The BBC Box

www.bbc.co.uk/thebox

So the BBC have bought a shipping container, painted it red and will track it around the world to see how international trade works. First consignment being whisky to China.

I think TV Forum should do something similar and ship photos of William Hanson to the states.

Why photos? Just stick him in the box.

They did something similar to this in 2004 (just looked it up) with a postcard, sending it around various people who'd signed up on the Magazine section of the BBC News site to see how valid next-day delivery claims were at the time.

Ironically it came to an end after five days when the postcard was lost in the mail.

Seems like a bit of a gimmick to me. Surely the company who own the box could just provide logs of where it's been and what it's been transporting? Why the need for GPS tracking?

I guess it makes life a bit easier - particularly in the overseas legs, where tracking the box in China etc. may be a bit more complicated than in the UK?

Most of the boxes are already tracked via GPS just in case they get lost in transit so it's no gimmick - it's just taking the data and putting it online for the world to see.

you really are a miserable sod aren't you. what kind of TV would it be if sian simply read the company's logs every morning, the point is you can play with their gizmo on the website to make it slightly more engaging.

however you, dullness personified, instead appear to want a tv version of the rota thread. why even paint it in BBC colours? why not just tell people the barcode and hope they spot it.

How do they manage to transmit/recieve a GPS signal when they're surrounded by other metal containers?

No.



As far as I can see, this 'gizmo' is just a map that you move around. Hardly the most exciting thing I've ever seen



I'd still like to know how much the whole operation is costing the BBC, at our expense. It's just a container, I don't see what's so fascinating about it. And yes, why have they painted it red and stuck the BBC logo on it? Who's going to see it unless they work on a cargo ship or live next to a port?

It's a normal working container, all the BBC had to pay for was the painting of the outside and the satellite tracking device.

The reports that come from the box's journey cost of course, but without the box they'd still have to fill that airtime somehow

Has anyone told the Daily Mail?

That must have cost a bomb to paint it red