Hi all, I’m writing this in the peaceful serenity and serene peacefulness of the Reading University campus (and using their wifi) because I can, frankly. If you are aware of the problems of accessing my main .com blog from universities, then you’ll understand why this post won’t appear on that site until I return to my flat. I’m returning to Horsham this weekend just for a visit so perhaps I’ll stumble upon the solution there.
I read a news story not one hour ago, regarding Channel 4 (a broadcasting company in the UK) and their deal with Google to provide full television shows and content on YouTube, probably ad-supported (much like the channel itself). Like all the major broadcasters in the UK, they have their own Video-on-Demand (VoD) service online with which they stream full shows (with interspliced short ad-breaks). The big difference between this channel’s VoD and the one run by the BBC, the iPlayer, is that television shows are available from the time they were broadcast and remain (supposedly) available indefinetely, whereas the iPlayer streams programmes for a limited time after initial broadcast, most of the time one week.
For a bit more background, there was a recent project between the aforementioned British broadcasters to provide a single, universal VoD service that would stream all the broadcaster’s content (details are sketchy) in one place. The project was codenamed Project Kangaroo and came to an untimely end when the Competition Commission deemed that a universal service run by all the broadcasters could be “too powerful” and expressed fears that the service could “hurt competition”. The project was ended but subsequently bought by another company in July who said they would launch in the coming months, no such development appeared and there was no indication of how the formal blocks imposed on the project by the CC would be dealt with.
Do you see where I’m going with this?
I heard about Kangaroo when it was in it’s initial stages and was excited by it, as a teenager I watch a lot of TV but socialise, meaning that it’s a pain to have to keep switching between websites and services to get the show I’m looking for when I miss something. The idea of a universal service was delicious and it was disappointing to hear of it’s blockage. But if Channel 4 are willing, and (thanks to Google, only time you’ll hear me say that) able, to put their entire back-catalogue on YouTube, and will run in parallel with 4oD (their own catch-up website) to put new shows online shortly after broadcast, then doesn’t it follow that other broadcasters can to? What do we get then? Why, my friend, we have a universal platform for VoD!
Of course, there are problems to overcome. First, and foremost, the BBC will have to get off their license-fee-funded high horse and put their content on indefinetely (and backlog their old shows if they so choose), which will probably never happen, and then they have nothing to lose from putting the same content on YouTube as well. It wasn’t clear, while Project Kangaroo was still somewhere in the mist, how the Beeb were to run their online content with Kangaroo, given that Channel 4 would undoubtedly have their content on there permanentely and the BBC may not have agreed to do this also, but there is certainly the scope for them to do so which would be the way for the BBC to get full shows on YouTube. Once they’re on-board, it’s quite likely that the other main broadcasters (ITV, Five and Sky) would follow suit, and if they didn’t it wouldn’t really matter (all you’d really miss is Corrie, Neighbours, Gadget Show, Fifth Gear and Futurama). But if they did.
There you have it, a Video-on-Demand service on one univeral platform, which most internet users are familiar with and already know and love. This could be easily acheived without any discussion or deals between the main broadcasters themselves and all they would need is the go-ahead from YouTube (arguably a broadcaster in their own right). This would also avoid all the crap and red-tape from the Competition Commission as long as it’s only ever seen as several individual deals between the broadcasters and Google and never as a joint venture and be far easier to manage if it’s each channel working their own account on the Tube.
This would be the ultimate makeshift Project Kangaroo, and far more convenient than the travesty of watching the universal VoD service in the USA, Hulu, attempting to get it’s act together for a UK service (they were allowed in the US so presumebly avoid the bureaucracy here). It would be far more adaptable and keep up to date with changes on YouTube and with online video content delivery technology in general, without the BBC or any other channel having to shell out to beef up their technology.
Now I think about it, the BBC might as well opt to put their shows on YouTube, it’s mostly already pirated anyhow! Plus, if you don’t pay your license fee, though you can’t watch live tv, you are still allowed to watch BBC iPlayer, so there’s no loss of income by joining this than there is with just iPlayer on it’s own, in fact it’ll probably break up or share out the server demands on the BBC that ISPs are so pissed off about (yes, I know iPlayer is peer-to-peer but the point still stands) and reduce the BBC’s bandwidth cost considerably, so the Beeb could actually save money by doing this.
This is staring them in the face, why don’t they do it!
In other news, I finished The God Delusion the other day and have made a sizeable dent in The Great Gatsby. In any other context you probably wouldn’t consider 30 pages sizeable but given that Gatsby is only about 200 pages, small by most standards, it’s a respectable chunk. I’m hoping to finish it at the weekend to free up shelf space in my flat and add it to my shelf at home – I’m proud of that collection.
Speaking of awesome things, namely me, I was saved £30 today. When I was on the verge, indeed the very pinnacle, of buying Windows 7 Home Premium edition online using my Student Discount to get it cheap. I realised I had to go to my lecture where, talking to someone, I discovered that the University had an educational license to distribute Windows software for FREE. Better yet, it’s available now, so when I’m home for the weekend I will take advantage of the fast internet connection in comparison to here to download the installation file and upgrade my laptop (so I call it because I can upgrade without it deleting my files/programs). At home it will take hours, here it will take days, to download. Now all I need to do is work out how to uninstall my Windows 7 RC dual-boot install, presumebly I can delete the partition that has the OS installed on it but I’m worried it’ll screw up my boot menu that appears when i start up my laptop with which I select an OS installed on the hard drive (7/Vista). If anyone can help, let me know.
Oh and also does anyone know a good image host, I currently use turboimagehost to quickly put my images online so that I can embed or link them into blog posts but the one I use now is pretty unreliable (if you can’t see the picture of John Barrowman on my last post then it’s down again and my point is proven) so if anyone knows a similar but more efficient image host comment and let me know (I have flickr but it takes too long to sign in and I’d rather have a quick and easy one).
I’ve run out of sign off ideas! Goodbye!
Tags: 4, BBC, Channel, Five, Google, Hulu, ITV, Kangaroo, Project, Sky, YouTube