http://www.nber.org/papers/w18773

E.g. I could get a IPTV-capable TV from random, cheap Asian vendors, which support all the technologies required to use the BBC HTML video iPlayer platform, yet the TV will not work with that platform, unless BBC approves of that vendor and that vendor has done the work to enable it. The BBC has constructed this power for itself. Now imagine if every state broadcaster in the world takes this approach – its going to increase the costs of IPTV significantly.

So yes, I completely agree with you. It should not be different. However, it is. That is my complaint. It should be yours too.

Update: A concrete example today: Android. Android supports all the technologies needed for the HTML video option, yet if you try to access iPlayer with Android it will not work (unless you have Flash, which many Android users do not). Why is this? The BBC has not approved Android for some reason, even though it has approved Apple iOS devices. Android users have been asking this of the BBC for years, to little avail. The BBC recently introduced an Android app to solve this problem, which is basically an Adobe Air wrapper for the Flash interface, however many users appear to find it substandard in features and performance, e.g. compared to the HTML video interface available to iOS. This would not be an issue if there were non-discriminatory access to the BBCs’ IPTV platform.

1. For however much longer the Flash platform remains relevant – I wouldn’t want to invest in it at this point.

Unfortunately, at the moment, the only options are:

a) An obsolete technology, whose supplier is no longer particularly interested in porting to new platforms, nor even in continuing to support existing platforms. Even if they were interested, it may require a six-figure sum and/or per-unit royalties.

b) Persuade the BBC to approve your device. Whether the BBC will do so depends on unspecified criteria.

The net result is that at present, entrance to the ondemand IPTV market has a very high barrier to entry. This is entirely due to the BBC. Further, the longer this goes on the more it seems the BBC is deliberately pursuing a strategy of building a restricted IPTV market.

Is my view.

It would appear that the BBC selected a supplier of streaming technology (Adobe) as a partner on the iPlayer project. Previous comments from the BBC would indicate a key factor was cross platform delivery. Previous to adopting Adobe they used Microsoft technology. The selection of Adobe appears to be above board – as you say what other platforms were available? Real, Microsoft, Quicktime (Apple) come to mind – and I’m sure we all remember how bad Real player which the BBC used to use for audio…

The fact that all the UK IPTV providers use DRM and/or Flash would indicate that digital protection of the stream is a requirement. I would have thought it unlikely that anyone would spend good money on DRM delivery platforms if they weren’t needed.

You can record TV locally as broadcast for time-shifted viewing – I think this has to be performed from the live broadcast and in your home. The fact TV is broadcast un-encrypted allows you to do this. The universal delivery of TV is currently mandated by the BBC Trust. The nature of the current TV license/BBC funding would need to change if delivery of all TV moved to the Internet. I’m sure technology would be developed to support local timeshift copies that are digitally locked to the local user to ensure copyright is preserved.

For there to be competition in the market for Flash, requires there to be an alternative supplier for it (one that actually works). I am fairly confident that none such exists (and I know about Gnash and Lightspark). If you know otherwise, feel free to point me towards that supplier.

See also an earlier blog of mine, “Letter to the BBC Trust regarding concerns with the BBC iPlayer”.

Let me be clear, I do not object to the BBC authenticating the end-user. E.g. if the BBC would sign my certificate, so that my home-built IPTV device could access the HTML video iPlayer interface, I would be happy. More generally, to satisfy me, the BBC would need at least a semi-automated Cert Authority system to allow small vendors and hobbyists to request and obtain signed certs. This would allow the BBC to later revoke access, if they had evidence of misbehaviour by an end-user.

My problem is that the BBC discriminates in who it will issue these certificates to, locking out all but a selected few from the ability to build IPTV devices.

It’s a balancing judgement, but unfortunately the public can do little but trust the BBC has made the right call. However, I do not accept for a moment that the BBC had their hands bound by content makers – the BBC owns or part owns many of the production companies it commissions from! And for those it does not own, they have demonstrated they are happy to fore-go encryption elsewhere. I am not even convinced these contracts really require the BBC to implement DRM, except perhaps with BBC Worldwide. Particularly given the technology is evolving, and the BBC was not in a position to guarantee OfCom or the BBC Trust would have actually allowed them to implement DRM.

As for DVB-T2, it does *NOT* have DRM. The BBC *tried* to get DRM for FreeViewHD, using the same arguments as for digital, but OfCom disallowed it ruling, iirc, that BBCs’ remit requires them to broadcast unencrypted. Parts of the EPG data are indeed encrypted, but the actual MPEG media streams are NOT encrypted. And guess what, there’s plenty of content to broadcast!

As for SD, the content available on iPlayer often doesn’t go past SD in potential quality. Which is also being broadcast in the clear!

I sympathise with the BBC situation somewhat. However the arguments they’ve made have reality-consistency issues to them that undermine their credibility. Where those arguments might hold water, it relies on documents which, conveniently, can not be released or even quoted from; on associations with other organisations who can not be identified.

So basically, there are 2 poles to the range of ways to view what has happened:

1. The valiant little BBC fought hard for the public interest, but ultimately was cornered by the powerful private content-makers, and forced into signing away the public’s fair-dealing rights. Worse, the BBC can not even defend itself from the likes of me, because those powerful content-makers have made every detail of those agreements confidential.

Poor BBC!

2. The BBC, under the leadership of people who sometimes come from and often later go to private media companies, have used the extensive resources available to it to re-shape the future of TV (which IPTV almost certainly represents). In particular, removing freedoms the public has held for many decades. Freedoms which private media companies have never been easy with, and which they find inconvenient in the digital world. The BBC have justified this based on the deals the BBC has made with private media companies. Where those deals require DRM, the BBC has actively encouraged the addition of such terms. The BBC is conveniently able to hide these deals from FOI requests under the smoke-screen of commercial sensitivity, even though some of these deals will be with companies the BBC part owns or even wholly owns – BBC Worldwide most notably.

I don’t know which of these two extremes is more representative of what’s happened. The BBC won’t show me the documents that could allow me to tell! I suspect option 2 may be closer to the truth though.