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BBC Store will allow people to buy, watch, and keep programmes

by Mark Tyson on 8 October 2013, 16:27

Tags: BBC

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Today BBC Director-General Tony Hall has made a speech about his vision for the corporation and outlined some plans for changes to its service provisions. A lot of the announced changes feature the embracing of new technology and so revolve around the BBC iPlayer, its use and its functionality.

Hall said that he wants the iPlayer to be even better and it will be re-invented and transform from its current use as a catch-up service to being online TV. The main changes in this respect will be that shows will be available from not just seven days after broadcast but for 30 days.

Another important feature is called ‘first on iPlayer’ which Hall informs us is being able to see programs on iPlayer even before they are broadcast. The iPlayer will facilitate users clicking and picking what they like, when they like from the available channels to be watched at their convenience, creating their own personalised schedule. Also so-called temporary ‘pop-up channels’ based upon popular current sporting and cultural events will be experimented with.

BBC Store

A new venture that the BBC hopes will be a money spinner is called the BBC Store. When this commercial service launches it “will offer people in the UK the chance to buy a whole range of programmes to watch and keep forever,” explained Hall. People seem to like to buy and keep things permanently, rather than renting or owning time-limited content, so this service could do well. The move will pit the BBC against many other online TV/Film retailers and subscription services in a competitive market.

BBC Playlister

A new music service was also detailed by Hall today. The service is called BBC Playlister and will allow users to “to tag any piece of music they hear on the BBC and listen to it later”. The BBC will work with big name streaming services such as Spotify, YouTube and Deezer “so that you can keep all your favourite music in one place, enjoy it across whatever devices you’re using, wherever you are and, we hope, help you discover and share new music,” said Hall.

Addressing the YouTube generation

The BBC would also like to appeal to new, innovative and exciting programme makers who are part of the “YouTube generation”. It is envisaged that more programmes can be made by these innovative start-up producers while avoiding the “conventional commissioning process”.

BBC1 +1

Another announcement which may be appreciated by UK folk is that there are also plans to introduce a BBC1 +1 channel. That might help people out with their peak-time PVR recording schedules.



HEXUS Forums :: 22 Comments

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Great, now when are the BBC going to get rid of DRM for license fee payers? I don't care if it's applied to movies (silly as DRM is anyway), bit for programming funded by the license fee it's really not acceptable to have to jump through OS-specific hoops and install bordering-on-malware ‘rights management’ software components.
You can already watch bbc 1 an hour behind on iplayer..
30 days is a good addition!
edzieba
Great, now when are the BBC going to get rid of DRM for license fee payers? I don't care if it's applied to movies (silly as DRM is anyway), bit for programming funded by the license fee it's really not acceptable to have to jump through OS-specific hoops and install bordering-on-malware ‘rights management’ software components.

Look up get_iplayer here: http://www.infradead.org/get_iplayer/html/get_iplayer.html

It won't directly stop the BBC from using DRM, but it will help you out in the long run and works quite happily under Windows too :)
I like the direction they are going in and hope others do the same. I much prefer to choose what to watch when I have time to watch it rather than following channel schedules. The addition of 30 days of content on iPlayer is also good for me because I often hear about programs that people thought were good that I hadn't heard of and the 7 day limitation on BBC iPlayer had prevented me from watching some.

It is nice to see the BBC bringing Netflix like functionality to a traditional TV channel and it's broad range of content. We are only getting 30 days of content but it is much better than the previous 7 and hopefully a step towards a complete catalogue being available(everything, no time restrictions), at least content that was created directly by the BBC.
They should just close the BBC.
They've been taxing the nation for too long with their inferior programme schedule.

They are evil, just like the network issues on iplayer.

edited for legal reasons, u cant just go around saying that !! (Mod Squad)