[advocacy] The future for open streaming solutions at the BBC?

[boink]

hello,

yes, their point is more than justified. We must never forget the
"average" user in a case like this. The average user still cannot use
the ogg format. It's still far too complicated for the "average" use to
use.

Though, I don't see the sense in the BBC using the Real Audio format.
Real Audio Servers licence fees are not cheap.

WBAI has been using the mp3 format (which 2600.com has been doing the
streaming for them. Paying for webcasting is not even in the WBAI
budjet). And if you look on www.wbai.org you will find one link for
Windows Media Player and the other for Real Audio. The average user
clicks on the links and it works. Sadly, it isn't that simple yet for
ogg. wbai website => www.wbai.org

Though, it would be nice that a public broadcaster could support an open
source project as an open source project could support public
broadcasting. I see a good possibility for a symbiosis which could last
for many years.

The question is here ... can the BBC do its own ogg stream? Isn't there
someone out there who can do it for them? We mustn't forget that the BBC
is a braindead bureaucracy, like all bureacracies of its size. And we
mustn't forget how conservative people can become when doing the same
job year after year. "Why should we change?" ... "If it ain't broke,
don't fix it", etc. Thus, we can see that a bureaucracy tends to work
for itself rather to provide the best quality service possible.

I am doing an ogg stream for FranceInter after they decided to only
stream in the Windows Media format. If you want to read about my stream,
it's on:

http://cuba.calyx.nl/~oink/oggstreams/

ogg stream stats are on (the stats have been running only for 6 days):

http://unix.rulez.org/~boink/report.html

happy streaming!

boink

On Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 12:11:57AM +0000, Damon LoCascio wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I recently emailed a query to the maintainers of BBC London website
> (http://bbc.co.uk/london)  asking if they had any plans to move away from
> Real Server as a means for streaming audio and Video of their live radio
> and tv broadcasts to something a bit more cross platform like OGG/Vorbis
> or even MP3's. The reply I received was :
>
> "I'm afraid we only plan to use Real Player files for our video and audio
> clips for a while yet. This is mainly because the Real Servers are much
> easier to support for the BBC and because Real Servers can handle the
> traffic that the BBC Website places on them, unlike some other products.
>
> We are looking into more formats and I will take up this matter with BBC
> Technology who deal with streaming audio and video."
>
> So my question is what resources are avaible to convince the techies at
> the BBC that an open source solution is just as robust if not more so than
> Real Networks solution. Do things like Icecast scale well or the Helix DNA
> server? What comparisons, if any, are availiable for the best server
> serving the best media format (OGG, MP3, RA's QT etc)? Is there a cast
> iron argument I can put to the BBC?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Damon.
>
>
> --
> ===
>
> "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs... you're
> missing something IMPORTANT!"
>                                 Rob. (prolly teefed tho')
>
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