Re: [backstage] Google Wave

[Steve Jolly]

Billy Abbott wrote:

I would like a pony.


That sounds somewhat easier: there are more ponies in the world than 
Google Wave invites.


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Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'

[Steve Jolly]

David Tomlinson wrote:

Steve Jolly wrote:

A year or less strikes me as too little because too many people would
just wait until it was free.  5-10 years seems like a more realistic 
minimum in that regard.  Mind you, I think that copyright terms would 
vary by medium, ideally.


It's free from the start, their are revenue streams, e.g. advertising or 
paying for a physical object, be that a CD or a T-Shirt or book.


If you abolish copyright, then there's no way for the author to benefit 
from those revenue streams, because the people who make the CDs, 
T-Shirts and books have no reason to pay the author.


I have addressed it, while I consider it natural, and people will not 
wish to give it up, I don't see it as desirable. It limits the Freedom 
of others.


Every law on the books exists to benefit society as a whole by removing 
Freedoms from the individual.  My right to privacy in my own home 
requires that other people give up their freedom to enter it without 
permission, for example.  So I don't think you can make a case that 
copyright is unusual in this regard.


How long would it take for a competitor, to prepare and publish an 
alternative to a say a book.  More than three months ?


A week or two, perhaps?  Longer for a really high-volume product, but 
if copyright was abolished then you'd see specialist piracy-houses 
springing up, competing to be first-to-market with copied products.  
And they could take pre-orders in the interim period, reducing sales 
beneficial to the author still further.


For a Dan Brown perhaps, but that is 8 Million sales in the first week, 
he can afford the leakage. It is only when products are successful, it 
is worth producing the physical copy.


But I imagine the text for book was available in multiple locations 
within days. I don't read Dan Brown, for reasons of sanity.


Perhaps we're talking at cross-purposes here.  My point was that a 
publisher who chose to pay an author for their work would be 
out-competed within days or weeks by competitors who have no reason to 
pay that author a penny.


S

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Re: [backstage] mailing list subs form is broken

[Steve Jolly]

Fearghas McKay wrote:

On 8 Oct 2009, at 23:48, Steve Jolly wrote:


PS If you ever bump into him in person, do buy him a beer...


Whenever I bump into him he is never drinks beer...


Or valid beer substitute...

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Re: [backstage] mailing list subs form is broken

[Steve Jolly]

Fearghas McKay wrote:
Since there is no obvious list admin please accept my apologies for 
posting this to the list


Ian Forrester is paid a miserly pittance from our license fees to put up 
with us on this mailing list, and likes nothing better than to receive 
admin requests in person.  Indeed, now that I share an office with him, 
I often hear him say so.


;-)

S

PS If you ever bump into him in person, do buy him a beer...
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Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'

[Steve Jolly]

David Tomlinson wrote:
Yes, I am aware of this, but why five years, why not one year why not 
three months, and if three months, why at all.


A year or less strikes me as too little because too many people would
just wait until it was free.  5-10 years seems like a more realistic 
minimum in that regard.  Mind you, I think that copyright terms would 
vary by medium, ideally.


How long does it take for most products to make the vast majority of 
their money. There are exceptions, like the Beatles etc.


As has been pointed out repeatedly already, copyright is about wider 
issues of control than the right to make money from a work.  If you want 
to convince people that abolition makes sense, you need to address that 
wider issue.


How long would it take for a competitor, to prepare and publish an 
alternative to a say a book.  More than three months ?


A week or two, perhaps?  Longer for a really high-volume product, but if 
copyright was abolished then you'd see specialist piracy-houses 
springing up, competing to be first-to-market with copied products.  And 
they could take pre-orders in the interim period, reducing sales 
beneficial to the author still further.


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[backstage] Pure Sensia

[Steve Jolly]

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2009/09/17/pure-sensia-digital-radio-first-look/

Linux-based radio with touchscreen and "app support".  Not sure I like 
the styling and it's a bit pricey, but it's an interesting product, 
certainly...


Since it has Twitter support, no doubt certain members of this list will 
love it ;-)


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Re: [backstage] Heatwave in North of England

[Steve Jolly]

Phil Lewis wrote:

I really must move! Is it me or does the BBC weather map show 36 degC
temperatures in the north of England at 12noon on Monday?


It's a cunning plan to persuade BBC staff to relocate to Salford.

S

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Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable

[Steve Jolly]

Sean DALY wrote:

I have two XO-1s from the previous G1G1s and a third I picked up on
eBay. It's rather magical the way they look for and find each other in
the mesh network. I've actually traveled with a pair instead of my
usual laptop (the 2 XO-1s together aren't larger or heavier).


Do you get any interesting benefits from having 2 XOs instead of a 
single conventional laptop?  It sounds like there ought to be some nifty 
possibilities...


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Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable

[Steve Jolly]

Brian Butterworth wrote:

It is very noticeable that WVM is not a DAB user...

I was actually thinking of cross between a Kindle and an etch-a-sketch 
that can be dropped onto a road, get covered in cement dust and will 
still allow page 3 to be read.Something with an interface so simple 
that it can be operated by "anyone in the pub" and cheap enough to be 
given away with a few litres of petrol - or on the cover newspaper.  


I guess radio is inadequate for conveying page three content, but in the 
same way as a Times/Sky mash-up, I reckon a Sun/talk-radio mash-up might 
have potential - people in the trades tend to listen to a lot of radio.


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Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable

[Steve Jolly]

Brian Butterworth wrote:
And then there's that gizmo, the one that can deliver the Sun to "white 
van man" cheaply and reliably.


The radio?

S

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Re: [backstage] BBC becomes the British Botnet Corporation

[Steve Jolly]

Sean DALY wrote:

I listened to a discussion on the World Service radio The World Today
programme yesterday morning, and I was disturbed at the sloppy
reporting: although botnet machines are exclusively running Windows
because of the poor Microsoft security model, this was not mentioned.
In fact, OSX was cited as being as vulnerable as Windows, which is
just silly. Although the three basic steps to security cited
(patching, firewall, and antivirus) are useful to a general
nontechnical audience, it's not a minor point that in the past ten
years there have been thousands of virii, keyloggers, and rootkits
which have attacked Windows, while those attacking GNU/Linux and OSX
can be counted on the fingers of one's hands.


Not sure I'm convinced - all operating systems have their 
vulnerabilities; telling *the general public* that they can worry less 
if they're using a less popular OS than Windows would just lead to 
complacency.  Telling people to patch regularly, use a firewall and 
install antivirus software is the only safe general advice you can give.


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Re: [backstage] Competition Commission bounces Project Kangeroo

[Steve Jolly]

Scot McSweeney-Roberts wrote:
Neither. Having 3 URLs instead of 1 isn't going make much of a 
difference from the consumers point of view (which is why I fail to see 
how Kangaroo would have been more "damaging to competition" than 3 
separate services).


Wasn't the point of Kangaroo that it would offer programmes for sale, 
after the time-window for iPlayer-style "catch-up" services had expired?


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Re: [backstage] Competition Commission bounces Project Kangeroo

[Steve Jolly]

Scot McSweeney-Roberts wrote:
Neither. Having 3 URLs instead of 1 isn't going make much of a 
difference from the consumers point of view (which is why I fail to see 
how Kangaroo would have been more "damaging to competition" than 3 
separate services).


Wasn't the point of Kangaroo that it would offer programmes for sale, 
after the time-window for iPlayer-style "catch-up" services had expired?


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Re: [backstage] If you had a ton of content to freely distribute

[Steve Jolly]

Ian Forrester wrote:

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.

How would you
1. Package it?


Artists and techies will probably have somewhat divergent opinions on 
this one...


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Re: [backstage] So Long and Thanks For All The Fish?

[Steve Jolly]

Brian Butterworth wrote:

I kind of thought that the BBC should use SI units for some reason...


What, and get pilloried in the press for pushing a metric agenda? :-)

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Re: [backstage] So Long and Thanks For All The Fish?

[Steve Jolly]

Brian Butterworth wrote:

Wow this is arcane.  We only got taught metric SI units at school...


Yeah, I prefer to avoid the imperial ones, but sometimes you can't - 
when working with Americans is a common scenario.


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Re: [backstage] Two questions: Comment Blogs and EU proposals

[Steve Jolly]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
2.  Does anyone know how I can successfully contact members of the 
Innovation Culture team at BBC Research and Innovation?


This list isn't a great way, but I think it's safe to say that some of 
them read it. :-)


S

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Re: [backstage] High Frame-Rate Television

[Steve Jolly]

Robert (Jamie) Munro wrote:

There was a cinema standard that called Showscan that ran at 60 instead
of 24fps for similar reasons. And IMAX do a thing called IMAX HD that
runs at 48fps. These systems both require a lot of lighting, and a lot
of film stock to shoot, so I don't think they are likely to be popular,
except in special cases like theme-park ride-films.


Well, that's film for you. :-)  Virtually all digital video recording 
systems use lossy compression though, so if higher frame rates compress 
better (as we suspect), your costs don't increase linearly with frame rate.



I wonder if highly shuttered video produces better results on TVs that
do motion compensated 100Hz stuff. E.g. if you delivered them 25p but
with the shutter open for 10ms rather than 40ms, they will be able to
make a much better job of the motion compensation, producing something
very close to true 100Hz video, but with no need for extra bandwidth or
changes to the transmission chain over what we have already. Should
broadcasters consider shooting with this kind of TV in mind?


That's when you'd need the extra light, because you're throwing away 
most of it by shuttering.  But yes, the fact that motion-interpolating 
displays prefer highly shuttered video is something that broadcasters 
could start bearing in mind if those displays gain a large market share. 
 Personally I'd be disappointed though - you're effectively using the 
low frame rate as a form of lossy compression, and there are far more 
elegant methods of compressing video than throwing frames away and then 
trying to regenerate them in the display.


Also, have you considered how annoyed the directors who want a 
highly-shuttered look will be? :-)  (Think "Top Gear", etc.)



Another thought I had was what about capturing motion separately to the
picture, at a lower spatial, but higher temporal resolution. Perhaps
using a strobed infra-red ilumination to generate smething like MPEG P &
B frames, and a full colour camera to generate I frames at a low frame rate.


Not sure that strobed IR would be the way to do it (limited range 
outdoors or under tungsten studio lighting, limited correlation with the 
visible light images due to materials' differing IR reflectivities) but 
yes, there's all sorts of interesting ways to sample (or resample) the 
various aspects of the video signal differently once you get your 
thinking away from fixed frame rates.  Chroma sub-sampling is a good 
analogy, and Bayer-patterning could be regarded as an interesting way to 
sub-sample chroma within the camera's sensor.  I think you always need 
to bear in mind that you're effectively implementing a compression 
scheme though, and question whether or not it's going to be an effective 
one.


I blog about this kind of video fundamentals stuff occasionally, if 
anyone's (still) interested - http://elvum.net.


S

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Re: [backstage] The "Page 284 of Teletext" test... anyone know the rationale?

[Steve Jolly]

Brian Butterworth wrote:
This one, can't go around praising a document and not linking to it, 
terrible form...


http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp169.shtml


Thank you for your kind words. :-)

S

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Re: [backstage] a postive BBC news story - Matthew Postgate's appointment bodes well for a new BBC tech era

[Steve Jolly]

Brian Butterworth wrote:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2008/oct/29/bbc-research

"Matthew Postgate 
's appointment 
as controller of the *BBC's* research and innovation department is, at 
last, great news for the BBC 's tech department..."


It's nice that people still care. :-)

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Re: [backstage] Why the poor bitrates on World Service, Asian Network etc?

[Steve Jolly]

Brian Butterworth wrote:
You could, perhaps, make high bitrate versions available to platform 
providers, with a limited number of feeds for the likes of LiveStation 
and Zattoo and the like.  


Intuitively, that strikes me as opening up *different* cans of worms...

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Re: [backstage] BBC DRM iplayer mobiles etc

[Steve Jolly]

Brian Butterworth wrote:
I note that Stephen Fry has posted this, which seems to cover it quite 
well..


Hear hear. :-)

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Re: [backstage] HD Videocamera advice please...

[Steve Jolly]

Jeremy James wrote:

Simon Thompson wrote:

The GOP length is the number of frames between successive I-Frames.  A
long GOP length will, for example, cause a delay on video appearing on
changing channels on a STB or, as editing cuts can only start from an
I-Frame will mean you can't do frame accurate editing.


I disagree with "can't" - the Sony XDCAM EX1 is a serious camera
intended for broadcast use that uses long-GOP MPEG2. However, editing is
indeed harder since the software needs to be clever about how it handles
the content. You potentially have to decode a fair number of frames to
show the one you want, and (unless re-rendering) you need to keep up to
the previous I-frame before any edits made in your source material
throughout the editing process.


BBC R&D did some work on this a few years back - here's a white paper 
from 2006, for example, if anyone's interested:


http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp138.shtml

The basic finding was more or less what Jeremy said - that long-GOP 
video encoding makes life harder for the people who write video editing 
software, but doesn't make frame-accurate editing impossible by any 
means.  You have to trade the advantages and disadvantages of recording 
with a long-GOP codec according to circumstances - a state of affairs 
that will probably surprise nobody. :-)


S

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Re: [backstage] Android UK launch set for Tuesday

[Steve Jolly]

Brian Butterworth wrote:
Sorry, a "GPS compass".  I worked on GPS for ages back in the day and 
don't ever recall GPS being able to be a compass.


It can't be a compass directly, but many GPS receivers can show you your 
direction of travel on a compass-like display.


S

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Re: [backstage] erik huggers on open standards

[Steve Jolly]

Tim Dobson wrote:
>Mike Melanson wrote:

I keep up with current subnotebooks and I don't know any that use non-x86 CPUs.

>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aware_Electronics

Yes so that's the "A-View", the "AW-300" and the "AW-150" subnotebooks 
for starters.


In what way are those "X86" CPUs non-x86?

Personally I'm disgusted that there's no iPlayer support for my Psion 3c.

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Re: [backstage] Soundcloud

[Steve Jolly]

Peter Bowyer wrote:

On 11/08/2008, Brian Butterworth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

"Kingswood innovations

Freeview Playback Due to launch in 2009 - with this you can record a whole
series with one instruction and, if you want to record two programmes that
clash, it will find one of the shows on a repeat broadcast and record it
instead."


Sounds a lot like MythTV to me


The difference being that MythTV has to make guesses about which 
programmes are which, based on the episode names and descriptions in the 
EPG.  It does a good job, but not a perfect one.  The Freeview Playback 
on-air signalling (which for the features described, is already being 
broadcast) enables PVRs to do a perfect job - or as close to perfect as 
is realistic. :-)  I know the MythTV guys were talking about 
implementing support for Freeview Playback signalling a while back - I 
don't know what its current status is though.


S

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Re: [backstage] BBC iPlayer - why the missing TV channel?

[Steve Jolly]

Adam Hatia wrote:

Does anyone know of any study results or resources on perceived quality comparisons 
between various resolutions (e.g. 1080i25 vs 720p50) & encodings?


Hans Hoffman has done some research in this area for the EBU: 
http://www.ebu.ch/en/technical/trev/trev_308-hdtv.pdf has some early 
qualitative opinions in, and there's a presentation of his more recent, 
quantitative work at 
http://hdmasters2007.com/pdf/Presentations/HDM2007_Hoffmann-EBU.pdf


Personally I found his results intriguingly counter-intuitive (in a good 
way). :-)


Rainer Schaefer reports on the work done by the EBU D/HDC group in 
section 2.5 of 
http://www.ebu.ch/CMSimages/en/PMC08%20Report-FINAL_tcm6-58345.pdf


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Re: [backstage] BBC iPlayer - why the missing TV channel?

[Steve Jolly]

Brian Butterworth wrote:
25fps, 1280x720, 16:9 (0.87 megapixels) is what is going to be in 
"Freeview HD", the DVB-T2 service.


I'm not aware that anyone has ever suggested a 720p25 HD service in the 
UK.  Ofcom have proposed putting four *720p50* services into a DVB-T2 
multiplex.


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Re: [backstage] BBC iPlayer - why the missing TV channel?

[Steve Jolly]

Adam Hatia wrote:

It claims to be true 1280x720 @24fps... http://vimeo.com/help/hd ...


The video in the link posted by Tom Hannen wasn't displayed at that 
resolution, even when you clicked the "HD" toggle (which changed the 
amount of lossy compression applied).  Perhaps there's a different way 
to get the higher resolution?



But wait, it can't really be HD... can it?
Yes! It's real, true, actual high definition. No tricks. Some other sites (we won't name 
names) and even a few major media producers have been offering low resolution video as 
"HD" just because it's slightly higher than the quality typically seen on video 
sharing web sites, hoping you won't notice. Don't be fooled, Vimeo HD is true 1280×720, 
up to 24fps.


I guess 720p24 *is* technically a true, actual high definition standard, 
although I would be very sad to see it widely adopted... :-)  (I think 
that for most *video* material, of actual moving subjects, you'd be 
better off picking a lower spatial resolution and a higher frame rate. 
Except for material where the director has deliberately chosen a low 
frame rate for effect, of course.)


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Re: [backstage] BBC iPlayer - why the missing TV channel?

[Steve Jolly]

Tom Hannen wrote:

The iPlayer is great, but in terms of HD, Vimeo now seems to be the
place to look at.  Their HD channel is amazing, but unfortunately
relegates the BBC's iPlayer into looking like yesterday's
technology...

Their HD channel is here:
http://vimeo.com/channel778e

An example:
http://vimeo.com/775442


At 360 vertical lines, that's barely more resolution than the old 
quarter-screen BBC Parliament service on Freeview - it's not even SD 
quality.  The video quality is better than the streaming iPlayer service 
(I don't have a Windows PC handy to try the iPlayer download service, 
which is higher quality), but calling it "HD" is a bit of a cheek.


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Re: [backstage] BBC iPlayer - why the missing TV channel?

[Steve Jolly]

Brian Butterworth wrote:

Was it a bad idea to include BBC HD on iPlayer too?


Are there any programmes on BBC HD that are not also broadcast (or even 
simulcast) on other channels?


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Re: [backstage] BBC begins DVB-T2 test transmissions in preparation for HD on Freeview

[Steve Jolly]

Brian Butterworth wrote:
I just asked Hauppauge if any of their exiting kit would work with 
DVB-T2, and they said


"I'm afraid that we do not have any product that would support DVB-T2, 
at the same time there's no plan of releasing one, at least until 2009. "


Looks like a very closed trial to me!


It's not a trial, it's a test of the technology.  And yes, it's a closed 
test.


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Re: [backstage] BBC begins DVB-T2 test transmissions in preparation for HD on Freeview

[Steve Jolly]

Gareth Davis wrote:
I'm sure someone down at KW will know chapter and verse on this, but 
AFAIK there are no IDTVs currently on the market that will be compatible 
with the test transmissions.


Correct.  There are no receivers currently available that are compatible 
with DVB-T2, be they STBs, IDTVs or DVB-T cards for PCs.  If you want to 
receive HD on a PC, your best bet is to get a DVB-S compatible card and 
watch the BBC HD channel via satellite. :-)


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[backstage] Mashed TV

[Steve Jolly]

Simon Thompson wrote:
We'll also be radiating a DVB-T (aka "Freeview") signal for you guys to 
hack around with.  We've got some USB DVB-T sticks, some software links 
and a talk on how to hack DVB-T and MHEG interactive stuff.


Just to clarify - this won't be a rebroadcast of one of the existing 
Freeview multiplexes: it's something we've put together just for Mashed. 
 Broadcasting all weekend on UHF channel 36 inside Alexandra Palace, 
the DVB-T network will contain two "Mashed TV" channels that will carry 
the lecture streams from Saturday morning, a bunch of videos from the 
O'Reilly Makezine Weekend Projects, some goofy idents created by 
gen-yoo-ine BBC research engineers and, in theory, anything that people 
give to us on the day (rights permitting, naturally).


Obviously you'll be too busy hacking to watch telly though, so to give 
you something to play with, there will be all the non-video goodies 
associated with digital TV, too: full schedule information available in 
EIT and TV-Anytime formats, a rebroadcast of BBC One complete with 
subtitles, audio description and so forth, and a rather special "red 
button" interactive service provided by our colleagues from the 
interactive TV teams: they want to get people writing their own 
Internet-deployed interactive TV apps, and there will be IP-enabled 
set-top-boxes at Mashed for you to test them out on.


http://mashed08.backnetwork.com/event/?articleid=24 gives some more 
technical details, and I'll be kicking off the "How to hack the BBC's TV 
services" session on Saturday morning with a brief talk about the 
potential of digital TV for cool hacks.


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Re: [backstage] Cool Accessibilty Hacks and Subtitles using BBC Redux @ Mashed

[Steve Jolly]

Christopher Woods wrote:

Blimey that sounds like a golden opportunity for some to really go a bit
leftfield with their concepts... Is it all* of the BBC's digitised archive,
or just a handpicked selection?


Everything broadcast in the last year.

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Re: [backstage] RealPlayer banished Toady!

[Steve Jolly]

Andy wrote:

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).


Cortado looks like a J2SE applet, not a J2ME midlet.  Is there a mobile 
version too?


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Re: [backstage] RealPlayer banished Toady!

[Steve Jolly]

Tom Hannen wrote:

I guess all the consituent parts exist already - I was thinking more
of an app that would make it easy for you to skip items whilst
cooking, or washing up, or in the car etc.

If you have a CD player in the kitchen, it is very easy to skip to the
next track - you stop what you're doing for a second, and hit one
button.  The same isn't true of trying to skip through items on the
today programme - stare at the screen, grab the mouse, choose from a
number of links, and click on one.

Hit the space bar to hear the next item would be a nice feature.  I'm
not saying it should be part of the today website, just that if I had
any programming skills whatsoever, I'd like to make it!


I wonder if segmented MP3 podcasts would be an elegant way to enable 
this functionality?


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[backstage] Re: [backstage] RE: [backstage] RE: [backstage] Re: Is it OK for BT Vision to charge £3 per month for the iPlayer?

[Steve Jolly]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

If BT can, why can’t you or anyone else?


In the absence of a contract with the broadcaster(s), I would suggest 
that copyright law might be a hindrance.


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Re: [backstage] Zattoo - live streaming BBC channels

[Steve Jolly]

Christopher Woods wrote:

Personally I'd rather have naff analogue with continuous audio where I can
gist the few words I miss, rather than have a lossy (moreso than analogue,
arguably) digital signal with squelchy audio and dropouts every so often. I
put up with it on my PC's freeview receiver, but I still find myself
wandering into the kitchen to tune in on the analogue set.

I think I'm a bit strange.


IIRC subjective quality tests have shown that poor quality audio causes 
a reduction in reported *video* quality of one point on the CCIR 5-point 
subjective quality scale.  I can probably dig out a reference if 
anyone's sufficiently interested.  Which suggests that people in general 
are even weirder than you think that you are, if that's any comfort. :-)


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Re: [backstage] BBC iPlayer, loved by millions, disliked by a single US citizen

[Steve Jolly]

Andy wrote:

Brian Butterworth wrote:

There is quite a reasonable argument that the TV License, which is
used to fund BBC television and radio, is a regressive tax, so someone
on benefits pays the same as a millionaire.

Or to put it another way "The less you earn, the more you pay as a
percentage of your income".

Someone who earns 14K per annum pays 1% of their income in TV Licensing,
someone who earns 140K pays only 0.1%, (assuming both own a colour
television), (figures not exact).

Anyone else think that is a little bit unfair? Wouldn't a proportional
or progressive tax be fairer?


Depends on your definition of fair. :-)  Leaving aside politics though, 
it's worth noting that making the TV license progressive would only be 
practical if the BBC's funding was folded into general taxation, and 
collected by HMRC.  I mean, let alone the cost of dealing with the 
additional information, how many people would be happy to give TV 
Licensing verifiable details of their employment status and income?


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Re: [backstage] Open Flash

[Steve Jolly]

Dan Brickley wrote:
On top of that, things are set up for an equally classic "you've tried 
the rest now try the best" argument. If you've committed to Flash, best 
to use the real thing eh? Users have a choice now: they can get an 
implementation from the leaders or from the followers. (not my view but 
a natural spin on things)


I agree with most of your points, but this one is only valid given a 
couple of presuppositions: namely that Adobe makes its own Flash player 
available for the platform you're using, and that the platform you're 
using supports user installation of software.  The less your platform 
looks like a regular PC, the less valid these assumptions are likely to 
be (for now).


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Re: [backstage] BBC iPlayer, loved by millions, disliked by a single US citizen

[Steve Jolly]

Thom Shannon wrote:
He does have a point though that the BBC is anti competitive. I 
personally think the bbc is great for consumers, and that the quality of 
bbc news is the only thing stopping uk tv news turning into something 
like american "news", but any of that could change, since the bbc isn't 
controlled by market forces.


"Not subject to market forces" and "anti-competitive" are different things.

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Re: [backstage] Moved to Manchester...

[Steve Jolly]

Brian Butterworth wrote:

[EMAIL PROTECTED] ?


I believe that most teams at the BBC have their own internal mailing lists.

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Re: [backstage] Anyone got a Eee PC 2G Surf/Linux CD?

[Steve Jolly]

Richard Lockwood wrote:
If I desperately need a laptop (RSI beckoning), I reckon I can get one 
for about the same price, with a massively higher spec than an E.
 
Apart from being fashionable, why would I want one?  Why not leave them 
for the original target market?


Size/weight.

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Re: [backstage] Ashley Highfield leaves BBC (almost)

[Steve Jolly]

Michael Sparks wrote:

On Wednesday 16 April 2008 14:32, Mr I Forrester wrote:

Although we laugh about this stuff, Google's policy on free food is
actually well reasoned. But I don't think it would apply to the BBC, as
we're publicly funded and rightly so should pay for food. I am however
going to miss the free coffee and teas from the broadcast centre. Never
was a better time to switch to green tea I guess.


I've got a kettle up here and tea bags and coffee you know. :-)


Do you want a fridge?

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Re: [backstage] Ashley Highfield leaves BBC (almost)

[Steve Jolly]

Mr I Forrester wrote:

No no, Redbull on tap... That would boost productivity :)

Cridland, i'm hot on your heels


I think that more senior management positions should be filled by 
popular vote.


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Re: [backstage] Ashley Highfield leaves BBC (almost)

[Steve Jolly]

Matthew Cashmore wrote:
lol! How on earth did Ian and I get on the list!!! Now that would be funny - can you imagine us running FM&T! 


There would be lots more beanbags, for one thing.

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Re: [backstage] Ashley Highfield leaves BBC (almost)

[Steve Jolly]

Mr I Forrester wrote:

Peter Bowyer wrote:
http://uk.techcrunch.com/2008/04/15/who-should-be-the-next-web-guru-of-the-bbc-vote-now/ 

So I highly recommend everyone goes there and votes for the guy at the 
end of the list ;-) Mr Cridland is getting far too much support, we need 
to put him back in his place.


"Controller of the children's Vision" would be a great job title. 
Almost as good as "Controller, Internet", or indeed "Head of Time" at 
the National Physical Laboratory.


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Re: [backstage] iPlayer and the ISPs - a solution

[Steve Jolly]

Andy wrote:

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?


I believe that the wholesale price of IPStream ADSL is regulated by 
Ofcom already.  Cutting it drastically would kick the legs out from 
under LLU.


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Re: [backstage] Ashley Highfield leaves BBC (almost)

[Steve Jolly]

Tim Dobson wrote:

In other news, Microsoft and Adobe employees are been encouraged to
send the BBC their CVs.

;)


I joke, I joke<


/me hides


http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/apr/14/bbc.digitalmedia1

(registration possibly required)

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Re: [backstage] Adding Subtitles/transcripts to /programmes pages

[Steve Jolly]

Tom Jacobs wrote:

i think it would be really useful if the BBC made available the
subtitles for their TV shows via the /programmes pages (or any other
accessible, searchable API).


Yes, it would be nice.

You can get access to them via a DVB card in your PC, of course, but 
because they're broadcast as pre-rendered bitmaps, you'd have to OCR 
them before you could do anything useful with them.  A few people have 
gone down this road - some friends and I gave a talk and a demo on the 
subject back at Open Tech 2005.


http://www.ukuug.org/events/opentech2005/schedule/stephen_jolly.pdf

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Re: [backstage] BBC tells ISPs to get stuffed

[Steve Jolly]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

I think the ISPs have a point ... the ADSL network is (currently) like a 
collection of country roads (narrow and fairly slow) which the BBC is trying to 
drive it's supersize juggernauts down. Think the ISPs should use some form of 
traffic shaping for iPlayer traffic and that the BBC and other such companies 
should fess up some of the costs involved in improving the network if they want 
to use the net to push their weighty products.


C'mon, the iPlayer (then "imp") was first announced back in September 
2003, and it's hardly the only service of its type.  It's not like ISPs 
haven't had any warning that bandwidth-heavy mainstream applications 
were on the way.


IIRC near-ubiquitous bandwidth caps (explicit or hidden away in "fair 
use" policies) only appeared with BT's launch of 8Mbps IPstream services 
in March 2006.


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Re: [backstage] BBC tells ISPs to get stuffed

[Steve Jolly]

Andy wrote:

The BBC forgot to mention it's actually blocking ISPs from caching the
streams.


As has already been pointed out, caching the streams wouldn't help ISPs 
because it's not their upstream bandwidth costs that are concerning 
them.  Leaving aside the practicality of caching content served via 
RTMP, the BBC is already using the Akamai CDN, making caching on the 
ISPs' networks largely pointless, as I understand it.


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Re: [backstage] DAB rollout...

[Steve Jolly]

Christopher Woods wrote:
Three years after the 
BBC's digital radio rollout was first started with 6Music, the WorldDMB 
decided to specify the inclusion of HE-AAC in the spec - yet, AAC had 
been standardised in 1997. Foresight never came into the equation? BBC 
R&D were testing AAC too back in the 90s, yet MP2 was still used even 
though it would've been early enough to adopt AAC wholesale at that 
point (only pissing off the early adopters) but once one your mum gets a 
digital radio the situation gets a lot trickier.


Just 'cos a technology's standardised doesn't mean that it's 
cost-effective to deploy it.  AAC support in "MP3" players didn't become 
common until the iPod launched in 2001, despite the fact that late '90s 
MP3 players were desperately short of storage, and would have been prime 
candidates for implementing a more efficient codec.  MP3 itself could 
have been a candidate codec for DAB, but it's more sensitive to bit 
errors than MP2, so it needs a more robust FEC scheme - an expert 
colleague once told me that the overall bitrate savings from such a 
change would only amount to about 10%, which at the time probably 
wouldn't have justified the extra receiver cost.


The parents still don't 
have a digital radio, exactly because they know that the spec will 
change at some point in the future. Plus my Dad prefers Radio 4 on FM 
because it doesn't drop to a lower bitrate at peak time (why?!), call 
him an old cynic if you like. ;)


Well, the spec for every broadcasting platform will change at some point 
in the future. :-)  I guess the salient point is probably that your 
parents are satisfied with the existing FM service though.


What worries me is that digital radio is almost still in a state of 
flux; in the space of three years, an industry-changing redefinition of 
the DAB standard is released and it causes all sorts of headaches and 
potential problems for manufacturers and broadcasters. FM stereo was 
standardised in the early 60s and it's not really changed since, yet I 
still feel like my DAB receiver (my venerable Wavefinder) is nothing 
more than 'sandbox kit', yet I've had it for years. I think half the 
problem is people just can't trust hardware they buy today to work in 
three/four years' time, whatever the assurances given.


Freeview has exactly the same issue (cf discussions about Ofcom's plans 
to push broadcasters towards a particular Freeview HD solution), but 
takeup there has been much faster.  It's interesting. :-)


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Re: [backstage] The Future of DTT

[Steve Jolly]

Andrew Bowden wrote:

Incidentally, this is the proposed change in diagramatic form
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/images/nr/multiplexes

I love the spin they put on it by drawing the current arrangement as all
jumbled up, whilst the new arrangement is all neatly regimented and
organised :)


It's interesting how much it (and the press release it illustrates) 
focus only on the headline benefits, isn't it? :-)  I look forward to 
seeing what 8MB/s h.264-encoded HD looks like - presumably the 
assumption is that the efficiency of h.264 encoders will have doubled by 
2012.


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Re: [backstage] Runners needed for Over the Air

[Steve Jolly]

Brian^H^H^H^H^HMatthew Cashmore wrote:

Hi Brian - received :-)


Brian makes a lot of posts to this list, but that doesn't imply that all 
posters to the list are called Brian, Matt... ;-)


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Re: [backstage] Embracing the torrent of online video

[Steve Jolly]

Matt Barber wrote:

Yeah I saw some stuff about tapeless production when I read about
Dirac last year, is it true that it is in use internally to shift some
content around the BBC?


Some teams are using tapeless production techniques, yes.  I suspect 
that most radio production is already tapeless, but it's still in its 
infancy for TV work.


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Re: [backstage] Embracing the torrent of online video

[Steve Jolly]

James Ockenden wrote:

In Hong Kong, all ATV, TVB, CableTV, CCTV & Phoenix TV output is is
all originally recorded on Beta tapes...
Yeah nobody uses VHS here anymore.
But Beta STILL  LIVES! (at least "backstage")
Probably it will work out the same for web video technology. Whatever
the producers embrace, that's your man.


I can assure you that Digibeta is still widely (but decreasingly) used 
within the BBC, too. :-)  Tapeless Production is still a work in progress.


(http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/projects/tapeless-production/index.shtml)

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Re: [backstage] Is Freesat going to be HD only?

[Steve Jolly]

Brian Butterworth wrote:
Let's assume that there is going to be a single transponder used for BBC 
HD.  Instead of just having a single stream of BBC HD, it has six 
streams that usually occupy 3Mb/s each, leaving plenty for one of the 
streams to be in HD at full bitrate.


To take just this paragraph as an example: nice idea, doesn't work in 
practice.  Firstly, statmuxing a single HD h.264 service and a bunch of 
MPEG-2 SD channels performs poorly.  (It's like putting chickens and 
hippos in the same pen - when a hippo wants a bit more space, the 
chickens tend to suffer.)  Secondly, five 3Mb/s streams in a 22Mb/s 
multiplex leaves 7Mb/s, which is too little for an HD video stream, let 
alone all the SI and six channels' worth of audio and data.  You can't 
increase the capacity of the multiplex, because you need to keep 
backwards compatibility with the existing Sky boxes.  Thirdly, 3Mb/s is 
too low an estimate - none of the BBC's main channels average that on 
DSAT at the moment, so you're talking about a significant loss of 
quality for the non-HD majority of the viewing population.  And so on.


The problem with your idea is that it consists entirely of problems. 
The simplest of which is that it would be comparable in complexity to 
digital switchover and cost an absolute fortune.


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Re: [backstage] Is Freesat going to be HD only?

[Steve Jolly]

Brian Butterworth wrote:
On 26/03/2008, *Steve Jolly* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote:

I think you're underestimating the difficulties.  And ignoring the
costs. :-)  Bear in mind that you can't make any changes that would
break the millions of installed Sky STBs.

As I pointed out before, it would only be the Sky HD boxes that would 
need reprogramming.  The Freesat boxes have not been released yet, so 
they can be fixed.


Getting Sky to reprogramme their HD boxes to make life easier for a 
competing service sounds like a bit of a challenge by itself to me.  But 
the point I was trying to make was that the existing MPEG-2 SD services 
and all their associated SI and interactive content will have to be 
broadcast for as long as there are substantial numbers of Sky SD boxes 
in use, *and* that any changes to the signalling on the multiplexes that 
carry them will have to be designed and then proven not to cause Sky 
boxes to do strange things.  (This was one of the more obvious design 
challenges for Freesat, obviously.)


S

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Re: [backstage] Is Freesat going to be HD only?

[Steve Jolly]

Brian Butterworth wrote:
I think you are confusing Freeview with Freesat.  On Freesat the 
multiple services are statmuxed together, on Freeview BBC ONE is in 
4.9Mb/s, apart from Scotland, Wales and NI where the extra two radio 
channels mean the whole of mux 1 is statmuxed.


I might be wrong, but I'm not confused. :-)  I haven't done my own 
measurements, but linowsat.com backs me up: of all the BBC One regions, 
only London shows any kind of statmux-related bitrate varation that I 
can see:


http://www.linowsat.com/0282/all/0282.shtml

As I said, ideally the BBC One (London) and BBC Two services would form 
the foundation of BBC ONE HD and BBC TWO HD, but it would be brilliant 
if they could switch to the MPEG 2 SD transmissions for the regional 
news.  I'm sure ITV1 HD would LOVE to do the same, especially for all 
that regional advertisting they are required to do...  So, there may be 
a slight frame pause going to the news at 6:28, 6:58, 7:28, 7:58, 8:28, 
8:58, 13:30, 15:28, 18:30, 19:59 and 22:25, but it would be a better way 
of sorting out the problem - well, cheaper. 
 
It's hardly rocket science!


I think you're underestimating the difficulties.  And ignoring the 
costs. :-)  Bear in mind that you can't make any changes that would 
break the millions of installed Sky STBs.



A simpler way to get a similar effect would be to tell the receiver when
a programme was being simulcast in HD on a different service, so that it
could automatically switch over to it at the appropriate moment, if
that's what the user wanted, and back again at the programme's end.  I
think TV-Anytime supports that kind of thing in the related content
table, IIRC.
 
That would have the same effect, but I personally would perfer to have 
my content in MPEG4 rather than MPEG2.


Your preference is noted. ;-)  Personally I'd like Dirac. :-P

S

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Re: [backstage] Is Freesat going to be HD only?

[Steve Jolly]

Brian Butterworth wrote:
On 26/03/2008, *Andrew Bowden* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> wrote:

Each region however has its own, permanent, dedicated video stream
which broadcasts 24/7.  I can't think of any channel on Sky which
reconfigures its video configuration on the fly (e.g. bandwidth,
bitrate, number of audio channels etc)


Aside from the obvious point that there are number of channels that 
don't broadcast the whole day (BBC three, BBC FOUR, CBBC, CBeebies) that 
go to low or bitrate services AND the even more obvious point that the 
channels are statisitcially multipelxed together and therefore change 
bitrate on the fly the whole time.


I think that of all the (15-odd) BBC 1 variants broadcast by satellite, 
only the London region is statmuxed, isn't it?  That's a lot of HD 
services to find room for, and a very big (and expensive) upgrade to the 
BBC's DSAT broadcast chain.


A simpler way to get a similar effect would be to tell the receiver when 
a programme was being simulcast in HD on a different service, so that it 
could automatically switch over to it at the appropriate moment, if 
that's what the user wanted, and back again at the programme's end.  I 
think TV-Anytime supports that kind of thing in the related content 
table, IIRC.


S

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Re: [backstage] Is Freesat going to be HD only?

[Steve Jolly]

Brian Butterworth wrote:
Is it true that the new BBC/ITV Freesat service (starting 5th May) will 
be "HD only"? 


The Freesat website implies that HD programming will be broadcast in 
addition to SD.


http://www.freesat.co.uk/what_is_it.php

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Re: [backstage] DVB-H finally gets formal adoption by the EC (oh and vista SP1!)

[Steve Jolly]

Gareth Davis wrote:

I'll warn you that a lot of processing power is required to decode the
H264 profile in real time. When the BBC were doing the HD DVB-T trials
across London I had a go at trying to pick it up, and found that my 3Ghz
P4 machine could only managed about 14 fps.


At the risk of promoting proprietary software, 
http://www.corecodec.com/products/coreavc.html may be your friend here.


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Re: [backstage] DVB-H finally gets formal adoption by the EC (oh and vista SP1!)

[Steve Jolly]

David Greaves wrote:

Anyhow, personally I'm stuck until I can get a non-DRM HD signal into my Linux
Myth PVR.


I assume satellite isn't an option for you?

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Re: [backstage] iPlayer DRM is over?

[Steve Jolly]

Iain Wallace wrote:

Aside from the Big Lebowski reference: What?


I believe it's an analogy.

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Re: [backstage] Guardian article about iPhone iPlayer

[Steve Jolly]

vijay chopra wrote:
I'm sorry I just despair for the journalists in this country. In theory 
they should be a paragon of virtue, holding authority to account, 
uncovering misdeeds and campaigning on behalf of the citizenry.
Instead we get dumbing down and catering to the lowest common 
denominator; and then they wonder why they have falling circulation.

The only dead tree press I buy now is Private Eye.


You sure know how to make friends with people who work for the country's 
largest news-gathering organisation. ;-)


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Re: [backstage] iPlayer DRM is over?

[Steve Jolly]

Dave Crossland wrote:

When the BBC limits the MP4 stream to Apple hardware devices, it is
implementing DRM


Sorry, not convinced.  IANAL of course, but personally I don't see how 
the concept of restricting access to a particular client implies the 
concept of preventing copying.


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Re: [backstage] Guardian article about iPhone iPlayer

[Steve Jolly]

vijay chopra wrote:
The BBC response article is only marginally better, again referring to 
"hackers" for no apparent reason though they at least have a motive to 
mislead: propaganda. Though I probably shouldn't attribute to malice 
what's adequately explained by stupidity.


Personally, I can think of explanations that don't insult the journalist 
in question. :-)  That aside though, the BBC News website has a form for 
people to report factual errors which you could use if you felt 
sufficiently strongly about the matter.


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Re: [backstage] Guardian article about iPhone iPlayer

[Steve Jolly]

vijay chopra wrote:
I like the way that the article suggests I'm suddenly a 1337 h4x0r 
because I can chnge the user agent on my browser.


See? I knew people would appreciate it. :-)

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Re: [backstage] iPlayer DRM is over?

[Steve Jolly]

Ian Partridge wrote:

One thing I've always found unconvincing is the way the BBC bleats
"but the production companies won't let us distribute the content
DRM-free!". The BBC has major clout - it could say "from now on, all
production contracts we sign HAVE to allow DRM-free redistribution".
It could refuse to pay megabucks for that. Given the piss-poor state
that ITV is in at the moment, what would the rights-holders do? Take
their bat and ball and go where exactly? The rights-holders need the
BBC just as much as the BBC needs them - if not more.


Can I suggest that you read up on the recent Writers Guild of America 
strike, with particular attention to the causes of the strike (notably 
the issue of residuals for new media distribution[1]) and the 
consequences - for the guild-members, "a beachhead on the Internet and 
in new media that will guarantee our share of a potentially vast and 
bountiful future"[2] according to the guilds' presidents.


S

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007-2008_Writers_Guild_of_America_strike
[2] http://www.wga.org/subpage_member.aspx?id=2781

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[backstage] Guardian article about iPhone iPlayer

[Steve Jolly]

Thought that people might find this interesting:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/13/digitalvideo.television

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Re: [backstage] iPlayer DRM is over?

[Steve Jolly]

Iain Wallace wrote:

 That's how the iPhone is doing it (and the Flash player, and all the
 other network media players that support progressive downloads), yes.
 Obviously progressive downloads and streaming are very different things,
 but in the domain of Internet video, the former seem to be meeting a lot
 of users' requirements at the moment.


The Flash player wasn't - it was using RTMP, which enables the client
to feed back about bandwidth to maintain a stream quality that the
client can handle and also to skip to any point without downloading
the preceding file contents.

I'm sure you knew this - just clarifying.


Apologies, I wasn't talking about the BBC's video services, and I wasn't 
sufficiently clear - Flash *can* play video back via a progressive 
download (cf Youtube), or it can "stream" the video via RTMP as you 
point out.  (I use the quotes because different people expect different 
things from the term - in a broadcast (or multicast) context people 
might expect streaming to preclude a return path back to the server, for 
example.)


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Re: [backstage] iPlayer DRM is over?

[Steve Jolly]

Dave Crossland wrote:

On 12/03/2008, Phil Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

 FWIW I still can't get the mp4 to stream rather than download.
 Anyone?


My guess is that the proprietary player on the iPhone just buffers
part of the HTTP GET data and starts playing away? :-)


That's how the iPhone is doing it (and the Flash player, and all the 
other network media players that support progressive downloads), yes. 
Obviously progressive downloads and streaming are very different things, 
but in the domain of Internet video, the former seem to be meeting a lot 
of users' requirements at the moment.


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Re: [backstage] Is it just me, or is some stereo audio on BBC chans (Freeview) out of phase?

[Steve Jolly]

Martin Deutsch wrote:

I've suggested that Christopher tries another reciever, or moves the
aerial to somewhere with better signal strength. (I don't know that
much about how the decoding process works, but perhaps someone more
fluent in DVB will know - is it possible that error correction and
recovery could be doing odd things to the sound in the event of low
signal strength?)


I wouldn't describe myself as an expert, but from what I know of DVB, I 
think that it would be very unlikely that a receiver could end up with 
an audio phase error and no other symptoms as a consequence of reception 
difficulties.


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Re: [backstage] Is it just me, or is some stereo audio on BBC chans (Freeview) out of phase?

[Steve Jolly]

Christopher Woods wrote:
Can you give an exact channel, date and time when you 
observed the phenomenon?  (03:59 GMT last night on N24, perhaps?)


Definitely. Observable on BBC2 last night/this morning (05/03/2008) during
the intro for "Spin" (03:44am). Also observable during the 60second
countdown buffer for N24 top of the hour (4am). I can send MPEG2 files if
you want (direct streamrip, advantage of having USB DTV receiver).


I have access to DTT stream recordings. :-)  I took a look at the N24 
music you mentioned.  Listening to it, there's a very clear difference 
in the stereo characteristic of the sound between the (virtually mono) 
talking head segments on either side of the music, and a lesser 
difference between the music at the end of the special report and the 
N24 countdown in question.


Converting the stereo to mid/side encoding and listening to the new 
channels separately, the side channel contains virtually no LF 
component, whereas the mid-channel contains plenty - you'd expect them 
to contain roughly the same amount if the signal had been subjected to a 
90 degree phase offset, and you'd expect all the low frequencies to be 
concentrated in the side channel in the case of a 180 degree phase 
inversion.


So at the moment, I don't see any evidence for an overall phase error, 
I'm afraid - at least for the one section of audio I've had a look at. 
:-)  The difference in the characteristic of the sound that I can hear 
could simply be due to the transition between dead-centre mono speech 
and a very complex bit of music with a broad sound stage.


S

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Re: [backstage] Is it just me, or is some stereo audio on BBC chans (Freeview) out of phase?

[Steve Jolly]

Christopher Woods wrote:
Not used my USB Freeview receiver for a while, hooked it up because I 
dug out an amplified aerial and thought 'heck, why not.' In essense, 
audio seems to be varying degrees out of phase - measurably 90 degrees 
out of phase on BBC Three and N24. I observed this phenomenon tonight on 
BBC Three, BBCs One and Two but most noticeable on News 24. Speech is 
fine (which is generally monaural, so yeah) and on other channels it's a 
bit noticeable in places, but it's most obvious on N24 and BBC Three 
where there's stereo music... The top of the hour buffer (with the 
countdown) on News 24 is totally out of phase for its duration.


Can you give an exact channel, date and time when you observed the 
phenomenon?  (03:59 GMT last night on N24, perhaps?)


S
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Re: [backstage] Adobe fuses on and offline worlds

[Steve Jolly]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
But what is wrong is to forbid people from being to help people 
regardless of the circumstances, for example by sharing with them, even 
if they want to. This is what proprietary software does.


It's also what happens when railways require photocards for season 
tickets, since that stops people sharing them and makes them buy their own.


(I can't believe I'm making arguments in favour of proprietary software 
here... ;-)


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Re: [backstage] Adobe fuses on and offline worlds

[Steve Jolly]

Dave Crossland wrote:

You are mistaking the kind of freedom we are talking about; software
freedom is tightly defined -
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html - and is not about those
things. But for what its worth, I do all those things.


Please consider using the phrase "GNU/software freedom" to describe this 
FSF-specific definition of the concept. ;-)


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Re: [backstage] HD-DVD / Blu Ray

[Steve Jolly]

David Woodhouse wrote:

On Tue, 2008-02-26 at 11:56 +, Brian Butterworth wrote:

Why don't you just write it to a BR disc for yourself? You bought it,
after all -- surely you have a right to _use_ it?



It is the same MPEG4 format anyway.


Is it? I thought HD-DVD used WMV^W VC-1 -- I thought half the point of
Microsoft's involvement with HD-DVD was to push their codecs?


I believe that HD-DVD and Blu-ray both standardised HD-DVD *and* VC-1 
(and MPEG-2), as alternatives.


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Re: [backstage] Internet TV standard

[Steve Jolly]

Christopher Woods wrote:

Hat-tip also to the marvellously geeky bod at the Beeb for the inclusion of
the Archimedes reference on the BBC Internet blog. Took me back to when I
first got my A3000 :)


There was one on my BBC Micro too, IIRC... :-)

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Re: [backstage] HD-DVD / Blu Ray

[Steve Jolly]

Richard P Edwards wrote:
I would love to know who it was that decided to make the two systems 
incompatible.. once again, if that hadn't have happened HD-DVD could 
have still lost, but without the public's purchases becoming pretty much 
obsolete, and the hardware would still have a market.


Where's the fun in a format war where the formats are compatible? :-)

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Re: [backstage] Last.fm for television

[Steve Jolly]

Peter Bowyer wrote:

On 28/01/2008, Brian Butterworth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

I presume that a TV version of last.fm would be last.uhf?


last.am would be more consistent, if slightly confusing.


last.dssc? :-)
last.cofdm perhaps, now that we're rapidly heading for digital switchover...

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Re: [backstage] BBC TWO Programme timings

[Steve Jolly]

Brian Butterworth wrote:
The system I wrote for ITV over 15 years ago worked down to the FRAME - 
that's 1/25 of a second.  That is how channels are scheduled.


Scheduling systems may be accurate to 1/25 of a second, but that doesn't 
necessarily imply that they are equally precise.  The ability to change 
their minds up to the last minute *and beyond* means that the accurate 
times need only reflect the schedulers' intentions, rather than being 
set in stone.


My point was that the schedule on BBC TWO has been deliberately nudged 
along a few minutes to gain a competitive schedule advantage, and this 
is being withheld.
 
I could just ask the BBC TWO scheduler if this is the case or not, I 
suppose.


That would be more useful than asserting it without any evidence, certainly.

Would an EPG be useful if the titles were imprecise? 
 
99% in such environments is terrible.


Firstly, titles *are* imprecise - they contain spelling errors and 
inconsistencies (eg "Brand New Top Gear" vs "Top Gear" vs "Best of Top 
Gear", etc) that make it very hard for PVRs to do useful things with 
them (eg title-based series detection).  Secondly, millions of people 
*do* find schedules useful despite the lack of total accuracy.  So 99% 
in such environments is adequate.



As a justification for doing nothing, yes.


Something has already been done - a standard for accurate recordings has 
been agreed and implemented by the broadcasters and PVR manufacturers.



I'm just thinking of the user of the PVR systems.


The people who have bought standards-compliant PVRs get accurate recordings.

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Re: [backstage] Dirac Pro v1.0.0, SMPTE VC-2

[Steve Jolly]

Sean DALY wrote:

I think this is fabulous news. Congratulations to all who worked on it.

A patent-unencumbered (say that 10x fast) royalty-free codec is
something the world needs.

So what if Microsoft doesn't support it, they don't support H.264 or
AAC either (XBox & Zune aside) and look where that got iTunes.


It is indeed fabulous news, but people should bear in mind that Dirac 
Pro / VC2 is not the codec that most people think of as "Dirac".  It 
lacks motion-compensation, which is unnecessary for its intended use, 
but which is needed to make it competitive with widely-adopted 
alternatives such as WM9 and h.264.


Dirac Pro is being marketed in hardware form as a way of squeezing HD 
video down relatively low-bandwidth cables, such as the SDI cables 
installed in many TV studios for standard definition signals - see 
http://www.numediatechnology.com/products.html for details.


http://dirac.sourceforge.net/specification.html gives more details, 
including the specifications of the two codecs.


S

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Re: [backstage] BBC TWO Programme timings

[Steve Jolly]

Brian Butterworth wrote:
I'm not trying to BLAME anyone here, I'm trying to find out where the 
EPG information gets nobbled and make an attempt to get some to 
"acknowledge mistakes" and provide  "accuracy" in the data.


Accuracy is impractical.  Locking the start time of programmes to a 
second-precise pre-published schedule would cause chaos.  I mean, think 
how often Radio 4 presenters crash the pips.  If you had a channel with 
no live content, no continuity, no opt-outs and no last-minute 
programming changes then you might have a chance, but you can't design 
the EPG system for an entire platform around those limitations.


So instead, you engineer a compromise.  The schedule becomes a guideline 
- people can use it for planning their viewing, and PVRs can use it to 
try and stop you from booking more simultaneous recordings than you have 
tuners, and as a way to plan when to switch themselves on and tune in. 
Then you have a precisely-timed trigger signal (EIT P/F on Freeview) 
that the PVR can use to tell when the programme starts and ends.  That 
way the broadcaster retains the flexibility to change the schedule as 
often as they need to, while the consumer still gets accurate recordings.


You appear to be asking for last-minute schedule changes to be published 
separately.  Well, you could do that, but the system I just described is 
better*, so that's what's been implemented.


*it allows PVRs to behave correctly even when programmes overrun 
indefinitely and without prior warning, for example.


If I can get a signed letter from someone at the BBC saying that it's 
Microsoft's fault, then I can go an staple it to the "Memorandum of 
Understanding" and get MS to sort it out.


Do you really need a letter saying that WMC has not been certified as 
compliant with the Freeview Playback standard?  Doesn't the absence of a 
Freeview Playback badge on WMC-based devices mean that Microsoft already 
know?


I think that the core issue here is your assertion that published 
schedules should be as precise as possible, and updated as often as 
necessary.  I don't think that most people expect that to be the case, 
and I don't personally see a compelling argument for making it so.  If 
accurate Freeview recording from WMC is important to you, I would 
suggest that you direct your efforts towards getting Microsoft to 
implement it using the existing standards, and ideally get WMC certified 
by the DTG while they're at it.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/papers/pdffiles/ibc99pl.pdf might be of 
interest to people following this discussion.


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Re: [backstage] BBC TWO Programme timings

[Steve Jolly]

Brian Butterworth wrote:
It seems incredible to me that the BBC is DELIBERATELY providing me (via 
Microsoft) with inaccurate information. 


If you were to start by assuming that inaccuracies in the EPG data 
provided by the BBC were there for reasons other than to screw over 
Windows Media Center users, you might be more likely to come up with a 
reasonable explanation for the behaviour.


*I* know I can do this, I just wanted to know why the BBC was providing 
poisoned information.  Why should people who have paid for Windows Vista 
Ultimate Edition have a poor service on purpose?


Why should the BBC optimise its schedule services for the benefit of one 
particular manufacturer of DTT viewing software?  As Martin describes, 
there are standard ways of accurately timing recordings from DTT, and if 
Microsoft doesn't choose to make them available to users of its 
software, I don't think it's reasonable to blame the BBC or any other 
broadcaster for this.


Given how much you know about broadcasting, I am certain that you are 
aware of the conceptual and practical differences between programme 
schedules published a week or more in advance, and actual playout times, 
which can vary considerably, especially (but by no means exclusively) if 
live events overrun.  I don't know much about Digiguide, but it seems 
probable to me that they are only providing you with the former 
information.  Again, I find it hard to understand how the BBC is to 
blame for this.


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Re: [backstage] BBC iPlayer bursts through user target

[Steve Jolly]

Graeme Mulvaney wrote:

It would be good if you could provide 'bookmarks' into some of the
current affairs/magazine style programming - e.g. you could jump to a
particular report in 'the culture show' or skip to the sudden death
round of 'the weakest link', etc.


Segmented content, huh?  Yes, that would be nice... :-)

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Re: [backstage] BBC iplayer on exotic devices

[Steve Jolly]

Dave Crossland wrote:

On 09/01/2008, Jason Cartwright <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Production client-side code really shouldn't have documentation in.


If the BBC is serious about supporting innovation around the iPlayer,
it ought to leave it in here.


I believe Ian said that there's a proper API coming, which sounds to me 
like a more elegant solution than serving lots of redundant comments to 
every iPlayer user.


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Re: [backstage] 403 Forbidden on http://www.bbc.co.uk/technology/

[Steve Jolly]

Sean DALY wrote:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/technology/ is showing 403 Forbidden.


Mmmm, sweet forbidden technology.  (Not to be confused with 
http://www.forbidden.co.uk/).


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Re: [backstage] BBC News : site feedback.... [Fwd: RE: Feedback [NewsWatch]]

[Steve Jolly]

David Greaves wrote:

Fair enough - but this is The BBC News

So getting it right (and not misleading) should trump the mere impossible :)

>


IIRC some time ago (months/years) there was something vaguely
fraudulent/misleading/prankish that was backed by an out-of-context but genuine
BBC story whose date was not obvious.

And it still doesn't excuse the front page dynamic links being 'gamed' to point
to a years old piece. I expect 'most emailed' to be limited to stories from the
last few days.


I confess that I've been surprised in the past by old links in the "most 
read" and "most emailed" lists.


Interestingly, the 4th-most emailed "story" at the time of writing is:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/education/07/school_tables/primary_schools/html/212_2180.stm

Which isn't a story at all...

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Re: [backstage] BBC News : site feedback.... [Fwd: RE: Feedback [NewsWatch]]

[Steve Jolly]

David Greaves wrote:

I think someone missed the point here...

Or am I wrong?


If I explain that all the stories on the BBC news website are barely 
more than static HTML, would that explain why adding watermarks to them 
all would be difficult?  If the site was backed by some kind of 
new-fangled CMS then it would be an extremely sensible suggestion. :-)


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Re: [backstage] iPlayer search problem

[Steve Jolly]

Adam Leach wrote:
My point was that this top gear episode 
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b008gzy6) is signed, yet there is no 
way on knowing that until you start watching it.  If i had downloaded 
this via the p2p client i would have been a bit disappointed, but then 
again its available so its better then nothing.


Yeah, and the fact that signed versions of programmes are usually 
broadcast after the unsigned version often leads to only the signed 
version being available during the period around the end of the 
seven-day window - this struck me as being an interesting consequence of 
the window when I first noticed it.


If you're like me and find yourself wanting "more of the same" when 
you've finished watching a programme, I suspect you could often find 
yourself wanting to watch content for which only a signed version is 
available.


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Re: [backstage] New BBC customisable homepage

[Steve Jolly]

Noah Slater wrote:

I would disagree with this, a standard that is ignored is still a
standard, it's just an ignored one.

The word "standard" doesn't mean something that's commonly used it
means something that is on a standards track specification.


What does that make a "de-facto standard"?

S


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Re: [backstage] Interview with Anthony Rose - Podcast

[Steve Jolly]

Matthew Cashmore wrote:
Well it’s podcast time again and yesterday I got the opportunity to 
speak to Anthony Rose - head of all things iPlayer here at the beeb.


Anthony also gave a pretty interesting talk at the IET's IPTV conference 
today - it's also on the web, albeit only (afaik) at the IET's own 
rather old-fangled site ("Realplayer or Windows Media?" is so 2005...):


http://www.iet.tv/search/index.html?spres=5850

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Re: [backstage] Please release Perl on Rails as Free Software

[Steve Jolly]

Matt Lee wrote:

Steve Jolly wrote:


To eliminate confusion, I propose that we in future refer to the FSF
definition of "free" as GNU/Free.  I thank you.


Or you could say 'free software, as defined by the Free Software
Foundation', which is more accurate and doesn't fall into the logical
trap of everything having a GNU prefix which some people may fall into.


You could, but it has the two disadvantages of being longer to type, and 
not being a joke. :-)


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Re: [backstage] Please release Perl on Rails as Free Software

[Steve Jolly]

Noah Slater wrote:

On 06/12/2007, Andy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

In fact isn't the bulk of this thread concerned with the way in which
"Perl On Rails" will be non proprietary.


Not really, proprietry is the wrong word to use here. The word "free"
is much more descriptive. It is perfectly possible to have free
proprietary software.


To eliminate confusion, I propose that we in future refer to the FSF 
definition of "free" as GNU/Free.  I thank you.


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Re: [backstage] Muddy Boots on Backstage

[Steve Jolly]

Billy Abbott wrote:
In order to get the gatekeepers to offer that software they need to have 
an incentive to do so. Apart from idealistic ones who are doing it for 
the reason of wanting the software to be free, I don't currently see 
what the incentive is for the others. While I'd like to be able to get 
the software (so that anyone can run their own service and also have the 
potential to grab the software and run their own service if their 
provider goes tits up) I can understand why people don't give it out for 
free.


Pleae let me know if I am missing a reason why people should, outside of 
idealogical reasons.


Well, if developers were more cautious about basing their applications 
on APIs with no Free implementations then that would give API providers 
an incentive.  But they aren't, and I wonder why?  As developers, what 
is it that makes the people on this list trust big web application and 
service providers to maintain their APIs for as long as you want them? 
Is it because you have a high level of trust for them, or a very short 
expectancy of useful life for your applications?


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Re: [backstage] Muddy Boots on Backstage

[Steve Jolly]

Deirdre Harvey wrote:

So can you give us any indication of when the technologists will
have completed the prototype of the journalist that doesn't need
food or shelter?


Well, someone here at BBC R&D presented a (tongue-in-cheek) design for 
an android journalist at an internal new ideas symposium a year or so 
back... I don't think it's got past the concept stage though. ;-)


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Re: [backstage] Broadcasters to launch joint VoD service

[Steve Jolly]

Nick Reynolds-A&Mi wrote:

i have no idea what a "dat file" is so I wouldn't know how to send
one anyway so it must have been someone else


Nick - I think you're using Outlook as your email client.  Have you got
it configured to send Rich Text emails by default?  I believe that can
lead to every email you send being given a "winmail.dat" file attachment
that contains the Microsoft-specific rich text version of the email.

See http://www.ericphelps.com/tnef/ for some details.

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