Rant about the BBC

supermonkeyworld · Post by **supermonkeyworld** » Sun May 21, 2006 3:57 pm 0

I generally give entertainment programmes pumped out by the BBC a wide-birth these days, but their documentary and news output is quite good. So why the hell do they have to use cunting real media player to listen to their stuff online?

Rod_S · Post by **Rod_S** » Sun May 21, 2006 4:01 pm 0

It's all gonna change soon:

http://open.bbc.co.uk/reboot/

Looking forward to seeing the final redesign.

Bubba · Post by **Bubba** » Sun May 21, 2006 4:28 pm 0

They use Windows Media Player for large chunks of it too

And I think VLC will happily play back both

Cheers

Bubba

Gorecki · Post by **Gorecki** » Sun May 21, 2006 4:47 pm 0

Bubba wrote:They use Windows Media Player for large chunks of it too

And I think VLC will happily play back both

Cheers

Bubba

I don't think VLC can play Realplayer streams. Although if anyone knows better then please let me know how.

Darkflame · Post by **Darkflame** » Sun May 21, 2006 4:47 pm 0

VLC = God of all players.

stealthbanana · Post by **stealthbanana** » Sun May 21, 2006 4:50 pm 0

Its a bugger when you use linux and haven't set it all up properly (well to use the BBC prefered formats).

Everyone please email the BBC and ask them why they only support proprietry formats, and ask for open source solutions to be supported.

mutantcamel · Post by **mutantcamel** » Sun May 21, 2006 4:54 pm 0

There was a great story I heard about when News 24 started to accept 3G video submissions from people. The first one they received was a guy simply saying "do your own fucking journalism". A similar sentiment comes to mind when I read stuff like "We don't just want you to redesign the bbc.co.uk homepage, we want you take it all the way back to the drawing boardâ€¦So, what does your bbc.co.uk look like?"

teamonkey · Post by **teamonkey** » Sun May 21, 2006 5:25 pm 0

Gorecki wrote:I don't think VLC can play Realplayer streams. Although if anyone knows better then please let me know how.

The RealAlternative codec works on the BBC's site if you don't want to install RealPlayer. The BBC also have a slimmed-down version of RealPlayer that you can download from their site.

merman · Post by **merman** » Mon May 22, 2006 12:07 am 0

And you can choose WMP for many of the streams now...

Sir_LANs-a-lot · Post by **Sir_LANs-a-lot** » Mon May 22, 2006 12:09 am 0

Ah, but it did have the best version of Elite though, eh?

PFVA · Post by **PFVA** » Mon May 22, 2006 12:23 am 0

supermonkeyworld wrote:I generally give entertainment programmes pumped out by the BBC a wide-birth these days, but their documentary and news output is quite good. So why the hell do they have to use cunting real media player to listen to their stuff online?

I was complaining about that yesterday whe i was trying to watch the Eurovision. And i ended up downloading it an not having the plug in to see the image, i just had sound.

Dungeon-Dave · Post by **Dungeon-Dave** » Mon May 22, 2006 1:27 am 0

stealthbanana wrote:Everyone please email the BBC and ask them why they only support proprietry formats, and ask for open source solutions to be supported.

Apparently they are - since they're looking at black-box embedded software thingies that do video feeds for them, running Linux of some sort (SuSE9 was preferred).

However, I *DO* feel like emailing a pretty heavy rant given the way my folks have been receiving threatening letters about not having a TV licence.

(footnote: no, they don't have a TV licence. But they don't have a TV either.)

leekfiend · Post by **leekfiend** » Mon May 22, 2006 1:38 am 0

Dungeon-Dave wrote:However, I *DO* feel like emailing a pretty heavy rant given the way my folks have been receiving threatening letters about not having a TV licence.

(footnote: no, they don't have a TV licence. But they don't have a TV either.)

Get them to write a letter telling the TV licence monkeys this, and they'll leave them alone for a year. Then they'll write them a letter saying "have you got a TV?" and your fols will have to write back saying "no".

In my case, I even own a TV, but use it only for my Gamecube. I wrote them a letter telling them so, and they bother me once a year since, as above.

~D4T45H4T~ · Post by **~D4T45H4T~** » Mon May 22, 2006 2:29 am 0

Rod_S wrote:It's all gonna change soon:

http://open.bbc.co.uk/reboot/

Looking forward to seeing the final redesign.

Dang, I would've had a shot at that if I'd known earlier...

Rib · Post by **Rib** » Mon May 22, 2006 3:26 am 0

This is actually because of copyright law.
If you have streaming media, it falls under radio licensing laws. If you offer media as a download, then it falls under different laws. So if you want to listen to the BBC they can only provide streaming media. Clearly they decided RealPlayer was best for this.
Of course they can provide downloads for anything they own all the rights to, but not for radio stations they run that play music etc....

YakYak

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