On 11/04/2015 18:30, Jim Lesurf wrote:
In article , Michael
Chare mUNDERSCOREnews@chareDOTorgDOTuk wrote:
What annoys me about the current change is that they have paid scant
attention to the problems end users face when their equipment no longer
works, because of the format changes. The argument that they just told
some manufacturers some details of the change about a year ago is not
good enough.

AIUI The BBC's problem there is that they often don't know who the 'end
users' of the various 'net radios' or 'connected devices' *are*. And
various makes/models don't even tell the BBC what *they* are, either! The
BBC just see a request come in via a third party. So they have been faced
with trying to find the makers and the commercial third parties who tend to
act as a stream clearing/redirection house for many of those makers.


Yes you did make that point on the web page. The BBC made minimal effort
to inform end users, that the equipment that they have bought to receive
their services would no longer work. It is not as if they don't have the
facility for doing this.


They should have obtained the manufacturers agreement that provisions
would be made so that end user equipment would continue to work without
end user additional expense.

Afraid they can't force the makers to make changes. All they can do is say
the services *will* change and offer details to help the makers transit.
They started talking to those they could contact from January *2014*. And
hope those makers would make the necessary changes in time.


They can't force manufacturers to change, but why does the the BBC have
to cut the existing services and start broadcasting in new formats?



The Audio Factory change has been handled in a very high handed manner.
No thought for the end user,

See the above. *Some* kinds of end user they can identify and deal with
directly. That, for example, is why they're using HDS for web browsers at
present because they established that Flash accepts it. But other end
users they weren't contact or deal with directly. Net radios tend to rely
on a third (commercial) party to get the streams and send them to the end
user. So the BBC was trying to contact makers and third parties those
makers paid.


The Net Radios that I have allow URLs to be directly entered into Vtuner
or Frontier websites.


and they even refuse to publish some of the URLs.

The IRP owners pressure the BBC to keep the 'final' URLs obfuscated. It's a
tug-of-war between the IPR costs / permissions and making the services
available. Here 'pressure' translates into either a higher cost to
broadcast, or a refusal to sell the BBC rights to do so to at all. I know
that people at the BBC would like the streams to be as widely and easily
accessible as possible. But they have to negotiate the rights to broadcast
with people who want to limit this for their own non-BBC reasons. And these
days a lot of what the BBC broadcasts is made by media companies, not by
the BBC 'direct labour'.


What are IRP and IPR. I suppose IRP could be people like Vtuner.
(Internet Radio Providers?)


--
Michael Chare