Much Back-Slapping at the BBC

With general celebrations all round at the BBC for the successful roll out of their iPlayer some things appear to have been overlooked.

Yes, after the consultation period they are going to have to support Macs. Except... if you read the small print... it is likely to be 2 years away.

"Earlier this month BBC Future Media boss Ashley Highfield said the corporation was committed to rolling out the iPlayer on Windows PCs first of all, and then cable TV services, Apple Macs, and eventually Freeview boxes.

But the BBC said it could not commit to a two-year deadline to achieve this goal, saying it was up to the third parties concerned."

This is outrageous. Basically it means that Microsoft DRM is ruling the roost and they are relying on Microsoft to deliver the solution.

OR

For Apple to develop time-limited DRM to deliver their material.

Now that the BBC have also stopped their stored radio material being accessed from abroad it means that they are really putting a lock down on all their stuff.

It ain't going to take long for people to break the Microsoft DRM so they will actually achieve NOTHING by using this "solution". Unfortunately it also means that illegal usage of BBC material will be encouraged. So file sharing will continue when they could have got people buying the material they produce. For example - making it available for purchase on iTunes would have been a simple and economic solution - but of course that wouldn't fit in with their plans...

It's pretty obvious that the Beeb does NOT want Apple to get a foothold in the UK in any way, shape or form.

The BBC article can be found here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6607083.stm