91¸£ÀûÉç Trust On-demand Syndication Consultation
Post categories: 91¸£ÀûÉç Trust,ÌýiPlayer
| 15:23 UK time, Monday, 31 May 2010
In all the excitement about the 91¸£ÀûÉç iPlayer beta last week some readers may have missed a couple of things.
The 91¸£ÀûÉç Trust published the conclusions of its review of the 91¸£ÀûÉç's on-demand services, including the 91¸£ÀûÉç iPlayer. Here's an extract:
The review, conducted two years after the launch of on-demand services, found that the iPlayer has performed in line with its usage expectations, has effectively promoted 'niche' or less well-known programmes, appeals well to its target younger audiences, and represents good value for money.
You can find the Trust's statement here.
The 91¸£ÀûÉç Trust also began a about the 91¸£ÀûÉç Executive's proposed approach to on demand and syndication. There are more details including the full management proposals. Here's an extract from those propoals:
An alternative potential solution would be to allow third parties to build their own delivery mechanisms for iPlayer - so called 'self-build'. This would mean variants of iPlayer built on different underlying technologies controlled by third parties and not the 91¸£ÀûÉç. The 91¸£ÀûÉç believes that self-build would compromise the ability of the 91¸£ÀûÉç to ensure quality, especially around upgrading of the products.There would also be a significant cost to the 91¸£ÀûÉç to comply self-build activity and subsequent upgrade. The 91¸£ÀûÉç will still work with third parties to adapt standard versions where appropriate, but ownership should remain with the 91¸£ÀûÉç. Where it is more cost-efficient to take advantage of third parties' technical resource, the 91¸£ÀûÉç will do so.
If you want to contribute you can do so. The consultation ends on July 21st.
Nick Reynolds is Social Media Executive, 91¸£ÀûÉç Online.
Comment number 1.
At 2nd Jun 2010, John_from_Hendon wrote:"An alternative potential solution would be to allow third parties to build their own delivery mechanisms for iPlayer"
Hmm... so the 91¸£ÀûÉç will undertake to provide delivery mechanisms for all possible hardware and operating systems? - this is unrealistic and economically unsound.
The walled garden delivery philosophy that the 91¸£ÀûÉç is proposing is in my view well established to be fundamentally unsound. Why should the 91¸£ÀûÉç force licence players to have the latest 'feature rich' version of iPlayer when many users are, and were, perfectly content with a minimal version?
The closing down of the open source Linux version demonstrates the 91¸£ÀûÉç's true view of only providing a very narrow product to it licence payers and this is wrong as a basis for delivery for a number of reasons. The 91¸£ÀûÉç should permit anyone and everyone to design and build their own player and let the market choose how many 'features' it wants, otherwise the 91¸£ÀûÉç will become just another Facebook or iPhone commercial business. This will considerably lessen the value and reach of broadband delivery to licence payers and generally turn off the viewers who will go elsewhere for their broadband viewing.
Furthermore can the 91¸£ÀûÉç afford to continue to develop its software for all operating system equally? I recall other close systems sponsored by the 91¸£ÀûÉç such as the 91¸£ÀûÉç Computer and the Domesday book project. If you can't remember them, look them up - they too were based on the walled garden approach and the led nowhere wasting all the effort and in the end producing nothing of lasting value. This sadly has been the norm for 91¸£ÀûÉç technology projects, but there is no reason for this to remain the case.
The 91¸£ÀûÉç should make its iPlayer server interfaces public and open source so that developers can be encourage to build the best and most innovative display mechanisms at no cost to the 91¸£ÀûÉç. This will maximise the 91¸£ÀûÉç coverage and minimise the 91¸£ÀûÉç's cost.
Complain about this comment (Comment number 1)
Comment number 2.
At 11th Feb 2011, U14781767 wrote:All this user's posts have been removed.Why?
Complain about this comment (Comment number 2)
Comment number 3.
At 3rd Mar 2011, huntingtonpaper wrote:I intend to agree with you on this comment"The closing down of the open source Linux version demonstrates the 91¸£ÀûÉç's true view of only providing a very narrow product to it licence payers and this is wrong as a basis for delivery for a number of reasons The 91¸£ÀûÉç should permit anyone and everyone to design and build their own player and let the market choose how many 'features' it wants, otherwise the 91¸£ÀûÉç will become just another Facebook or iPhone commercial business. This will considerably lessen the value and reach of broadband delivery to licence payers and generally turn off the viewers who will go elsewhere for their broadband viewing."
Complain about this comment (Comment number 3)