Why is the BBC iPlayer so slow?

Discussion in 'General Chat' started by Nimrod, Nov 23, 2008.

  1. Safinn

    Safinn Addict

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    I think its all the millions they get from the advertising. Thats what pays for the iPlayer.
     
  2. BSmith

    BSmith Elite Member

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    Yeah I remember sitting through all those adverts when I watch BBC One, and just look at the BBC website it's covered in them!
     
  3. Safinn

    Safinn Addict

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    They probably have the most advets! It does my head in. You trying to watch something and 15 mins into it they pause for 5 mins to show you stupid crap!
     
  4. InsaneNutter

    InsaneNutter Resident Nutter Staff Member

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    Like most other 1 hour TV shows it meets the scene standards of been 700mb for an hour show. I think it would be hard to hit the same file size all the time just be recording and encoding on the fly, I don’t really know much on the subject so it could be possible.

    Maybe it’s possible to encode video using your graphics card, I know new Nvidia cards can be used for stuff like folding@home and cracking wireless security a 100 times faster than your average dual core cpu.
     
  5. MunkyMagikUK

    MunkyMagikUK Digiex Blogger

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    Which BBC are you watching?

    BBC is owned by us, the people, and payed for through TV license, and therefore has no adverts during shows, and it only advertises it's own shows inbetween programs, and these adverts never last for more than a couple of minutes. It has NO commercial adverts. It's channels like ITV and C4 that use commercial adverts to pay for their shows.

    The iplayer will be payed for using money from the TV license, so all in all, people who use the iplayer who don't pay a TV license are actually free-riding. Doesn't bother me particularly, but I can see where Rustwick is coming from in all of this.

    As for the uploading thing, it doesn't bother me that it isn't up right after the show has finished, but I think it should be up 30 mins after the show has finished, and at most an hour. And yes, more popular programs should have priority, but I bet there are quite a few people who watch Eastenders regularly, plus, Eastenders is a 30 minute show, whereas Top Gear is an hour, and so will take less time to upload. However, the time it takes for Top Gear to upload is ridiculous.

    Also, Eastenders is on everyday (except Wednesdays?) and therefore it would need to be uploaded quicker, because if you had missed the episode that night then you would need to watch it before the next day, whereas with Top Gear you have all week to watch it before the next episode.

    You also have to understand that the BBC will want as many people to watch the program as it airs, because then you get good viewing figures. I know that you could add up all the views it gets on the iplayer with the views it gets when it's aired, but I should imagine they would want people to watch it on Sunday night, as they then might watch another program after it, as opposed to the iplayer where people are going to watch a specific program and then leave it.

    I'm not condoning how long it takes, just giving reasons as to why shows like Eastenders might be on earlier. There are obviously different factors that affect how long a program takes to upload, and although you may think it's wrong, the BBC may have valid reasons.

    My two cents in.
     
    Last edited: Nov 26, 2008
  6. BSmith

    BSmith Elite Member

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    I was given a review unit of a device a couple of years ago which does encoding via hardware rather than software, retail value about £130 at the time I think, but that seemed to work well from the little I used it. I'm fairly sure you could specify filezile for time period in that too, so all you'd need to do is tell it to do 700 meg for each hour.

    Cheers for the link by the way.
     

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