Tag: BBC
BBC bringing live One and Two to the Internet
The BBC has announced that it BBC One and BBC Two will be available to watch live online from next Thursday, 27th November.
BBC Three, BBC Four, CBBC, CBeebies, and BBC News are already available. According to the director of BBC Vision, Jana Bennett, this “completes our commitment to make our portfolio of channels available to watch on the internet”.
Officially, the entire portfolio of channels is only viewable in the UK, thanks to limiting which IP addresses can access content to those believed to be in the British Isles, but we all know that it’s possible to get around those kind of technical restrictions…
Project Kangaroo VoD service could begin alpha testing in December
Project Kangaroo, the joint online TV initiative from the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, has been a long time in the making, but at last it seems as if a launch date — for alpha testing at least — is in sight.
Despite ongoing reservations from the Competition Commission that this hopping beast is going to be just too big and stifle competition (you know, a bit like Sky does — err… allegedly), a December launch is planned…
Sky adds iPlayer listings to Sky Player, but Discovery doesn't want anything to do with the Internet
Sky has just added listings from rival BBC’s iPlayer to its own content-catchup service, Sky Player. The new sections carry BBC branding, but just consist of links to play the content in BBC’s own iPlayer environment…
Tech Trumpet: Old '80s Computers Rickrolled
Firstly, an apology to anyone eagerly awaiting a track composed from the “interesting looking audio boxes sitting next to me”. Unfortunately, I’ve not yet got all the wires and other gear required to do them justice.
This week, I’ve dug out what may well be the earliest example of Rickrolling. Take a few defunct ’80s computers (the BBC Model B, to be precise), a discarded dot matrix printer or two, a few industrial monsters, and a handful of sound effects that never quite made it into any successful game, and you have a late-Eighties Rickroll extraordinaire…
BBC to put Top Gear on YouTube. Let's hope Richard Hammond doesn't crash your browser.
Some say that his 19th century views on environmentalism and global warming are pushing millions of viewers down the path of climate change scepticism, and some say that his incendiary views are designed to cause a stir and causes people like me to write about them… all we know is that he’s called Jeremy Clarkson.
If you’re a fan of party-political broadcasts for the Conservative party presented by ill-informed controversialists who probably do actually use the phrase “political correctness gone mad” without irony, then you’ll be delighted to hear that the BBC has launched a Top Gear YouTube channel.
BBC's iPlayer upgraded to H.264 codec – download speed and picture quality boosted
The BBC has been blowing your license fee on further developing its iPlayer service, announcing today that it’s starting to use the open source H.264 codec for its streaming telly service.
This has allowed the Beeb to boost the encoding bitrate of streamed shows from 500kbps to 800kbps, so it should all look a little sharper and cleaner when you catch up with such classics…
BBC, ITV & Ch. 4 ask for more time to prove 'Kangaroo' is above board.
British broadcasters and project 'Kangaroo' bed-buddies: the BBC, ITV, and Channel 4, have been told by the commission in charge of their fair-competition inquiry that they have more time to get their facts straight.
The Competition Commission's inquiry was due to begin on the 6th August, but like three lazy students, the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 have all begged for more time to prepare their case. And like a kindly avuncular professor, the Competition Commission has agreed to postpone the much anticipated inquest date until early September when it is hoped that all three big boys will have got their act in gear and gathered the relevant information they need to argue their case properly.
Vodafone to offer free access to BBC Olympic content
Vodafone is going for gold in the race to provide the best mobile Olympic service, and I’ve just died a little inside after using such a horribly clichéd figure of speech.
Vodafone has joined up with the BBC and is offering free access to the latter’s Olympic coverage, which is no doubt music to the ears to those stuck on stone-age mobile phone data tariffs (so pretty much everyone in Britain, then)…
The BBC gets in on the map mash-up scene with its guide to Beijing's Olympic venues
If you're already getting a bit excited about watching the world's finest athletes wheezing their way through the Beijing smog, our lovely BBC has the perfect internet accompaniment for you. The Interactive Map has icons representing each Olympic venue hovering…
Virgin Media's iPlayer service attracts over 10m views in June
Virgin Media claims that its subscribers watched over ten million programmes on its BBC iPlayer service during June.
As the company has around 3.5m subscribers able to access the catchup service, it means that, on average, each person watched three programmes during the month. In comparison, the BBC iPlayer web service received 20.4m requests in June.
