BBC iPlayer, The iPhone and Illegal State Aid

No one could have missed the fact that the BBC has launched a new service called iPlayer recently. They stuff it down our throats after every pointless episode of EastEnders.

Most people (normal people) would be surprised however to learn of the ongoing controversy which surrounds the beeb’s most recent squandering of our money.

The (Microsoft Windows Only) Desktop Client

Which allows you to download DRM encumbered BBC programming from the last 7 days and store and view it for the following 30 days, after which time the DRM technology built into the files renders them unplayable. This DRM protection however has roughly the strength of ten paper bags. But that’s beside the point.

The Windows iPlayer application uses the same Kontiki Peer to Peer client as does Channel 4’s 4OD. For the unitiated, this piece of software, once installed, will run constantly in the background as a “seed” hosting chunks of content oh behalf of the BBC for others to download from you rather than them. This is in essence the SAME technology as the BitTorrent which is touted by digital rights enthusiasts, such as the BBC as the root of all evil.

Aside from this. Kontiki is well known to randomly cuase high CPU load, systm freezes and lockups. Certainly not something i’d wnt to install on my Windows PC. If I had one.

Of course the other problem with the Windows based client software is just that. It is Microsoft Windows only. It is certainly not platform agnostic, and that is something to BBC is supposed to be duty bound to provide to license fee payers. By deciding to create a platform specific solution, in partnership with the supplier of that platform (Yes, Micorsoft were involved in the development of iPlayer) they are offering an unfair advantage to a private enterprise, and doing so using public funds.

The Online Streaming Service

Released around Christmas 2007, This promised to be an excellent opportunity for the BBC to finally offer up it’s programming to ALL license fee payer, regardless of whether or not they were also Microsoft license fee payers. They failed.

The choice of flash video streaming over RTMP offers yet again another unfair advantage to yet another private enterprise. Adobe. Rather than chose an open non-proprietary codec, they opted for yet another proprietary system of content delivery. So who do you think advised the BBC on their online streaming iPlayer service? Yes. Adobe Inc.

The “Salt In The Wounds” iPhone Service

So, last week some people started noticing that if visited using an iPhone, the iPlayer site was now serving up nice Non-DRM’d h.264 encoded MPEG4 files. A quick glance at a BBC pres release confirmed that yes, they had released a “streaming” service targetted specifically at the iPhone. Only it doesn’t stream. It’s just that the iPhone is able to buffer and begin playing the file as it downloads.

Most people with half a braincell realised that by simply changing the User Agent string in their browser they too could download an unencumbered lovely little h.264 of any program they wanted by simply looking at the html source and copying and pasting a URL.

The mainstream media reported these “hackers” and the BBC closed the security hole mumbling something about “oh, it was only supposed to be a beta, come on guys, ree-lax”. To suggest that switching user agents is hacking is tantamount to describing wolf-whistling builders as crazed rapists.

This then opens the debate, if the BBC do not have the rights to distribute their programming in an open format as they say they do, how is it they can offer this very service to users of one device, which is only offered by one mobile carrier (O2), only produced by one company (Apple) and has a relatively tiny user base.

From a simple marketing perspective this act gives Apple a HUGE extra selling point for their iPhone product in the UK. It’s almost beyond belief that this could be allowed.

Either they openly distribute their content to ALL those who are forced to fund it, or they don’t. It seems clear to me that the decision makes in all this are uneducated in the technologies involved. With a Personal Video Recorder under my telly, and a large enough hard disk, i can digitally record anything i want on any free-to-air channel, whenever i want - and keep it forever. Why go to such lengths to try and secure something which is so freely available.

Consider this scenario. I miss an episode of my favourite BBC TV show. It’s ok cause i had my Freeview digital video recorder i bought from ASDA to record it in full digital quality using nothing but the aerial on my roof. In fact i’ve recorded the entire series, as well as the previous series all in full SD broadcast quality… maybe even HD if i had freesat. It’s good enough to keep and watch again. Or share with others if I wanted.

Then consider another scenario. I miss an episode of my favourite BBC TV show. It’s ok cause i can head over to the iPlayer site and download a small but unrestricted h.264 encoded MPEG4. It’s pretty shitty quality, but good enough to watch at a push. I’ve done this every week since the show started, and i now have two series of it burnt to a CD at a fairly low resolution and bitrate, that i’ll probably dispose of once i’ve watched them all.

In which one of these sitations am i more likely NOT to go out and buy some BBC DVDs. And let’s face it, this whole debate boils down to potential loss of residual income.

The current state of play benefits no one but three giant multinational organisations and a UK mobile phone carrier, who pretend not to be BT Cellnet. All at the expense of the UK public.

I wonder if the EU Antitrust Commission are busy at the moment?

Update: The fix issued by the BBC seems to be more of a publicity stunt than an actual fix. The MP4 streams are still pretty much completely unsecured. Beebhack is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to watch the content they’ve paid for on their own terms. There’s also a really nice looking XBMC plugin, which if it works as good as it looks is gonna be amazing.