Under the Rotunda

While I’m not happy with the amount of information I haven’t yet added to the Project Canvas wiki, there was some big developments on Friday last week, with the BBC Trust publishing the additional info that BBC management put together on Project Canvas.

Read more over at my post on the Canvas blog.

(Project Canvas is the working name for a open, standards-based IPTV to the TV project here in the UK that has BBC, ITV and BT -two public service broadcasters, and a telecom/ISP company respectively - as its founding partners.)

Over the last week I’ve found myself  including links to various tools in more emails than usual, so I thought I might collect some of them here too in a series of short posts every few days (goodness knows it’s been way too long since a tools post here on the blog).

First up are three great productivity-related tools:

• Google Apps - a no-brainer perhaps, but if you haven’t used this cloud-based suite of services (primarily Google Docs, and Calendar) than you might not appreciate how handy it is to be able to quickly and easily edit docs, as well as (especially) share them with friends. Google are also increasing the number elements that can be synced across an increasing number of mobiles devices
• Survey Monkey - Ever need a quick & dirty survey to, for example, collect answers from friends when trying to organise a sporting team? The Monkey is free for basic surveys, and the paid version ($20 per month) let’s you have branched questions, as well as tart the pages up with your logo etc.
• SugarSync does cloud-based file backup and synchronisation. Have a few key folders or files that you want to keep backed-up but either don’t want to buy an external hard drive, or want something stored far away in case your house burns down? The big recent change is free accounts: up to 2gb of storage is free which is heaps for a key set of files, and paid plans start from a substantial 30gb. PLUS you can nominate specific folders that you want anyone to be able to access via web browser (behind a password) - making it great for sharing files with clients in place of other sites like Dropbox.

There is less than one week to go before the BBC Trust releases its emerging conclusions on Project Canvas*. One part of the whole project that will get heavily scrutinised from now till, well, the whole time the project exists, is the electronic programme guide (the EPG).

Prompted by the EPG focus for Canvas (but not directly related) here, in no particular order, are 5 things that suck about the EPG of Sky+ (my current TV provider):

1. It cannot get episode guides/blurbs right: too often it simply shows the wrong description under “info” for the episode that is screening. (Applies for both live and recorded eps.)
2. When in Anytime (the on-demand section) there is no acceptable description of series or episodes. For example, it says “The Wire”, but doesn’t tell me what series, or what episode, or indeed whether it’s just on ep or a whole series that I can watch.
3. It takes at least two button presses to get to both Anytime in the first place. Same to get to my recorded shows.
4. When watching linear/live TV, hitting the “info” button can only show info for the current time and channel selected. This means you cannot - not even easily - keep watching live TV while getting any more than show name on upcoming shows either on that channel or other channels.
5. The “search by A-Z function” is so rubbish that it is effectively useless. There are a lot of programs on offer from Sky (let alone what might be avaiable in something like Canvas) , but it only lets you key in the first letter as your whole search term, and with the listings showing every episode including the timeshifted channels, you get RSI paging down through, for example, the Cs to reach “criminal minds”.

(Of course, while I’m not a TV or technology novice, it’s worth noting these are based just on my and my household’s experience - it’s always possible my particular box or remote or service aren’t functioning like they should.)

* I’ve just started a wiki all about Project Canvas, and accompanying blog, if you’re interested in reading more about it. The wiki is here, the blog is here, and the Twitter account is @ProjectCanvasUK. (The wiki is still early days with regard to in-depth content though - check it out in a couple of days for something meatier.)

a.k.a Does Berkett shell out some green to get the BBC’s on-demand flagship on his on-demand cable platform?

On Twitter late yesterday I posed a question asking if Virgin Media pay the BBC anything (& if so, what) to have the iPlayer service on their cable TV service.  (I’ve been looking into video on demand (VOD) more & more lately, for a project I’ll post about here in a few days.)

Update - 13 May - Tim Renowden has a great post summarising some of the technical slanted  reasons why non-Virgin providers aren’t currently syndicating the iPlayer. Definitely worth a read. Find it here.

The background to my question:

Now, even though I’m Australian, I realise the BBC is a public service funded entirely by the license fee, and has a remit to provide its content to as wide an audience as possible. I also realise that - with the exception of the BBC Worldwide - there isn’t really any “content sales” in the way other broadcasters like ITV and C4 make commercial deals for the distribution of their content beyond their own broadcasts and sites.

But I still wasn’t entirely convinced that Virgin Media was getting the iPlayer service for no cost at all. After all, with no other provider syndicating the iPlayer content as widely, surely that gives Virgin Media an advantage in the consumer marketplace, and that could amount to some form of state aid couldn’t it?  To be clear, I was not necessarily thinking the supply to Virgin had to be a profit-generating exercise for the BBC (for surely that would be in violation of their public wide-access purpose). But can’t the BBC claim some payment is needed, for cost recovery? After all, the BBC can - from consumers - recoup costs of voting mechanisms via premium SMS numbers, and the proposals for Project Canvas which the BBC will hold a 25% stake suggest cost recovery from enterprise is absolutely a possibility when it comes to the EPG.

So I did some reading.

What I found:

• Both NTL & Telewest were part of the original technical and consumer trials for catchup TV in late 2005 (one source - this annex PDF). Those two organisations of course merged and became what is now Virgin Media. (Homechoice - since purchased by Tiscali UK - was another trial participant.)
• It was those cable services providing catchup TV specifically  that were the subject of the public value test, and this public value test  contributed to the overall on-demand decision of approval taken by the BBC Trust (along with the internet-based catchup services of course - namely on BBC sites).  (Section 3.6.6 of this annex.)
• The BBC Exec stated then it had no objection in principle to making the content available to other providers for syndication, as long as they were reasonable. As a result a policy for syndication of on-demand content, and guidelines for syndication of on-demand content were created. These policies cover the type of thing one would expect: to be approved a syndication deal could not adversely affect the competitive landscape; it must be available to all subscribers of the service; it cannot hamper the BBC fulfilling its overall public purposes; it must be available only to UK audiences.
• The most pertinent considerations and principles are as follows: value for money, and platform neutrality as far as technology and value for money allows. In other words, the iPlayer is to be made available on as many platforms at no cost (including syndication platforms) as possible, as long the audience reached outweighs the cost of having BBC developers create the technology and the syndication.  It’s why the Nintendo Wii has the iPlayer service officially while other consoles do not (i.e. a combination of the Wii being in more homes (audience), and already having a browser so adaptation is less intensive than what would be required for the browser-less Xbox (technology)). By inference, if the value for money measure is not upheld, the syndication option does not go ahead (and since NTL/Telewest were already part of the tech trials, this value for money test was more than satisified).
• Conclusion: While I found nothing to categorically exclude it, it seems highly unlikely that Virgin Media is paying anything - including cost recovery - to the BBC for the provision of iPlayer on Virgin’s cable TV platform.
• Furthermore, it seems that the guidelines around value for money and technology are broad/vague enough to give the BBC coverage to follow up, or deny, any syndication options they like, with enough ammo to outwardly justify why they choose not to adopt any particular syndication option.
• Finally, as part of the syndication guidelines from the BBC Executive, every 6 months the Exec is required to outline for the BBC Trust all new syndication deals consideration,  both those approved and those rejected. I haven’t managed to find the actual reports of these yet, beyond it being noted in Exec & Trust meetings that they were in fact presented, and doubt they’re publicly published.

Further reading:

Finally, if you are interested in them, you can find the full on-demand syndication policy here, and the guidelines for syndication are here (both links are to PDFs). There’s also the original on-demand decision, the public value test/assessment that makes up part of the decision,  and the market impact assessment from Ofcom that made up part of the PVT (again, all PDFs).

Update - 13 May - Tim Renowden has a great post summarising some of the technical slanted  reasons why non-Virgin providers aren’t currently syndicating the iPlayer. Definitely worth a read. Find it here.