Anger over BBC radio streaming changes

[David Cantrell]

On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 06:04:24PM -0000, C E Macfarlane wrote:

> The BBC should never have adopted any proprietary format in the first place.

Back when they first started streaming stuff online, the only available
products were proprietary. Remember how they started off with Real
Audio? As soon as non-proprietary formats became available, they tried
them out. When I was working at KW sometime around 2000 or so, we had an
extensive Ogg Vorbis trial, for example, but it never got much traction.
I don't remember why it didn't take off - presumably lack of client
support, because despite me being a bit of a geek I found the RA streams
far easier to use.

> The BBC is paid for out of our taxes

No it isn't.

>                                      and it should be using open source
> formats whose future support is more certain

but that's what people are complaining about!

> However, once having made the mistake of adopting such a standard, they have
> a duty to adopt for a reasonable minimum length of time.  Analogue VHF
> television broadcasting lasted I believe about 20 years before being
> switched off ...

They did. Real Audio and Windows Stuff *were* adopted for a more than
reasonable length of time. Well over a decade IIRC.

> And it is not as if this is an isolated example.  I have calculated
> elsewhere that AT LEAST a million items of equipment have either been
> disastrously castrated or even made entirely useless by similar actions by
> the BBC over approximately the last year alone.

That's only meaningful if you include data on how old those devices were
and how many were still in use at the time Auntie "castrated" them.

-- 
David Cantrell | Official London Perl Mongers Bad Influence

You can't spell AWESOME without ME!