BBC Begins Open-Source Streaming Challenge

bus_stopper copies and pastes: "The BBC is quietly preparing a challenge to Microsoft and other companies jostling to reap revenues from video streams. It is developing code-decode (codec) software called Dirac in an open-source project aimed at providing a royalty-free way to distribute video. The sums at stake are potentially huge because the software industry insists on payment per viewer, per hour of encoded content. This contrasts with TV technology, for which viewers and broadcasters alike make a one-off royalties payment when they buy their equipment." We've mentioned this project before but this story goes into a bit more depth about the goals and motivations of the developers.

Good old Auntie!

It just proves that you get a hell of a lot for your 125 GBP license fee!

John

Re:Good old Auntie!

On the other hand, it could be argued, that many people benefit enormously from the BBC, despite not paying the TV license. Me, for one, I don't have a telly and so I don't pay, despite listening to BBC radio, reading the website etc.

My point is that by developing this code, _eventually_ and _slowly_ less and less people are going to have a television in the house and hence less and less people will pay the license.

Which means that the UK government will have to figure out how to finance the BBC. I would hate to see them deciding to sell it. It would be really unfortunate if this project marked the beginning of the end of BBC as we know it.

Re:Good old Auntie!

ITV's shows are dire, as atested not only by critical failure (not winning many awards these days are you, ITV?) but also by poor audience figures. Some ITV regions are supported by the taxpayer indirectly, but it's true that the large part of programming and broadcasting is funded through the obnoxious advertising.

Channel 4 is partly government funded, and seeks grants for its, uh, unconventional programming from European projects which are themselves... government funded. Whether it means sending film crews to Italian beaches to film topless women, or showing 30 year old obscure Dutch movies about bicycling in 16:9 with subtitles, C4 reads the latest funding trends from Brussels and incorporates their needs into its schedule.

Channel 5 is entirely pointless and should never have been launched on analog. The government (the one you think shouldn't be interfering) forced them to add the movies and news bulletins which break up their otherwise relentless schedule of old material bought from other networks. In some cases the BBC (which you don't like) paid for this material (which you apparently DO like) to be made more than 20 years ago. Didn't you notice how the average C5 program seems kinda... retro?

In general I'm not in favour of government interference, but it's the reality we face. The technology for everyone and their dog to try to run a TV station doesn't exist yet, and might not for another decade. In the absence of that situation the invisible hand of market forces cannot operate properly, so the government inevitably must REGULATE broadcasting activity or we'll experience the spiral of reduced expectations. Once the government actively regulates the activity you're going to pay those taxes, and you might as well get something useful out of it. I think the BBC is fairly good value for money, and would support direct taxation rather than the "license fee" to support it until better means are available, despite the fact that this would inevitably mean that I personally wind up paying more for the same service.

Re:The Future of Television

It annoys me that I have to pay even if i own a set, regardless of what i watch, even if I only use if to play my XBox.

If you do indeed only use your TV in the UK to play DVDS or consoles, you can apply to be EXEMPT from a TV license as I did for 3 years. When you get the letter advising you have not got an up to date Television license, simply call the number on the bottom of the form, and advise them that you use your TV for console and DVD use and they will add you to the exemption list.

Of course when they show up at your door or sit outside and see if your TV tuner is actively tuned to broadcasted television channels instead of playing the XBOX or watching DVDs then you can expect to get heavily fined and rightfully so.

So if it bothers you that much about paying £125 for quite easily the best broadcaster in the world, I'm sure you will find my advice useful.

Re:Good old Auntie!

Nice comment! For 125 GBP you get...

8 channels of television
11 radio stations (not including local radio)
BBCi (http://www.bbc.co.uk) including live streams of all of the radio content and 'listen again' facilities
BBC research labs contributing to the open source community.

I would say that the license fee is a bit of a bargain!

John

Re:Good old Auntie!

8 channels of television

Even better, you can usually find something worth watching on those 8 channels. Since I moved to the US I have 20 times as many channels, and the best thing on is still British comedy reruns on public access TV.

Re:Good old Auntie!

It looks like the BBCs intention is absolutely not to compete with the likes of Real. All they are saying is that the license fees for the existing codecs do not scale, and that it will be cheaper from them to write their own. There is nothing in the BBC's remit that requires them to spend the license-payer's money on overpriced software they can more cheaply write themselves.

While it is true that dirac may reduce the amount that Real, etc, can make from their codecs, once again there is nothing in the BBC's charter which requires it to prop up commercial software markets at the license-payer's expense.

The BBC is not selling dirac. It is simply a tool they feel they need to do their job. However, they are releasing it under an open-source license. You may feel that this is anti-competitive as it undercuts Real, but Real et al are not the BBC's competitors. ITV, C4, etc are the BBC's competitors (though in an ideal world, the BBC is supposed to be about pulic service, not competition). By making the codec open-source, the BBC is freeing these other stations from the requirement to pay Real and its ilk. It is freely giving the products of its work to its most direct competitors, along with everyone else. This seems to be a very fair and competition-friendly way of going about things.

As for public service, a primary use for this new technology is to provide a huge, free, online repository of BBC content. This is an extraordinary project, entirely in the service of the public, which would be absolutely impossible for a commercial broadcaster to attempt. Whatever else people may have to say about the BBC's scorecard in living up to its remit (and I certainly think it's gone too far on a number of occasions) this is an absolute bullseye.

Ogg Theora

It seems to me that the best way to support Free codecs would be to throw support at an existing project such as Ogg Theora [theora.org]. Does anyone know why they're not throwing support behind it?

Re:Ogg Theora

Perhaps because they are attempting to develop a broadcast standard codec from the ground up, which I would speculate would require different goals and optimisations to the Ogg Theora project.

Ogg Theora is alive

Theora is a conventional (block, motion, color transform, throw away bits, then ordinary compression) 2nd generation video codec, it is alive and well, and it reached bitstream freeze just a couple of months ago. Presumably beta and then final releases of the software & associated documentation will follow in good time.

Tarkin is the Ogg wavelet codec. You're correct that work on Tarkin has more or less stalled, but wavelet codecs are a legal quagmire today, in part because so many people have conflicting patents in this area and are just waiting for the chance to litigate. Are any of the images on your website JPEG2000 instead of regular JFIF? Thought not.

Re:Ogg Theora

From what I read last time this was covered... Dirac kicks Theora's arse, and xvid too.

IIRC, it takes forever-squared to encode, but once done it beats just about anything in terms of file size and picture quality. Since the BBC's model is going to be encode once, then let the public download at will, this is fine by them.

Re:Ogg Theora

Theora (vp3) competes with current generation codecs, Dirac is a next gen technology. Dirac is also just a codec, so one should be able to use the Ogg container format or any other one for that matter. Since the BBC's stated goal is a royalty free system and they seem to be FOSS friendly I would assume they would be considering Ogg strongly.

By the way, I haven't seen a link to it so far, here [bbc.co.uk] is a link the a BBC info page on Dirac and here [sourceforge.net] is the Source Forge page for those wanting the code.

From the article

It can be used for passing video round home networks, rights-managed peer-to-peer file sharing, or playing media in handheld devices, as well as for web streaming.

And this is why it will be fought against on the political front. How much you want to bet that the feds will want to require some sort of keying/user tracing mechanism in order for this "free" technology to be made publically available? Big media will argue that in order for the government to protect copyright, they shouldn't allow technology that can subert other's copyrights.

Re:From the article

I would imagine that the British Broadcasting Corporation doesn't much care about the feds.

Re:From the article

The BBC is the biggest media organisation in Britain and goes regularly goes one on one with governments including our own.

If the "feds" were to ask the BBC not to release it we'd end up seeing one of your politicians getting an unexpected kicking in his next interview. A few years ago a BBC interviewer asked the Home Secretary (in charge of the police, prisons, immigration, "Homeland Security" etc.) the same question *14* times, when he wouldn't answer the question.

14 times

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/events03/uk_pol/ cons/leadership/nb_newsnightiv.ram

Go BBC!

Another reason why I'm glad to be a UK citizen - every time I start to wonder if it's really worth having a 'public service' broadcaster the BBC goes and does something like this. I'm hoping they'll be able to make a stand when someone tries HDTV regulations over here.

Only in the US

This contrasts with TV technology, for which viewers and broadcasters alike make a one-off royalties payment when they buy their equipment.

Again, there are other [tvlicensing.co.uk] countries [zdnet.fr] in the world where things don't happen that way. In most of the EC in fact...

For your information Michael, the Beeb is in the UK where your statement doesn't apply.

Re:Only in the US

Again, there are other [tvlicensing.co.uk] countries [zdnet.fr] in the world where things don't happen that way.

A TV license is a payment against royalties on content, not royalties on TV technology. In contrast to existing TV technology, users of commercial streaming video applications pay a per-viewer/per-hour fee for the technology. That is what the BBC wants to avoid by developing their own streaming solution.

The BBC

Another good reason (among many) why the BBC should remain a non-commercial operation. Yes, paying the licence fee is an annoyance, but everyone gets a lot out of the Beeb, not just TV (BBC Online has all but replaced daily newspapers for me, and after having grown up with BBC radio, I find commercial radio unlistenable). And they're even bringing back Doctor Who!

Sure, it has its problems, but I'd trust the BBC over any politician, especially ones who make threatening noises about its charter every time it does its job by being independent and embarrassing the government of the day...

Re:The BBC

All in all it's probably a better deal than we get here (US). We have "free" TV, but it is Ad laden and restricted by what the ratings will support.

Our public TV has some good stuff (and some HD too), but it gets minimal federal funding and has to beg for donations all the time. (AFAIK, the congress mandated push to HD is reaming their budgets too, they won't survive this decade)

The pay options are ok, but still ad driven and you can end up with a $100+ a month TV bill if you get any "top tier" stuff.

As for me, basic cable is bundled in my rent, so there's little choice in it.

I am glad this is what my license fee pays for!

I have paid for ten TV licenses in my life, and I have to admit that I am glad the the organisation that gets some of this money is developing something like this...

...although I have to admit, the BBC would have probably have been better off using my money to become the "offical" sponsors for an existing open source project such as Theora [theora.org], rather than starting from scratch.

The link is the story is dead, I found the home page here [bbc.co.uk], and the SourceForge site here [sourceforge.net].

Thanks,

Andrew McCall

3GHz

I'm in half of RTFA, and

The figures assume a 3GHz processor but the focus is on gaining speed by code optimisation rather than hardware because the BBC wants Dirac to be usable on a broad range of devices.

Who on the world has 3GHz processor in his desktop computer? Certainly not me, not my friends or relatives, nor even my boss, who has 2.4GHz.

Will it run on low end hardware?

It would be nice to know if the codec will run on one of these [nvg.org]? :-)

OGG streams off line though?

So why has the BBC shelved it's OGG streaming technology in favor of proprietary formats? This technology is available now and works very well. Hey BBC. Please give us back the OGG streams you used to run!

BBC

Did anyone else think it was funny that the BBC wants to provide something royalty-free? Me thinks that's grounds for a hanging.

Darwin Streaming Server / QTSS

AFAIR, isn't that free of any streaming fees? If you install Darwin SS on Darwin (or use QTSS on OS X Server) and stream with MPEG4, is that a one-time fee (for the QT Pro license needed to encode = 30 USD) and then free for ever and ever. Or do you also have to pay a pr. stream fee on top of that too for the codec? I can't find anything on Apple's site about it.

http://developer.apple.com/darwin/projects/streami ng/ [apple.com]
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/products/qtss/ [apple.com]

Re:Darwin Streaming Server / QTSS

None of the above. Darwin SS is free (source and usage). To encode sometihng to it, you can use Quicktime Broadcaster, which is free (but not source), and only runs on a mac. You can of course encode with other solutions. The one of best ones on the market is Live Channel by Channel Storm, which runs about a grand as a one time price.

Ogg Vorbis & Theora

What's wrong with those products BBC?

A bit of politics

"...a bit more depth about the goals and motivations of the developers."

Freedom of information is not about paying or not paying for commercial content. Freedom of information is about politics, human rights, rulership and ideology manipulation. BBC is on the side of freedom for some time, and currently under heavy pressure from the conservatives.

Letting free codec technology to public now may help in some near future, when independent journalists will be hunted to underground or illegality.

Parliament TV

I hope it gets adopted for streaming coverage of the Houses of Parliament. It irritates me that as a voter I can't easily watch.

Videolan

Why develop your own streaming software when VideoLan [videolan.org] is already out there and working great? I regularly use it for any media viewing, and I've had great sucess with the streaming features.

Project homepage

no KW required

BBC Dirac [bbc.co.uk]

The Dirac Project

Dirac is a general-purpose video codec aimed at resolutions from QCIF (180x144) to HDTV (1920x1080) progressive or interlaced. It uses wavelets, motion compensation and arithmetic coding and aims to be competitive with other state of the art codecs.

Do it quickly before Blair kills it

There's a green paper due on the BBC later in the year. A pre-report has already been critical of the BBC's online activities, suggesting it does too much itself.

From an investigation in August 2003:
http://www.culture.gov.uk/global/publicatio ns/arch ive_2004/BBC_Online_Review.htm

You can bet MS (or Microsoft lobbyists the BSA) will try damn hard to kill this project.

I wish the BBC would stop dragging its feet and do it, start releasing the archive now with their codec, before the politicians kill.

Dirac homepage

Dirac homepage [bbc.co.uk] and the Sourceforge [sourceforge.net] pages

Dirac?

I think the BBC is using the name Dirac in the wrong document - shouldn't it be the name of a villain in their new series of Doctor Who?

Well, not the whole industry...

QuickTime Streaming Server is open source, so you can run your own server on whichever platform you want.

And Apple doesn't charge any per-stream or per encoded hour crap either.

Per Hour?

The sums at stake are potentially huge because the software industry insists on payment per viewer, per hour of encoded content

If It's only by the hour does this mean the guys who never learned control get free porn?
COOL! finally someone who understands us!

Someone call Steve

This would be the right time for Apple to open source their Quicktime stuff. Not only Darwin Streaming Server, but all the rest too.

Serious problem for conferences

This could be a perfect solution for conferences such as HAL 2001 [hal2001.org]. I remember there was a need for sponsorship by a professional television broadcaster to provide licenses for realtime streaming of conference speakers back then.
A good alternative to Real and Media encoder that is free is definitely wanted in these areas.

Offtopic: I wonder why the DV's of this conference are still not encoded...

MPEG4....

For the sake of computer users everywhere, why don't all the world governments/BBC/etc.. get together, buy the patents for MPEG-4 and make them public domain and create an open standards committee? I don't care how much it costs... I mean, lets standardize and be done with it; each day that passes the MPEG-? technologies are becoming more and more entrenched and its not like anyone is going to go back and reencode everything in a patent-free format...

Just like building physical roads, can't some sort of emminent domain type of argument be made for electronic infostructure?

"Dirac"?

Sure, the compression is really good, but the problem is that it makes everybody look like they have really bad hair...

(Only physics geeks will get this. Why am I bothering?)

How is that supposed "patent free"?

Last time I heard, IBM was holding key patents to arithmetic coding -- an entropy coding method that Dirac makes use of according to the BBC project page.

This patents is the main reason why JPEG files are seldom found "in the wild" using the optional arithmetic coding method (which would shave off some 10 or 20% of the file size). Royalty payments would be required for encoders and decoders. Duh!

Ogg Vorbis streams

Right, so the BBC have the resources to _develop_ a whole new codec, but not to set up Ogg Vorbis streaming of their radio programming, alongside the existing RealAudio streams?

The BBC, IMNSHO (as a licence payer), should be champions of open communications, and this extends to the openness of their distribution formats. I wish they'd stop wasting resources from crappy little mini-sites with gossip and games relating to soap operas.

Rik

And all because...

... of the unique way the BBC is funded: by you, the license payer.

Long live The Beeb.

BBC Interactive Media Player (iMP)

Currently the BBC are trialing iMP (interactive media player), which allows users to download TV content from the last 8 days. It uses a peer to peer basis for downloading (like Bittorrent), and is currently using Windows Media 9 with its DRM to restrict the content. As I gather, it is a standalone application.

Cross platform compatibility is a fairly hot subject at the Beeb at the moment, and one of the developers hinted that WM9 is just a stand in for any other codec. Presumably when Dirac matures, we'll see Dirac being used.

It's currently in trials with up to 1000 users.

This [independent.co.uk] is probably the best public article about it.

Exotic?

"Wavelets [exotic waveforms used to map changes]"

Wavelets are exotic? Where are they from?

another incorrect use of "content"

> per hour of recorded content

You mean per hour of recorded video, of course.

How many minutes of anything we could call "content" is captured in that hour, of course, varies.

Content does not mean bits. If it did, an empty disk would have exactly the same amount of content as a full one.

BBC Technology Sale

I wonder how this project is affected by the recently announced sale of "BBC Technology" the BBC technology arm to Siemens. It is projects like this that seem to me to make the sale an extraodinary decision. Unless they are completely unrelated? Any insiders want to AC?

Only in Britain

How to pay and other information The colour TV licence costs just over £10 per month - about 33p per day for each household. It is free if you are over 75, half-price if you are registered blind.

Re:Way to keep it quiet...

Good luck slashdotting the BBC servers... They're very robust these days, with servers either side of the atlantic too.

In fact, I found a schematic for the network

http://support.bbc.co.uk/support/network/ [bbc.co.uk]

Re:open codecs?

xvid is. And it's not streamable.

Re:open codecs?

and its not open in some countries in the "free to use" sense. You collide with the various mpeg related patents

Re:Quicktime

Really? First off, Quicktime is an application/api, not a video codec. Secondly, they're looking for an open source and royalty-free way to do this. Quicktime most definitely isn't open source, only runs (officially) on two platforms, and the best codecs included with it are definitely not royalty-free.

Re:codec?

Nope, it is definately COmpressor/DECompressor. See! [wordwebonline.com]

Re:Quicktime

that it isn't 'free' as in libre nor as in beer?

they own the content already, if they get a per-hour-per-viewer-per-whatever-ever free codec to distribute it then the only thing they need to pay is for bandwith.

all the commercial vendors would love/want/require a somehow per-hour billed license with them(because hey, it would be like the jackpot - huge continious income without doing anything).

Re:Not only the codec

A properly built codec will plug into existing content creation systems. Building Adobe Premiere for this codec would be a waste of time. Other people have done it better already.

Re:open codecs?

No. Both are MPEG4 implementations, and MPEG4 is a patent-encumbered format.

Re:BBC terrorises single mothers for cash

Dont remind me I still haven't paid my TV license :(
Last year had an official down here - he let me off the fine provided I wrote a cheque there and then.
110 pounds is too much