BBC Trust approves Project The BBC's self-regulatory body, the BBC Trust, has approved the Beeb-led set top box Project Canvas with certain conditions. Domestic broadcasters have lagged behind on HD TV, while Sky, which launched HD in 2006, has found around two million customers for its Sky+ HD services. To close the gap, the old guard are banking on a …
Two points:
1) All of those would be a preferable experience to watching most of ITV's current output
but 2) isn't bubonic plague and the Black Death the same thing?
I believe that there may be more than a wiff of a suggestion that the bubonic plague was just one of many diseases that made up The Black Death.
This coupled with the fact that tests on skeletons from "plague" pits in the UK have found no trace of bubonic plague, whereas those from, I believe, Spain have. There may be several reasons for this (diffenrt organic survival rates, etc, but its enough to throw the automatic attachment between the two into some doubt.
Of course, his lordship may well not have been aware of this...
I shall now take my anorak, and depart, sadly not yet in search of beer.
"Lord Reith even compared commercial TV to the introduction of smallpox, the bubonic plague and the Black Death."
He wasn't SO far off. He just didn't foresee the BBC looking at the aforementioned plague and deciding to copy it.
From the Trust response-
"1.16.
This approval is conditional upon the completed component documents of the Canvas core technical specification, to the extent not done so already, being released no later than 20 working days from this final approval. Further developments or refinements to the core technical specification must be published by the Canvas joint venture as they are completed and no later than eight months prior to launch of the first wave of set-top boxes."
Given the launch time table, that's about now. But I guess it's a question of what 'published' means, given-
"1.26.
This approval is made on the understanding that Canvas will be governed by the following principles:
•
the Canvas core technical specification will be made available to third parties on a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory basis"
Just publishing it freely on webiste and dropping the NDA requirement is too easy. Section 4.8 onwards goes into more detail and the Trust says it's never heard of OpenIPTV.
Sorry, I work in the DTV industry and I haven't heard of them.
I found their website and it is painfully obvious that this is a IP ONLY solution. Canvas is a multi source system - satellite, terrestrial, cable AND IP. This is why Sky and Virgin are up in arms, because it moves control away from the operator and over to the broadcaster.
I also looked at all the names listed there but in practice there is vey little activity from them.
Frankly I thought you were referring to OpenTV at first.
This is clearly a post which just leads folks to these doubious quality streaming sites, just looking at the televisionpconline.com leads to a god awful web site with pictures of people who saved $300 a month etc. Looks like a scam site to me.
Rob
Did somebody pee in your cornflakes this morning?
While there are some genuine questions to ask about the openness of the specification, and whether they should rewriting the technical spec of the wheel, overall I think this is a good thing.
Quite frankly, the pre-Canvas progress at mainstream not-via-a-pc IPTV would best be described as laughable if it wasn't also quite so contemptuous of the consumer.
It seems that without exception, the "internet enabled" TVs so far have offered a risible garden-walled selection, presumably for grubby money reasons. Now given that irrespective of how it occurs, sooner or later we'll get a dominant system, and I'd rather have one based on the self-serving interests of the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, than the self-serving interests of BSkyB.
Your prejudices are pretty clear, thanks.
Quite frankly some people were happy with Microsoft setting the PC standard, and would have been happy with them owning and controlling all the Internet protocols too.
One ring to bind them all...
This has internet tax/license written all over it.
I hope if they do then it is a pay per view type of tax.
I have no desire to watch anything.
I have no TV and therefore no need for a licence, as far as I am concerned they can have my IP ( fixed ) and bill me for every second of any channel they can prove I have watched but if they put a blanket "tax" on the internet then they can kiss my sweet bibby as I will fight tooth and nail.
