Blogging has been errr "light"

Nomad has been exploring the idea of actually having a life and not writing entries on this stupid blog. Despite some promising progress things have not really worked out.

So expect more posts in future. As usual there is much to do before Christmas but in the New Year we expect to get to work on Android TV.

BBC conned?

According to 'The Sun' the BBC has been conned by a scrounger. Actually we think that the BBC is being conned by itself. It needs to find people who fit into its narrative of events and is not very particular about checking their background.

Nice work if you can get it........

Nomad has recently been thinking of looking for a new job.

Perhaps this fits the bill. The salary seems reasonable for a part time position.

"the BBC and its impartiality"

Just to be clear, the BBC is not biased. The Director of BBC News herself says this (kudos to Guido). It must be true.

In order to make sure that no one misunderstands the situation she has told her employees to stop tweeting thier personal opinions. Suppose analysis of tweets showed that everyone at the BBC was biased against, lets say Israel (purely for the sake of argument obviously), why then people might imagine that in some way the editorial judgement of the BBC was influenced by the personal opinions of the people who work there. No sir, the professionals at the BBC leave their personal opinions behind when they enter into the sacred halls. They do, dont they?

Not a knockout blow, but.......

Despite our optimism the BBC has not been made to suffer an immediate 25% cut. The 340 million of extra commitments is not quite 10% of the Beebs 3.6 billion budget. Still the clever bit looks to be freezing the TV Licence for 6 years. Assuming that inflation runs at 3% a year that would correspond to a cut of almost 20% over the period. That is a 27% cut in the budget by 2016.

So not a knockout blow then but a commitment to steady attrition. Attrition which will be enhanced if YOU do not pay for a TV Licence. That is what this blog is all about. We may or may not be able to get rid of the BBC, but our cause is advanced by every pound that does not go thier way.

Jeremy Hunt strikes

Just when it seemed that we were in for a long wait to see what would happen, the culture secretary hits the BBC hard. He has not gone for changing the licence fee but at a stroke could reduce thier budget by 25%. Nice work Jeremy.

Blu Ray Google TV Thingy

Sony are not just making TVs that run Android, they are also making a Blu Ray player. See the spec below. Update Nomads Christmas list accordingly will you.

Sony Internet TV Blu-ray Disc Player NSZ-GT1

Available in October for about $399.99

• Google TV built-in

• Seamlessly search across your television & Internet for content

• Surf the web while watching TV using Dual View

• Upgradeable Google TV platform

• Blu-ray Disc playback capability

• Download apps from Android Market (*coming in early 2011)

• Superior processing power with Intel Inside

• Easy-to-use RF QWERTY keypad remote with integrated optical mouse

• Link to select mobile phones (coming this fall)

• Built-in Wi-Fi

• One HDMI input, one HDMI output and four USB inputs

Amen!

When Britains best blogger writes, we err.... post a link.

Of course Daniel is correct that we are best served by diverse sources of media. However there is no free market for broadcasting in the UK. The TV Licence provides the BBC with a monopoly position rather similar to that enjoyed by Lord Portland who purchased the soap monopoly from Charles the First in the 1630s. It is worth noting that Lord Portland provided a source of revenue to the Crown; the BBC does not.

There will not be a level playing field until the TV Licence is abolished.

Here in time for Christmas

Obviously you are wondering what to buy Nomad for Christmas. We think that Sonys new HD Television with Android TV will fit the bill.

Admittedly it probably is not available in the UK yet. We can but hope.

Meanwhile...

Of course if you really dont want Google TV. There is always this.

Logitech get in first!

We are all agog waiting for Sony to announce thier new hardware, an event which is planned for later this week.

However it seems that Logitech have stolen their thunder by announcing the Logitech Revue, a set top box which runs Android TV.

There is considerable confusion over the correct terminology. As we understand it Google TV is a web based service that searches for video (in the same way that Google searches for text). Android TV is an operating system. Hopefully the two will work together!

Under investigation

Boy is Nomad in trouble. He is being 'investigated' by TV Licensing. An interesting aspect of this 'investigation' is that it has yet to uncover Nomad's name; information which is readily available on the electoral roll (amongst other places).

Bluster? We could not possibly comment.

"Impartiality" at peril!

"Senior BBC journalists are threatening to boycott strikes targeted at next week’s Conservative Party conference because they fear the corporation’s ‘impartiality’ is in peril" says The Mail.

Now you might well think that certain staff are making a principled stand by being prepared to cross picket lines "because they fear the corporation’s ‘impartiality’ is in peril". However this would pre-suppose that the corporation is actually 'impartial'. We rather suspect they fear that the corporations partiality will become all too apparent through this action.

Read more: dailymail.co.uk/news/article

More interestingly, what we want to know is whether there will be a commensurate refund for those who have paid for a TV Licence.

Google TV about to launch

If you have been following the plot you will know that we expect great things of Google TV. Hence we are excited that Sony are about to unveil thier first hardware that supports Google TV. The 12th October is the date mentioned here.

A particularily interesting question is the date when Google TV will be available here in the UK. Sometime in 2011 seems to be the consensus view. However Google TV is an operating system that will connect to "Google for video" on the net. Is there a reason why we cannot operate Google TV enabled devices without being able to connect them to "Google for video"? I guess we are about to find the answer to this issue fairly soon.

Update: Actually it seems that the operating system is going to be called Android TV. Which probably answers the question. This is what we really want to get our hands on.

Church vs Beeb, next round

Obviously this blog is protestant (its writer is also Protestant). As refuseniks we are naturally suspicous of organisations with a global reach which lay claim to moral infallibility for thier spokesmen.

As far as we know the BBC does not sell indulgences but in many ways it does resemble the pre-reformation church. The faithfull do not question the world view that is presented by the priest (news presenter). Excommunication (not being invited on Question Time) is widely feared. Its financial power has grown far beyond that required for what was originally envisaged as being its mission. It has a symbiotic relationship with the state.

On the other hand the actual world view held by the BBC is entirely antithetical to that of the Catholic church. In so far as the BBC does believe in morality, it is an entirely relative and permissive version. The BBC therefore has a problem with religion in general and Christianity in particular.

As the Pope himself puts it "let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society". He probably was not thinking of the BBC at the time but his words are apposite none the less.

So we welcome the Pope to Britain. If nothing else, his presence will doubtless annoy many of the BBC's resident hacks.

Fearfull freeze fixed

The TV Licence fee will be frozen for two years says the BBC Trust (subtext: we dont want any further cuts). I accept your idea of a freeze for next year says Jeremy Hunt (subtext: it might actually be cut during the following year).

We hope that Jeremy will actually abolish the licence fee. If not he should go for a cut of at least 25%. That is what other government departments are suffering.

Guido guns for Gruinard

Whether Guido was justified in victimising William Hague seems rather doubtful. Despite which, his blog remains a must read as it is so often accurately targeted. We might well have guessed that much of the BBC's advertising went to the Guardian, but there it is. As ever the facts vindicate our cause.

A neatly circular arrangement where the BBC places ads in the Guardian to recruit 'suitable' staff and said staff then use the advertising budget to support their favourite paper. Your licence fee is not only propping up a left leaning broadcaster but a newspaper as well.

PS: Sorry the story is originally from Biased BBC. Qudos.

PPS: Which originally came from a letter to the Telegraph. Research before headline please.

A brave admission?

We wonder whether Mark Thompson's recent admission that the BBC was biased against Maggie will prove a critical own goal. Draw a line under the issue and move on, was obviously the thinking. Unfortunately for the BBC, its critics have found some validation for thier stance and are unlikely to shut up anytime soon. If the BBC was "massively biased" during the 80's it seems rather unlikely that it would have reformed itself while under no pressure to do so from a friendly Labour goverment.

The usual suspects have been quick to respond with telling pieces from Peter Hitchens and Daniel Hannan. Then yesterday a new player appeared on the scene, the Catholic Church did not mince its words. Unlike the Anglicans who meekly asked for a Religion Editor the Catholics alleged that the BBC harbours "a consistent anti-Christian institutional bias".

We can only imagine Thomson asking his aides "how many spin doctors does the Pope have?"

BBC to "sell cuts"

Mark Thompson has been busy explaining to Number 10 how the BBC is nowadays impartial, even though they might have been biased against Mrs T in the past.

Whether Mark can actually exert any control over his editorial staff is somewhat questionable. However the ability of the government to put pressure on the BBC to provide more favourable coverage is one of the best arguments for the abolition of the Licence Fee.

We are also struck by his repeated use of the word "impartial". Perhaps he is being somewhat disingenuous. To quote a BBC hack from some years ago "we are impartial but not neccessarily unbiased".

Who would have thought....

that the BBC, that model of impartial objectivity would have shown political bias. Surely our Mark must be mistaken when he says that they did not like Margaret Thatcher. Look at the range of topics that the BBC handles in the most professional and dispassionate way; global warming, the EU, the state of Israel, the Catholic church, posh Dave from Eton, etc.

Then again maybe not.

Get rid of the licence fee!

Not much point in commenting on this post really, the point is made in a most eloquent manner and requires no improvement on our part.

Video on Demand gets in gear, but only in the USA

Things are always better in America; well apart from grammar, cheese, gun crime......oh never mind. Anyway the point is that video on demand is starting to have a noticable impact in the USA.

According to this story the takeup of pay TV in the USA is dropping and one of the reasons is that people can get stuff for free over the internet. What the story does not really spell out is that people are prepared to pay to use sites like Netflix (which presumably do not count as 'Pay TV'). Whether free or not the point is that people prefer to select what they view and when it starts. Suffering brain death while consuming the output of certain channels is not really healthy at all.

Apple have also noticed this trend and are supposedly about to revamp Apple TV. Whether this will go anywhere is debatable. The death of Apple TV has long been predicted by the pundits. As usual the service will not be available in the UK.

We have observed before that a major stumbling block in the UK is the grip that the major channels have on copyright rights. This is what stopped Hulu launching a service here. A way round this obstacle needs to be found.

Web only drama arrives

Obviously there are lots of things that are available on the Web only. To be honest this is because many of them are so bad that even by the lax standards of today no 'proper' TV channel will consider giving them air time.

It may be a first however that MTV which is available on cable, satellite (and possibly digital?) is piloting a series as web only. This clearly shows where things are headed. The major issue with web TV nowadays, is not the technology, but the availability of content. Clearly MTV see an opportunity in filling the gap.

Douglas finds a new target

We have linked to Douglas Carswells excellent blog before. It is good to see that he is stepping up his targetting of the TV Licence. See this recent post for example. Douglas has a good record for getting rid of things, notably he claimed the scalp of the last speaker. Lets hope this goes somewhere.

The injustice of the TV Licence

We promised more from David Grahams ASI report on the Licence Fee. The following passage is quoted verbatim. Eat your hearts out all you unreconstructed capitalists, no one delights in grinding the faces of the working poor quite as efficiently as TV Licensing.

Nor do most people see the darker side of the payment process. The Licence Fee is chargeable to any household that receives a live broadcast, whether that is a BBC signal or not. Failure to pay results in prosecution. In 2008/09 there were 168,000 prosecutions for evasion, nearly 15% of all prosecutions. Most of those charged are poor, often young single mothers. The only way you can avoid this payment is by watching no live TV, literally having your set disabled.

Here is a magistrate giving her own views of this system: "As a JP, I have for 20 years had the difficult task of sentencing TV licence defaulters, followed some months later by the often hopeless task of fine enforcement. Unlike other offenders, TV licence evaders are predominantly female, many of them benefit recipients with children. The majority are single, struggling to keep their families financially afloat. Food and electricity tokens often take priority over a weekly TV licence payment. If still without a licence, offenders can be re-prosecuted almost immediately unless they dispose of their TVs."

The fact that the Licence Fee criminalises poor people has been the main ground of dissent from public figures like Charles Moore, or Geoff Mulgan, a former advisor to the Labour Government, who said: "The Licence Fee alone stands as an inegalitarian flat-rate charge, linked in no way to ability to pay. (It is a tax) which has no democratic component: it lends no choices to those who pay and conveys no information to the broadcaster".

Canvas could still be blanked!

Virgin Media are launching a complaint to OFCOM about Project Canvas. If succesful this might still see Canvas stopped.

We are impressed that the complaint is based around the point that Project Canvas has not promoted open standards. This is a useful line of attack, as it gets to the root of the BBC's interest in Canvas.

To quote from a footnote in David Grahams report for the Adam Smith Institute:

This may be behind the BBC’s desire to promote "hybrid" devices like Canvas. At a recent conference, a BBC executive, Richard Halton, said that Canvas, a hybrid device that combines access to the internet and to broadcast channels, required the payment of a BBC Licence Fee because it was capable of receiving a live transmission. www.marketforce.eu.com/broadcasting

Clearly the BBC does not want open standards in place otherwise you could just use a Google TV box to access SeeSaw (for example) and not bother with a TV Licence.

Wealth of the Nations Viewers

The Adam Smith Institute has released this report saying that the licence fee should be abolished and that the BBC should become a subscription service. We could not agree more.

Here are some quotes from the report:

• The UK’s current model for broadcast regulation is exhausted.
• Universal broadband and the Internet make a "licence" to broadcast obsolete.
• However, the BBC remains committed to its subsidy status. It invests heavily in opinion management and has systematically captured its regulators.
• This report proposes voluntary subscription as an alternative funding model.

This is an excellent report and I shall be systematically cherry picking from it for the next few days.

Infinite Bandwidth!

BT has decided to market FTTC under the name of "Infinity". The "Infinity" brand probably covers some FTTH installations as well. It will offer download speeds of up to 40Meg.

There is now an official list of when areas are being upgraded which can be found on this page. Much to Nomad's excitement, it arrives in his backyard before the end of the year.

We assume that this will automatically improve your uplink and download speeds. Lets say you are currently paying for "up to 10Meg" but only get 3Meg, which is fairly typical, you should be able to see speeds of 10Meg just by re-booting your modem.

Other service providers will presumably be offering competing products once your exchange is upgraded.

Update: Another useful site for information on broadband availability can be found here.

TV Licence? PC Licence?

Jeremy Hunt has hinted that collection of the TV Licence Fee may have to change as more people are watching TV on thier computers.

So are we dead in the water? Probably not. That the use of a PC to watch video is exempt from a licence fee is actually in the primary legislation. If the Culture Secretary wants to make a change then he has to go back to parliament.

The most plausible change would be requiring a licence to use iPlayer. There is already DRM 'encryption' on iPlayer, why not hand out user accounts with the TV Licence? The BBC would prefer to live in denial however and are unlikely to want this. We think that the most likely outcome at present is no change. We shall be watching what happens next.

TVersity gets its act together (mostly)

Nomad downloaded upgraded to TVersity Version 1.9.1 today. The upgrade process was much improved and it was now obvious how to upgrade as opposed to downloading a new installation.

There appears to be no major new functionality but some additional transcoding options are now supported. There is more support for the latest iGizmos (we care not). On the downside, access to BBC iPlayer content still does not work.

Ask for a refund!

It seems that the unions at the BBC are upset over the changes to the pension plan and are contemplating taking industrial action.

Why anyone at the BBC would imagine that this is a good point to take industrial action is a matter beyond our comprehension.

The apposite question however is as follows. If the BBC fails to provide a service for some period of time, are TV Licence holders entitled to a refund? The service has been paid for in advance, if it is not delivered surely recompense must be due.

Promises, Promises......

Will Jeremy Hunt really cut the TV Licence fee?

It is disappointing that things are not happening more quickly and we have to wait till 2012 to find out. It is good to see that this government does seem set on observing the constitutional niceties however.

Licence Fee Evasion

An article in the Telegraph today claims that the real rate of TV Licence evasion is much higher than the BBC claims.

See this story.

Some of the assumptions used in this story appear wrong. In particular it is not valid to claim that everyone who is not paying by direct debit is trying to avoid paying at all.

There are 26.1 million households in the UK. If the BBC is really selling 25.4 million licences then that is an astonishingly high level of acceptance given the level of discontent with the BBC and the licence system in general. Our gut feeling is that the real rate of avoidance is likely to be higher than the official figure. This analysis does not really shed light on the issue though.

However we think the article is correct in its conclusions about the coming crisis for the BBC. After all that is what we have been saying for the past few months.

Smooth Radio "hacked"

Nomad has been trying to connect to the Smooth radio feed (102.2 FM). After a bit of work he eventually found this address on their website.

http://streaming.gmgradio.com/smoothradiolondon.asx

The address was accompanied by this warning "Please note that we only allow Wi-Fi Radios to connect through this address". How can they tell? Anyway it seems to work when the address is plugged in to TVersity.

Why would a radio station want to restrict peoples ability to listen? Surely they need listeners in order to attract advertisers. Perhaps we are missing the point and there is an entirely new business model for radio stations? Anyone care to enlighten us.

iPlayer "Encryption"

It turns out that the BBC have introduced "encryption" on the iPlayer. To be more precise they have updated the encryption used. This explains why TVersity no longer downloads from iPlayer. The encryption has already been cracked (it was laughably simple) but we will presumably have to wait for a new release from TVersity before this route works again.

This opened up a whole new area of research for Nomad. Look at this site for instance.

Radio Feeds Fed

If you are looking for a radio station feed try the RadioFeeds.co.uk site. We probably have already recommended them but it wont hurt to do so again.

The site can be found here.

Dont bother wasting time with the website of the particular radio station. Especially if you want to route the feed to your media player!

Not getting it at all

The BBC somewhat like the present Israeli government has become so isolated that it no longer accepts criticism even from its friends.

See Rod Liddles post here.

For the record Nomad is not in the pay of by Rupert Murdoch, he does sometimes read "The Mail" as McDonalds usually have a copy of it; nevertheless he wants an end to the BBC and the licence fee in particular.

Disregard that last post

Reality has not sunk in at all. Mark Thompson still thinks that he is in competition with other broadcasters. Thompson runs a quango which is funded by a tax on people who consume content from his "competitors". How can that be regarded as competion?

If Thompson thinks that he can get away with anything less than transparency under the new government then he is making a serious mistake. The next review of the licence fee is due in 2012, the BBC would be well advised to put its house in order before then.

Increasing the executive pay bill would not have been our recommendation. We also, initially, wondered how the BBC manages to calculate inflation as running at 14%. The real trick though, turns out to be that the BBC manages to report on pay rises almost two years after they happen. Transparency delayed is transparency denied.

Reality Sinks In

Mark Thompson says "we cant go like this"

Well no!

Victory?

The war is not yet won but some battles are going our way.

The BBC cuts back on its pension scheme here.

The BBC is told it must reveal information on stars salaries here.

Niel Midgely comments on Jeremy Hunt vs Michael Lyons

Sir Martin Sorrell made these comments on pay TV

Hello Mac Mini - Goodbye media player?

This blog is no fan of Apple hardware and the locked down approach to software availability that goes with it. The re-incarnation of the Mac Mini with an HDMI port is of interest nonetheless. Informed opinion is saying that this spells the end for Apple TV.

There appears to be a trend emerging here, the Boxee box, Google TV and now the Mac Mini; these are all (basically) dedicated PCs which provide a link between your TV and the internet. Thus there is a move away from the seperate server (usually a PC) and media player system which has been the focus of our story so far. The crucial point here will be whether the Mac Mini addresses the "10 foot interface" problem in any useful way.

The BBC are also trying to get on the bandwagon with Project Canvas. However the arrival of yet another product on the market months ahead of Canvas can hardly be seen as good news by the consortium.

Question Time questioned

As we have noted before, bias is all the more effective for being subtle. Changing the makeup of the Question Time audience from a 50/50 split to a 60/40 split would probably not be detected as a blatant act of bias. No doubt the producer would argue that this is within the margin of error. However the point is that it will make a big difference in the perceived reaction to a debate. See Douglas Carswells blog for the full story.

On the other hand it is easier to promote blatant bias if you are dealing with a local story. Fewer people will be aware of the truth. See Conservative Home for this story.

You may well be saying that members of the Conservative party probably would say that and you may be right. However note the careful way in which the point is made in both cases. These are both well presented stories and the comments threads also shed light on the issue.

Spend Less!

See this story in the Daily Mail about how the unions at the BBC are unhappy with their proposed rise and would like a pay increase of 7.3 per cent. In the print version yesterday the union rep was quoted as saying "the cake is not big enough".

Then compare what the BBC employees think with what the public think. The BBC was the most popular target for spending cuts. A massive 70% of the population want the BBC to spend less.

Source for this chart can be found at this link.

and another thing............

At this blog we really do not worry about sounding like 'disgusted of Tunbridge Wells'. Indignation is our thing. So lets tackle digital radio as a change from our usual focus on television. If ever there was a technology looking for a problem to solve, this is it.

Clearly sending video pictures over the airwaves takes up large amounts on bandwidth. It makes sense to adopt a technology, in this case digital transmission, that makes best use of the space available. By comparison audio channels occupy a tiny amount of bandwidth. Since the police and fire services were moved out of the FM band there is currently little problem with providing extra channels. Reception of the analogue signal generally provides a very high quality audio output, approaching Hi Fi standards. DAB, on the other hand, is alleged to provide poor quality, especially in fringe areas. Not surprisingly there is growing antipathy to DAB; see the Save FM site for instance.

The DAB- standard which the BBC has pushed forward in the UK has been largely ignored in the rest of the world. Those countries which are going digital are mostly adopting DAB+. This means that if you do buy a new digital radio for your car; it will stop working at Calais.

We wondered what the BBC did with the 12% of the Licence Fee that it did not spend on programme content. Part of the answer is that it likes developing new media standards. Somewhere in a back room at the BBC are a team of engineers who made this technology work. By adopting digital radio we will be giving them job satisfaction; with pride they will be able to point at your DAB reciever and say 'I designed that codec'. So for a mere £200 (across the nation) to upgrade the radios in your car and house you can bring happiness to a techie. Sweet!

That is the problem with the Licence Fee. You give money to the BBC and they have to spend it on something. You will not be consulted on whether that something is what you want. It would look bad if the project got abandoned. So you now have to pay out on new hardware to save face at the Beeb.

The government has decreed that 50% of radio listening will need to be digital before it will set a changeover date. So if you are tempted to surrender your analogue radio for a digital one (the scrappage scheme as it is being called) think again. Yes your old radio might be sent to a good home in Africa; but you are bringing nearer a costly and pointless imposition on the rest of us.

Fortunately it seems that content providers are beginning to realise that digital radio is a dead end. This week another radio station pulled the plug and turned itself into an internet only station. With mobile internet becoming a reality, people can still listen on the go. Lack of content is going to kill digital radio. Yay!

Monitoring Part 2

What the setup looks like now that the new monitor has arrived. Note the ethernet over mains plug to the left of the picture.

Monitoring

Given that VAT is forecast to increase in the budget, Nomad has been urgently looking for something to spend his money on. Obviously he would like a Google TV box but that may not be available at any price for another 12 months. An upgrade of the monitor seemed a plausible project however, the existing 22" monitor being a little small for the distance it is used at.

We recommend buying a monitor with native 1920x1080 pixel resolution (16x9 aspect ratio). This will give the best results when viewing Full HD output (Blu-Ray for example). You can expect that Full HD TVs will provide this resolution and aspect ratio however monitors may not as they are typically driven from a PC video card. The other vital consideration for a monitor is that it has a HDMI input; this will allow connection of the Google TV box when it arrives.

Incidentally, for those of you who have not followed the plot from the start, we do recommend buying a monitor instead of a TV. Operating a TV, even one disconnected from an RF input (aerial) gives TV Licensing a possible line of attack should they ever knock on the door.

Nomad rather liked the Iiyama 26" monitor. However this had a 1920x1200 pixel resolution (16x10 aspect ratio). A Full HD picture would therefore either have been distorted or left part of the screen blank depending on the settings.

So in the end Nomad bought the Iiyama ProLite B2712HDS-B1 27" Widescreen Monitor (B2712HDS-B1). So far it is working well.

The Datasonic 22" monitor will now become the monitor for the PC, displacing a CRT monitor which was a castoff from work.

Canvas?

I am posting a story on this link even though it is two years old. It appears to answer a question that has been bothering me recently; namely what the purpose of Project Canvas might be?

It would seem that the rationale of the BBC in pursuing Canvas is the same as that for Freeview. The BBC wants to promote the adoption of a standard that does not support subscription. As the public buy more boxes that only support 'free to air' it becomes more difficult to switch the BBC to a subscription model. However it also becomes more difficult to introduce a new commercial subscription service. In this way a box which you are attracted to buy because it is 'free' actually ends up restricting your choice of content.

Oh yes, and the other question that I had about how the BBC spends the 12% of the Licence Fee that does not go on programme content. Part of the answer is that it likes developing standards for new media platforms. We intend to return to this point shortly in regard to the debacle over digital radio.

Codec Wars: Google strikes

It turns out that we were unfair in saying that Google might not be doing the heavy lifting for Google TV. Google has bought a company called On2 which produces a codec called the VP8 and open sourced the codec. At the same time they have defined a new open source format known as WebM.

Codec? A codec is pretty vital to everything you read about on this blog. A codec is what turns a video signal into a file (or a datastream). Another codec reverses the process to produce the video signal that you watch.

Apple and Microsoft back the patented H.264 codec. This codec supports the widely used MPEG4 video standard and you have to pay to use it (obviously the public pay indirectly). Not surprisingly Apple (the bad guys) do not competition for thier codec very much and are threatening to sue for infringement of thier patents.

So once again Google are opening up the medium to wider use. Clearly this paves the way for Google TV. We like Google. Some people are currently criticising Google for collecting un-encrypted wi-fi data. So you install a radio transmitter in your house that broadcasts your personal data around the neighbourhood, what do you expect? Turn encryption on you fool.

Seen on Facebook:

'X' Would probably perish without iPlayer. I don't think i watch proper tv anymore

The world is changing, and no, before you ask, it was not a status update from Nomad.

Conservatives rational, shock, horror, probe.........

I know we promised less stories about BBC bias, but every so often we have to remind ourselves what this blog is for. In any case it would be a shame to miss Britain's best blogger commenting on the BBC.

We have commented before that bias is all the more effective for being subtle. Dan's story illustrates perfectly how the BBC simply applies its own prejudices to the issue under debate.

The Left invented the concept of institutional prejudice. They are however rather slow to apply the idea to those organisations that they have themselves subverted. The problem however, as with all other issues related to the BBC, is that it is a state funded organisation. The BBC is therefore, almost immune to outside pressure and will continue to be biased until the Licence Fee comes to an end.

TV Licence Resistance plan demo

Recieved this e-mail today:

Hi nomad, we'd just like our members to be aware of this event,

"Demonstration in support of ‘TV licence refusenik’ Tony Stone

Demonstration in support of ‘TV licence refusenik’ Tony Stone
Friday 4 June 2010 at 10:00
South West Surrey Magistrates Court, Mary Road, Guildford GU1 4AS

Our colleague Tony Stone is on trial this Friday in Guildford for his refusal to pay the TV licence fee on the grounds of the BBC’s indecency, bias, and the general unfairness of the TV licensing system.

Other well-known ‘TV licence refuseniks’, such as Vladimir Bukovsky and Gerard Batten MEP, are coming to support Tony and to give evidence in his defence.

You are invited to join our demonstration outside the Court to support Tony and protest against the BBC bias.

Please spread the word."

Regards,
The TV LICENCE RESISTANCE Team.

http://tvlicenceresistance.info/forum/index.php

Googolplexed Good News

After the disappoinments of Hulu giving up and Canvas being approved, to name but two. We were due for some good news. Google TV is it.

Every so often something appears which defines the standard and creates a new industry. Think of the IBM PC for example. The IBM PC did nothing new, in fact all it did was to put a label on existing technology that Microsoft and Intel had already created. However the existence of a de facto standard backed by a big player, created an industry which is still thriving.

We are sticking our necks out here, but Google TV looks like a new such de facto standard. The technology all exists already but someone has to enforce the protocols and make it happen; clearly Google is big enough to do this. Obviously we have yet to see this working, it could still be rubbish, but something tells us it will be good.

In terms of the TV Licence campaign this is all that we could hope for. If all the video content available on the web could be accessed through a single box, then why would anyone ever watch 'television' again?

We have to go and lie down now before it gets too much! Google TV? It needs a better name though.

Architecture Revisited

The technical solution promoted by this blog has been based around the networked media player and PC paradigm. Last year we suggested that an alternate approach based around a dedicated PC would be possible. The main drawback would be that the user interface is not suitable for remote operation.

Admittedly we have yet to actually see it in operation but what Google TV appears to do is to solve the user interface problem. This opens up the advantages of the dedicated PC approach.

Using our existing approach, to watch a single programme may require using two user interfaces which are physically located in different places. This happens if the server is not already programmed to make a particular item available. In this case both the server and the player require to be operated. However Google TV would carry out both functions in the same box. This would be particularily useful for one off programmes which are not programmed for regular download.

Much of the video content on the web is on isolated websites. See Telegraph.TV for a good example. There appears to be no protocol for a media server to access this content and therefore it is only possible to play it on a PC and not via a media player. Although TVersity makes an attempt to fill this gap for some websites (e.g. Youtube) it clearly is very limited in what it can do.

In summary Google TV appears set to change the game. This also implies, however, a fundamental change in the technical solution we recommend.

Google TV: Questions & Answers

What is Google TV?

Google TV is an operating system based on Android (which in turn is based on Linux). Google TV will run on compatible TVs, set-top boxes, DVD players and other such devices.

Why is a dedicated OS needed for these devices?

It is possible to use a Windows PC for these applications. However the problem is that the user interface is not very manageable from an armchair 10 feet from the box. Google TV provides a "10 foot interface" using a remote device (which may also be a mobile phone).

Will Google TV be a success?

In short, yes. Google has real clout. The project is also backed (so far) by Sony, Logitech and Intel. Google appear commited to providing an SDK and open sourcing the code. Given the existing level of support for Android it is likely that a large number of developers will quickly provide applications. It is also likely that more manufacturers will enter the hardware market.

How will Google make money from this?

That aspect is less than clear at present. The answer may be that having captured most of the search market on PCs, Google needs to find a new medium to expand into. It is also worth pointing out that Google may not be making that big an investment up front, as the heavy lifting may be done by other members of the consortium.

Will I need a TV Licence to use Google TV?

No. Clearly the system design assumes a feed from a "TV" signal. Presumably however there is no need to connect this. Alternatively the "TV" input could be used for a DVD or media player.

Can I use BBC iPlayer on Google TV?

Well there would have to be an iPlayer app that ran on Google TV for this to work. However the BBC are already developing an application for Android so it seems more than likely this will become available.

Can I use Miro on Google TV?

Again there will need to be a suitable app. However Miro already provide a version for both Linux and Ubuntu so the task of developing an Android/Google TV version should not be insurmountable.

Can I use SeeSaw on Google TV?

It is unclear whether a site like SeeSaw will require a dedicated app or whether it will be possible to view content from SeeSaw using only the Chrome browser. Either way it is likely that sites like SeeSaw will quickly provide whatever is needed to make the interface work. Youtube, incidentally, is fully owned by Google and will obviously be available from the start.

Will this kill Project Canvas?

We think so yes. It will probably kill the Boxee box as well. It should even kill Apple TV although iHeads (see what I did there) are very loyal (stupid). In fact Google TV will probably seriously hurt the sales of DLNA media players as well.

When will a Google TV box be available in the UK?

Availability in the US is stated to be "Fall 2010". Availability in the UK is probably unlikely before 1Q 2011.

Logitech bashes Apple

Here is the first picture of Google TV hardware that we have come across. See this link. We also rather liked the anti-Apple tone of this article.

It is unclear from the article whether the box has its own hard drive for storing media content. Will it be able to work with existing media players and if so how integrated will it be? The really big question for us though is when it will be available in the UK.

The initial choice of Google TV hardware is likely to be between Sony and Logitech. Apparently Sony's offering will include a Blu-Ray player. What will the box look like we wonder?

Update on Google TV

Straight from the horse's mouth as it were, here is some more detail on Google TV.

Interesting that the strategy seems to be to make money by selling hardware in a 6 month window before releasing the source code. Obviously the success of Google is based around providing open source solutions, but why not make a premium from the early adopters? Google's approach exists in counterpoint to that of Apple (the bad guys) who lock you into a proprietary system and charge you for every bit of content you download from their online store.

We see the big advantage of Google TV as defining an industry standard means of interacting with the 'TV' (the so called "ten foot interface"). Once this is in place other applications will follow.

Our big question about Google TV boxes is will they provide media client functionality to work with a media server. If so this will clearly be a winner and Nomad will rush out and buy one. Close reading of the FAQ suggests that the answer is no, initially at least. However once Google release the SDK it seems likely that someone will quickly develop one.

Memo to George

George

Rumour has it that in order to try and balance the books you are going to increase taxes and are also looking to get rid of some quangoes. Here is a plan to make some quick money, cut a major quango down to size and actually get rid of a tax (which you could always replace with another one).

Privatise the BBC. TV channels, national radio channels and a whole bunch of local radio stations; just sell them to the highest bidder. The new owners will have to introduce advertising, subscription or something more inventive to make them pay. On the other hand nobody will have to pay for thier TV Licence anymore and a greatful public will forgive you for the increase in VAT (or whatever).

It really is that simple.

regards ~ Nomad

Cut the licence fee!

Obviously Sky are not happy having to compete with a taxpayer funded competitor. Who would be? Hence their call for a cut in the licence fee. More to the point, their criticisms of the BBC Trust are spot on. The Trust does nothing at all to control the BBC and simply seems to rubber stamp whatever the DG thinks of.

In a seperate story the BBC takes criticism for keeping too much work in house. Be that as it may, the bit that intrigues us is that the BBC spends 88% of its income on producing content. What, pray, does it do with the other 12%?

Coalition Coalescence

As things settle down at Westminster after the election, it is time to ask what a Liberal/Conservative coalition government means for the future of the TV Licence?

If the current government lasts, and this is obviously a big question, we think it is unlikely to make radical moves on this front. Although the Conservatives might favour reform or even abolition of the TV Licence, this is something that the Liberals are unlikely to agree to. The most likely outcome is that the TV Licence will endure but that any rises in the fee will be very limited.

This may well be fertile ground for a campaign to persuade people against buying a licence. If reform will not happen by political means it can still happen if people vote with their cheque books. We remain in business.

This could be big

Google are going to connect your TV to the internet. See this story. This has potential. We are seeking some more technical details of the system before getting too excited though.

Apparently the technology is based on Android, Google Chrome and Adobe Flash.

Most importantly for us, it might relegate the BBC's Project Canvas to an also ran.

OFT approves Project Canvas

Bad news continues to flow in. This time the OFT have approved Project Canvas.

This would appear to be a setback to the development of an open source standard for streaming video. Exactly why a new standard is needed when there already exist protocols for IPTV is unclear to us.

However it may be that the existence of this project actually encourages the development of video on demand. What is unclear at present is whether we will be able to access the IPTV functions without having a set top box that needs a licence. We suspect that the BBC will be aiming for a system that requires users to have a TV Licence, if they have any sense that is.

Disinherit the BBC

There is more than one way to curb the excesses of a bloated state broadcaster. We would not have guessed that disinheriting your children would have been one of them.

It makes our campaign not to pay the licence fee look rather tame doesnt it.

Still if the BBC staff really want to keep their salary secret then they should try working for a private company and not one funded from the public purse.

Alan needs business class

See this.

Actually we are slightly forgiving on the business class issue. What is less forgivable is that an organisation which is funded by the taxpayers thinks it should be immune from public scrutiny and accountability.

Immer Schlimmer

So yesterday I am wondering why Hulu cant provide a service in the UK. Today it seems that they have given up, for the moment at least, on plans to launch in the UK.

This is bad news, we imagined that the arrival of Hulu would change the game in a big way. It would have been nice to have a single piece of software that provided access to all the channels, now we are stuck with iPlayer, ITVplayer and 5player (might have made that one up), etc. This development might even result in a redesign of the system.

However the good news is that I am off on holiday and wont be giving the matter much thought. Dont expect any updates for a couple of weeks.

Hulu to charge

According to this story, Hulu are planning to start charging for some content. "Hulu Plus" will apparently cost $9.95 a month. Thats less than a TV Licence.

More to the point though why can they not provide a service in the UK? Perhaps a charging structure will make this more likely.

Time Lords not voting for Tories

Obviously the BBC cant be seen to take sides in the election, after all it has a duty to be impartial. But suppose that people at the BBC were to state thier position as indivduals, that would be alright perhaps.

Thus David Tennant (among others) has decided to express his concerns about what would happen to the BBC following a Tory win.

My question though is why anyone would vote for a bigger licence fee; which seems to be the alternative to a freeze. The BBC talent lives in rather a cosseted world of their own and really imagine that we share thier concerns. I rather doubt this letter will dissuade any would be Conservative voters.

Candidate Cant Cover Complaints

So we may have been wrong about the importance of the election debate, it turns out that it might actually have changed the course of events.

On the other hand our criticism of the BBCs labour leaning stance turns out to be spot on. Who did the BBC employ to field complaints about election bias? A labour candidate no less! He has now been moved to another post but this seems to be because he tweeted that his job was "crap" rather than because of his political affiliation.

Election Debate - Not Here

The first election debate is one of those moments when Nomad regrets that, bereft of a TV Licence, he will be isolated from a decisve moment in the nations history. Or not as the case may be. Indications are that not many people are greatly bothered. A vast audience is not expected for the debate.

Election night itself is also a great television moment. However this year it will be somewhat undermined by an increased number of counts that are carried out the next day. Nomad has, in any case, solved the problem of election night by going on holiday. It seems reasonable to assume that the election will not be televised in Croatia.

Do it Yourself Broadband

Fed up with waiting for BT, the good people of Rutland have set up thier own telecom company to provide FTTC connections to rural areas. See their website.

Interestingly they see video download as a major driver. Which rather proves the point we are trying to make on this blog.

TVersity loses its sparkle

We upgraded to version 1.8 of TVersity and have regretted it ever since. After an initial struggle which reverted the system to the free version we managed to reinstate the Pro version. However it has become impossible to play anything from BBC iPlayer and also from some Youtube channels. Additionally the settings appear to be lost when you navigate away from the settings page (the input settings appear to carry on functioning though). If it aint broke dont fix it; thats what they say.

Support from TVersity appears to be very poor, in fact the whole enterprise appears to be struggling. Perhaps we should revisit the topic of media server software.

BBC makes news by promising no Bias

We know that we did promise fewer posts having a go at the BBC. On the other hand it is hard to resist this particular gem.

"Above all, the BBC will aim to be the standard-bearer for fair, accurate and impartial journalism across the UK......we will show neither fear nor favour in how we report the election" says Mark Thompson.

Really? Surely this is written into the BBC Charter, is it not actually the law of the land. Next Gordon Brown will promise to stand down if he loses the election, tellers will promise not to falsify the counts and the Queen will promise not to appoint a minority government.

Why on earth would the DG feel that he needs to clarify the impartiality of the BBC during an election? Could it be that he is aware of a certain partiality that normally operates within the BBC?

Bank Holiday

Its a holiday weekend so Sky cant be bothered to update the news podcast (or the Youtube channel). Needs to try harder!

"Freeview"

Is "Freeview" really "Free" if you have to pay £145.50 to watch it?

Just a thought.......

BBC adopts DRM

Yes, Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a spawn of the devil. No person with a brain can think otherwise. However the adoption by the BBC of DRM (the subject of a current OFCOM consultation) could turn out to be a significant one. The BBC claim that this is needed otherwise the content available on thier HD "Freeview" service will be restricted.

However if the BBC are allowed to adopt DRM in some form why dont they take things to thier logical conclusion and become a subscription service.

Computerworld has an interesting post on this topic. The author is upset about the loss of free content but he has not missed the big picture either, stating that "Employing DRM would undermine the argument for continued funding through a television licence – something that is hardly in the BBC's interest."

We are not really too upset about this development; the BBC and DRM, they richly deserve each other!

March is at an end

It is now late in the evening of the last day of March and the promised visit from TV Licensing has failed to materialise. Disappointing really!


Fortunately Nomad is out at work during the day and has also been away for a large part of March. If you have a life (rich coming from the author of this blog?), then there is much less chance of getting a visit. We rather like the idea that detector van man has made countless fruitless visits over the past month in an effort to 'enforce' the licence. Hopefully this would have saved various OAPs and poor single mothers from such visits.

Probably the truth is that there was never much chance of being visited during March. TV Licensing rely on a high level of bluff to scare people into buying a licence.

Can mobile television be licensed?

The BBC Trust is now getting nervous about the BBCs plans to develop an app for the iPhone. See this article. Ostensibly the issue is lack of competition.

However we think that the real issue with streaming BBC programmes to mobile devices is that it will end up undermining the licence system. Lets run through some scenarios:

1. An American tourist visits London and discovers that he can download a BBC app for his iPhone. He takes an open top bus tour while absorbing some additional British culture by watching Eastenders on his iPhone. Coming from a country where there is no TV Licence it never occurs to him that his actions are illegal.

2. The receptionist at a small company catches up on "Strictly Come Dancing" using her iPhone app. Noticing that the batteries are running a bit low she plugs in the charger. Technically the device is now 'installed' and this means that her employer can be prosecuted if there is no TV Licence for the office.

Is this for real? Are the BBC (TV Licensing) really going to put inspectors on buses and trains? Are they going to visit offices and check whether you have an iPhone and if so do you charge it in the office while using the BBC app? Is enforcement of the law going to be in any way effective?

Lets say you are sitting on the 6:08 from Waterloo watching BBC News 24 on your iPhone. You are accosted by a stranger who asks if you have a TV Licence. He then asks your name and address. Lets say you then tell him to get lost, what can he do. TV Licensing have no powers of arrest. There is nothing they can do.

The BBC is terribly keen to adopt new technology. However the business model that it uses (the TV Licence) is entirely outmoded. It may have been appropriate in the 1940s but is increasingly pointless today. The BBC has to decide whether it is stuck in the past or adopting the present. Trying to have it both ways will end in disaster for them.

For more detail on the license issues for mobile devices see this article. Warning: some comments in this article are not for the easily offended.

BT Vision

BT Vision is a combination of Freeview, a hard disk recorder and download on demand. BT Vision has been around since December 2006 but it appears that it is now being marketed in a more determined way.

There are a couple of problems with BT Vision as far as we are concerned. The first is that you need to have a broadband package from BT and you need to have a BT Home Hub installed. The second problem is that the Vision+ set top box comes with Freeview built in; this means that you need a TV Licence.

Why is download on demand not available without Freeview? Probably for two reasons. Firstly BT are trying to grow thier subscriber base without overloading the network. It makes sense for them to reduce the load on the backhaul network where possible. Secondly, and this is possibly more important, they want to source content from the BBC and need to keep them sweet. The library of existing content which the BBC already own is a very powerful weapon for them in controlling what people can do. The other channels are also scared of upsetting the status quo.

As we know Hulu tried and so far have been unable to make the right agreements. Eventually someone will break the mould. The UK broadcasters will eventually have to face reality even if they are currently being successful in avoiding it.

Future Editorial Direction

There are other blogs looking at the BBC, the political bias, the greed of the management, the downright incompetence and wastefulness that you might expect from a monopoly supplier. Look under "This blog likes" if you don't know where to find them. To be fair, the mainstream media also do a good job on this front. Try reading the Daily Telegraph for example.

On the other hand there are, to my knowledge, no blogs looking at how to avoid paying for a TV Licence while still legally watching video content. That is our unique selling point.

Obviously it is worth explaining why we are motivated not to pay the licence fee. However our intention will be to concentrate on what we do best, rather than be an also ran to the likes of 'Biased BBC'. This means we will concentrate on technical issues, new products and content providers. These articles need more research and there will likely be fewer posts. From time to time it will of course be neccessary to blast the Beebs failings.

Happy Reading!

Video Download Mode

Sorry, this might get a bit technical. On-demand stream or podcast is the question.

On-demand streaming means that when you want to watch something, you request a stream from the provider and (after a few seconds delay) it starts arriving. Youtube and SeeSaw among others are users of this approach. The problem with streaming is that if the link is not fast enough then the stream will not keep up with the display and the picture will freeze for a few seconds. This was apparent during our recent attempt to watch the Dubai Grand Prix on iPlayer. The limiting factor here is often not the local loop but the network and server constraints. Watching the Grand Prix on iPlayer is very popular and currently causes the biggest peaks in network traffic seen by BT.

Podcasting means that you subscribe to a channel and the latest issue is downloaded to your machine when available. The existing protocol relies on the subscriber checking periodically for updates. Miro is an example of a podcast reciever. Once completely downloaded the video becomes available for you to watch. As the complete file is available locally the picture will not freeze while replay is running. It is also possible to use this technique to provide very high quality video over slow connections; the download time may be longer than the running time length of the video. A disadvantage of podcasting is that users tend to download more than they watch. Sky News provide an update of the headlines 4 times every day, however it is unlikely that the typical subscriber will watch more than one a day. Clearly this increases the overall load on the network.

Given a fast enough link, on demand streaming has the advantage of (almost) immediate provision regardless of whether the video has already been downloaded. The further advantage is that the overall network load is reduced because users only download what they actually watch. With increasing link speed as FTTC is rolled out across the country these look to be winning attributes. The caveat about FTTC has to be whether the capacity of the backhaul network is increased fast enough to keep pace.

In conclusion it seems that on-demand stream is likely to emerge as the winner as link speeds increase. In the meantime podcasting has a role to play in providing good quality video over slower connections. This is good news if you already have a fast broadband connection or are about to get one. It is not so good if you face a long wait for FTTC to be wired on your exchange.

Why have the network providers not considered a point to multipoint 'push' version of podcasting. This would be extremely efficient at offloading the backhaul network and would provide better quality than on demand streaming. It seems obvious to us, but who knows?

SeeSaw

SeeSaw provides on demand content from BBC, 4oD and Five. There already appears to be a good selection to choose from and presumably more content will appear over time.

We liked SeeSaw, it has a very simple interface and the picture quality is good. The major drawback is that it only runs on the PC. An application like TVersity would be needed to stream it to a media player; unfortunately none exist at present. However SeeSaw has only been available since last month and is still in beta release. It is likely that it will become better supported.

SeeSaw is now run by Arqiva. Originally it was called Project Kangaroo and was jointly owned by the BBC, 4 and Five. The Competition Commision did not like that setup and forced a sale (rightly so in our view).

Overall this looks to be a promising service. SeeSaw can be found here.

Joy

...is knowing that your exchange is on the Phase 5 list of BTs FTTC rollout. This means 40 Meg download speeds will be available here in less than a year.

Subject to BT not changing their mind of course!

Coming Soon: Google TV

...to a set top near you, is this box made by Google.

Hit or miss? Its too early to say obviously. What is clear is that whoever does this well stands to really clean up. The problem is that however good the design of the hardware, the real issue will be getting content on line. If Google can leverage what is already on the net, then they may have a winner.

Scotland the brave?

Here is a fascinating development which we missed earlier due to being on holiday. Is the BBC vulnerable on its northern flank? The SNP have a record of stirring up trouble on any possible issue and the licence fee might well be a profitable area for them. Anything that can be portrayed as an 'english tax' will probably be looked on as fair game.

Biased Beeb Belittles Byers Blatant Blunder

In our last post we said the BBC would do what it could to keep labour in power. Their downgrading of the Byers story is a case in point.

This story is a very good illustration of the subtle way in which bias is applied. The unfavorable story was run, it was just run in a way which suggested that it was not very inportant.

Incidentally, you may think we should be doing our own research for these stories. Fair point, its just that we dont watch 'television' any more.

Beeb Broadcasts Blatantly Biased Basil Brush

Look we know you might think we are inventing some of this stuff. Now it is in 'The Sun' though. That means it has got to be true, right?

Who would have thought that Basil Brush, that paragon of political correctness(?), would succumb to having a go at the Tories. Still if Doctor Who had it in for Maggie why should we be surprised that the fox has a go at 'Nasty Dave'.

One thing we can be sure of is that the BBC will do everything in thier power to try and swing the election. Only Labour will protect the empire they have built. A Conservative government would be a catastrophe for them.

PS: With an election coming up it is probably appropriate to declare an interest. Nomad intends to vote UKIP. This is not primarily due to thier policy on the BBC but here it is anyway: "UKIP will consult on a proposal to cut the BBC back to a core public service output, with a focus on quality and seeks to raise standards for TV and film production."

Facebook?

The BBC is spending your licence fee (not ours obviously) to send people on a course that teaches them how to use Facebook.

You could not make it up. Really!.

TV Licence price goes up

The price of a TV Licence will increase by 2% at the start of next month.

Not really surprising I hear you say. Well no. But tucked away at the end of the article is a fantastic number, apparently the BBC has saved Two Billion pounds from its budget.

Look, enlighten us, are we being stupid. If this is true. why would the licence fee be going up? According to Wikipedia "Total levies from the licence fee were £3.49 Billion in 2008-09". The BBC has saved the licence fee payer over 50% and now the licence has to go up two percent?

Catching up on last weeks stories

Some stories that happened while Nomad was on holiday.

iPlayer deal blocked

Strangling the Kangaroo

BBC Shake Up

Tories to axe BBC Three and Four

The news on Project Kangaroo being killed is really good. What is not clear is how this affects the BBC's new baby: Project Canvas. Surely Canvas will be subject to the same considerations as Kangaroo. Lets hope the Competition Commision maintains a tough stance.

The BBC appears to be getting the message that it needs to trim its budget. The proposed changes appear rather trivial though. The current strategy at the BBC appears to be to carry out some window dressing and hope that the Conservatives do not win the election.

The NAO returns

We previously mentioned that the NAO were less than impressed with the BBC. It seems they have yet to see an improvement.

Look these endless bureaucractic reviews will achieve very little. The answer is very simple; just dont buy a TV Licence. The problems will quickly resolve themselves.

Interruption to Service

Incidentally Nomad will be celebrating Freedom Day by going skiing. Normal service will be disrupted for at least a week.

Freedom Day

Freedom Day in this house is the first of March, the day after Nomad's last TV Licence expired. A year on, it is worth reviewing how things have gone.

Despite a letter from TV Licensing (the BBC) every month threatening me with increasingly severe punishments, I have yet to be hauled before the magistrates. No one has even knocked on my door.

On the whole the year has been a success from a technical viewpoint. The KISS1600 media player, while more or less obsolete, has more than earned its money. Similarily Miro and TVersity have proven to be great products. There are bugs and these can be an irritant; hopefully further development will resolve them.

Politically the status quo has held as there have been no moves to change the law. With an election on the way, Labour have now run out of time to change things. It is still unclear what the Conservatives plan to do but it is apparent that they are not well disposed to the BBC. There remains a danger that they may trade a cap on the licence fee (say) for an extension of the licence to cover the internet.

The major disappointment of the past year has been that the availability of media has not grown as fast as might have been expected. In particular the failure of Hulu to get itself up and running in the UK has probably delayed more widespread adoption of video on demand. Internet video remains a young medium. Looking at the most popular podcasts on PodcastDirectory.com, for example, 9 out of the top 20 are pornographic and 2 are techie. We seem to recall that last time we looked there was an even higher proportion of porn. For some reason the porn industry are always early adopters. From betamax onwards they have been at the front. The prevalence of porn indicates that the medium has not yet become mainstream. We still think that this is going to happen. When it does the BBC will be in trouble.

Trust!

The BBC was not spending your money in a very responsible way and so the BBC Trust was set up to keep an eye on them. Now the BBC Trust has been spending your money. Perhaps someone should be keeping an eye on them? Ipso Custodiet Custodian.

Well no, that would be complete nonsense obviously, the BBC needs to be privatised so that the viewers can decide for themselves. Then we would not need the unnecessary expense of the BBC Trust.

It should also be pointed out that the Trust has shown a lamentable lack of independence from the BBC. The cost associated with the windowdressing that purports to demonstrate an entirely spurious independence is probably money wasted.

iStitchUp

In a previous post we commented that the BBC and Apple appear to have the same business plan (control the platform and you can charge what you like for content). Interesting to see then that the BBC is providing its services on the iPhone.

Presumably you will need a licence to watch live streaming TV on the iPhone, we wonder how the BBC plans to enforce this. Supposing someone watches TV on thier iPhone while at work, who is liable? Is it the employer or the employee?

The BBC is not short of new initiatives. We wonder if they ever think through whether these are actually in thier own interests, let alone anyone elses.

Pay more to see less

According to the Mail the BBC has deployed a larger team in Vancouver than our actual Olympic squad. Not that these people actually have to film any sport because that is all taken care of by the host nation.

So what does the BBC team do, it justifies the airfares involved by filming endless discussion and comment pieces. The viewers thus get to see less sport because there are too many talking heads. Cutting the budget is the only answer to this endless waste.

Beyond Parody!

On the one hand Nomad often thinks that his opposition to the BBC is a lonely and pointless crusade, entirely at odds with what 'normal' people think. On the other hand you could not possibly make up a story like this one.

If drama has been subverted by left wing thought, what hope is there for current affairs?

100K is 705 Licence Fees

The BBC may claim that things have changed. However it seems that rather a lot of them earn a great deal of money. See this story. Since the licence payers have to fork out this largesse you would think that they were entitled to know where the money goes. It seems not.

Even worse is that the National Audit Office has no power to investigate the BBC. Is the BBC some critical defence project so secret that its financial dealings must be restricted to a single line item in the budget? No it is a media organisation, its journalists spend thier lives poking their noses into other peoples business and adopt a tone of moral outrage when people try to stop them. Practice what you preach.

Obviously Nomad does not pay for a licence (that is the central premise of this blog) but if he did he would be writing to the BBC to ask them how his money is spent.

Robbing Jonathan to pay Mark

Despite all those protestations coming from the BBC about how they intend to pay the talent less, it would be niave to assume that the money will be returned to the license payers. No, the money will be spent on the executives instead. They are already ramping up thier expenses claims to compensate.

The BBC is rather like one of those Soviet tractor factories that measured success by the amount of input rather than the amount (or quality) of output. Just dont buy a TV Licence from them. Painful it may be, but a budgetectomy is the only cure.

Go Douglas

As noted on this blog the other day, Douglas Carswell is not someone to mince his words. "The BBC are like the duckhouse gang" he alleged today in a commons commitee.

Cant really argue with that.

Take a pay cut to join the BBC

Obviously the BBC was planning a gentle tactical withdrawal to safer ground. All along the front line soldiers are abandoning heavily fortified positions. This now seems to be turning in to a rout though. The Trust seems not to be co-ordinating things with thier friends in the BBC itself.

The latest upset is that the Trust thinks people should accept a pay cut to work at the BBC. Whatever happened to paying the market rate? Pretty soon there will be no one working at the BBC and no programmes getting made at all. Errm, might have been sarcastic that last sentence.

BBC Pension Fund faces Climategate

It turns out that pushing the climate change agenda is not merely an editorial stance at the BBC. The pension fund has also been using its purchasing power to promote green policies. Presumably this means that they have been buying shares in green companies, shares that might not turn out to be quite as lucrative if it transpires that the threat of global warming has been grossly overplayed. Ooops!

Still the good thing about being protected by a government enforced monopoly is that you can easily fund the deficit in your pension fund by spending less on making programmes. The public still have to pay, do they not?

LG BD550 Blu-Ray Player

Look there is only a month left till Nomads birthday. In a previous post he may have said that he wanted a LG BD390. Is it too late to change that? An LG BD550 would be much better.

So far LG seem to be the only people making a Blu-ray player with DLNA support. It is a no brainer that this is what is needed.

Cheaper in prison!

Darren Seago found that he was being overcharged at £52 a year to watch television (link to story). So he complained to the people who run his digs (HMP Liverpool) and got a refund. Well done Darren.

In an even more outrageous scam the taxpayers of Britain are fleeced for £142 a year to watch television. Its not so surprising that guests of Her Majesty have a rather restricted choice of viewing and payment options. It is a scandal that those on the outside do not have more choice.

Douglas' Blog

There are a few blogs that you really need to read (aside from this one obviously). Douglas Carswell's observations on life are required reading for anyone with a brain who actually cares about the UK. If slightly less rounded and literary than his friend Hannan; Douglas is often sharper and more incisive.

His blog on a recent example of BBC bias is a pointed example of the sort of partiality which has led me not to watch any BBC current affairs programme for over 3 years now.

Janet Daley may not quite match Hannan and Carswell. This piece on the BBC Trust does hit the target very squarely though.

Be afraid, be very afraid ....

Be afraid, for the inspector cometh riding in his glorious detector van. He knows where you live, you vile criminal, and when he catches you he will torture you at length before gouging out your eyes (the punishment must fit the crime after all). You will then be locked in the stocks under a sign saying "Guilty of disrespecting the BBC" and the honest licence paying citizens of your parish will throw box sets of Eastenders repeats at you.

Or something like that, a rather free paraphrase obviously. On the other hand it is now 11 months since Nomads last TV Licence expired. If they were really interested in collecting the money you would image that they would have got round to paying him a visit by now.

There is a letter like this every month and mostly it goes straight in the bin. The comparison with Septembers missive is interesting though as it shows that not much has changed.

Convert to the Cause

Abortion is not something that Nomad has noticed the BBC applying bias to. It is easy to believe that they do however and we dont have to think too hard to see which side they would be on.

So well done to Veronica Connelly for standing up the BBC and refusing to pay for a TV Licence. The more that people take them on, the more difficult it will be for them to collect this outdated levy.

A spokesman for TV Licensing said: "Regardless of personal opinion, anyone found watching or recording TV as it is broadcast without a valid licence risks prosecution and a fine of up to £1,000. Nomad says "just dont watch television as it is being broadcast, watch it at a time of your choosing and they cant touch you".

200Mbit/s would be good!

Nomad supposes that not many of you read Engineering and Technology magazine. This month there is an article titled "The UKs Next Network". A couple of paragraphs are quoted below:-

"BT is going about it with gusto. In July 2008 it promised to bring higher speed networking whether by FTTP (Fibre To The Premises: your house) or FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet: that green box on your street) past 10 million homes by 2012. By the end of March 2010 the company will have passed over 1.5 million homes with 25 per cent of them being FTTP connections. The service will offer 40Mbit/s downstream and 10Mbit/s upstream connections, which compares with the 50Mbit/s downstream services that Virgin Media offers in some areas on its cable network."

"Virgin Media, meanwhile, is pushing ahead with its plans to use FTTC and advanced cable modems to bring 50Mbit/s and even 200Mbit/s connections to the UK. Dale Barnes, head of advanced technology trials at Virgin Media, pointed out that the company (and it antecedents) had already spent £13bn to pass 12.6 million homes with its cable network."

200Mbit/s download would let you see a great deal of video (and in HD too)!

National Audit Office sticks the boot in

The legion of complainants taking issue with the BBC are joined this week by the National Audit Office. The NAO is hardly one of the usual suspects. They dont even write a blog!

To quote from the NAO report "value for money and cost-effectiveness are not always foremost in the BBC’s thinking”. Still, why should the BBC be any different from the rest of the government.

Why they cant make you pay for a TV Licence

The point about writing a blog is that you can put in whatever you want. Today Nomad reprints Norman Tebbits thoughts from his blog in the Telegraph. Write these words on your hearts.

Our fellow Europeans may well enjoy similar rights, but they are rights which have their origins in constitutions and laws. The right of a German or Frenchman to free speech is a grant by law – essentially an entitlement rather than a right. Here, it requires a law to set limits upon that right, which in this Kingdom is the God-given right of an Englishman or woman from birth.

Can they make you pay for a TV Licence? Obviously Not!

Climategate rolls on

Just for the record Nomad is a sceptic but even so this blog is not intending to take sides on Climategate. The value of this scandal to us however, is what it is revealing about how the BBC works.

A new post from Delingpole supports an earlier story you read here. In short the BBC holds a conference to decide on the editorial line. It then packs the conference with people from one side of the debate. The process is rounded off with a policy statement about how even handed the BBC will be.

This quote from Richard D North confirms what we always suspected. "I was frankly appalled by the level of ignorance of the issue which the BBC people showed. I mean that I heard nothing that made me think any of them read any broadsheet newspaper coverage of the topic (except maybe the Guardian and that lazily)."

Not again!

It is becoming almost banal to read criticism of the BBC. This particular effort clearly ticks all the right boxes.

This covers new ground however; as the BBC own up to more failings.

Rounding off the day nicely is this comment. Although speaking personally Nomad thinks that the TV Licence needs axed entirely and the BBC broken up into units which earn thier own money.

Just one day in one newspaper!

Charles Moore to buy TV Licence

A bad day for Nomad. Charles Moore, the inspiration for this blog and the choices behind it, says that once Wossy leaves the BBC he will buy a TV Licence again. Obviously Charles feels that he had made his point and had some impact.

Nomad will not be buying a TV Licence. Yes, Jonathon may be going, but the point is that the BBC itself is still there. Until state sponsored broadcasting comes to an end we will not have real consumer choice in this country.

Wish List Additions

If you happen to be giving Nomads birthday present some consideration then start here.

A Blu-ray player from Sony with DLNA support would put me in a much better mood. So its not released yet, it might well be by March.

Wossy Wetires

Jonathon was rather a precocious child who sometimes needed tough love to stop him going off the rails. Unfortunately his guardians and mentors failed to realise this; intimidated as they were by the size of his package. Now Jonathon is out in the cold looking for a new job. As the Telegraph points out today; the BBC always argued that they have to pay market rates to get talent. So clearly Jonathon will quickly get snapped up by the commercial competion and offered a nineteen million pound contract. We dont need to feel too sympathetic, do we?

The departure of one person will not be enough to change the institutuion. However the spin coming out today (see here) is that the BBC have told Jonathon they were not going to renew his contract. If so it is possible that the BBC really are starting to change. The question is why they did not get rid of him when they had the chance a year ago. Perhaps reality takes a while to sink in when the taxpayer underwrites your mistakes.

Whitewash Forecast

The BBC reacts to criticism of its (lack of) coverage of Climategate. Given the consistent failure of the BBC Trust to show any sort of independence from the organisation it is supposed to regulate Nomad rather doubts that this review will get anywhere.

Nevertheless it is a clear sign that the BBC has noticed it is being criticised. The BBC has yet to take on board that criticism may require anything other than rebuttal.

Popbox

Syabas who are known for the "Popcorn Hour" media server have announced something new called the Popbox.

The really interesting thing is that they are making available an SDK. This opens up the device to people wanting to produce their own apps. The third party support is impressive and the price of $129 (US) is pretty good as well.

Nomad is less keen on the lack of a DVD drive and confused about whether it is DLNA compliant. On the whole Nomad is inclined to think that this approach is barking up the wrong tree. The way ahead is a rigidly defined hardware interface (DLNA) with a very flexible software (and TVersity leads here) running on the server. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

Apologies

Nomad thought that the BBC was a lumbering state owned industry that failed to spend its income efficiently. How wrong can you be? According to this report from accountants Deloitte Touche the BBC contributes 7.6 billion pounds to the economy.

One wonders however, whether Deloitte were paid to produce this report and if so does that money count toward the 7.6 billion?

According to Wikipedia "Total levies from the licence fee were £3.49 Billion in 2008-09". Whatever Deloitte were paid they clearly deserve it, I wish they were doing my taxes.

So to summarise, the licence payers give the BBC 3.49 billion, the BBC pays rent on its offices, Mark Thompsons pension fund, flowers for performers, taxi cabs for people working late, etc, etc and it still manages to find 7.6 billion which it contributes to the economy. Fantastic.

Lost in Space - Part 2

Nomad missed this story when it first came out but it obviously bears analysis. Once again the BBC is boldly going along tracks that have already been mapped, graded and in some cases even tarmaced. This time the BBC is offering to connect you to various BBC and commercial radio stations via the internet. Duhhhhh. Does your PC have Window Media Player (thats a rhetorical question by the way)? Then enter the URL of your chosen radio station audio stream and .... er, thats it really. The previous post explains how you can also use TVersity for this.

Hang on a minute though, doesnt this sound rather like the BBC's plan to offer us television over the internet. Clearly the BBC has a strategy and it behoves us to ask what the point of the strategy is. The BBC is trying to establish itself as a portal for streaming media on the internet and it is hoping for one or more of the following:
a) People will pay the licence fee because thier media player has a BBC logo.
b) The BBC can populate a database that tells them who watches what.
c) The package involves you using live streaming video and so you need to buy a TV licence.

There may also be other reasons but clearly the BBC sees some advantage in what it is doing.