BBC News => BBC moves to file-sharing sites
You know, I would gladly pay the £131.50 ($255.87) television license fee that everyone in the UK with a TV is required to pay that funds the BBC if only I could get the BBC programming. The technology exists, but it is political and contractual barriers that prevent it.
BBC programming is far more interesting to me than the existing pay networks we have in the US like HBO or Showtime. Of course, we have BBC America, but that’s only a small subset of the programming and it’s often months or years behind the actual transmission. It’s also cut and heavily loaded with commercials.
The programming never includes BBC Four material, like Dr. Iain Stewart’s Journeys from the Center of the Earth or Journeys Into the Ring of Fire – two excellent documentary series on geology that would probably be considered too arcane even for the Discovery Science channel over here.
That’s why I applaud the BBC’s commercial arm for attempting to setup a bitorrent distribution system through Azureus/Zudeo. I have just have two cautionary things that hopefully the BBC will not stumble over. They have to distribute the files fast (within, if not a day, than no later than one week after original transmission) and they need to price them reasonably. The second series of the new Doctor Who sells on DVD for $70, that’s about $5 per episode and it’s already rather pricey for DVDs. Copy-protected digital media can’t be anywhere near that expensive. It’s going to have to be in the range of iTunes’ $1.99 or less.
Even at $1.99 the numbers add up too fast. That’s $25 for Doctor Who, $25 for Torchwood, $25 for Robin Hood, $16 for Life on Mars and that doesn’t touch on other shows like Planet Earth, My Family, Worst Week of My Life and many other programs.
Most importantly, their DRM better work on Macs.
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