BBC Top Tweet!

It came to my attention that the BBC (yes, THE British Broadcasting Corporation) is one of the top tweets. One source said it was number one and the other at 6th and 8th position. Perhaps source one combined the second sources tweets to give the Beeb number one status. Either way, I had to verify this weird factoid as a lifelong Beeb fan.

Nevermind that the Beeb itself says that Twitter tweets are 40% 'babble'. I also become a true Luddite when it comes to things such as Twitter. I am a quasi-Luddite when it comes to modern technology, grudgingly accepting some things (e.g., computers, blogs, and e-mail). Otherwise going whole hog about things such as the internet, MP3 players, and PVRs (I include iPlayer in that category). Anything which gives me access to "Culture" wherever I may be is more than acceptable to me. The BBC's motto is "Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation" which strikes a chord in me.

Anyway, part of the reason for all the Tweets is that the BBC has announced budget cutbacks. It has proposed closing two radio stations (The closing of Radio 6 causing a fair amount of tweets), half its website, and cut spending heavily on imported American programmes (not much of a loss in my opinion) in an overhaul of services to be announced next month.



Personally, I think the Beeb should introduce external licence fees for all those people who use proxy server to access iPlayer from outside the UK. Sure, there's a get out clause about people who watch delayed programmes which is hinted at in this blurb:

If you watch or record television programmes as they're being shown on TV you must, by law, be covered by a TV Licence, no matter what device you're using.

Go a little further on the licencing fees website and you see:

However, you don’t need to be covered by a licence if you’re only using ‘on-demand’ services to watch programmes after they have been shown on TV. So, you need a licence to watch any channel live online, but you wouldn’t need one to use BBC iPlayer to catch up on an episode of a programme you missed, for example.

Although, I did have a detector van person knock on my door and ask if I had a Television 20 years ago. I told him that I didn't, but I did have a computer. That was before access to the internet was widespread. Britain didn't have much in the ways of dial-up BBSs either at that time. Soooo...

Anyway, The people using iPlayer as more than just a "catch up service", but as their primary source for receiving the Beeb should be able to access the service directly. Of course, that gets in to all those DRM aspects that I personally detest: in particular, region coded DVDs (or other region blocked material). There are so many ways to get around these things that most Blu-Ray discs AREN'T region coded. So, region coding with me is a topic that truly raises my hackles, but it is also very easy to circumvent. Information should be without borders: especially music and other artistic performances.

So, if the good people at the Beeb would listen to me, maybe they may consider making iPlayer a pay service without borders and time limits. How many Americans are going to want to watch Rab C. Nesbitt? Better yet, how many can understand what he's saying? It's idiotic to make Rab C. Nesbitt DVDs (or other shows with "limited appeal") region coded to the UK or Antipodes (DVD regions 2 and 4). And BBC America is a joke (along with being part of the Discovery Network). If the Beeb won't look to other sources of income, they should stop bitching about licence fees.

Or being broke.

Personally, I'd pay to be able to download from iPlayer if they would cut the DRM crap. Otherwise, get-iplayer does the trick quite nicely for me: especially since get_iplayer gets rid of the DRM!

Raiding the BBC Archives: DRM, iPlayer, and other things

Anyone familiar with UK TV knows that the powers that be were terrible about archiving shows. It was common UK television practice up until the late 1970s to destroy videotapes because of agreements with actors' and musicians' unions that limited the number of repeats. Fortunately, the policy of wiping recordings ceased in 1978. When Peter Cook learned the series Not Only... But Also was to be destroyed, he offered to buy the tapes from the BBC but was refused because of copyright issues. He then suggested that he purchase new tapes, so that the BBC would have no need to erase the originals, but inexplicably this was also turned down. We are fortunate that some series managed to survive this dark period of ignorance. I believe that some programmes, such as Doctor Who and the Goon Show managed to survive because the tapes were shipped to other countries that were more enlightened regarding archiving (e.g., Canada and Australia).

This wasn't just a UK problem since Lathe of Heaven had various issues regarding its rebroadcast, this was despite it being the most requested PBS programme of all time. Even the remake had to have the Beatles "A Little help from My Friends" redone to enable the show's rerelease. WNET has not said how much it cost to re-release Lathe of Heaven, stating simply that it "wasn't cheap," and that hopefully royalties would help recoup the expense.

Anyway, This comes from one issue I have with iPlayer: they don't archive the shows for very long. The 7 day limit is annoying: especially when they rebroadcast the show. Also, the rebroadcast of Hamlet was in standard def rather than hi-def. The good folks at the Beeb have said that they are making the quality of standard programmes better, which they are. But, hi-def is indeed much clearer, which is important when you are watching the programme on a 1080p 37" LCD-TV! Also, some of the later archived versions of iPlayer vids are signed.

Being signed is acceptable if you are deaf, but it's a bit like watching someone playing charades for those who do not sign. This is especially true since the interpreters tend to emote whilst signing. It could be worse, the described programmes for the blind are a bit annoying as well. The Goons used to point out the advantage of the radio for using your imagination. As they would say "try doing that on Television" after some bizarre description of their activities.

You can find Goon Show Scripts here:
http://www.thegoonshow.net/scripts_alpha.asp
If you are too cheap to buy the books.

The next annoyance is DRM, which isn't limited to iPlayer. Neither is it really relevant since there are ways to get around that nonsense. It seems to me that these people could make more money by allowing people to subscribe to the iPlayer service and download away. Better yet, get rid of the geographic restrictions on this material anyway since that can be circumvented as well.

It's a bit like the cartoon where the person is saying "Not many people pirate CDs of Buxtehude" (although I did hear that Tallis's Spem in Alium was pirated as Spam in Allium, or Spam in Garlic in translation--not sure if that was a joke or not after this reference). How many people are going to pirate Michael Portillo's Great British Railway Journeys? Anyway, it seems that regional encoding has gone the way of the Dodo with blu-ray since people who want to watch programmes such as Michael Portillo's Great British Railway Journeys will do so.

Never underestimate a determined Anorak!

The New Toy

I am having great fun with the Cinema Tube, although most of my viewing has been material which is on some form of drive: in particular iPlayer downloads. Get-iPlayer is a whole lot better than the actual BBC iPlayer for the fact that the downloads don't have the annoying DRM. IPlayer's DRM makes no sense, but neither does DRM in general. The particulars of iPlayer DRM being that the downloads must be played within a week if you begin to view the programme. Otherwise, the thing can sit for months so it seems. I have Rick Stein's Christmas Odyssey waiting to be played on the official iPlayer from late December 09!

Although, up and coming goodies are David Tennant's Hamlet is being repeated. I'll download that in hi-def(another complaint about the official iPlayer). There is also a programme, The Virtual Revolution, which is coming up as well that sounds interesting.

Back to iPlayer DRM, the official player blocks the end users ability to do things with DRM, yet get-iPlayer can download the programmes without the DRM. Even better, it can do so in hi-def! The hi-def versions usually play much better than their other versions. In some manner, get-iPlayer does a sound taxi trick to remove the DRM. Nice!

Although, I did record an episode of Michael Portillo's Great British Railway Journeys (Todmorden to York) which was unplayable. Somehow, when the show came to the City walls bit there was this message that the sound had a difference in speed. Not sure what that means. The Beeb's archives mean that this show is only available in a signed version (as opposed to the hi-def versions availble a little while back).

Not sure if the original version can be fixed, but I am going to give it a try.

In future, I will download the flash versions with get-iplayer since they usually come out better.

Well, so much for reviewing the media server software. I'll save that for a future post.

More iPlayer moaning

I am really ticked about the DRM on iplayer material since that seems to bugger up just about everything with the player. Also, I have this thing against DRM in that it makes life miserable for the end user, can still be broken, and really doesn't protect anybody's rights anyway. No, it seems to make playback impossible.

Anyway, I had a problem with iPlayer in that get_iplayer was giving me something about the ITV plugin and not letting me download anything. Fall back position was to use the official Beeb iplayer desktop. Amazingly enough the programmes actually downloaded and seem to have done so completely using the official Beeb iplayer desktop. That was a miracle to behold since usually the official Beeb iplayer downloads act wonky as all get out. What's the point of watching something in "hi-def" if the sucker does all sorts of weird things? On the other hand, the shows download and play when I go off line (Ha!).

Get_iplayer has a lot of advantages over the official Beeb iplayer since it removes the DRM that prevents you from keeping the show longer than one week. The official Beeb iplayer desktop has a week's limit to how long you can watch something before you have to redownload it. Also, the the official Beeb iplayer desktop downloads aren't portable (can't move them between computers). Moving the downloads creates all sorts of problems. That's unfortunate since once computer is hardwired and the other is wireless. The hardwired computer downloads stuff in about a 10th of the time.

Anyway, all is well, but I truly wish the Beeb would drop the DRM on the iPlayer downloads since it doesn't do anyone any good.

BBC iPlayer

I really like iPlayer since it allows me to catch BBC programmes and watch them when I want. Although I have some frustrations with the player not always downloading correctly, especially through the actual iPlayer desktop. My hardwired connection can download faster than my wireless, but I can't transfer shows since they tend to stop midway. A programme called get_iplayer is much better for downloading and doesn't have some of the associated iPlayer drawbacks.

Get_iplayer finds the "portable device" version of the show. I find that version is less buggy than the actual iPlayer version. I blame the DRM for a lot of iPlayer's issues. In particular crappy download quality. It seems that programmes either are jumpy as heck or can stop. I am frustrated as heck that I was only able to download half of an episode of the New tricks episode "Mad Dogs". Frustration has cause me to buy a copy of season 5 from a Dutch vendor and the sucker is taking forever to come.

On the other hand, it is a great advantage to catch some of the programmes such as Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton's Madison Square Garden Concert. It doesn't bother me that they're a couple of OAPs. And it seems that QI series 7 is up and running. That means I have to download that!

Why have cable or satellite when you can have iPlayer?

Problems! Problems!

I have to admit a bit of surprise when this popped up in response to my wanting information on viewing instant movies on netflix:

I personally consider myself a citizen of the world and this is an affront to my vie sans frontiers lifestyle.

Of course, I would prefer my culture to flow from Europe to the US rather than the other way around.

Which it is as I am downloading Spooks (AKA MI-5 to the Septics) 8 Episode 1 and Episode 2 of Andrew Marr's The Making of Modern Britain (Road to War) from the BBC iPlayer website. Marr's show is absolutely fascinating even though it is far more lefty than I am these days.

After having suffered through the last two Seasons of Spooks, I'll give it a view on iPlayer before making a commit.

Nothing like a transatlantic Tivo to get me the type of viewing I really want!

Copyright and my music and movies

One of the issues I find I am dealing with in regard to the iPOS and why it doesn't work with other programs than iTunes is DRM, or Digital Rights Management, and AAC/.m4p . The iPod is set up in such a way to try to prevent "piracy". Then again, so is the Toshiba gigabeat, but I don't have any problems with managing that unit. But the iPOS is a whole other thing.

I don't mind artists getting royalties for their work, but I do mind pieces of software telling me how to organise my music collection. Forcing me to use file formats I don't want and reorganising my music files on my computer. Even more so when the software is set up so that it constantly crashed my equipment.

On the other hand, I have 7 to 11 mp3 players (number depends on if you count computers). Fair use allows me to be able to listen to this music on any of these machines. As I have said before, I don't use file sharing programs, but I have an extensive music collection. I don't like being told to use one piece of software or equipment: especially if that software or equipment doesn't work for me.

Another headache I have is that some of the music and movies I want to see distributed aren't getting as wide a distribution, or even being distributed in a way that rewards the artists. Case in point are videos, especially those being pirated, sold in one region and not another, and so on.

The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts. To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate. It is the means by which copyright advances the progress of science and art.

The problems is that there are now new ways of getting music, video, literature, and other art forms distributed. Yahoo had an article about how the music industry has missed the mark on the internet and using the internet as a method for distributing music and videos. That's really true.

First there were the peer-to-peer networks, which the Recording industry has basically shut down. On the other hand, there are now sites in places like the Ukraine (MP3 Fiesta) which distributes recently released albums for 99 cents a pop. This is opposed to other sites which charge as much for a single song.

But the real issue to me isn't so much the price of downloading as much as the access to material. Take Nikolas Harnoncourt and Concentus Musicus Wien's recording of Jan Dismas Zelenka's Hipocondrie. Das Alte Werke hasn't reissued this on CD, but it's available as a download on the internet. I've seen it for $2.99. Maybe that price is in Euros, but the point is that for anywhere from US$3-6, I can have a digital copy of a work. Das Alte Werke has caught up with this and say it will reissue this work, but how many people have downloaded it already.

And, I can replace a work that I sold from my vinyl collection despite the fact that I need to back up my downloads and don't get album art and notes (not much of a loss in the days of the CD) for much less than the price of a CD. Additionally, most of the cost of a CD is profit (and distribution costs). But, cutting out the middleman drastically reduces the cost of the music.

And getting material to the audience is the real issue. I was thinking of howthe Beatles came to the attention of Brian Epstein by people asking for copies of "please, please me" and Brian searching out the Beatles. A musician can use the internet to connect with his audience.

That's the real point of this post is being able to make music available to the audience should be the focus of the music industry.