this interesting: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/13/digitalvideo.television S And the BBC reply: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7293988.stm signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [backstage] iPlayer DRM is over?
On 08/03/2008, Dave Crossland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Will the user agent DRM will be made stronger? It *appears* that it has. People are reporting 403 on any non-iPhone request. So even if you have an MP4 capable phone you now need an iPhone. It could be that MP4 has now broken (I don't have an iPhone) However if the BBC are locking content artificially to the iPhone the Trust may not be happy. Didn't they rule iPlayer be platform agnostic? Did the BBC get authorisation from the trust to scan for and block all devices not on a specific list? -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] iPlayer DRM is over?
On 13/03/2008, Andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It *appears* that it has. Confirmed. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7293988.stm Anyone know Nokia's head of legals phone number? Or Google's? Or Samsung? Or LG? Or Sony? Or any other mobile phone vendor? Can the BBC really hope to survive the potential legal onslaught these vendors could bring? The trust have already ruled iPlayer must be made platform agnostic, the BBC have not only failed to do this but they have now acted directly against it (scanning for and blocking products not from approved vendors even if they posses the technical capabilities needed). Andy -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] iPlayer DRM is over?
OK, so the BBC has decided to use something more involved than a simple user agent check to determine whether it will serve up standards compliant and non DRM encumbered media to a client. Fair enough. What I still find rather confusing is that, short of using whatever DRM capabilities the iPhone has, they will still be streaming DRM free content to a single platform, something that is likely to be circumventable by other clients soon. Not only that, but the BBC article I posted a link for earlier plainly states that the iPlayer DRM used to protect the downloaded content for Windows is also broken, so in effect supplying DRM encumbered media to a windows client is the same as providing DRM free content (the difference is when the removal of or circumvention of protective measures is carried out). So the BBC is claiming it is not permissible for it to make non-DRM content that it has licensed available, but is doing so and doing so in a manner that makes that content only available to a device (th iPhone) that comes from a single vendor and has a very small market share (I wont go into depth here to draw parallels with reasons given for Linux support as they are self evident). The BBC are also making media available for download to another single vendor provided platform (a vendor that has faced and is facing further anti-trust action in the EU). In the latter case the media is encumbered with DRM, but that DRM has been broken. So in effect the BBC are giving a competitive edge to two commercial entities, one of which is already in hot water for using suspect practices to maintain their dominance, apparently on the basis that that is the only way to protect the media, but without any real protective measures in either case. (I cant remember what happened to the slew of / rumoured anti-trust cases against apple for its pricing, hardware tie-ins and failure to licence FairPlay or I would mention these too.) Now, I am sure that fairly soon the method being used to 'protect' the iPhone specific DRM free content will be identified and circumvented, some people would probably be happy with that as a solution. I would however suggest that using such workarounds will be detrimental. The BBC needs to either provide a platform agnostic DRM capable player (I would even add the fantasy requirement for it to be unbreakable DRM), or resolve its licensing issues (or something else). Earlier in the week a number of people posted references to a BBC blog that seemed to indicate that DRM free, standards compliant media would be available to mobile devices (regardless of type) as long as they were capable of displaying such media in a satisfactory manner, I would rather like to know if that is still the case and how the BBC is going to justify becoming a very nice marketing tool for a select number of device providers (without cost to those providers!). I would be half tempted to suggest that the BBC's best option at this point in time would be to remove the Windows and iPhone specific iPlayer capabilities (others would probably advocate getting rid of the flash player as well, but at least that is marginally more portable, even if it is not open) and wait until they have a solution that does not favour one or more commercial entities, basically what is something that is based on open standards and platform agnostic. Now, I really shouldn't be getting side-tracked by this list as often as I am... Thanks. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [backstage] iPlayer DRM is over?
On Thursday 13 March 2008 13:55:50 Iain Wallace wrote: ... User Agent ... cookies. ... Wireshark, ... BBC-UID cookie ... large hex number ... Quicktime version (including OS identifier). ... MP4 URL ... cookie contains some kind of hash ... client data ... agent sends over. ... upload a packet trace from an iPhone or Touch? ;) So you are one of those dastardly hackers exploiting the BBC's security measures Seriously though, Whilst identifying what mechanism is being used to more accurately identify the platform making the request for the mp4 is going to be necessary for anyone who wants to carry on using a workaround to get hold of usable media (and frankly someone should do it even if it is just to point out that this kind of 'protection' is unlikely to work) I would much rather the BBC skimpy clarified their position and then abided by whatever rules they claim restricts their ability to stream compliant media, that way at least when the BBC next decide to license something they will have to consider their online distribution requirements as part of any license agreement. As a side note if the BBC really is using plugin version information to determine platform (and using a cookie to store that info) then it may be useful to gather all the data that the iPhone is likely to present to a server making such a request now, rather than doing it on a bit by bit basis and dropping that somewhere. Cheers signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [backstage] iPlayer DRM is over?
On 13/03/2008, Ian Forrester [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We've released a fix to prevent unrestricted downloading of streamed TV programmes on BBC iPlayer. It's official! The BBC are that stupid. I doubt your new system is as secure as you think so yelling We've fixed it nah nah nah is going to make some people crack it just to show you up. I on the other hand I am looking at the legal avenues. Is the E.U. Commission for Competition busy at the moment? Like other broadcasters, the security of rights-protected content online is an issue we take very seriously. Not so seriously you would actually consult any security experts (or hire any) or follow industry best practice for security systems, but seriously none the less. It's also a pity you don't take the BBC Charter, the BBC Trust or E.U. Competition Law quite as seriously! -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] iPlayer DRM is over?
On Thursday 13 March 2008 15:44:56 Phil Wilson wrote: --- We've released a fix to prevent unrestricted downloading of streamed TV programmes on BBC iPlayer. Like other broadcasters, the security of rights-protected content online is an issue we take very seriously. It's an ongoing, constant process and one which we will continue to monitor. --- The problem for me is that as far as I understand it, because of the way authentication has been implemented, streaming is practically impossible on anything other than the target platform, in this case the iPhone. This means that almost any hack will result in a downloaded file, rather than a streaming video. Phil You hit the nail on the head, the media in question here is 'rights protected' only in terms of copyright. Given that it is being distributed, short of DRM, I am not sure how the BBC hopes enforce any specific method of usage. I would also like to point out to Ian that this response, whilst clarifying the BBC's general position on 'rights-protected' content, goes no further in explaining the lock in to a niche device (for this BETA service at lease) nor why the BBC can stream DRM free content (even if it is as a stream) to the iPhone but not to other mobile (or other) platforms. As for focusing the debate, I would suggest that all this does is rule out any distribution of BBC content by people who download a stream (which is obvious anyway), it doesn't clarify as to whether I can happily pull the stream to a non iPhone device by making appear to be one or download the stream, watch it on a device not yet supported and then delete it (without distributing it first). Andy. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [backstage] iPlayer DRM is over?
On Thursday 13 March 2008 16:03:26 Thomas Leitch wrote: Fair enough. What I still find rather confusing is that, short of using whatever DRM capabilities the iPhone has, they will still be streaming DRM free content to a single platform, something that is likely to be circumventable by other clients soon. Not only that, but the BBC article I posted a link for earlier plainly states that the iPlayer DRM used to protect the downloaded content for Windows is also broken, so in effect supplying DRM encumbered media to a windows client is the same as providing DRM free content (the difference is when the removal of or circumvention of protective measures is carried out). In effect.. No. It's not broken. You pointed out something that probably circumvents the protection. You can force your way into my house should you really want to, but that doesn't mean my front door is broken. No it doesn't, it means that the protection you have is broken, i.e. a code has been 'broken'. In the case of DRM 'broken' would indicate that it is (easily, systematically and/or repeatably) breachable, broken as in 'doesn't work anymore' not broken as in 'broken window' It works well enough to give rights holders a safety blanket. Fair enough, if that is the BBC's position. What I find worrying is that the argument 'we need to protect our content' has in your view become 'we need to be seen to be trying to protect the content'. Thats fine too, but lets be honest about it. Now, if broken DRM is OK why are we limiting it to a broken DRM scheme on a single vendors platform. So the BBC is claiming it is not permissible for it to make non-DRM content that it has licensed available, but is doing so and doing so in a manner that makes that content only available to a device (th iPhone) that comes from a single vendor and has a very small market share (I wont go into depth here to draw parallels with reasons given for Linux support as they are self evident). BBC also makes iPlayer content available in formats Windows can understand, oh and Adobe Flash. Yes, but that hardly addresses the point, the iPhone version is DRM free. You pointed out earlier that DRM was required for the rights holders to be happy with it, are rights holders happy with DRM free content being distributed for the iPhone? The BBC are also making media available for download to another single vendor provided platform (a vendor that has faced and is facing further anti-trust action in the EU). In the latter case the media is encumbered with DRM, but that DRM has been broken. You can download on an iPhone or iPod Touch made by Apple, or Microsoft Windows. Separate companies... separate vendors even. So in effect the BBC are giving a competitive edge to two commercial entities Adobe. Microsoft. Apple. Now, I am sure that fairly soon the method being used to 'protect' the iPhone specific DRM free content will be identified and circumvented, some people would probably be happy with that as a solution. I would however suggest that using such workarounds will be detrimental. The BBC needs to either provide a platform agnostic DRM capable player (I would even add the fantasy requirement for it to be unbreakable DRM), or resolve its licensing issues (or something else). Pay £££ for a license to freely distributre individual bits of content. Spend many months dealing with each different holder of those rights... you've probably guessed that there isn't one mammoth, single rights holder, or distribute it in a protected form to as many people as possible. A format which obviously doesn't satisfy the vocal minority. Earlier in the week a number of people posted references to a BBC blog that seemed to indicate that DRM free, standards compliant media would be available to mobile devices (regardless of type) as long as they were capable of displaying such media in a satisfactory manner, I would rather like to know if that is still the case and how the BBC is going to justify becoming a very nice marketing tool for a select number of device providers (without cost to those providers!). So one moment you to want it to be available on more devices. Now you think that's quite anti-competitive ? Wait, we stream in Real and Windows formats here you know. Have you seen those companies using that as a very nice marketing tool ? Because I sure as hell haven't. does not favour one or more commercial entities I can really the people who, you know, act and write music and direct, produce and fund... you know, those pesky creatives and the like really plumping for that one. Get real. So in summary, there are issues with DRM and cross platform compatibility, these are legal (in terms of licensing) and technological. Fine, if the BBC were a commercial entity I would be entirely happy for them to do what they wish, ignore the issue
Re: [backstage] iPlayer DRM is over?
On 13/03/2008, Thomas Leitch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That's the definition of portable as possible. NO IT ISN'T. Binary compiled code is NOT PORTABLE! Yes C source code is classified as Portable. But only if it is written in a portable manor. I.e. a C program that assumes chars are unsigned is not portable (it will fail on ARM for instance). A C program that makes non-portable calls such as Window-API calls is also not portable. A Portable C program would assume no more than the C standard requires for data types and functions, and would only use system calls that are portable, like those defined in the IEEE Portable Operating System Interface. As far as I am aware Flash is not portable as it can't be recompiled onto other platforms not supported by Adobe. The version for iPhone is also not portable as it has been artificially locked to that device Andy -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] iPlayer DRM is over?
On 13/03/2008, Dave Crossland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The BBC are giving illegal state aid to a handful of companies - Adobe. Microsoft. Apple. Real. - and trampling hundreds of others. If you have the time and the evidence I suggest you contact the EU Commission about it[1]. The form detailing what you need to do is only 4 pages long[2] You can email your complaint to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To ask for advice you can try contacting the Consumer Liaison Office[3] [1] http://ec.europa.eu/comm/competition/state_aid/overview/index_en.cfm [2] http://ec.europa.eu/competition/contacts/complaints/en.pdf (PDF) [3] http://ec.europa.eu/comm/competition/forms/consumer_form.html Other sources to complain to are: BBC Complaints: http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/ BBC Trust: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/appeals/index.html Ofcom: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/complain/ Your MP: (via) http://www.writetothem.com/ Your MEP: (via) http://www.writetothem.com/ (I would NOT recommend writing to all of them at once, pick one (probably the BBC) and give them a chance to respond. Then you may want to consider making a formal complaint to a higher authority). Andy -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] iPlayer DRM is over?
On 13/03/2008, Sean DALY [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One could speculate that the BBC definition of platform agnostic is time-bombed DRM for every platform in the UK, the universe elsewhere, on a platform-by-platform basis, starting with Windows, then Apple, then... I did try find a definition for agnostic but there was nothing relevant in this context, it's virtually all definitions relating to religion. I tried The Oxford English Dictionary[1], Collins English Dictionary[2], Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary[3], Merriam-Webster Online[4] and The Chambers 21st Century Dictionary[5]. Of course if we are talking about platform neutral then there are a number of definitions that are more relevant. One particular favourite of mine is: not saying or doing anything that would encourage or help any of the groups involved in an argument or war:[6] So the BBC should not help any group or groups! Are they not helping Microsoft and Apple? And another good definition (From the Oxford English this time): Not belonging to, associated with, or favouring any party or side.[7] Does the BBC not favour Microsoft and Apple platforms? Andy [1] http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50004560?single=1query_type=wordqueryword=agnosticfirst=1max_to_show=10 [2] http://www.collinslanguage.com/results.aspx?js=ondictionary=cedmtext=agnostic [3] http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=1676dict=CALD [4] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/agnostic [5] http://www.chambersharrap.co.uk/chambers/features/chref/chref.py/main?query=agnostictitle=21st [6] http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=53477dict=CALD [7] http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/00323716?single=1query_type=wordqueryword=neutralfirst=1max_to_show=10 -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] iPlayer DRM is over?
On 13/03/2008, Phil Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Has anyone complained direct to the content providers? Unsure, I am not sure they are breaking the law. The BBC is a public body and their are tight restrictions on what it can and can't do. Thus it is more likely it is committing an offence under the law. i.e. have you found a BBC programme you'd like to watch which includes the property of a third-party and written to that third party petitioning them to re-think their stance on DRM? Erm, I was talking about locking the MP4 stream to iPhone what has this got to do with DRM now? Perhaps they are the ones you should be complaining about. There is a huge problem there. We only have the BBC's word that the content providers have forced them to develop iPlayer this way. Given the BBC has not got a good track record when it comes to honesty[1][2][3] this may be entirely untrue. I am not about to contact the E.U. when I have no evidence it isn't purely the BBC making these decision. Andy [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/19/nbbc119.xml [2] http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article2072794.ece [3] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/columnists/columnists.html?in_article_id=486295in_page_id=1772in_author_id=256 -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] iPlayer DRM is over?
On 09/03/2008, Ivan Pope [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm interested in why this is for the iPhone and not for other phones, e.g. my N95. The next question is when can someone get this running on a Android Simulator? (Or even one of the hardware devices?). According to the online docs[1] Android supports MPEG4. And while we are at it what about download to Android, after all it looks like DRM may be included (or at least there is a package in the package index[2] called android.drm, it is however blank[3]). If you understand how Android works then it doesn't look like it should be too hard, the examples look quite straight forward[4]. Unfortunately I don't know enough about Android to give it a shot. You would need to fetch the appropriate pages from the web and parse them if you want to use the non-BBC iPlayer page layout, but it looks more possible now than it did. Now if only we could get the BBC Radio streams in MP3 (or something else that's useable)? It is possible to capture and transcode the .ra feeds but there will be legal issues with relaying it to a mobile device (if copyright is supposed to protect innovation, why is it making it a damn site harder?). Of course if the BBC had it in a nicer format to start with it wouldn't be a problem. And it wouldn't cost them a lot to do, mplayer[5] to decode to WAVE, lame[6] to encode to MP3, both Free! (or just mencoder[7]) Anyone at BBC RD thinking about an Android App that let's you access iPlayer and BBC Radio on the move, in a more mobile friendly interface than all the HTML and Javascript? Maybe add something to fetch BBC podcasts? (Assuming Android devices will have adequate storage for such an endeavour). What I mean is, what thing have they done to make it unique for the iPhone and what can we do to route around that so other phones can use it? What they have done is called user agent sniffing. They basically look at whats connecting and if its an iPhone they serve a different web page. You can spoof user agent[8][9] to bypass this but thats not a proper solution. All that is needed is link to the mobile version for when the user agent sniffing fails. It shouldn't take more than 10 minutes to do that (but it has to be done at the BBC end). That being said Kudos to the BBC for actually using MPEG4! Andy [1] http://code.google.com/android/what-is-android.html [2] http://code.google.com/android/reference/packages.html [3] http://code.google.com/android/reference/android/drm/package-summary.html [4] http://code.google.com/android/toolbox/apis/media.html [5] http://www8.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html [6] http://lame.sourceforge.net/index.php [7] http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/mencoder.html [8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent#User_agent_spoofing [9] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59 -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] iPlayer DRM is over?
On 11/03/2008, Ivan Pope [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks. And if I might make so bold - why do they do this? Presumably it's because they want to send Flash to a PC, and MP4 only to phones. Unfortunately user agent sniffing isn't really designed to do what they are trying to do. They would generally have to have a list of all phones user agents and whether they support Flash or MP4 and serve accordingly. There are better ways of doing this. For instance the user agent (i.e your phone) can chose itself by being given multiple options via a 300 response code. Or check what the browser/phone actually wants, i.e. check the Accept header to see if it wants .flv or .mp4 Or use the fallback of HTML object tags. Present a Flash object tag and inside it put the HTML for MP4. If flash is not present the browser should fallback to what's inside the tag (may fail if Flash is present but incompatible, or wrong version). Of course most methods fail at some point so provide a link to the user to override possible incorrect choices. User Agent sniffing is certainly not a good solution if there is no user override for correcting it's mistakes. It is certainly bad accessibility wise. What is it specific about the iPhone that this feed needs to be limited to iPhones? Nothing, it's just their way of separating PC and phone, if it isn't an iPhone they assume it's a PC. Similar to some sites that assume if a web browser is not IE it's Firefox/Netscape. Or, to put it another way, if it wasn't sniffing my phone, could I watch this feed on my N95 (insert any other capable phone or phone app here) If your phone supports MP4 and HTTP then it should be fine. For now fake user agent. In the long run complain to the BBC or the BBC Trust. (This is NOT platform agnostic as requested by the trust, specifically scanning for a certain product and delivering them better content is extremely risky). As I said it shouldn't take more than 10 minutes for the BBC to correct. If they are doing things server side then just alter there code to server MP4 if user agent is iPhone, OR if a certain argument in the URL is set. Something like: ?php $version = 'flash'; if (isset($_GET['force'])) $version = $_GET['force']; else if (isIPhone()) $version = 'mp4'; else $version = 'flash'; if ($version == 'flash') // serve flash stuff here else if ($version == 'mp4') // server mp4 here else echo 'Unrecognised version!!!'; ? And then add links with force=flash and force=mp4 so the user can correct mistaken user agent sniffing. Combining this with some of the other above methods would be even better. But unless the BBC wants to actually hire me I'm not going to do their jobs for them! Of course that code may not work, I haven't done PHP for over 3 years but it is the basic idea. Andy -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] iPlayer, DRM, Free Software and the iPhone
On Monday 10 March 2008 08:55:46 Mr I Forrester wrote: I will attempt to get some answers to your questions, although I think the iphone service is only a beta service at the moment? Ian, I get the impresion some of them, or at least those related to future support for other mobile platforms may have been answered on one of the BBC blogs (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/03/bbc_iplayer_on_iphone_behind_t.html). However I think most of my points and queries still stand so any further info you could get would be nice. Thanks. Andy. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [backstage] iPlayer, DRM, Free Software and the iPhone
Till then, I would suggest you don't do anything your mother wouldn't be happy about. I take it that isn't legal advice... :) signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
[backstage] iPlayer, DRM, Free Software and the iPhone
devices, but there is an obvious demand for mobile content from the BBC. From a totally personal point of view, if I could reliably determine that this was legal, I would be tempted to see if I could automate this process to some degree and then make use of my IPAQ (a Hx4700 running free software) to watch the resulting DRM free files when I am on the move. My PDA's 4' VGA screen makes it an ideal mobile media platform, the fact that I have mplayer installed and a 2Gb CF card means I could quite reasonably use it when travelling to catch up on my favourite BBC content. Obviously it would also mean that I would be able to watch content on my PC (running Debian) whenever I wished. Anyway, to sum up, I am pleased that the BBC is offering DRM free material, it is the right thing for the BBC to do, (if that is what they intended). I am rather less pleased that it is not easily usable for those of us without an iPhone. I have some questions about how this new source can be used legally, and I wonder how long it will survive as a BBC service. I'd love to get some comments from the BBC, or other interested parties with regard to the issues I have raised (apologies if they have already been addressed elsewhere). I'd also like to point out that this (rather larger than intended) commentary is not intended as a criticism of the BBC in general, the BBC provides me with a large amount of my daily news, entertainment and commentary and it does an excellent job doing so. Thanks, -- Andy Halsall signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [backstage] Business Reasons To Support Gnash
If only people would make real-world, rational and pragmatic arguments about FOSS then this adversarial stuff would be less strident. The argument (IMO) should be about the use of an open standard, not Adobe vs Gnash. I agree totally, this cannot be emphasised enough. If your OS/device/whatever can't do published standards then tough. OTO if the BBC supports and promotes proprietary standards (cf Microsoft OOXML) then that's more of an issue. Especially with @10% (and rising) of BBC traffic coming from non Windows PC type platforms. The interesting thing here is that clearly mobile devices and set top boxes are increasingly being used to view multimedia content online (and offline for that matter), yet media solutions (especially those where DRM is a key consideration) are geared very much toward Windows PC's. The BBC would do well to provide a platform agnostic, well documented and standardised solution to media distribution. I think that *that* is the reason that the BBC have a duty to counterbalance their support for Adobe/Flash with support for more open alternatives. Again, this cannot be emphasised enough. Andy Halsall. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [backstage] What would you love to see coming out of BBC Vision in the near future?
On 03/03/2008, Ian Forrester [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - XML/RSS/ATOM/JSON of upcoming iplayer programmes - XML/RSS/ATOM/JSON of programmes about to drop off iplayer How about a full iPlayer API so we can actually create programs that use that data? Screen scraping is hugely inefficient, to get a list of all iPlayer programs and their details would take hundreds of page requests using screen scraping. Links to products relevant to programs in the API would be useful, e.g. a link to the DVD of the series, however I think the Trust would be a bit upset if you tried linking to Amazon or something similar (might get away with a reference to the BBC shop though). Of course if there are books that accompany the series then you could list an ISBN, and it's not interfering with commercial markets as all book shops can use ISBNs! (OT: Do DVDs and CDs etc. have an equivalent of an ISBN? Should TV programs themselves have some kind of globally unique identifier? If so who do we get to assign such identifiers?) And iPlayer video/streaming in a format/protocol programs can actually use would be nice, how about Dirac than Kamaelia would be able to play it[1]? And the obligatory Moon on a stick, see previous implementation[2] courtesy of PuTTY[3]. Andy [1] http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/Components/pydoc/Kamaelia.Codec.Dirac.html [2] http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/moon-on-stick.jpeg [3] http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/wishlist/moon-on-stick.html -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] One-day Conference To Help Web Developers Address Accessibility in Web 2.0
On Monday 03 March 2008 14:51:33 Ian Forrester wrote: Hi All, We're involved in abilitynet's one day conference - www.abilitynet.org.uk/accessibility2 This may actually be quite interesting, its certainly a topic that could do with a little more publicity and support. (I should say its also nice to see the page's referring to the conference boasts both valid markup and passes automated accesibility tests.) The only thing I would take issue with is that at £150.00 (plus travel and accomodation) this will be out of reach for the group that would benefit from it most. (i.e. small web design company's, freelancers etc.. who probably havn't got a compliance team already telling them they should be aiming for accessibility as well as glitz.) Having said that, at least AbilityNet is a charity, so presumably the cash will go to good use. Cheers Andy. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [backstage] Adobe fuses on and offline worlds
On Sat, Mar 01, 2008 at 04:30:35PM +, Dave Crossland wrote: On 29/02/2008, Matt Barber [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Of course the BBC has a duty to educate. The use of proprietary protocols/formats is a direct contradiction to this duty. How can we educate people when we can not even tell them how things work. I can see where your coming from in regard to the software that runs the platforms to deliver content - but aren't we overlooking another function of the BBC here, and that's to educate everyone, not just the guys (and girls) that like to look at the code and generate the apps. It's also important to consider everyone who just likes to turn on their TV and watch something, and go on the news website and check out the top stories. I'm not saying it's bad or good to use open-source - I like the idea of open and free software, but sometimes non-free software can do a great job too. I'm sorry I didnt make this point clearer: Im not saying the BBC ought to require everyone to use GNU+Linux and a free software BIOS :) Im saying that the BBC ought to provide access to people using Windows - which does a great job, right? ;-) - But not in a way that REQUIRES Vista, and excludes GNU+Linux users. And not just because it excludes GNU/Linux users but it will also make life harder for them when it comes to new platforms such as mobiles etc. Hopefully the success of laptops such as the Asus EEE (and maybe Elonex ONE) should give a sizeable, measurable and visible Linux segment of the market by the end of the year and make it more difficult to go with one size fits all solutions. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Adobe fuses on and offline worlds
On 29/02/2008, Peter Bowyer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Isn't that akin to criticising the BBC for not making sure everyone knows about how its (former) transmitters work? You are entirely misinterpreting what I am saying. I didn't say the BBC should make sure everyone knows how their protocols work, they should allow the people who want to know. I gave an example, I would have thought that made it clear. I am not entirely sure what you mean by how its (former) transmitters work. I can find information for you regarding how DVB works, is that what you wanted? For that you need ETSI EN 300 744 V1.5.1 Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB);Framing structure, channel coding and modulation for digital terrestrial television Enter it into the form at: http://pda.etsi.org/pda/queryform.asp for free download. If you wanted to know about Analogue TV try: http://www.itu.int/rec/recquery_xml.asp?formName=SearchformStatus=inputsIn=Tlang=ensSeriesHidden=sRec=BT.470sWord=sArea=ALLsStatus=ANYsDocLang=ANYsDateFrom=sDateTo= You may be able to get it Free under the 3-Free scheme (you can download 3 Recommendations per year for free, see the ITU's website for details). If you want to know how transmitters in general work there are a number of books on the subject. Andy -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Adobe fuses on and offline worlds
On 28/02/2008, Dave Crossland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If the BBC publishes information in open formats/protocols that have only proprietary software implementations, it ought to be criticized and pressured to start or contribute to the development of free software implementations. Provided the formats are truly open, then it is not the BBC who should be criticised. Now if the BBC actually released all their specifications openly (i.e. had them accepted and published by the IETF for instance) then it would be the Free Software Community who is responsible if there are no free software implementations. Of course the BBC has a duty to educate. The use of proprietary protocols/formats is a direct contradiction to this duty. How can we educate people when we can not even tell them how things work. It is really damaging the future of education and the BBC must not assist with it. When learning about technology it is useful to to find out how current solutions actually work. With open protocols it is entirely possible to do this, for instance if I want to know how a particular part of IPv6 works I can read an RFC and I will have more knowledge as a result and be able to design better protocols in the future. With proprietary protocols one is prevented from learning how it operates so would need to start from scratch with less knowledge of how the problems have been tackled in the past. This certianly not good for the individuals, neither is it good for the industry as inferior technology will be produced and as such it's not good for the nation (and thus license fee payers). Thus I wouldn't consider that to be: (b) promoting education and learning; [and] (c) stimulating creativity and cultural excellence; Royal Charter for the continuation of the BBC (2006) Andy -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Adobe fuses on and offline worlds
On 26/02/2008, Alia Sheikh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Now this is a bit hairy - would you be happier if the BBC required that the public could use only non-proprietary software to access any of its work? I doubt that it what Dave is saying. It should make it's content available via a standard way (see: http://www.ietf.org , http://www.w3c.org , http://www.iso.org ). That way it can be viewed in both proprietary and Open Source software. See everyone's happy. And if you are unhappy using Open Standards then you can't use HTTP, or TCP/IP for that matter so how are you going to access the BBC website in the first place? It feels uncomfortably like you're making a moral judgement about the nature of 'good' and 'bad' software and asking the BBC to enforce this. No one is asking the BBC to enforce ANYTHING. The entire opposite, we are asking the BBC to allow *any* software to be used. I wouldn't be happy deciding what people should care about and enforcing it. That's what the BBC is doing and you have been defending. It is saying we believe Adobe's software is what everyone should use so we only permit their users access to our content. Andy -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
[backstage] Internet TV standard
Hi all, Just found this on BBC news. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7259339.stm From the article: The European Union is spending 14m euros (£10.5m) to create a standard way to send TV via the net. Also form the article: It will be based on the BitTorrent technology many people already use to share movies and music. Isn't that the same technology the BBC rejected? Nice to see BBC rejecting the cross-platform, EU recommended, technically superior, cheaper, better tested protocol in favour of Kontiki (what did Kontiki have as a good point?). Andy -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Internet TV standard
On 25/02/2008, Nick Reynolds-FMT [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: this post from the BBC Internet Blog may be of interest: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/02/p2p_next.html Great, I got my hopes up for nothing! it's never going to replace the BBC's consumer offerings (e.g. iPlayer); from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/02/p2p_next.html So the BBC is going to assist in building a cross-platform open standard system and then not use it? Though it begs the question once it's released how is the Beeb going to con the Trust this time round? The claim of it's impossible to do cross platform, now let us get back to our Microsoft (and maybe Apple) exclusive deals is going to sound a little unbelievable no? Andy -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] HD-DVD / Blu Ray
On 20/02/2008, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I buy virtually all my music as CDs, but then rip them to play them how I want to play them. There is a widely held belief that ripping CDs may actually be illegal in the UK. The Gower's report recommended allowing private copying by 2008[1]. However only for format shifting and only for 1 copy. Oddly in the review the example of CD to MP3 player was used. How on earth you can do that without moving it to the PC and then to the MP3 player (i.e. copying twice) is unclear. If I can buy non-drm/tied music/films, I will. Can't help with films, but play.com sell non-DRMed MP3 music[2] (selection isn't exactly massive, but give it time.) Oddly it's cheaper than iTunes. Who in there right mind would pay extra just to get DRM on the stuff they buy? Brian Butterworth wrote: By 2015 the nets going to be 100s of Mb/s I wouldn't have thought it should take that long, Japan has 100,000 kbps (nearly 100Mbit) for just 36.58$US[3]. Same speed for upload. And no bandwidth cap. In contrast in the same report it listed the speed of the UK's Incumbent DSL provider as just 2200 kbps (down), 256 kbps (up) with 15GB cap priced at 45.17$US. (Note figures are based on a report written in 2005, so speeds may have increased) A more important question is will the BBC be providing it's programs on Blue-Ray or HD-DVD? Will Microsoft cut their losses and run or will they use their immense capital to push HD-DVD harder now? Personally I have no problem with using ordinary DVDs, the fact I don't have a HD TV might be a considerable factor though! DVDs won't go away soon, they still have uses, if only for backup and archive (though many people use a second drive or some kind of network storage). There is something to be said for having a physical copy as opposed to a download. If I have the physical copy I know it can not be taken from me remotely (at least not with DVD). Someone may break into my house or it might burn down but you can insure against that. How many insurance companies will insure your iTunes collection on your PC? (Serious question, how will the increased value of digital data on PCs in the home affect the insurance market? Will we start seeing insurance for data, will we see insurance companies offering discounts for secure systems like the do if your property has good quality locks and alarms?) It's easier to take stuff away from you remotely with downloads. Viruses can erase entire drives (not often done, thankfully) however DDoS attacks against big vendor do happen, so how long till someone tries to blackmail Apple (iTunes) with pay up or we'll wipe your customers music collections and license files*? Add to that the fact that Hard Disks do crash from time to time and filesystems do get corrupted then downloads are currently risky business. At least if we get a private copy exemption it will make backup easier but DRM screws that up. Suddenly you don't just need the audio/video file you need the license. And some licenses are tied to a physical machine so when its destroyed and you replace it the files could be useless. * Would we know if this had already happened? Andy References: [1] Gowers Review of Intellectual Property ISBN: 978-0-11-84083-9 Available from: http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/gowers_review_intellectual_property/gowersreview_index.cfm tinyurl: http://tinyurl.com/bvds2 [2] Play.com Music Downloads http://www.play.com/Music/MP3-Download/6-/DigitalHome.html [3] Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Multiple Play: Pricing And Policy Trends, DSTI/ICCP/TISP(2005)12/FINAL (April 2006): Available from: www.oecd.org/dataoecd/47/32/36546318.pdf -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
[backstage] Radio 1 Top 40 Feed
Hey Chaps, This has probably been done before, but i was bored with a hangover on Saturday. I knocked together this little beauty.. http://chino.welcomebackstage.com/~andy.mace/r1top40.php Have a look.. tell me what you think.. I'm sure i can find somewhere to house it permanently if so required. Andy Andy Mace iTV Operations Engineer BBC Future Media Technology # BC5 B4, Broadcast Centre, 201 Wood Lane, W127TP ( 0208 008 2346 (x82346) ( 07766 043 100 * [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [backstage] Mark Thompson on the iPlayer and platform neutrality
Let's get the straight shall we. How on earth is a binary platform neutral? Binaries are specific down to the CPU architecture. Of course source code would allow us to abstract from the CPU, but wait the BBC has this code but has it hidden. IN DIRECT CONTRADICTION TO MAKING IPLAYER PLATFORM NEUTRAL. It does NOT take 6 months to upload a small .tar.gz file. Andy -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] fully accessible???
On 01/02/2008, ~:'' ありがとうございました。 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: is it just me? or is that yellow text on white background all but impossible to read? If you are referring to the text at the top it appears to be on a black background on my computer. Andy -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] RTMP stream URL resolving script
On 23/01/2008, Phil Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Without looking it up, the previous reply (from a Gnash dev IIRC) was that the BBC are using the latest version of Adobe Flash Streaming Server, and this has dropped support for streaming over HTTP. I remembered it being described as deprecated. My interpretation of deprecated is that it isn't recommended to use it but it still can be used. Normally it means it will be removed sometime in the future. For instance I can use a Deprecated Method in Java and it will still wok but I will get a warning and it may be removed from Java in the future. I therefore assumed that RTMP could still be used but wasn't the recommended approach. I may have been wrong though. (Why would anyone remove something useful from a software application anyway? More importantly why would anyone trust a vendor that did that with their Mission Critical software applications?). When YouTube upgrade, they too will probably lose support for streaming over HTTP as well. They currently stream over HTTP don't they? This the BBC could *currently* do the same. Also, I previously asked you if you knew of any alternatives the BBC could have used. To quote you: Any chance you could actually answer the questions I asked? To quote you: This has also been answered before (the last time you asked it, actually). I'm not entirely convinced you've actually been reading replies, or if you have, actually paying them much attention. Apache has the power to serve files over HTTP. You should check it out http://www.apache.org/ . Stick a file in a location it can access and clients can stream from it. Red5 likely still does HTTP. http://osflash.org/red5 First hit on Google for Video Streaming Software: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/streaming.html (VLC can behave as a server as well as doing playback) Supports multiple formats and protocols. Now I have answered yours will you be answering my other questions? Andy -- Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows. -- Adam Heath - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
