Seriously!

I’ve been getting obviously fake e-mails telling me there is a problem with my Television Licence. OK, they are using the e-mail addy that the BBC has for me, but these are fake.

And they are so obviously fake that it boggles my mind. First off, the licence number is wrong. Secondly, this isn’t how I pay my fee. Thirdly, my licence doesn’t expire at the end of this month.

I thought I would be nice and pass the e-mails on to the licensing folk, but they appear to not want to be bombarded with fake licence e-mails. And I’ve gotten a few of these, which I usually blow off. This one was too silly to not comment about.

Anyway, the Licensing Authority has a page on this nonsense for what it’s worth. One of the Licensing Authority’s suggestions is to check the e-mail address of the sender, which this one is fake.

It has come to my attention that BBC America material is available on demand from the Apple iTunes Store.  I am assuming the same is true for Canada as well.

It’s nice to see a lot of this available on demand, such as Mongrels and Horrible Histories.

Not sure if any ITV or Channel 4 material is available (Time Team).

I’m not sure what got me looking at Time Team DVDs on Amazon, but I was there.  Perhaps it was because I was looking at the silly show, Bonekickers, which the BBC describes as an “Archaeological drama series” .  Most people call it comedy who know anything about history of archaeology.  I did also see that History Cold Case is available on DVD as well.

Anyway, Time team has been around for since 1994, for 19 Series with around 200 digs, yet Channel 4 have finally released Series 18 on DVD.  I should add that PBS did a US version which lacked the personality of the UK version (not to mention the wealth of history). Despite this, there have been only a couple of “Best of DVDs” issued (The Very Best Time Team Digs, Time Team Digs-A History of Britain, and Time Team in Your Garden). The recently released DVD, Time Team-Tottiford and Other Digs, is the first complete season to be released on DVD. Nevermind that one can download quite a most seasons of the show on line if one can’t watch it on 4OD.

Despite the cost of this set, I plunked down the dosh to buy a copy hoping that will lead to positive reinforcement for the Channel 4 Marketing types. ALthough, I wonder if, being commercial, they are immune from the lack of funds which plague Aunty. Still, you would think that both the Independent Broadcasters and the BBC would do what they could to make a few quid by trying to flog DVDs of their programmes.

Although, I will add that there is a mystery to me as I watch a couple of historic Panorama episodes from 1955 that have been on iPlayer of Malcolm Muggeridge interviewing Edward R. Murrow and Salvador Dali. These are only available for streaming at the BBC site, but at least they are available. This may have something to do with a page called Talk for BBC 4. Any luck, BBC 4 will add the David Frost Nixon Interview to this list.

And you wonder why I want to connect my TV to my computer? It beats having to watch this stuff on a crappy monitor!

Anyway, there is a lot of material out there which I wish had better availability. Of course, that statement will puzzle the powers that be who think they are making the material pretty available, yet there is a reason that some sites exist which facilitate the downloading of this material. Personal choice is to use the official channels and contribute to seeing more of this material being produced.  Someone also said that other Time Team Series were available in Australia, but I was unable to find these from my sources. Seriously, if people are waving money in their faces of the people who produce this material, why don’t they take it?  It makes a bit more sense than having TV detector vans driving about.

This couild become yet another rant about BBC archival policies, DVD production, and so on.  Of course, I should also plunk down the money to buy the DVDs of some of the other programmes I mention here–even if I will never see them again–if I want to practise what I am preaching.  But, that would come with the hope that the Powers that Be would get the message.

Don’t ask how I came across this book, but it did get my interest. I am not surprised that collecting TV licences is beginning to take off in the UK. Especially since you can view your licence online!

See:
http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/

A young Jeff Rawle. What character was he in the Harry Potter series?

In case you missed it, this is the big news in the iPlayer community. I do have to admit agreeing with the Inquirer’s comment that “Middle class, middle aged people will be outraged that the great unwashed’s commercial telly has found its way onto the BBC’s Iplayer, and Youview might be worried too.” Part of me is happy that programmes such as Time Team will be accessible through the official iPlayer (probably not get_iplayer). On the other hand, most of ITV seems to be US offerings with the good stuff getting repackaged as BBC on US public TV (false labeling that).

 

 

Here’s the BBC’s take on it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2011/02/bbc_iplayer_find_programmes_fr.html

Mixed feelings on my part. I have a lot of “brand loyalty” to the BBC with most of my viewing being BBC material. I don’t write off the independents, but I can make do without them. On the other hand, it is nice to have access to their programmes for those treasures which poor, ignorant Yanks are deceived into believing are BBC productions (e.g. the Original Upstairs, Downstairs was produced by London Weekend). My old fav, Billy Liar was also an ITV production, but it was remade for US audiences.

Also, I don’t think that the availability of ITV material is going to make me more likely to use the official version of iPlayer over get_iplayer. Maybe if they do something about the DRM and offer a purchase service for material past the 30 day “catch up date”.

Especially since I know how to get your attention, but it isn’t something that my relations who work for Auntie haven’t heard until they are sick of it.

I know the BBC’s (and ITV’s) point of view about preserving digital rights and all that. It’s not just the BBC since other entities are involved (E.g., US Public Broadcasting and The Discovery Network). The problem is that there is still revenue haemorrhaging which can’t be blamed on the BBC iPlayer being pirated to the Internet.

Whilst the boffins are trying to keep people from downloading material which bypassed the iPlayer’s Adobe Air DRM, the material still makes it to the internet on Pirate Bay and Files Tube. It doesn’t take too long for something like a Being Human, the Tudors, or Even the Michael Portillo Great British Railway Journeys to show up as downloads in HD format. One site, filmous.com, sells the material.

The other gripe I have with the official iPlayer is how the catch up service tends to be erratic, with episodes being up for a week to much longer. Not to mention that there is a 7 day lifespan once an episode has begun to be watched, and 30 day lifespan without viewing. I reckon that Michael Portillo Great British Railway Journeys runs anywhere from 10-32 1/2 hours (10 for series one 22 1/2 for series two) which is far more of Michael than I want to sit through at once.

I realise that it is blasphemy to suggest that the iPlayer material should have an additional charge in addition to the licence fee, but there must be a way that this material can be delivered digitally in a reliable manner that earns money for the BBC. Why should something like filmous.com make money selling this material whilst the BBC loses out?

And the regional issue, couldn’t you also look the other way at that? After all, the official iPlayer material plays anywhere once it has been downloaded. Likewise, one can buy the Region 2 DVDs and watch them anywhere in the world with a region free player. I have to admit that the regional restriction isn’t that much of an issue, but any pay service should be a bit more liberal in who can access the material.

My preference is to acquire this material from legitimate means, usually iPlayer or purchase of the DVD. On the other hand, it is annoying to find that this material is freely available (in fact more freely available–e.g., the Goodies complete and Time Team) via download.

There is a market for this which can earn money for the BBC. It is a shame that the BBC is not working to exploit it: both in terms of revenue and increased audience for its products

I am pleased to say that my most popular posts deal with the BBC’s iPlayer.

Even though Second Amendment posts tend to attract the most comments, but that is due to the commenters being astro-turf.  There are a lot of Second Amendment keyboard warriors out there.

But there are far more frustrated BBC licence holders out there than “gunloons”.  It’s just that the BBC is being very stupid about how they are handling iPlayer, which ends up hurting the licence holder who is screwed since they can’t get BBC Content. The BBC ranks low on customer satisfaction, especially if you consider the customers are forced to pay for programming.

As I said, the BBC should make iPlayer a subscription service and not really bother with DRM, or the regional limitations.

Get_iplayer WAS a solution to this problem, but it’s creator yanked it because of BBC’s lack of support for open source.  Forget, lack of support, the Beeb was openly hostile to get_iplayer making it impossible to download the iPlayer streams using the get_iplayer programme.   It used to be that get_iplayer would have been updated to work around this problem, but it is no longer supported by its creator.

Nevermind, there are other solutions.

One is the iPlayer Downloader, ipdl.exe.  It’s OK for downloading iPlayer streams.  It uses the old iPhone method for dowloading the material.  while the quality isn’t as nice as the HD versions that were downloaded by get_iplayer, the Beeb has improved the quality enough so that it’s like standard defintition TV.

There are people who are maintaining the get_iplayer software at this site.  The owner of this site “forked” get_iplayer, which I guess means he improved the code.  Bad news, he did it in Linux format

Then there is this workaround. It seems that rtmpdump can still be used to record iPlayer streams, but this also seems to be more complicated than I wish to deal with right now. Well, it’s not that complicated, but I have other things I want to do than toy around trying to download material from iPlayer.

On thing I do have to say is avoid Daniusoft media converter since it does not remove iPlayer’s DRM. The Daniusoft folks should get whapped for false advertising since they push their software as being able to do this.

Anyway, the nice thing about get_iplayer was that it pretty much did what you wanted. Although, as far as I am concerned it was a bit more complicated than the actual BBC iPlayer desktop. What the BBC iPlayer people need to realise is that it is extremely limited.

Personally, I want to be be able to able to use my brite view cinematube as if it were a Tivo premier. It should be able to do so since it is a UPnP device. But somehow, iPlayer won’t allow for the UPnP functionality.

Unfortunately, Britain, despite its attempts to play catch up, is pretty much behind the rest of the world. In this case, Britain still hasn’t caught on that DRM hurts far more than it helps in allowing for access to material.

I really wish the Beeb would consider making iPlayer a subscription service since it makes far more sense to me to use iPlayer than it does to get “cable” or “satellite”.

Also, please comment if you know of other methods which work for downloading BBC iPlayer material. Thank you.

OK, It seems that the Beeb has decided that they want to cut off the streaming of some of its programmes using third-party software according to the get_iplayer site. Again, it’s the DRM bullshit. Unfortunately, this change is hurting the folk who have poor reception amongst others.

Also, it seems that get_iplayer is no longer being supported: or is downloadable. The developer does not want to upset the Beeb.

Of course, the official iPlayer is still out there, but I have loads of problems with it. The main one being that it only works on my computer. Also, the Digital Rights Management system is sheer crap. To be honest, it won’t take too long until someone figures out how to crack it.

The plus for the official version is that it has really super resolution. The down is that it is really limited in its use: takes forever to download, isn’t portable, deletes after a certain time period, and so on. The forever to download is the real bite to me: especially if I am watching the news in real-time. It’s the usual crap you get when you’re streaming a video using flash: watch for a few seconds, stop & buffer, watch for a few seconds, stop & buffer, watch for a few seconds, stop & buffer, watch for a few seconds, stop & buffer, and so on until you turn off the programme.

I’m not paying licence fees for that crap!

Baldrick has a cunning plan to rip up your back garden!

The fact is that the Beeb is becoming like ITV and channel four, which is another related rant.  Both of these services make it impossible to watch streams on anything other than a computer.  Not that I am much of a fan of the commercial services since they usually dish up pure crap (unlike the Beeb that dishes up some crap).

But, sometimes the pay services have really neat programmes such as Channel 4’s Time Team hosted by Tony Robinson (whom most people in the US know as Baldric from the Blackadder Series). It’s a brilliant series and the people at Channel 4 have all the episodes available on 4oD. The problem is that you have to stream them to a computer. The ninnies have a few DVDs of the “Best of” Time Team, but that ends up being about 24 out of 140 some odd shows.

I think The Discovery Channel in the rebroadcast the series in the US (I know UK Discovery Channel broadcast it).  PBS in the States has a version of Time Team (Time Team America), but somehow it just isn’t the same.  Maybe there’s more history lying around in the UK, or maybe people in the UK are such media whores that they will allow three days for  the Time team crew to rip up their back gardens.  I can’t really say since I haven’t seen enough of the US version to comment on it, although what I have seen gives the impression that the two programmes are similar in concept and different in execution.

Again, I’m all for history.  Personally, people in the US should take far more interest in their history than they do.  Lots of things are torn down in the US without proper archaeological surveys being done: although the UK series shows it’s never too late to dig.

Mudflap Bubbas was curious about my comment:

I have literally traveled to the ends of the world to avoid the superbowl only to hear the results broadcast on foreign shortwave. I think I have managed to find a way to avoid it this year.

She asked: How did you manage to get away from all the Super Bowl stuff? I am really curious. Find a secluded cave that you need to share with some of us?

Ah, the joys of the new technology! In particular, the Joy of BBC iPlayer and the internet.

Find something such as Radio Nederland or some other world service (I can’t comment on al-Jazerra, but they may be a good source of entertainment) and stay away form US media. Also, DVDs that don’t feature the Superbowl. Although, my bliss was destroyed in 1986 when I was in Bonaire and the BBC World Service announced the Superbowl Score.

You can be safe by avoiding any mass media outlet and be your own source of entertainment for the weekend. But here are some suggestions for American Souls who don’t want to watch the Superbowl:
al-Jazerra–It’s the 31st Anniversay of the Islamic takeover in Iran, perhaps you will be treated to them burning football players in effigy
BBC iPlayer
ITV has a similar service to iPlayer where you can watch Secret Diary of a Call Girl and similar trash!
Channel 4 has 4oD: Channel 4 is a weird hybrid of the Beeb and ITV which means it can have gems such as Time Team along with crap such as Desperate Housewives.

Someone once said there were around 176 Time Team episodes out there, which means you could have a marathon watching them all on 4oD. Although, you may have dreams about Baldric having a cunning plan to dig up your back garden (Tony Robinson, aka Baldric from Black Adder, is the Time Team presenter).

It seems that PBS also has a Time Team.