public broadcasting on the internet

the bbc has long been an innovator and I am very happy that they've revived Dr Who so fabulously

but the plan to allow downloads of programmes using iplayer to only one OS platform is, for me just plain unacceptable, and I want a portion of my license fee back for 2 reasons
1. I have 3 Macs at home - none will run windows unless I spend money on a VM
or alternatively, I have to buy a windows machine AND a license
2. if some of my public broadcast service license fee has been used to subsidizew the development of a piece of software that only benefits one main vendor, this is a gross misuse of public funds.

I am not a religously anti-microsoft person at all - I believe they are a typical giant company, and they (especially in their research) are trying to improve their products and services as fast as possible, but I think the BBC could have developed an open platform using more open DRM technology -given a large part of their content is already captured and re-disted using bit torrent, they are fighting a losing battle and they are the wrong people to fight it - leave that to commercial channels who have clout and
reasons to avoid losing advertising revenue.

There are a lot of people who would help the beeb develop and distribute an open tool that time limited programmes, and compiled and ran on all major platforms - the issue of CODECs has long been solved for multiplatform audio/video - the DRM module in such software could easily be made portable (it is not media or network or OS dependant or can be made independant if you must insist on media specific watermarking techniques too)

sorry, but this is the wrong way for the british broadcasting corporation to evolve and surely they know it? see their report on
eu action in this space for other critique

n.b. zattoo ( for example, do the OS/Codec independant iptv stuff


meanwhile, other mejeeya newz:

scientolgists to play anti-nazi conspirators is
just too much for germans

It'd be ok for me if it was a comedy (e.g. like THe Producers, with tom cruise singing
springtime for hitler, only not)