Silverlight Broadcasts TV: It Really is Getting That Good Now, But Also Painful
I am Mark. I work for Microsoft and I like our products. There with that over with, last week my Livestation beta invite was approved. It is really superb. Better than any other web TV I have seen to date. It’s built on SilverLight which will broadcast the Olympics later this year. Now that’s scale like we ain’t needed to think about before. I haven’t tried it from work but I do I hope it will be smarter than the BBCiPlayer. Can you believe the BBC’s system built on our own technology won’t let me watch TV that I pay a license fee to watch when I am in the office. That’s right at work we go out via a proxy in Dublin, Ireland so when I am sat at my desk in Thames Valley Park I can’t download online TV from the beeb. This is madness. This is an unhappy use case being played out on all the users of the system. Just because we prefer to watch on a laptop, doesn’t mean we are cyber-hoddies trying to steal something. CurpheyLaw-n -Risk management that interferes with the users will always be resisted.
On a side note I would like to see a really good independent study on why the SilverLight security model is superior to that of other mobile runtimes. Anyone?
February 18, 2008 at 9:52 am
> Better than any other web TV I have seen to date.
I think there simply AREN’T many live web TV systems out there right now. In the UK I only know of two: Livestation and Zattoo. They are quite comparable.
February 18, 2008 at 12:30 pm
> On a side note I would like to see a really good independent study on why
> the SilverLight security model is superior to that of other mobile runtimes.
Not that I am aware of. Livestation is only live since a few weeks, so I suspect there are relatively few people out there who had a chance to have a closer look at the underlying technology.
Another question:
I would like to see a good independent study on the technology itself, and how it compares with other streaming technologies out there, such as the ones used by Zattoo and TVU Networks. All of these use P2P, so it would be interesting to see a serious study of various technological aspects, e.g., streaming quality, image rendering, scalability, resilience to changes in network demands, peer churn, etc.
Anyone?
February 18, 2008 at 4:25 pm
>Can you believe the BBC’s system built on our own technology won’t let me watch TV >that I pay a license fee to watch when I am in the office. That’s right at work we go out >via a proxy in Dublin, Ireland so when I am sat at my desk in Thames Valley Park I can’t >download online TV from the beeb. This is madness.
But what could the BBC really do? By law (as I understand it) they are not permitted to “broadcast” commercial free content, funded by license fees, outside the UK. Checking the location of an IP number seems a reasonable way of doing it. I guess they could accept written statements from organisations like yours where you swear that these IP numbers are physically in the UK. Or perhaps the application for a login could involve some sort of verification. Neither options would be particularly easy and probably not worth the trouble.
I’m impressed with Livestation. I’m in the US and my only disappointment is that it doesn’t include BBC World here yet. I hope it’s coming.
February 18, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Ross
Everyone who buys a license could register it and be registered for UK content. Drivers licenses all have numbers, why cant TV licenses?
February 18, 2008 at 9:08 pm
But what would stop someone “lending” their login id to someone outside the UK? I know there is no perfect solution but it seems like that would be open to more abuse, expense (international bandwidth) and potential violation of the royal charter than the BBC would want to deal with.
February 18, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Isn’t that the “Don’t make TV cause it will end up on YouTube anyways” argument? In this world surely the best thing for the BBC is to sell as many licenses as is possible. Why should that only happen inside a small physical Island in these days of the ever connected grid?
February 22, 2008 at 6:28 pm
You may be right about it being good if the BBC could sell more licences but that’s a whole different discussion. I don’t think the BBC is legally permitted to sell licenses to non UK residents.
I was responding to your original post where you said you hoped that Livestation “will be smarter than the BBC iPlayer”. It’s not a lack of smartness that limits the iPlayer to IPs in the UK. It’s the BBC complying with the law in a way that is clearly not perfect but probably a reasonable compromise.