Alain Williams* Arqiva BT Informitv IP Vision Ofcom RNIB RNID S & T Simon Hawkins* Sense Sky TAG Virgin Youview

Organisations and individual responses in full The BBC Trust received 21 representations during the public consultation from organisations and individuals. The following 15 organisations and individuals* gave permission to publish their response alongside our decision. Alain Williams* Arqiva BT InformITV IP Vision Ofcom RNIB RNID S & T Simon Hawkins* Sense Sky TAG Virgin YouView From: Alain Williams <[email protected]> Sent: 17 January 2011 09:56 To: Syndication Review Subject: On-demand syndication - provisional conclusions Page 18 ‐ you discuss the use of DRM p 21/22 use of BBC aggregtion product People will always break whatever protection that you put on it, so there is little point in starting. Just inconvenience most users who need to download some program that may not work on their machine. Stick to open & well supported protocols/formats. Do I take it (page 34, 3/a) that you will always provide 'HTML, Flash Application and MHEG versions', it is your use of the word ''initially'' which suggests that this might not be a long term solution; or by ''initially'' do you mean ''in the first instance'' ? Page 28 you talk about 'Computers' and list 'linux, mac, pc'. This is incorrect. 'PC' means a 'Personal Computer', many people's PC runs Linux or OS/X (Mac). You should use the term 'MS Windows' or 'Microsoft Windows'. Your writer has, seemingly, been adversly influenced by the ''PC vs MAC'' adverts of a few years ago. One other point: much 'listen again' material is only available for 7 days. If I go away for a fortnight's holiday then I am completely unable to use this. A period of a month would allow me to catch up when I return, I don't really see that this would impact the BBC in any financially meaningful way. You are welcome to publish my comments, with or without attribution. ‐‐ Alain Williams Linux/GNU Consultant ‐ Mail systems, Web sites, Networking, Programmer, IT Lecturer. +44 (0) 787 668 0256 http://www.phcomp.co.uk/ Parliament Hill Computers Ltd. Registration Information: http://www.phcomp.co.uk/contact.php #include <std_disclaimer.h> 1 Arqiva Limited Response to the Draft Statement of policy on on‐demand syndication Arqiva welcomes the opportunity to respond to the draft statement of policy on on‐demand syndication published by the BBC Trust in January 2011. We fully understand why the BBC Trust has made its provisional conclusions as outlined in the consultation documents. However, we have concerns over the level of detail captured in the document and fear that the current level of ambiguity could result in issues being created in the policy’s execution. We would therefore welcome clarification in the final document over the how the policy would be put into practice, particularly in respect of search (including the relationship with linking and metadata), discovery and presentation of the BBC’s on‐demand full length TV content. End 09.02.11 BBC Trust on-demand syndication proposals – BT Comments BBC Trust on-demand syndication consultation ( Provisional Conclusions ) BT’s comments (Non Confidential version) Contact: [email protected] Submitted: February 2010 1 BBC Trust on-demand syndication proposals – BT Comments 1. Introduction We welcome the opportunity to respond to the BBC Trust proposal. As a current provider of BBC content to our customers we have worked with the BBC over the last few years to deliver the BBC iPlayer1 experience to BT Vision viewers through the 50 hour VOD offering initially and now with the full big screen experience. Our overall response to the BBC Trust policy is a supportive one and we are pleased that the guidance given seeks to clarify and provide equality of provision to those wishing to distribute the iPlayer content. 2. Commentary Before making specific points on the conclusions of the syndication policy review, we wish to set out our position in three important areas, the scope of the proposals, legacy arrangements and iPlayer quality. 2.1. Scope of the Proposals Before the introduction of the iPlayer, the BBC supported many different profiles for different types of applications eg Pay TV platforms like BT Vision, set top boxes and PC’s. This gave a broader range of technical and other interfaces for BBC content which reflected the variety of access methods and their intrinsic differences. For example most set top boxes are part of a different commercial model than PC’s and Televisions which are retail purchases by the consumer. Turning to the iPlayer, we recognise that the proposed policy gives a high level overview of some of the technical standards to be supported, namely HTML, Flash and MHEG. We would like to highlight that these particular standards are only a few elements of what is needed to deliver the iPlayer. As the BBC Trust will appreciate, there are a number of different technical elements to the iPlayer and we would appreciate clarity and detail on all the standards the BBC is supporting across the different parts of the iPlayer. Different iPlayer profiles are needed for these different types of applications. The BBC Trust needs to set out a range of iPlayer profiles including all the technical standards within them and thus provide greater clarity for iPlayer applications like BT Vision’s platform. The danger in restricting the technical standards in the Proposals to those of HTML, Flash and MHEG is that they are too high level and fail to provide the flexibility which will be required for different user types and devices including legacy applications. We would also argue that the BBC Trust has a role in encouraging Pay TV Platforms in particular as they provide larger scale access to the iPlayer. 2.2 Legacy applications As the iPlayer becomes more popular and develops additional features over the forthcoming years, it will be important for those networks/devices offering BBC content to be able to keep up to date with new versions of the iPlayer. For this reason fair notification in advance of changes is key in ensuring that the offering given to customers can, wherever possible, be the latest offering. This further emphasises our need to understand the detail of compatibility against the standards that will be used. Equally, where it is not possible to support a new standard introduced by the BBC, it is very important that the original standard is still supported so that the customer offering can be maintained. This is particularly important for BT Vision where making changes to the set top box population ( if a change is needed due to an iPlayer release ) [Redacted] 1 The word iPlayer used in this response refers to the BBC iPlayer. 2 BBC Trust on-demand syndication proposals – BT Comments 2.3 Quality The quality of the user’s experience of the iPlayer is important to ISP’s in terms of customer satisfaction and delivery. 2.3.1 Customer satisfaction When considering the quality of the iPlayer service to the viewer it is undeniable that there is a quality standard that the viewer expects when watching content. A poor quality iPlayer experience will drive user complaints to the ISP and could lead to customer churn. In such a competitive market as Broadband provision, these are serious issues and explain why BT Vision is as keen to drive up quality standards for the iPlayer as the BBC is. 2.3.2 Delivery The iPlayer is easily the most popular of the various catch-up TV players and is used by approximately 17% of UK Internet users. IPlayer requests almost doubled in the 12 months to April 2010.2 [Redacted] 3. Further Detailed points The structure of this section follows the structure used in the BBC Trust document “Draft statement of policy on on-demand syndication”. 3.1 Scope We have the following comments on this section. 3.1.1 BBC iPlayer content We would like a clearer definition of the content covered in the proposals. Specifically, our proposal is that iPlayer content should be defined as ; a) content limited to being available via a 7-day catch up service only and b) [redacted] This definition should be applied to both TV and PC versions. 3.2 Full Length TV Content We have the following comments on this section. 3.2.1 Quality and Delivery of Content Under point 14 of the draft policy, the BBC Trust refers to the BBC ensuring that any aggregation product should demonstrate ease of use, accessibility and provide a high level of quality. As we have discussed in section 2.3, we agree with the BBC Trust that we need to deliver very good picture quality [redacted]. 3.2.2 Technical Compatibility with BBC aggregation products Because of the importance of the iPlayer to BT Vision and the fact that changes to set top box functionality can be more complex than in some other applications, ( see section 2.2 ) we request 2 Ofcom Communications Market 2010 report. 3 BBC Trust on-demand syndication proposals – BT Comments that when the BBC upgrades the iPlayer to a new version, it will still maintain support for the previous versions and will not force content providers to take the newest iPlayer version. We would also expect the BBC to provide fair and reasonable advance notice of ; a) the availability of new versions of the iPlayer and b) when legacy versions of the iPlayer are no longer to be supported. In particular, we want to ensure that the BBC will support, and will continue to support for legacy iPlayer versions, the following five areas : 1. [redacted] 2. [redacted] 3. [redacted] 4. [redacted] 5. Dynamic monitoring of the key BBC iPlayer systems As our customers will be accessing a BBC system, but may be contacting BT for support, we must have the ability to see the Operational status of the BBC system.

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