We’ve been holding back with Apple news since the vomit-inducing coverage of the iPhone launch that many publications gave (Engadget and Gizmodo appearing top of the list, in that order).
Here’s one worth noting though, Apple has announced that they’ve now sold over THREE BILLION tracks.
Continue reading 3 Billion iTunes Track Sold
Sky have announced, in the presentation of their final year accounts, a joint venture with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe to offer PSP owners in the UK and Ireland a content download service.
Saying that PSP-owners can “turn their devices into personalised on-demand video libraries,” will be a big boost for the PSP UK-side, where Sony claim that there’s 2 million of the blighters.
The start date has been pencilled as “early 2008,” making it the first in Europe. With delivery to the handheld via wireless or PC-connection, it’s that expected content such as “sports, entertainment, movies, music and animation,” will be available, interestingly from “both Sky and 3rd party channel partners.”
Sky is being really prolific in distributing its content (apart from Virgin customers :) ), arguably better at it than the BBC – whose have a specific remit to do so.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
Today the BBC has opened a list for up to 500,000 UK TV license payers to sign up for access to iPlayer – if they have an appropriate computers setup.
Over the next six months, those who sign up will be let on to the Beta trial to use iPlayer. (Those of us who have been on the 15,000 people iPlayer trial will have noticed that there was a new release of the software last night.)
Let’s be clear, we do think that the iPlayer is an advance for the BBC, and the functions and control it gives views are welcome.
Where it really lets itself down is that it is dependant on a very thin slice of technology needs.
Continue reading BBC iPlayer: A Flawed Gem
If you listen to our interview with Mark Taylor, you’ll have heard a very interesting point that was raise in the OSC discussion with the BBC Trust.
The BBC Trust are totally fine with BBC content going out to over the Internet _without_ content protection – ie DRM.
This would be in-line with the BBC’s view of distributing their TV content over satellite in the UK, where in 2003 they made Sky beam out the BBC TV channels without encryption – much to Sky’s displeasure – saving themselves £40m – £85m in the process.
This is of course still an avenue open to the BBC. We wonder how much of the License payers money would be saved on DRM if they were to take this route?
We got the exclusive opportunity to interview the members of the Open Source Consortium (OSC) that has met with the BBC Trust, directly after they had been discussing the BBC iPlayer with them for the first time.
From there we scooped the iPlayer On Linux a must story, but there was a lot more detail in the interview than we could get into the piece.
Various highlights were
If you, like many others, are unhappy about the iPlayer only being available on a particular version of Windows, get yourself over to the iPlayer petition. Every vote counts, so join the current 12,000+ that have said they don’t like it.
Sorry about the popping in part of the recording (like the beginning), but I left the mic windshield at the office – blast!)
[audio:https://digital-lifestyles.info/media/audio/osc-post-bbc-trust-iplayer-meeting.mp3]
Ofcom has published a proposal that some VoIP services should allow users to call 999 to connect to emergency services as soon as by early 2008.
They’ve carried out research that has revealed that as many as 78% of those with VoIP thought that they could, or did not know if they could.
Ofcom’s concern is that VoIP users cannot connect to emergency services when they really need it – ie. in an emergency.
If people have to locate a landline or mobile phone, costing them a delay of seconds or minutes in getting through to emergency services, it could prove critical.
Continue reading Ofcom Wants VoIP 999 Services
We’re all aware that the BBC is planning to make their iPlayer compatible with Macs … and we even know that now that the BBC Trust has committed to make it work with Linux (shock horror).
Well if you’re like most of the tech population, you might be scratching your heads, wondering how the bleep they’re going to be doing it – given that the whole system relies on Microsoft technology to deliver any of it, and in particular the DRM. Especially as, to date Microsoft has steadfastly refused to deliver a media player for the Mac that has DRM built in.
Continue reading Is Silverlight the BBC iPlayer Silver Bullet?
We’ve recently had an horrific experience. Having recorded a few great interviews using the excellent Zoom H4 digital audio recorder, gone to download them to the Mac for processing, only to find that some of them were zero length – apparently completely inaccessible.
The sinking of the heart that occurs and the sheer blind panic shouldn’t be experienced by anyone, so we’re going to pass on our experience to you in the hope that you don’t ever have to live through the same.
The Zoom H4 has always performed well for us. it produces excellent quality stereo recordings with no hint of data lost.
Continue reading Cheap SD memory – Don’t Do It!
We’ve been in touch with the BBC Trust today, to follow up the statement that was mentioned in our piece about the BBC Trust position on the iPlayer and Linux playback. Here it is in full with our observations at the end.
Continue reading BBC Trust Statement On iPlayer OSC Meeting: Bit Woolly
The Open Source Consortium (OSC), the organisation leading the charge to make the BBC iPlayer open to all platforms, not just Microsoft Windows, met with the BBC Trust yesterday to find that there was a lot of agreement in their ambitions.
Speaking to Mark Taylor of the OSC straight after the BBC Trust meeting, I learnt that The Trust had declared that they “share the vision” of the OSC. Not surprisingly the OSC representatives felt very buoyant but the very positive meeting.
Continue reading BBC Trust: iPlayer On Linux And Mac A Must