BBC Three Closure

As in the BBC Three section of iPlayer, which disappeared a few days ago.

Sky doesn't do streaming, it uses progressive downloading so that everyone can get broadcast quality 1080i regardless of Internet speed.

They mean on this screen on iPlayer, which lists the channels available.

On Thursday BBC Three disappeared . . . but it came back early this morning.

http://i68.tinypic.com/2141jkg.jpg

Unlike every other channel option, any programmes on the former BBC Three are listed as being just on BBC, with no specific channel name given.

http://i66.tinypic.com/ouuv6b.jpg

This is how BBC One programmes are displayed

http://i66.tinypic.com/a9xw8w.jpg

What's the difference?

Progressive download is about downloading at full quality and it becomes available to watch when enough has been downloaded for it to be stable enough to watch uninterrupted. It's available to watch again afterwards.

Streaming will often auto negotiate a speed that can be supported on your network, and in general doesn't get saved for future playback. The quality can be variable because the emphasis is on near instant access.

The advantage of the Sky setup is if you have a fast enough connection it becomes available for playback near enough straight away (and as stated it only has to download once - next time it'll play directly from the Sky box). Slower internet still works (in fact any speed internet for that matter) and you still get the quality but it'll take longer to get to a point where you can play it all the way through without stopping - sometimes as high as 2/3 of the total download - that's the trade-off for the better quality and replay feature.

The advantage of streaming is you don't (usually) have to store it, but if your internet goes down you ain't be watching anything. Streaming is more old school (in fact in the days of narrowband internet when broadband didn't exist it was better to stream music and (very) low resolution video than it was to offer them for direct download as it was quicker to get your content via streaming than direct download!)

Upside of Sky's approach is constant quality, and you have a stored recording allowing you to watch again. Sky use this to their advantage - delivering 1080i with Dolby 5.1 at around 8Mbs - which is effectively off-air quality. (Arguably their SD H264 stuff is better than off-air MPEG2...) Works particularly well for delivering high quality if you have sub-par broadband (though at the expense of a delay)

Upside of streaming is that you can jump around a stream and skip randomly - which you can't do on Sky with a slow IP connection.

I've not seen anything to match the quality of Sky's implementation though.

Not always. YouTube's "implementation" of streaming is inconsistent for example. Sometimes you have to skip back to what it's already downloaded before you can just just jump around.

Actually, you can still 'skip randomly' within the downloaded element of the programme even on Sky with a slow IP connection.


The now/next banner will always show how much has been downloaded . . . here's one I started a couple of minutes ago:

http://i66.tinypic.com/309pxz9.jpg

. . . and you can jump to any downloaded point within that by simply choosing a time from the 'play' screen . . .

http://i67.tinypic.com/2n1e0t4.jpg

It's not quite the same as jumping within a live stream, but unless you are desperate for something later in the programme immediately, then the delay is worth it for the improved quality.

I suspect that anyone who has an IP connection that is very slow , would choose their 'On Demand' selections earlier than those with faster downloads, to allow themselves to move quickly through the programme if required.

I didn't think you could skip randomly, only within the linearly downloaded section (i.e. you can't jump 45 minutes into an hour show when only the first few minutes have downloaded - it only lets you jump around the downloaded content, rather than leaving holes and letting you download the later parts of a show before the earlier parts)

No, you can't. I've amended that bit of my post.


However, I did explain that it will show you which portion of the programme you are allowed to 'skip' within.

Normally, for example, if watching a 30 minute TV programme from BBC iPlayer, it would have fully downloaded in HD quality before you're through the first few minutes.

I can't imagine many circumstances where someone would download an entire programme just to immediately watch the last couple of minutes.

Just posting this here ....

Can everyone stop moaning about BBC3’s online move? It’s still ace


see here ……..

ESSENTIALS on INEWS.CO.UK
25-Aug-2016 @ 16:41