BBC web downloads set to launch

The BBC's on demand TV service, the BBC iPlayer, will launch to the public on 27 July, the corporation has revealed.

UK users will be able to download popular shows over the net seven days after broadcast to watch on their PC.

Later this year, the service will also be available via links from YouTube and could also appear on other websites such as MSN, Bebo, and Facebook.

At launch the application will only work on Windows PCs but a version for the Mac could be available by autumn.

iPlayer
Shows can be watched seven days after transmission
Over time other features will be added to the iPlayer including live streaming of programmes, the BBC Radio Player and "series stacking", which will allow users to download episodes from series retrospectively.

Director General Mark Thompson said: "Forty years ago, in July 1967, BBC Television launched colour TV.

"This July we are going to launch the iPlayer and in our view, the iPlayer is at least as big a redefinition of what TV can be, what radio can be, what broadcasting can be, as what colour television was 40 years ago."

Timely launch

The iPlayer has been in development since 2003 and received final approval from the corporation's governing body, the BBC Trust, in April 2007.

In that time it has been through numerous revisions, many demanded by the Trust and the broadcast and telecoms regulator Ofcom, whilst other broadcasters, such as ITV and Channel 4, have launched their own on-demand services.

"The market badly wanted to make the BBC go through a proper due process," said Ashley Highfield, director of Future Media and technology at the BBC.


BBC iPLAYER
iPlayer will allow viewers to catch up on TV programmes for seven days
Some TV series can be downloaded and stored for 30 days
Viewers will be able to watch shows streamed live over the internet
Users will not be able to download programmes from other broadcasters
Classical recordings and book-readings are excluded from iPlayer

Who else offers TV on-demand?

He added that the long process had been "frustrating" but had ultimately made the iPlayer a "better" proposition.

"Nobody wants to be the first to innovate and the last to implement but I don't think that matters," he said.

"We are right at the beginning of the video over the internet revolution, these are really early days."

At launch users will be able to download programmes seven days after their first transmission and will then have up to 30 days to watch them.

Programmes will include popular series such as Life on Mars; soap operas such as EastEnders and documentaries such as Planet Earth. Initially, 400 hours of programming will be available.

Some sporting events, such as Euro 2008, will be offered through the iPlayer as the service expands.

Mr Highfield said that over a 2MB broadband connection half an hour of programming would take approximately half an hour to download.

Once viewed in entirety, programmes will be automatically deleted.

Critical view

The lifetime of downloads is controlled by a digital rights managements system (DRM) supplied by Microsoft.

Some critics of the iPlayer, notably advocacy group the Open Source Consortium (OSC), has said that programmes should be made available without these digital locks.


SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
iPlayer screengrab
Operating system: Windows XP SP2
Browser: Internet explorer 6.0 or above
Media Player: Windows Media Player 10 or above
Net connection: Broadband

However, Mr Highfield said this was not possible.

"We wouldn't be able to launch the iPlayer at all without digital rights management," he said.

"The rights holders - the people that make the programmes, from Ricky Gervais to the independent producers that account for up to a third of our programming - simply wouldn't have given us the rights to their programmes unless we could demonstrate very robust digital rights management."

The OSC has also criticised the BBC for initially releasing the iPlayer as a Windows-only system and has threatened to make a complaint to the European Commission.

The OSC argues that the system should work on all computer operating systems.

"I am fundamentally committed to universality, to getting the BBC iPlayer to everyone in the UK who pays their licence fee," said Mr Highfield.

"This is the approach we have always taken but we have always started with the platform that reaches the most number of people and then rolled it out from there."

Mr Highfield said that a version for Apple Macs could be available in autumn, with versions for Window's Vista and mobile devices to follow.

Versions for Freeview and cable viewers are also planned with Virgin Media expected to roll out the service later this year.

Deals with other distributors such as MSN, AOL, telegraph.co.uk, Tiscali, Yahoo, MySpace, Blinkx and Bebo were also in the pipeline, whilst a commercial iPlayer for global audiences could launch in 2008 he said.

"Wherever you are on the internet you will come across BBC programmes," said Mr Highfield.

SOURCE : BBC NEWS TECHNOLOGY

Banned video game is 'fine art'

The US publishers of a video game banned in the UK and Ireland have described it as a "fine piece of art".

Take Two chairman Strauss Zelnick said Manhunt 2 had his full support and that consumers should decide for themselves.

"The Rockstar team has come up with a game that fits squarely within the horror genre and was intended to do so," Mr Zelnick said in a statement.

The sale of the game is unlikely to go ahead in the US and has not been granted certification in the UK.

"It brings a unique, formerly unheard of cinematic quality to interactive entertainment, and is also a fine piece of art," Mr Zelnick said.

The game has been designed Adult Only in the US but both Nintendo and Sony have confirmed that the title will not be able to be released on their platforms as originally intended.

In a statement, developers Rockstar said they were disappointed by the British Board of Film Classification's (BBFC) decision to refuse classification of Manhunt 2.

It said: "While we respect the authority of the classification board and will abide by the rules, we emphatically disagree with this particular decision.

The adult consumers who would play this game fully understand that it is fictional interactive entertainment and nothing more Rockstar statement

"Manhunt 2 is an entertainment experience for fans of psychological thrillers and horror. The subject matter of this game is in line with other mainstream entertainment choices for adult consumers."

Rockstar are also the developers of other controversial titles including Grand Theft Auto and Canis Canem Edit.

The game features many violent scenes

In rejecting the game, David Cooke, director of the BBFC, said: "Manhunt 2 is distinguishable from recent high-end video games by its unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone.

"There is sustained and cumulative casual sadism in the way in which these killings are committed, and encouraged, in the game."

Rockstar's statement continued: "We believe all products should be rated to allow the public to make informed choices about the media and art they wish to consume.

"The stories in modern videogames are as diverse as the stories in books, film and television. The adult consumers who would play this game fully understand that it is fictional interactive entertainment and nothing more."

Manhunt 2 was developed for the Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 2 consoles.

SOURCE : BBC NEWS : TECHNOLOGY

Human genome further unravelled

A close-up view of the human genome has revealed its innermost workings to be far more complex than first thought.

The study, which was carried out on just 1% of our DNA code, challenges the view that genes are the main players in driving our biochemistry.

Instead, it suggests genes, so called junk DNA and other elements, together weave an intricate control network.

The work, published in the journals Nature and Genome Research, is to be scaled up to the rest of the genome.

Views transformed

The Encyclopaedia of DNA Elements (Encode) study was a collaborative effort between 80 organisations from around the world.

It has been described as the next step on from the Human Genome Project, which provided the sequence for all of the DNA that makes up the human species' biochemical "book of life".

We are now seeing the majority of the rest of the genome is active to some extent Tim Hubbard, Sanger Institute

Ewan Birney, from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory's European Bioinformatics Institute, led Encode's analysis effort. He told the BBC: "The Human Genome Project gave us the letters of the genome, but not a great deal of understanding. The Encode project tries to understand the genome."

The researchers focussed on 1% of the human genome sequence, carrying out 80 different types of experiments that generated more than 600 million data points.

The surprising results, explained Tim Hubbard from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, "transform our view of the genome fabric".

THE DNA MOLECULE The double-stranded DNA molecule - wound in a helix - is held together by four chemical components called bases Adenine (A) bonds with thymine (T); cytosine(C) bonds with guanine (G) Groupings of these "letters" form the "code of life"; a code that is very nearly universal to all Earth's organisms Written in the DNA are genes which cells use as starting templates to make proteins; these sophisticated molecules build and maintain our bodies

Previously, genome activity was thought of in terms of the 22,000 genes that make proteins - the functional building blocks in our cells - along with patches of DNA that control, or regulate, the genes.

The other 97% or so of the genome was said to be made up of "junk" DNA - so called because it had no known biological function.

However, junk DNA may soon need a new moniker.

Dr Hubbard said: "We are now seeing the majority of the rest of the genome is active to some extent."

He explained that the study had found junk DNA was being transcribed, or copied, into RNA - an active molecule that relays information from DNA to the cellular machinery.

He added: "This is a remarkable finding, since most prior research suggested only a fraction of the genome was transcribed."

'Complex picture'

Dr Birney added that many of the RNA molecules were copying overlapping sequences of DNA.

He said: "The genome looks like it is far more of a network of RNA transcripts that are all collaborating together. Some go off and make proteins; [and] quite a few, although we know they are there, we really do not have a good understanding of what they do.

"This leads to a much more complex picture."

The researchers now hope to scale up their efforts to look at the other 99% of the genome.

By finding out more about its workings, scientists hope to have a better understanding of the mechanics of certain diseases.

Dr Birney said that in the future, they would hope to combine their findings with some of the larger studies that are currently investigating genes known to be associated with particular conditions.

He added: "As we understand these things better, we get better insight into disease, and when we get better insight into disease, we get better insight into diagnosis and the chances to create new drugs."..

SOURCE : BBC NEWS