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sammyjayuk

Listed below are comments made by sammyjayuk between Friday, 27th June 2008 and Tuesday, 22nd September 2009.

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Freeview HD Copy Protection Update 4:56pm on 22 Sep 2009 AlexBennee wrote: "So what does this mean in laymans terms? Will I be able to watch Freeview HD on my current HD TV with built in digital tuner?”

No, but you wouldn’t be able to do that anyway. In any case, that’s not the issue here.

The issue, or at least one of the big ones, is what this will mean for those wishing to implement Freeview HD receivers with open source software. Basically, an open source implementation will not be able to successfully, reliably and *automatically* tune to a Freeview HD channel. The video and audio streams that make up the Freeview HD channels will be in the clear, but the data which enables them to be associated with channels will be protected by the “lookup tables”.

To watch a Freeview HD channel without the lookup tables (or an alternative source of SI-equivalent data), the view could, for example, be presented with the “elementary streams” in turn, choosing the video stream then the audio stream for the channel they want to watch. Viewing a recording would work in much the same way, but all ~36Mbit/sec (or around 16 gigabytes per hour) of the multiplex would need to be recorded. Idents and (ironically) DOGs will help here.

All in all, I believe that this represents an unacceptably substantial level of inconvenience to license fee paying, legitimate viewers.

Now lets consider those “teams” of people who take content—from DVD, Blu-ray, broadcast, wherever—and make it available on file sharing networks. These teams consist of dedicated, often highly skilled people—those who are willing and able to bother with decrypting a Blu-ray disc, for example—who are very unlikely to be particularly inconvenienced by a system that doesn’t even encrypt the audio and video streams! I don’t expect this to have any real impact on the availability of content on file sharing networks.

Finally, let’s look at the people who actually download and consume this content. Will they be at all inconvenienced by any of this? NOT ONE BIT—they’ll do what they’ve always done, because the aforementioned “teams” will have already done all the hard work.

The only people this is really going to affect are license fee paying, legitimate viewers who just want a little bit of choice. Please explain to me how that’s right…

Sam
New version of BBC iPlayer for PS3 now available 10:06pm on 08 Sep 2009 Imagine my excitement as I use the Bluetooth remote control to activate the shiny new iPlayer icon on my XMB, feel my heart fall as the PS3's woefully inadequate "web browser" flashes up a square white box on my TV, then a nearly-but-not-quite full screen white box, eventually revealing an interface where the text doesn't fit and is a chore to navigate with the remote control. Watch my frustration levels rise as - having changed to the BBC's recommended settings, making the browser even more unusable on the wider web - I watch a video and find that I'm completely unable to control playback! Empathise with my confusion that HD streams are AWOL on a £300 device...

Finally, sympathise with the BBC - after all, very little of this is their fault.

Anyone who's spent time with the PS3's browser will know that it is perhaps the worst thing to happen to the web since Internet Explorer, and anyone with a Mac will be of the opinion that Flash is in need of something serious like a firing squad behind the bike sheds. Both are incapable of coping with today's web - in particular, I'm surprised NetFront has survived into 3.0, especially on a device of the PS3's power.

No, I just don't believe that the PS3's browser, as it is, offers a good user experience, even though there is an iPlayer specifically targeted for it, because iPlayer on this sort of device is more of an "application" rather than a web site. Unless the BBC are able to do application like things - such as control the behaviour of the d-pad, get rid of the mouse pointer, kill most of the browser chrome, override the text size and resolution settings, provide useful overscan settings and hook video playback up to the remote control, at the least - it really needs to actually *be* an application, like VidZone.

Sam
How we assign our page numbers 2:47pm on 21 May 2009 Surely the full title of this page ought to be "How we assign our page numbers on every platform but Virgin Media," Andrew? [/sarcastic and unhelpful comment]

Sam (who has realised that he is a licence fee payer these days, and is really struggling not to prefix everything with "As a licence fee payer...")
What we'll be building in the next six months 11:58pm on 10 May 2009 Andrew, thanks for your reply. On Virgin Media, you could use cookies, which are at least more persistent than anything the other platforms have. If you're ok with using stuff that might not be available cross-platform to provide a better RB experience, (as you so obviously are, considering that it'll be a long time before you can do the streaming stuff on Sky) you ought to be taking advantage of what VM's platform has to offer.

Anything would be better than the inferior service we have now!

Sam

PS. I assume you generate stats from the server logs for VM RB? I'd be interested to know how many people actually use it... Thanks, Sam
What we'll be building in the next six months 3:31pm on 06 May 2009 You talk about a sort of "internet enabled Red Button" service, but what about the one platform that is able to offer this to all the millions of people who use it? You're very proud of iPlayer on Virgin Media (and only rightly so) but most of the rest of the interface is ancient.

Where is personalisation? For one thing, most of what I see on the Bridge is irrelevant to me - a lot of the time, there are two links to Sport (I think I understand why there are two sport sections, but still) of all things! On the other hand, I'd quite like to have links to stuff like local weather - although the current page would be useless because you decided to remove the biggest city in the southwest (I understand why you did this, too - but why Plymouth?!) from the map!

I know that you probably have a commitment to keep the service roughly the same across the platforms, but it doesn't really feel like the Virgin Media BBC RB service is as good as that on the other platforms.

Sam
What's On BBC Red Button (9-27 March) 1:19pm on 23 Mar 2009 Why is there only one CBeebies game on Virgin Media at a time? It just seems very odd to me, given the way the platform works.

Sam
Please Wait... 9:30pm on 01 Jan 2009 MHEG is about as old, I think - as is Liberate. The age of the technologies used to power interactive TV here is astounding - although IMHO its more amazing that the BBC still manage to do everything they do, cross platform, given how old and different they all are.

Hoping to see more great things in 2009!
Sam
Flickr on TV 03:11am on 11 Jul 2008 Ooo, can a normal iPlayer load MHEG over the network?? I must admit that I never tried - I played a bit with the way it does HTML (I did once want to recreate the i-Bar), but wasn't aware it could do MHEG.

Plus, I never had a way to author MHEG - roll on MHEG+!

The i-Player now resides with my little sister - sounds like I'm gonna have to steal it back!

Sam
Mashed interactive TV 4:35pm on 07 Jul 2008 Is the MHEG+ toolkit going to be available for general download? I'm assuming that the lucky people at Mashed got to play with it, but I'm sure I'm not the only one not at Mashed that would like the chance to tinker!

Thanks,
Sam
BBC iPlayer 2.0: Promotional Video 09:49am on 27 Jun 2008 @ptreble, I'm seeing the same here with Safari 3.1.1 on 10.5.3. It's really odd because, as you say, the clear button appears but the actual panel still contains the welcome text.

Sam

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