[UK beta on] BBC Mainframe open Access!

LewieP

This thread is for the discussion of the BBC's new archive service, try not to steer too far towards discussion of drm/conent ownership, that's more something for D&D really.

I just got this email

The Beeb wrote:

Dear lewis,

We are very excited to announce that the BBC archive trial is now open!

Hundreds of programmes are now available for you to watch and enjoy until late autumn. We will be adding new programmes throughout the trial.

To access the trial go to this website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/trial and enter your unique PIN along with your e-mail address. You'll need to remember this number as you won't be able to get into the trial without it.

PIN: ******

We hope you enjoy the BBC archive trial and find it easy to use, but please remember that it is a prototype and will be a learning process for us as well. If you do come across anything that you think we can improve then do let us know by contacting us through our feedback form.

In fact your comments and opinions are essential to this trial, so please don't hesitate to get in touch and let us know what you think of the website and the programmes we have made available.

Please do not share your login information with anyone else or post it to a public place. If another person uses your login your own access to the trial will be affected.

Regards,

BBC archive trial team

This is essentially the first step to the BBC giving license holders access to the conent that they have allready paid for the right to watch. Checking the archive homepage, they have closed registration, but if I remember correctly, months ago when it opened a bunch of UK PAers registered for it. They also say that later on this year it will open to everyone, so keep checking.

I'm gonna check out some of what's on it now. OMG Tomorrow's World from 1991!

Lave II

I registered for this ages ago. But I've got nothing.

Well at least I've another reason to constantly refresh my email.

How exciting! I love the Beed.

FightTest

programmes

LOL LEARN2SPELL ENGLAND AMIRITE?!?!

(sorry)

Mumblyfish

This could, and should be a most wonderful thing, but information is scarce. How is the material being distributed? Are episodes of programmes available in their entirety; are we limited to clips? Are the programmes available in their broadcast resolution or will we be forced to view in dinky little browser windows? All very important stuff, but for how earth-shattering this service should be the BBC aren't doing a particularly good job of getting the word out.

TL;DR: Beta testers, get in touch when I can download full episodes of Fist of Fun. Thanks.

LewieP

FightTest wrote: »

programmes

LOL LEARN2SPELL ENGLAND AMIRITE?!?!

(sorry)

LEARN2INVENTALANGUAGE USA AMIRITE?!?!

(I forgive you)

Æthelred

Woo-yay, got an email too. Will report back with details.

Duchess Prozac

I got this email a few days ago, however Everytime I try to watch the video it slows my computer down a crawl until I reboot.

Æthelred

There's a really weird selection of stuff on this thing. :? There's 327 items in all, with just 7 videos from the 2000s:

Power to the People
Take a look at revolutionary socialism in action in Scotland.

News: 29 Dec 2005
Secret papers from 1971 about dealing with a nuclear war are revealed.

Space: Flying Visits: Destination Mars
Heavy doses of radiation and solar flares stand between us and Mars.

x 3 more episodes of Space

Scotland the Wild: The Secret North
Julie Anderson uncovers the story of Scotland's Arctic past.for the 2000s:

Mumblyfish

Oh dear. I do hope you picked those out as "special cases" rather than examples of the service as a whole. Utterly insignificant programmes that noone would want to watch once, let alone again, unless they get their jollies off on being really angry over license fee money being pissed away. Aethelred and Duchess Prozac are both in on it, so if you could be so kind, could you field a few questions?

Around what dates does the archive cover at present? Is it filled with classic material from the 1960s to the early 1990s which no longer gets repeated and will never see a commercial release (thanks for pandering to the idiot majority, Beeb; I always thought the license fee was being protected to provide niche television that no commercial outlet would touch, rather than chasing ratings; lolJoseph), or is it full of shit "naughties" (2000+) TV? Edit: Not skim-reading Aethelred's post cleared this one up; I would still be grateful to know how far back the archive goes, and how comprehensive it is in covering earlier eras.

Simple question: Clips, or full programmes?

What resolutions are available, and can archive programmes be played in a stand-alone player, or are we forced to view in a browser window the size of a postage stamp?

Can content be downloaded, or do we have to suffer through trying to stream in Windows Media Player? Even if it is heavily protected by DRM, I would like the option to download.

How is content transferred (if it is downloaded)? HTTP? FTP? BitTorrent, or similar? Oh, please say BitTorrent. I would like to believe that the BBC has at least one higher-up on the books with a gods-damned brain.

Finally, and this one may be subjective so I'm not expecting an answer: How "popular" is the material on offer? Is it mostly programmes popular with the masses? Niche or cult programmes? Shit that goes beyond niche, due to its shittiness; shit that noone in their right mind would care about (see: Aethelred's post above)? I'd like to know, because as I've already made quite clear, this would be a wonderful method of distributing programmes the BBC of today won't broadcast, and I would hate to see it wasted on programmes that still get repeated. Basically, I'll have a fit if there's no Fist of Fun or The Mary Whitehouse Experience, but every fucking Only Fools and Horses episode under the sun.

BenMCOB

Damn, I completely missed the sign up for this... I must know though, is Breakfast Serials from 1990 on there? I'm like the only one of maybe 3 or 4 people who seemed to watch it when it was on so I don't see it ever coming out on DVD. And to date I still haven't watched the last episode of Nice Chap.

Æthelred

Mumblyfish wrote: »

Oh dear. I do hope you picked those out as "special cases" rather than examples of the service as a whole. Utterly insignificant programmes that noone would want to watch once, let alone again, unless they get their jollies off on being really angry over license fee money being pissed away. Aethelred and Duchess Prozac are both in on it, so if you could be so kind, could you field a few questions?

Sure; it'll help me poke through the system a bit. I picked those 7 programmes out not as special cases, but because those 7 are the entirety of the TV archive for 2000-2007 at the moment. I think any analysis of the system has to recognise that the BBC simply haven't added much content yet - the trial is slated to go 'live' this autumn, so presumably they'll be adding more and more as time goes on.

I can't understand why they haven't added more as of yet though. Journalists will be getting in on this trial, and they won't be impressed. It surely doesn't take long to convert a reel into digital. From the sheer banality of what's there thus far, I can only assume that the system is at a "this is what we could do" stage.

On your 'popular' question at the end: really, really not enough content to judge.

Around what dates does the archive cover at present? Is it filled with classic material from the 1960s to the early 1990s which no longer gets repeated and will never see a commercial release (thanks for pandering to the idiot majority, Beeb; I always thought the license fee was being protected to provide niche television that no commercial outlet would touch, rather than chasing ratings; lolJoseph), or is it full of shit "naughties" (2000+) TV? Edit: Not skim-reading Aethelred's post cleared this one up; I would still be grateful to know how far back the archive goes, and how comprehensive it is in covering earlier eras.

Hah, just caught this edit. Anywhere, here's the raw numbers (ignore the links, vbulletin copies them):

• Radio (115)
• TV (257)

• by decade
• 1930s (3)
• 1940s (11)
• 1950s (30)
• 1960s (89)
• 1970s (71)
• 1980s (98)
• 1990s (54)
• 2000s (16)

• by category
• Children's (21)
• Comedy (26)
• Drama (54)
• Factual (234)
• Light Ent (30)
• Music (23)
• News (32)
• Sport (4)

So like I said, a weird selection by decade. The predominance of factual programmes is explained by the BBC thusly:

The fact that there are more factual programmes than comedy and drama programmes in the archive trial reflects the fact that there are lots more factual programmes in the BBC's archive as a whole. This is because drama and entertainment programmes actually account for only a small percentage of the BBC's output. We all tend to think that more drama and entertainment programmes are broadcast than actually are because most of these are broadcast at prime time - which is, of course when most of us are watching!

Simple question: Clips, or full programmes?

Full programmes. However, 'magazine' style programmes will apparently be lacking some footage. Again from the Beeb's FAQ:

Some of the magazine programmes in the trial, like 'Nationwide', do not exist in full anymore. This is because with this format of show lots of different elements are brought together to create each programme. For many programmes some segments would have been pre-recorded, perhaps on location, whereas other elements would have gone out live from the studio. This all means that not every show was recorded in full.

What resolutions are available, and can archive programmes be played in a stand-alone player, or are we forced to view in a browser window the size of a postage stamp?

First off, it's WMP and Real Player again.

Programmes launch in a pop-up window, but it's straight-forward enough to get the address and play it in your stand-alone player. It's so straight-forward, it really should be an option - when streaming normal footage from the BBC's site, there's the link to "launch in stand-alone player." If they're not going to block it, they should put the link it for the technologically less-inclined.

Resolution is 320 x 240. Bleh.

Can content be downloaded, or do we have to suffer through trying to stream in Windows Media Player? Even if it is heavily protected by DRM, I would like the option to download.

How is content transferred (if it is downloaded)? HTTP? FTP? BitTorrent, or similar? Oh, please say BitTorrent. I would like to believe that the BBC has at least one higher-up on the books with a gods-damned brain.

Streaming. However, remember all the fuss about what sort of DRM the BBC should use? All the talk from private companies that there should be stricter DRM than the BBC wanted, etc. That would all be irrelevant if they were simply going to stream everything, so I'm fairly certain downloading will be made available at some stage.

The_Scarab

Who the fuck complains about free TV?

Especially free BBC TV.

Mumblyfish

The_Scarab wrote: »

Who the fuck complains about free TV?

Especially free BBC TV.

It's not really free, considering the content (and, of course, the service itself) was paid for by the [vast majority of] British taxpayer. I do suppose it would be free in my case, as I don't pay the license fee (for reasoning see: any post where I get sidetracked onto ranting about how insufferably shit 2000-era television is), but my point still stands: For the great majority of British citizens, the BBC's archive service is anything but free.

Aethelred, thanks for your lengthy response. It is much appreciated.

Rook

Yeah, I got my pin a while ago and I'm sorta fairly disappointed with the content available. It was a good laugh to go and watch the Tomorrow's World programs from 10 and 20 years ago but I'm not entirely sure whether I'll spend too much time browsing around the archives.

Æthelred

It's one to come back to in a couple of weeks and see if any new content has been put up, I think.

The service technically gets around the need for a valid TV licence by some mechanism in which previously aired programmes don't need a licence, or something. I know when a friend of mine stream live sports from the BBC website (at university) he's breaking the law.

Æthelred

This doesn't really belong in this thread, as it's about the iPlayer, which is for just-aired programmes, but people will actually check this thread.. Anyway, it seems the iPlayer will be using a strange DRM system. Downloaded programmes will be deleted automatically after 30 days, but the main mechanism is that:

Once viewed in entirety, programmes will be automatically deleted.

Bizarre. How's that going to work? Can I watch a section of a programme again if someone interrupts me and I miss a bit?

Cepp

Is bbc micro live on there?

Æthelred

What's that?

edit: wait, the console?

Cepp

link

An old computer show from the 80's, I only discovered it on youtube a couple of days ago but I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Would be nice to watch it all at a decentish res/quality.