Netflix was engineered from the ground up to have user authentication. Iplayer wasnt. It’ll require a lot of work to do that, and as it’s the BBC/government project it’ll involve a lot of expensive IT consultants.

iPlayer was years ahead of the curve in delivering online content. You just have to compare it to the others – it’s still much better than 4OD, ITV player etc. However, now that the major studios are pushing ahead (to try to compete with netflix et al) the BBC needs to catch up and stay current.

Sorry – I get a bit heated when people start bashing either the BBC or the NHS. I’m living in a country where they have been gradually dismantling their equivalent of both…. and the public are worse-off for it. Fortunately for them, they don’t know any better 🙁

Good – I know people who are deliberately not paying their licence and using this as replacement.

Seems reasonable in principle to me. No TV here, don’t watch a lot and most of what we do is on catch-up but I do watch a bit live (eg recently the rugby) and am happy to pay the modest fee. I’m no angel, when I lived abroad there was no mechanism for this so I used a proxy. Could probably get away without a license here but it’s not a lot of money for what we get out of it.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the law and mechanisms put in place are a complete cock-up of course.

I don’t currently have a TV licence. Until a few years ago I didn’t have a TV, but now do have one. Our family watch the occasional BBC show on iPlayer, especially the children. Before streaming, now that we have kids, we would have bought a licence and watched live TV. I would happily pay for a licence now, but didn’t because I didn’t need to. I’m pleased the law is changing. There must be plenty like me who will obey the law honestly without any enforcement applied.

I don’t and won’t ever buy a license. Anyone who happily donates funds to the bbc is mad.

They knowingly allowed child abuse to happen in the saville saga.
How much have they paid people such as Jonathon Ross?
Most selective news reporting in the UK.
Their old school thinking and staff are prehistoric.
Awful tv shows.
Utterly crap sports coverage full of montages and interviews instead of raw sport.
Just no.

glasgowdan – Member
I don’t and won’t ever buy a license. Anyone who happily donates funds to the bbc is mad.

You don’t have to….
I assume you don’t therefore watch anything the BB produces/shows then. So it really doesn’t matter.

On the stuff like Saville it’s a very long time to bear a grudge.

People saying the BBC is rubbish, sort your life out, BBC1 and BBC2 may not be your thing but the Beeb is amazing, the Radio stations, the World Service, Sports coverage (granted they might not be able to afford much these days but whose fault is that?) Think of shows that have literally changed the country, The Young Ones, Grange Hill, Black Adder, Sorry I haven’t a Clue etc etc.

Currently Happy Valley is brilliant and who the hell would of made all the Nature programmes with Attenborough?

My view is that the BBC is awesome, I think it delivers consistently good content (yes, there is the odd low point, but it’s an exception in my eyes) and is generally impartial (every side always say it sides with the other, that’s a pretty good indication that it does impartiality well in IMO). Look at it compared to other countries TV and also look at how these countries hold it in such high esteem. I know people will disagree with me, and that’s fine, but for me spending £145 a year, £3 a week, on something that good, be it online or live is an absolute no brainer.

Have a read of this.

Seems to me like it would be a great idea to work towards accounts for iPlayer. Sign up for a user account, it links with your TV license if you have one – otherwise you have to pay. And it should work worldwide.

They’d make pots of money from overseas subscriptions.

They make pots of money selling their programming around the world already.
Why should the license fee then be a legal requirement?
If ITV Player can do online/catchup without ads they certainly aren’t losing money doing it.
BBC should be the same.
They are more than capable of self funding and do so more often than not.
Very few of their programmes are even made by them anymore.

hammyuk – Member
If ITV Player can do online/catchup without ads they certainly aren’t losing money doing it.

It does have ads, and the service is nowhere near as good as the BBCs in any regard. Picture quality, app quality, content, you name it.

Watching it last night on the Smart TV and there were no ads during the programmes at all while watching them which is my point.
There may have been one at the start but thats it.
Unlike 4 where there are ad breaks like live tv every few minutes (or so it seems).
Ads aside – the app on the tv is as good if not easier to navigate.
Is a lot cleaner, brighter, etc.
The main fact is the license fee is unnecessary nowadays when the BBC are allowed to sell programmes on around the world recovering not only the cost but making millions in profit.

I’ll be quite happy to pay. Oh wait, I already do. Most of my TV and all my radio is supplied by the brilliant Beeb.

To whoever said the BBC is unbiased… question – do you watch it with your eyes and ears closed?

To who are they biased Dan?

hammyuk – Member

Watching it last night on the Smart TV and there were no ads during the programmes at all while watching them which is my point.
There may have been one at the start but thats it.
Unlike 4 where there are ad breaks like live tv every few minutes (or so it seems).
Ads aside – the app on the tv is as good if not easier to navigate.
Is a lot cleaner, brighter, etc.

No, there are ads, they may not have been working last night on whatever device you have (they often fail to play), but I can tell you they do have them on the web, PS3 and Freetime (Humax Freesat HD box).

As for the app, simple things like search actually working would be a start. In fact the search box is now completely missing actually on the Freesat HD box. Often it fails to restart the programme after the ads have played too, or better still it restarts the picture but not the sound.

Excellent news.

I’ve never understood the mentality of the thieving parasites who refuse to pay for a licence yet use the iPlayer.

Let’s have some decent fines and prosecutions as well.

People who take for free what others have paid for – most on here actually seem proud of themselves.
I wonder, do you steal other things when you feel you can get away with it?

To whoever said the BBC is unbiased… question – do you watch it with your eyes and ears closed?

That was me, and no, I do not.

Almost every other news outlet has an agenda of some kind, some more blatant (Fox News) than others. My view is that the Beeb is the least biased new outlet, it is not perfect but it is bloody good. And the fact that every side complains about how biased they are says a lot.

We don’t have a TV, but still pay for the TV License as I’m happy to support the BBC, only thing which keeps Sky News etc honest (if you don’t believe me, spend 5 mins watching Fox news in the US).

My view is that the Beeb is the least biased new outlet, it is not perfect but it is bloody good.

It does a pretty good job of being unbiased but it’s impossible to be perfect. Show a black face and the Telegraph will complain it’s pushing a multi-cultural agenda, but don’t show one and you’re excluding a large part of the population. It can’t win. But compare it to foreign newscasters and you realise just how unbiased it actually is.

As an ex-pat who semi-regularly visits the UK IME the news part of the BBC is about the only really exceptional bit left: the US long ago started producing better series, sports coverage and radio are fine but nothing special (the Spanish broadcasters are just as good, for example), and the much-vaunted documentary producers have long been resting on their laurels. Unless you like hours and hours of baking, in which case the BBC is a definite winner.

Almost every other news outlet has an agenda of some kind, some more blatant (Fox News) than others. My view is that the Beeb is the least biased new outlet, it is not perfect but it is bloody good. And the fact that every side complains about how biased they are says a lot.

This +1

It’s generally (IMO) applying a broadcasting equivalent of Speaker Denisons rule, in that it biases towards the status quo and against the government.

People who say it’s lefty have pretty short memories of it’s coverage of the Blair government (unless you think it’s that far left that Blair was unpalatable compared to IDS, Hague and the rest of the sting of unsuccessful Tories of that era).

Some of it’s output is crap, some of it’s presenters are paid millions. But if it didn’t produce some populist programming (R1, Strictly, Top Gear) it would struggle to justify more worthy* programming like the natural history department, Radio 4, Radio 6 etc.

*used ironically, as none of those would be worth keeping economical. Just imagine what R4 would become if it had to be populist.

If you’ve got the lefties saying you’re biased towards the right, and the right wing nutjobs saying you’re biased towards the left, well, then…

Let’s have some decent fines and prosecutions as well.

You see its even easier, it’s the internet, you can lock people out. Hundreds of websites manage it perfectly easily.

Yes I know.

I’d like to see a few nice, ordinary middle class people given hugely disproportionate fines.

Just as a warning, you know.

mrsfry – Member

How exactly are they going to achieve this.

Detector vans.

Pretty much all the top BBC Journalists come from Right wing think tanks / parties…

The chairman of the BBC Trust is Chris Patten, a former Conservative cabinet minister. The BBC’s political editor, Nick Robinson, was once chairman of the Young Conservatives. His former senior political producer, Thea Rogers, became George Osborne’s special advisor in 2012. Andrew Neil, the presenter of the BBC’s flagship political programmes Daily Politics and This Week, is chairman of the conservative Spectator magazine. His editor is Robbie Gibb, former chief of staff to the Tory Francis Maude. After the BBC’s economics editor Stephanie Flanders left for a £400,000-a-year job at that notorious leftwing hotbed, JP Morgan, she was replaced by its business editor Robert Peston. His position was taken by Kamal Ahmed from the rightwing Sunday Telegraph, a journalist damned by the Guardian’s Nick Davies for spinning government propaganda in the run-up to the Iraq war.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/17/bbc-leftwing-bias-non-existent-myth

If the BBC stuck to a remit of providing content that would not normally be available form other providers they would have a case for keeping the TV license. As it is now the content across all their channels is absolute dire. The wages paid to ‘talent’ is criminal. They should scale back their offerings, cut out all the crap and focus on more quality.

Detector vans.

They’ll have to invent them first.

As it is now the content across all their channels is absolute dire.

There’s a lot of crap, no doubt, and I don’t watch it. However I feel that the following is worth the 39.5p a day it costs me

Anything Attenborough does
Anything Brian Cox does
The Adventure Show
Grand Tours of Scotland
Have I Got News For You
Coast
Horizon
Human Planet
Arena
Countless music documentaries on BBC 4
Louis Theroux
etc

They should scale back their offerings, cut out all the crap and focus on more quality

Who decides what is quality? I think Strictly Come Dancing is absolute crap, but for many, many people it’s fantastic. So does my definition of quality trump theirs?

Sherlock
Buzzcocks
Top gear
Match of the day
Just caught some re runs of the office some great investment in stuff.

Anywhere in the world the BBC international news channel is the one I’ll check first

Rusty – trust me there are no ads using the ITV Hub app on the Samsung during the programmes.
Watching It’s not Rocket Science right now and it is definately ad free 8)
Only 4OD is bloated for me.
Regardless of ads/no ads though the BBC long ago lost the right to be demanding money. Legally or morally.
The moment they starting selling programmes and counting the cash they stopped being in a position to say they need the license fee.
Like any other business – they should stand on their own two feet, start stripping out all the dross, bloated fat cats, unnecessary departments, etc.

What goes first hammy
World service?
Shipping forecast?
Local news?

It’s a balancing act where the whole package adds up.
It’s not just for the BBC…

The fee you pay provides a wide range of TV, radio and online content, as well as developing new ways to deliver it to you. In addition to funding BBC programmes and services, a proportion of the licence fee contributes to the costs of rolling out broadband to the UK population and funding Welsh Language TV channel S4C and local TV channels. This was agreed with the government as part of the 2010 licence fee settlement.
The licence fee allows the BBC’s UK services to remain free of advertisements and independent of shareholder and political interest.

http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/topics/what-does-your-licence-fee-pay-for-top13

They should scale back their offerings, cut out all the crap and focus on more quality

Who decides what is quality? I think Strictly Come Dancing is absolute crap, but for many, many people it’s fantastic. So does my definition of quality trump theirs?

The (the second quote) +1

It’s undeniable that there’s a market for Strictly. It’s not me, but there is one. At the time it was an innovative format, now syndicated and copied across most channels, from the more blatant “(striclty come) dancing on ice” on ITV, to “The Jump” (a load of minor celebrities try and get good at a sport before being eliminated). But the BBC came up with it, so it does fulfill the remit of “stuff no one else does”. Also it’s arguable that even if the BBC didn’t do it, ITV wouldn’t necessarily pick it up, why would they, their schedule is already full of similar crap. So it’s still providing a choice to viewers, and provides a quality standard.

80% of viewers probably watch 20% of the output. The remaining 20% who watch the Thin Lizzy documentary on BBC4 should be glad for them and the programming they watch because they and it are subsidizing their niche documentary making. If they went down the road of only supplying what commercial channels don’t then the 80% would stop paying, and we’d have none of it.

The shipping forecast being a perfect example, it’s probably listened to by 100 people, maybe a thousand tops? But without it some of them would be dead. Although satellite phones, the internet, and prior to that navtex have largely superseded it. But hang on a minute, who provides Navtex……..the Germans version of the BBC!

I’ve never understood the mentality of the thieving parasites who refuse to pay for a licence yet use the iPlayer.

Yes it’s outrageous, people who don’t legally require a TV licence not having one! Do you buy a fishing licence if you aren’t a fisherman, hmmm?

I’ve never understood the mentality of the thieving parasites who refuse to pay for a licence yet use the iPlayer.

Let’s have some decent fines and prosecutions as well.

People who take for free what others have paid for – most on here actually seem proud of themselves.
I wonder, do you steal other things when you feel you can get away with it?

I knew you wouldn’t be able to stay away. 😆

Why don’t we start with a public flaying and if that doesn’t work, well you’ll need to start offing people. Otherwise they might not get the message bloody parasites! Wait a minute, I’m beginning to come across like a pompous prick…

What I find hilarious is that you get so het up over something that is perfectly legal. Change the law and I’ll comply. Simple.

TV is a 20th century construct that has fallen apart in the 21st. And all because the BBC rushed ahead without thinking it through. The problem is purely of their own making (don’t want somebody to watch without a licence then don’t make it freely and legally available over the internet ‘watch later’, duh). Plenty other organisations have managed to square that particular circle. If you still want the golden egg, don’t shoot the golden goose first (or yourself in the foot).

I don’t pay for newspapers either. But then its because the paper (that I bought pretty much every day for 20 years) got shite and I stopped actually reading it. And now they make it freely available on the internet too, duh! If the paper was what it was back then I would still be buying it.

Music is f***ed up too. However I personally value that more and still buy hard copy in cd format. Plenty others are happy to illegally download or stream. I want them to make more music so I can appreciate it, so I contribute.

Its good that that there are people who feel strongly about the BBC, you are its core audience and you appreciate it. Some of us are less so. I can appreciate its qualities and I’ve even bought some BBC dvd boxsets (having watched first on iplayer). But I can live without it.

What exactly are they going to legislate for? A TV licence is for TV, not just the BBC, even if you only watch Sky you need a licence. The iplayer is very specific, is this what they are going to legislate for? Or will they try and pass a ‘streaming licence’ that covers any on demand service in the same way as the TV licence covers any broadcast service?

If the former it’s a bit pointless as has been pointed out previously, if the latter it’ll stomp all over the international internet agreements.

What are they thinking?

“An agreement was reached last year…” of course it was.
The BBC keeps its paymasters government happy by its biased unbiased reporting and its paymasters keep the BBC happy by passing legislation that keeps everyone having to pay despite the Corporation being a huge money machine in its own right.
Is the fact that it was instigated in 1946 when the BBC were the only broadcaster now the main reason it should be scrapped?
It wasn’t until 1955 ITV appeared.
The fact the “fee” isn’t a fee – it is actually a tax and collected as such, distributed to the Governments central coffers and then BBC bid for it back is again grounds that it should be kicked to the wayside.
It isn’t “public service broadcasting” anymore as it was when it started in the 30’s and hasn’t been for a very long time so why are the public forced (criminal offence) to pay a tax?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_United_Kingdom

The fact the “fee” isn’t a fee – it is actually a tax and collected as such, distributed to the Governments central coffers and then BBC bid for it back is again grounds that it should be kicked to the wayside.

So it’s a state funded broadcaster. What’s the actual problem with this? I think it’s good.

The fact the “fee” isn’t a fee – it is actually a tax and collected as such, …. so why are the public forced (criminal offence) to pay a tax?

You’re only “forced” to pay it if you use the service. If you don’t want to pay it, don’t use the BBC. It’s pretty simple.

You’re forced to pay it even if you DON’T use the BBC if you watch live tv.
None of that money goes to ITV/CH4/Sky for their programming – only the BBC yet if you don’t use any of their services at all you still have to pay the tax license fee so do you really think that is fair?
Even the House of Lords didn’t think so not very long ago.