Charlie Sorrel
Gear

BBC Teams with Adobe and The Cloud for Free WiFi Streaming

The BBC announced yesterday that it will be teaming up with Adobe to offer YouTube style streaming Flash video from its site, and also a deal with WiFi provider The Cloud, to offer free access via 7,500 hotspots around the UK.... Ashley Highfield, Auntie's director of Future Media and Technology said that Mac and Linux users might never get the software, which is needed to download and watch shows offline: We need to get the streaming service up and look at the ratio of consumption between the services and then we need to look long and hard at whether we build a download service for Mac and Linux.

Bbc-F1997The BBC announced yesterday that it will be teaming up with Adobe to offer YouTube style streaming Flash video from its site, and also a deal with WiFi provider The Cloud, to offer free access via 7,500 hotspots around the UK.

Good news, for Mac and Linux users, too. The streaming service will work with your computer, with future plans to support mobile devices (the PSP and Nokia N95 are mentioned). Embedding of videos into blogs and social networking sites will also soon be possible.

This is the advantage of the Beeb. The yearly (and compulsory) license fee of $135.50 ($277) means that every TV owning household in the UK has already paid up. New ways to access shows are therefore free to viewers, and the BBC is actually obligated to offer a public service.

It's not all good news, though. The BBC's DRM crippled, Microsoft-only iPlayer might stay that way. Ashley Highfield, Auntie's director of Future Media and Technology said that Mac and Linux users might never get the software, which is needed to download and watch shows offline:

We need to get the streaming service up and look at the ratio of consumption between the services and then we need to look long and hard at whether we build a download service for Mac and Linux. It comes down to cost per person and reach at the end of the day.

Thanks, Ashley. Does this mean that Linux and Mac users will get a partial refund on the license fee? I guess that, until then, there's always BitTorrent.

BBC online to go free over wi-fi [BBC News]