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We have just had momentous political issues over the European Union, with our prime minister effectively opting out of much of the union, and with potentially long term consequences for the economy, jobs, etc. etc.

Not that we should be discussing politics here, but that's just not true. Readers should read up on exactly what we vetoed for themselves. I do agree that it will potentially have long term consequences - all for the better!

However, we have more common ground with the BBC. I dislike their left-wing bias in their news reporting and their PC-ness, but can forgive them all that for all the excellent services they do offer. :D

(They'd get £100/year from me just for Doctor Who IMHO :cool: )
 
Oh smart.
I found the browser version to be just fine for years, but a dedicated app with Airplay? That's brilliant.

Almost all the TV I watch is from the BBC (I like some Channel 4 and even fewer US/foreign shows) even with that god awful Christmas advert!

Edit: Now that's a nice app. Picture is great too.
 
BBC isn't just great for the ad-free content, it's the fact that it legally has to provide non-bias news content, plus their website for news and sport is excellent.

I sometimes moan about having to pay a license fee, but generally we get our moneys worth.

Unbiased news hahaha :p

Anyway I welcome this app! No complaints at all and the quality is good on 3G and wifi. I just hope they introduce HD play back which is sorely missed when watching Frozen Planet.

BBC Iplayer will be available on Xbox live early next year too which is good if you don't own Apple tv.
 
BBC is owned by the public, each and every person who has a TV has to pay a certain amount to the government and this way can provide it for free.
Most if not all US stations are commercial and would lose money if they give their content away for free.

Aren't these free already by being over the air?
They make money through advertising, so streaming over the Internet will increase their reach o those with a bad TV signal, or just want to watch in the go on their mobile devices instead of having to purchase a portable TV hat requires a long antena.
 
I wonder if the British know what a precious resource they have in the BBC. From here in the hyper-commercialized US, it looks like a very valuable intellectual crown property. Keep it up!

On the other hand, let me whine like non-US posters do when Apple rolls out a new service gradually, and say, "Let's have it here!"

I guess I knew that the subscription model was what was going to happen for us non-Brits, and watching live is too much of a technical challenge to pull off, but I'd still think that giving us some access to the "crown jewels" of the BBC for free would be a very cheap advertisement for Britain.

A lot of us would actually rather not have it.

Immagine paying an extra £145 ($225 US) a year to get a couple of channels with a very broad array of content (i.e 80-90% of programs you have no interest in watching), its ad free but dont forget that if we want decent channels we have to pay another £50-£100 a month for Sky (Satellite) or VirginMedia (Cable) TV on top of the BBC enforced fee.

Personally I'd rather it was scrapped, and stick ads on the BBC. We dont get things like Hulu either, just an unreliable iPlayer.

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Aren't these free already by being over the air?
They make money through advertising, so streaming over the Internet will increase their reach o those with a bad TV signal, or just want to watch in the go on their mobile devices instead of having to purchase a portable TV hat requires a long antena.

It costs the BBC (sorry, the British Public) millions to keep iPlayer running. No money is made through ads as the BBC are not allowed to show adverts in any way shape or form.
 
A lot of us would actually rather not have it.

Immagine paying an extra £145 ($225 US) a year to get a couple of channels with a very broad array of content (i.e 80-90% of programs you have no interest in watching), its ad free but dont forget that if we want decent channels we have to pay another £50-£100 a month for Sky (Satellite) or VirginMedia (Cable) TV on top of the BBC enforced fee.

The BBC isn't just about the TV channels, they offer excellent radio networks too. Their website is reliable for news and sport. The BBC offers a good variety of sport coverage too. The BBC also has to be very careful what news stories they cover to avoid any political bias, which is another bonus.

Personally I'd rather it was scrapped, and stick ads on the BBC. We dont get things like Hulu either, just an unreliable iPlayer.

It costs the BBC (sorry, the British Public) millions to keep iPlayer running. No money is made through ads as the BBC are not allowed to show adverts in any way shape or form.

The iPlayer is not unreliable at all! What are you on about?

And the BBC does show adverts outside the UK to fund services/channels worldwide (such as BBC America).

Without the BBC, British TV would end up crap and we'd end up with more Murdoch controlled news coverage. Just what we need right?
 
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...dont forget that if we want decent channels we have to pay another £50-£100 a month for Sky (Satellite) or VirginMedia (Cable) TV on top of the BBC enforced fee.

Decent channels?

I've had Sky since 1995 and all the rebrands of terrestrial digital (OnDigital, ITV Digital and Freeview). The only thing that Sky was good for was The Simpsons back in the old days. I'm eagerly awaiting the day they realise they've been giving me free film channels so we can scrap our basic subscription and turn it into a Freesat receiver. I can only imagine how good Frozen Planet looks in HD.

Picture quality, interface, "a million channels and nothing's on"... not a fan of Sky.

Sky News is an absolute joke. I'd sooner watch Russia Today or Fox News (not that I ever would).
 
It costs the BBC (sorry, the British Public) millions to keep iPlayer running. No money is made through ads as the BBC are not allowed to show adverts in any way shape or form.

Here in the US, we get blasted with adds every 10 minutes, so TV Stations are making tons of money already. The only station I know that is supported by the public is PBS, and they have yet to provide a live streaming over the internet.

I also noticed that BBC programming is in many aspects far superior to the cheap shows in the US. As an example the show "Life on Mars" didn't last due to poor ratings. Most people here like to watch crap on TV rather than a good show. IMO, the BBC's "life on Mars" was an amazing series.
Also, there's a tendency here to stretch shows more than necessary, so these would last several seasons. Very few shows were hits that lasted as planned, such as BattleStar Galactica and 24 (well, 24 was a show that could have lasted longer).
 
Here in the US, we get blasted with adds every 10 minutes, so TV Stations are making tons of money already. The only station I know that is supported by the public is PBS, and they have yet to provide a live streaming over the internet.

I also noticed that BBC programming is in many aspects far superior to the cheap shows in the US. As an example the show "Life on Mars" didn't last due to poor ratings. Most people here like to watch crap on TV rather than a good show. IMO, the BBC's "life on Mars" was an amazing series.
Also, there's a tendency here to stretch shows more than necessary, so these would last several seasons. Very few shows were hits that lasted as planned, such as BattleStar Galactica and 24 (well, 24 was a show that could have lasted longer).

I know that the US networks do take the piss a bit with the adverts. All UK channels do ads every 15 minutes, for about 3-5 minutes depending on the time of day. I dont think I could stand the US network ones which half the time dont even seem to pause the program when an advert comes on! Or will be in mid sentence and cut to an advert...seems odd to me!

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Decent channels?

I've had Sky since 1995 and all the rebrands of terrestrial digital (OnDigital, ITV Digital and Freeview). The only thing that Sky was good for was The Simpsons back in the old days. I'm eagerly awaiting the day they realise they've been giving me free film channels so we can scrap our basic subscription and turn it into a Freesat receiver. I can only imagine how good Frozen Planet looks in HD.

Picture quality, interface, "a million channels and nothing's on"... not a fan of Sky.

Sky News is an absolute joke. I'd sooner watch Russia Today or Fox News (not that I ever would).

Really...you want to go there? You're talking about your own personal choice. On the whole, Sky/Virgin have damn good range of programming. Just because you only like Frozen Planet and The Simpsons it doesnt mean everyone else does. Broaden your viewing and you'll find a whole lot of programming out there. I'm not a huge fan of sitting in front of the telly, but if/when I do I can usually find a few good programs to watch. I'm a fan of DiscoveryHD (Ice Road Truckers, Ice Pilots, Aircrash Investigations), ComedyCentral, Sky Movies (especially now that its all 'On Demand').

To give you an idea, on Virgin Media's new Tivo (I've literally just had it installed this week) you've got a good 2500 movies, 5k+ tv shows, etc. They have whole seasons of shows to watch, whenever you want. If thats not decent TV I dont know what is! Its also ad free ;)
 
More crap here about the TV license fee eh?
The license fee is very little in my opinion. Think about all the content the BBC provides, it equates to about 40p a day.
The iplayer is a major product now with millions of listeners and watchers a month, and works a damn sight better than the other UK TV providers in my opinion.
Advertising is done my BBC-Worldwide, which is NOT funded by the license fee, but through advertising and product sales to other countries. In fact it's not part of the corporation, but a separate entity.
 
The BBC isn't just about the TV channels, they offer excellent radio networks too. Their website is reliable for news and sport. The BBC offers a good variety of sport coverage too. The BBC also has to be very careful what news stories they cover to avoid any political bias, which is another bonus.

I'm with you on the Radio Stations - they do produce some good stuff, there's no doubt about that, and if you read my post I wasnt nocking the quality or quantity of shows. I was a fan of their site until the new homepage came in - looks rubbish now. Glad they haven't touched BBC News.

I'd still rather see a couple of adverts down the side of the site (like the US see if they go to bbc.co.uk) than pay £145 for it!


The iPlayer is not unreliable at all! What are you on about?

And the BBC does show adverts outside the UK to fund services/channels worldwide (such as BBC America).

Without the BBC, British TV would end up crap and we'd end up with more Murdoch controlled news coverage. Just what we need right?

iPlayer is fine for the standard scheduled daily programs. But for any programs that go on longer than they are scheduled for, or are on the red button it just goes to pieces. A good example is Formula 1 - every single F1 iPlayer show has been broken in some way, shape or form. By the time they get round to fixing it, the 7 days is up and its no longer available to watch. The same goes with any live events - they manage to screw up the recordings.

That combined with the poor quality of bandwidth recently has resulted in a lot of people having to sit there 'buffering'. I'm on a 50meg connection and even that still buffers, despite iPlayer needing an absolue maximum of 3meg/s for high quality content (not HD, just better than SD). I love iPlayer, its way better than the crummy ITV, C4 and C5 players, but its by no means perfect.

As for Murdoch, I do completely agree. If it was my decision, I'd split Sky up and bring back the British Sky Broadcasting company under the arm of FreeSat. I actually left Sky because I was fed up with their poor practices. I moved to Virgin, got more channes, kept the Sky channels and got a library of over 10k on demand items. I'm paying less per month too so it was a win-win situation.
 
I'm on a 50meg connection and even that still buffers, despite iPlayer needing an absolue maximum of 3meg/s for high quality content (not HD, just better than SD). I love iPlayer, its way better than the crummy ITV, C4 and C5 players, but its by no means perfect.

Unless you have a leased line T1 connection that would cost more than the average UK wage, you don't have a 50MB connection.

Virgin cable's "50mb" service is only "50mb" between your house and the cable cabinet at the end of the street. No UK home ISP offers an uncontented service without traffic management, and ISPs are never as simple as your connection speed is the speed at which your ISP can pull data from a third party server.

Virgin are pretty notorious for traffic management and poor peering arrangements from CDNs too.

Phazer
 
I'm with you on the Radio Stations - they do produce some good stuff, there's no doubt about that, and if you read my post I wasnt nocking the quality or quantity of shows. I was a fan of their site until the new homepage came in - looks rubbish now. Glad they haven't touched BBC News.

I'd still rather see a couple of adverts down the side of the site (like the US see if they go to bbc.co.uk) than pay £145 for it!

I'm not a fan of the new BBC homepage either, but I never view it. I have the News and Football sections bookmarked (Football section is actually my homepage). Long as they don't touch those with their new design..

If the BBC started using adverts, a TV license would no longer be required. Therefore, it would no longer be 'owned' or funded by the public. They would no longer be legally required to have non-bias news (to an extent) and the whole current appeal of the BBC would go out the window. A hybrid adverts and lower TV license fee wouldn't work either.

I can't imagine things like Children In Need and Comic Relief doing as well as they are if the BBC was no longer funded by the public's money and stopped being a "non-profit organisation".


iPlayer is fine for the standard scheduled daily programs. But for any programs that go on longer than they are scheduled for, or are on the red button it just goes to pieces. A good example is Formula 1 - every single F1 iPlayer show has been broken in some way, shape or form. By the time they get round to fixing it, the 7 days is up and its no longer available to watch. The same goes with any live events - they manage to screw up the recordings.

That combined with the poor quality of bandwidth recently has resulted in a lot of people having to sit there 'buffering'. I'm on a 50meg connection and even that still buffers, despite iPlayer needing an absolue maximum of 3meg/s for high quality content (not HD, just better than SD). I love iPlayer, its way better than the crummy ITV, C4 and C5 players, but its by no means perfect.

As for Murdoch, I do completely agree. If it was my decision, I'd split Sky up and bring back the British Sky Broadcasting company under the arm of FreeSat. I actually left Sky because I was fed up with their poor practices. I moved to Virgin, got more channes, kept the Sky channels and got a library of over 10k on demand items. I'm paying less per month too so it was a win-win situation.

I've never watched the F1 via iPlayer, but I see your point about the iPlayer being flaky in that sense. As for the poor quality of bandwidth, I've never had a problem streaming, though I'm with Sky via ADSL through the phone line, as opposed to Virgin via optical. I get a constant 8-10Mb with Sky (I'm on a up to 20Mb connection but they explicitly said that I would only get 6-10Mb), and I don't get throttled during peak times. My parents are with Virgin, and their 10Mb service drops to about 1-2Mb during the evenings. From what I heard else where, Virgin's 50Mb service is pretty limited, and you'll often drop to 1Mb if everyone in your street is heavy users too, especially during peak times when Virgin will decrease your bandwidth by 75%!

I don't watch Sky News, but you have to love Sky Sports News and their football news coverage on a Saturday afternoon! I have had very few issues with Sky and have been with them for 2-3 years. Their internet a good few years ago was shoddy, but their up to 20Mb service is great. Their TV is excellent too - the HD box and remote plus GUI beats the crap out of Virgin Media. Every time I use a Virgin Media TV box, I feel like I'm no longer good with technology.

Also, check out Sky Go (ability to watch Sky channels on your iPhone, iPad, Mac, PC) - most excellent thing ever if you want to watch a football game out and about. Also, ability to remotely record on my Sky HD box via my iPhone is a life saver too. Sky's new service, Sky Anytime looks promising - especially if they can pack in the BBC's iPlayer into that package, which is being rumoured. I don't know why anyone would prefer Virgin over Sky, other than the benefit of not having to have a satellite dish.
 
I'm not a fan of the new BBC homepage either, but I never view it. I have the News and Football sections bookmarked (Football section is actually my homepage). Long as they don't touch those with their new design..

If the BBC started using adverts, a TV license would no longer be required. Therefore, it would no longer be 'owned' or funded by the public. They would no longer be legally required to have non-bias news (to an extent) and the whole current appeal of the BBC would go out the window. A hybrid adverts and lower TV license fee wouldn't work either.

I can't imagine things like Children In Need and Comic Relief doing as well as they are if the BBC was no longer funded by the public's money and stopped being a "non-profit organisation".




I've never watched the F1 via iPlayer, but I see your point about the iPlayer being flaky in that sense. As for the poor quality of bandwidth, I've never had a problem streaming, though I'm with Sky via ADSL through the phone line, as opposed to Virgin via optical. I get a constant 8-10Mb with Sky (I'm on a up to 20Mb connection but they explicitly said that I would only get 6-10Mb), and I don't get throttled during peak times. My parents are with Virgin, and their 10Mb service drops to about 1-2Mb during the evenings. From what I heard else where, Virgin's 50Mb service is pretty limited, and you'll often drop to 1Mb if everyone in your street is heavy users too, especially during peak times when Virgin will decrease your bandwidth by 75%!

I don't watch Sky News, but you have to love Sky Sports News and their football news coverage on a Saturday afternoon! I have had very few issues with Sky and have been with them for 2-3 years. Their internet a good few years ago was shoddy, but their up to 20Mb service is great. Their TV is excellent too - the HD box and remote plus GUI beats the crap out of Virgin Media. Every time I use a Virgin Media TV box, I feel like I'm no longer good with technology.

Also, check out Sky Go (ability to watch Sky channels on your iPhone, iPad, Mac, PC) - most excellent thing ever if you want to watch a football game out and about. Also, ability to remotely record on my Sky HD box via my iPhone is a life saver too. Sky's new service, Sky Anytime looks promising - especially if they can pack in the BBC's iPlayer into that package, which is being rumoured. I don't know why anyone would prefer Virgin over Sky, other than the benefit of not having to have a satellite dish.

I think the internet on Sky/VM is luck of the draw. In my area ADSL is quite simply crap. Virgin Media on the other hand is very solid. The lowest speed I've had down the line is 48Meg, and that was at peak time. I'm aware of some issues in oversubscribed areas - the same applies with ADSL but on a much bigger scale due to the slower lines.

Lets face it, ADSL will never compete with cable on any level. Cable is already capable of gigabit speeds, ADSL is barely able to get 10mbps in most places!

As a VM subscriber I've got access to Sky Go and Sky Anytime for free - its very decent. People are moving from Sky to Virgin in huge droves. Why wouldnt you? You pay less, you get more. You get the same quantity of channels, plus all the on demand stuff (sky have less than half the amount of on demand content), plus you dont have to pay £10/month for each additional box/room, and you dont pay extra for HD content. I know it probably sounds like I'm some kind of Virgin Media fanboy here, but I'm not. Like I said above, we were with Sky. We had virgin media installed last week.

We've gone from this:

- 1x standard sky box, no HD
- Sky Movies collection
- Sky Sports collection
- No on-demand content via TV at all
- Access to Sky Anytime/Sky Go on PC/iPad/XBox
- £59 /month

To this:
- 3x 'Tivo' boxes, full HD
- 1x 'VHD' box (I.e standard non-recording box), full HD
- Sky Movies collection (in HD)
- Sky Sports collection (in HD)
- Dedicated 10mbps modem in each of the TV boxes with access to youtube, iplayer, itv player, 4OD and the 5 Player
- Access to on demand HD content from WarnerTV, Comedy Central, NatGeo and others in addition to the entire SkyGo/Sky Anytime library, the Virgin On Demand library with full seasons of major TV shows
- Access to around 100 3d movies a month (not something we'd use however as we've not got a HD tv)

£48.99 /mo

You tell me - which one is better? We're not missing any channels from Sky, pay less and get a heck of a lot more content. The only thing we've lost is the ability to access Sky Go via the Xbox, but when its sitting next to a Tivo box which has access, its not really a problem.

Up until about a year ago, I would have agreed and said that Virgin TV sucked big time, but since they introduced Tivo they have really turned a corner. IMO they are now way ahead of sky. Sky's flaw is that it has to come down a dish. That's all well and good but for services like iPlayer, you simply cant use a dish, you need a decent internet connection. Thats where a dedicated 10mbps cable line directly to the box helps massively.

(Sidenote: VM 50 meg doesn't get any form of throttling, its just the 10meg one that does that)
 
the fact that it legally has to provide non-bias news content, .

Non bias in that they have to tow the government line in reporting.....

The BBC is great, but dont fool yourself into thinking their news is impartial, they just regurgitate government press releases.

Unfortunately the only impartial news left in the world, is social media news, because you have to make your own judgement. Most people just dont.

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I think the internet on Sky/VM is luck of the draw. In my area ADSL is quite simply crap. Virgin Media on the other hand is very solid. The lowest speed I've had down the line is 48Meg, and that was at peak time. I'm aware of some issues in oversubscribed areas - the same applies with ADSL but on a much bigger scale due to the slower lines.

Lets face it, ADSL will never compete with cable on any level. Cable is already capable of gigabit speeds, ADSL is barely able to get 10mbps in most places!

As a VM subscriber I've got access to Sky Go and Sky Anytime for free - its very decent. People are moving from Sky to Virgin in huge droves. Why wouldnt you? You pay less, you get more. You get the same quantity of channels, plus all the on demand stuff (sky have less than half the amount of on demand content), plus you dont have to pay £10/month for each additional box/room, and you dont pay extra for HD content. I know it probably sounds like I'm some kind of Virgin Media fanboy here, but I'm not. Like I said above, we were with Sky. We had virgin media installed last week.

We've gone from this:

- 1x standard sky box, no HD
- Sky Movies collection
- Sky Sports collection
- No on-demand content via TV at all
- Access to Sky Anytime/Sky Go on PC/iPad/XBox
- £59 /month

To this:
- 3x 'Tivo' boxes, full HD
- 1x 'VHD' box (I.e standard non-recording box), full HD
- Sky Movies collection (in HD)
- Sky Sports collection (in HD)
- Dedicated 10mbps modem in each of the TV boxes with access to youtube, iplayer, itv player, 4OD and the 5 Player
- Access to on demand HD content from WarnerTV, Comedy Central, NatGeo and others in addition to the entire SkyGo/Sky Anytime library, the Virgin On Demand library with full seasons of major TV shows
- Access to around 100 3d movies a month (not something we'd use however as we've not got a HD tv)

£48.99 /mo

You tell me - which one is better? We're not missing any channels from Sky, pay less and get a heck of a lot more content. The only thing we've lost is the ability to access Sky Go via the Xbox, but when its sitting next to a Tivo box which has access, its not really a problem.

Up until about a year ago, I would have agreed and said that Virgin TV sucked big time, but since they introduced Tivo they have really turned a corner. IMO they are now way ahead of sky. Sky's flaw is that it has to come down a dish. That's all well and good but for services like iPlayer, you simply cant use a dish, you need a decent internet connection. Thats where a dedicated 10mbps cable line directly to the box helps massively.

(Sidenote: VM 50 meg doesn't get any form of throttling, its just the 10meg one that does that)

I think you need to be a bit more techy savvy with VM though, their customer services re appalling

Im with VM, and the only way I've made the internet equipment stable is by putting my own firmware on it...... I've been cautious about changing to the tivo and superhub combo as i've heard nothing but bad stuff about superhub.
 
T1 has never existed in Europe, I think you mean E1. ;)

Oh, and Virgin do sell FTTP with contention ratios of 1:1, upwards of 100Mb/s down and up. Virgin offer it to any residential property in my area if they want to pay for it.

I'm on an ADSL connection at 5Mb, but many friends of mine have 50 or 100Mb with Virgin. Come peak hours, they struggle to get 2Mb throughput. Cable does not come down my street so I cannot get it.

Unless you have a leased line T1 connection that would cost more than the average UK wage, you don't have a 50MB connection.

Virgin cable's "50mb" service is only "50mb" between your house and the cable cabinet at the end of the street. No UK home ISP offers an uncontented service without traffic management, and ISPs are never as simple as your connection speed is the speed at which your ISP can pull data from a third party server.

Virgin are pretty notorious for traffic management and poor peering arrangements from CDNs too.

Phazer
 
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