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Re: [News] Adobe and MSBBC Continue to Snub Microsoft's #1 Rival (GNU/Linux)

Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> ____/ [H]omer on Thursday 10 April 2008 11:38 : \____
> 
>> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>> 
>>> BBC to launch iPlayer for Wii
>> 
>> BBC to launch iPlayer for Amiga
>> BBC to launch iPlayer for Sinclair Spectrum
>> BBC to launch iPlayer for HP48GX calculator
>> BBC to launch iPlayer for Tamagotchi
>> BBC to launch iPlayer for Casio watches
>> BBC to launch iPlayer for anything but Linux
>> 
>> This is beyond bigotry, it's the most palpable anti-Linux conspiracy.
>> 
>> Meanwhile:
>> 
>> http://beebhack.bluwiki.com
>> 
>> Screw you, MSBBC.
> 
> They use a Microsoft stack for this. Now why would they support a platform that
> is set to inherit Microsoft's business? In fact, given specs, Linux users
> could get all the work done _for them_.
> 

Well, to be honest, Linux users have a fair superior tool available
to them anyway, that being Mythtv and DVB.  Anyone can get themselves
a Mythtv box four TV tuners (BBC1-4) and radio tuners (up to 11 if you
really want all of the national radio channels), and just set the system
up to record everything, and clean-out the hard-drive when you hit the
predefined limit (standard mythtv feature).

My myth box stores video from the BBC and ITV channels at about 1Gbyte/hr.
Thus, 24 Gig/day, or 168Gig/week.  Four channels comes in about 1.2
Tbytes, easily within current storage capabilities.

For the radio channels, the BBC normally uses 192kbit/s for R1-4, and 96
or less for the other channels.  The storage for this is miniscule
compared with the video, of course, but if we were to record all the 11
channels for a week, then we'd be about 4 x 192 plus 7 x 96 which is
about 7 Gigabytes of data, negligible from a storage viewpoint.

So, I say, stop messing around with the BBC iPlayer, and get yourself a
mythtv box with 4 (or more) tuners, and get your own recordings.

Mythtv also has interesting features, like you can use mencoder to
downcode video automatically, so that it's "repurposed" for watching on
your N800, GP2X, Archos 504 or whatever kind of player you have.

I suspect that had the BBC spent its £130 millions on distributing
mythtv boxes around the UK, it would've been a far more effective use of
the money, than shovelling it at Microsoft to produce the iPlayer
proprietary P2P system, and eating ISP bandwidth which is *not* paid for
by the licence-fee.

-- 
| mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk                           |
| Cola faq:  http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/   |
| Cola trolls:  http://colatrolls.blogspot.com/                        |
| Open platforms prevent vendor lock-in.  Own your Own services!       |


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