91Èȱ¬ Trust and iPlayer syndication
Post categories: 91Èȱ¬ Trust,ÌýiPlayer
| 15:50 UK time, Monday, 21 December 2009
This morning the 91Èȱ¬ Trust published its findings in relation to a complaint about the 91Èȱ¬'s iPlayer syndication policy. As the executive in charge of bringing the service to TV platforms, I wanted to give you a bit of background to this.
As we've said before, we aim to make the 91Èȱ¬ iPlayer available to as wide an audience as is technically possible and economically feasible. At launch, almost two years ago now, the service was only a Windows-based product on the web.
But since then, we've now syndicated the 91Èȱ¬ iPlayer to no fewer than 25 different devices and platforms. On TV, we have made 91Èȱ¬ iPlayer available to the audience of Virgin Media, PS3, Nintendo Wii, Cello's iViewer last week, and (in Beta) on Freesat.
This process will accelerate in the New Year, with more and more internet-connected TV devices entering what is a fragmented market with varying standards. Instead of making a bespoke product for each device, we have chosen a way that we believe represents the best value to licence fee payers - we will make available a set of standard products to all; making investment in bespoke products only where high audience reach can be achieved.
Back in March, a company called IP Vision made a formal complaint to the 91Èȱ¬ after we declined support for a product they were developing for their Fetch TV box. After the 91Èȱ¬ Executive's Fair Trading Complaints Panel rejected the complaint in May, IP Vision appealed to the 91Èȱ¬ Trust, which published its findings and conclusions today.
The Trust has rejected the main substantive points of the appeal, but, in terms of process, we do note that they have ruled that we should have assessed the competitive impact of our decision.
We also note the Trust's view that October's clarification of our syndication guidelines represented a change in policy that should have been ratified by the Trust. The clarification will now be considered as part of the Trust's review of the 91Èȱ¬'s on-demand syndication policy, which begins in January 2010. We will rely on our pre-existing policy until the Trust complete their review.
It has been a great year for our audience as they access 91Èȱ¬ iPlayer on multiple platforms - on PCs, mobile and TV. I look forward to building on this success next year with more platforms and devices.
Rahul Chakkara is Controller, TV Platforms, 91Èȱ¬ FM&T.
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At 21st Dec 2009, Esesli wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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Comment number 4.
At 28th Feb 2010, Zeke Pliskin wrote:I find this post amusing because XBMC's iPlayer plugin is free, which is about as cost-effective to the license payer as can be. Also, it was ALREADY cross-platform.
I'm still having trouble grasping why more hasn't been done to help the people who developed it, free of charge, because they love the 91Èȱ¬'s programming. Aren't those the sort of people you want to encourage, rather than paying corporate ones who probably don't to develop a standardised system of cross-platform content delivery? I always assumed the Beeb was all about encouraging and developing young talent. That was certainly the impression I got when I browsed job vacancies, but I suppose in the end they're nothing but pretty words that get lost in the corporate din.
Oh well. If the 91Èȱ¬ wanted to encourage file-sharing by discontinuing support for XBMC with their thoughtless implementation of SWF - something that could have been mentioned to the developers ahead of time so the program could be whitelisted, seeing as it remains true to the T&Cs of iPlayer etc, then they have succeeded. Ironic that something designed to enhance security around use of their content digitally will probably just cause a minor increase in piracy anyway.
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At 27th Mar 2010, U14390976 wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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At 12th May 2010, U14460911 wrote:All this user's posts have been removed.Why?
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