informitv / news
Opinion
iMP - First impressions of BBC media player trial
The BBC iMP or integrated Media Player project is a broadband service that will enable selected television and radio programmes to be downloaded over the internet up to seven days after first transmission. Based on experience with the trial service, informitv offers an extended review of the innovative offering.
On first view, bearing in mind that this is based on a limited public trial, the iMP player works extremely well, but in this early release it displays a number of limitations in its user interface and other quality issues that seem surprising for such a high-profile BBC product that has been in development for so long.
The reality is that this is a software product that relies heavily on third-party components. The integration of these within an intuitive application is not as consistent as it might have been.
Essentially, it is very similar to the freely available Open Media Network player which is powered by the same peer-to-peer distribution technology from Kontiki, although it must be said that the design of the BBC implementation is considerably more finished. The key difference with the OMN version is that anyone can publish to the platform, with predictably variable results.
What sets the BBC iMP player apart is the range of high quality programming available. The service claims to offer “500 shows, 300 hours, 7 days of BBC programmes”.
While that seems a lot, the initial reaction may be that it is not enough. The choice is initially limited to those programmes for which the BBC owns or has negotiated the relevant rights, which currently represents only a small proportion of their total output. It currently excludes some of the most popular programmes, which inevitably include those destined for commercial release.
The problem is that while the BBC radio player has received wide acclaim, few people limit themselves to BBC television programmes. Without a single unified mechanism for distributing the programming of a range of broadcasters and producers, an exclusively BBC offering will always seem limited.
Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see how downloading programmes will change viewing habits. Largely removed from the context of the channel schedule, with radio and television programmes of different networks and genres available through a single interface, it empowers the user with the ability to be more selective and discriminating in their choice of programmes.
As with the video cassette recorder and the digital video recorder, this can, at least initially, lead to sampling programmes that might otherwise be missed.
The ability to catch-up on programmes from the previous week is an enormous benefit, but the limitation to a seven day viewing window is rather restrictive, given that the same programme can be recorded off-air and retained indefinitely for personal use.
Installation
The iMP application is straightforward to install. The application requires Microsoft Windows 2000 or XP. There is currently no Mac or Linux version.
Player
The iMP Windows executable application wrapped around Microsoft Windows Media Player and the Kontiki Delivery Management System software which provides the underlying peer-to-peer distribution mechanism.
Interface
The user interface has been attractively designed to look like a portable media player device. Despite its rounded contours, the application interface sits within a standard window frame, rather than being clipped to its boundary as with many modern media player skins.
The application follows the Kontiki software in eschewing standard Microsoft Windows user interface conventions. There is no application menu. Instead there is a series of folder tabs, which rather break the analogy with a physical device and mix the metaphor of the interface.
More significantly, there are no shortcut accelerator keys for navigation. The application can only be used with the aid of a mouse, with serious implications for both usability and accessibility which may present issues in terms of disability discrimination.
Despite ignoring some of the conventions of standard interfaces, this is very much a personal computer application, with multiple tabs and occasional dialogue windows. Under the superficial skin, it has none of the product design that would generally characterise a portable media player, and it has no pretensions towards a televisual interface like a home media centre device.
While the application window is not resizable, two fixed sizes are available by clicking on a resize icon: 800x600 and 1024x768 pixels.
The majority of the interface is delivered as web pages from BBC servers and is occasionally rather unresponsive as a result.
Navigation
Various inconsistencies suggest an application that has been built on an existing foundation, rather than being designed from first principles. The result is surprisingly unintuitive for an essentially simple application, with a number of obvious usability issues in this initial release.
The home page promotes the top downloads of the day, a celebrity choice, and links to trailers that are downloaded by default. There is also a prominent search box.
The guide allows programmes to be filtered by medium, channel, genre or date. There are also links to view all series, top downloads, celebrity choices and recommendations.
To return to the programme selection requires clicking on a button marked ‘EXIT’, which suggests that these features have been grafted on rather awkwardly.
The search option allows programmes to be searched by word or phrase anywhere in the description, which produced some strange results. Searching for ‘news’ returned as the top items Broken News, a satire of rolling news, and Much Ado About Nothing, the first of a ‘new series’ of modern Shakespeare adaptions. A more intelligent approach to search is clearly required.
Clicking on a programme - it is not possible to select this from the keyboard - provides further information and the opportunity to book a download for the item, or in some cases the entire series. Alternatively, if the programme has already been downloaded, it can be played in the Player window. Strangely, this information is presented in a region that can be hidden by selecting a ‘CLOSE’ button. Once hidden, these options are only made available by selecting ‘OPEN’.
The downloads area provides details of programmes that have been previously downloaded, the status of those that are currently downloading, and bookings for future downloads, all divided into television, radio and high-definition television sections.
Downloading
Programmes must be downloaded before they can be played. The Kontiki peer-to-peer distribution system employed is designed to spread the load of downloads across multiple clients to allow the system to scale to an arbitrary number of users.
In practice, it works very well, at least with around 5,000 users in the trial group. A 30 minute television programme file of around 160Mb can be downloaded in around half an hour over a standard broadband connection, which seems quite acceptable. A 30 minute radio programme is around 25-30Mb.
With broadband speeds rising, it is likely that programmes can be downloaded faster than real time. In other words, they can be delivered in less time than it takes to play them.
Downloads are queued and take place in the background, and do not appear to inhibit ordinary computer use, backing off to allow other activities to take priority.
The Kontiki software includes a built-in download monitor providing detailed statistics on the download process, with a grid display rather like that on a disk defragmentation utility, showing the arrival of individual sections of a file. It will also show how much data is being served by the client to other users, although in this instance the client was not configured as a server.
It is worth considering that downloading a lot of programmes could cause problems for users with monthly transfer limits on their broadband connections. The average viewer watches around 24 hours of television a week. At around 0.5Gb an hour, downloading even a small proportion of that over a standard broadband connection could quickly reach the restrictive bandwidth caps imposed by some service providers.
The hard disk space required should also be taken into consideration. The recommendation is 5Gb, which should be enough for around 20 hours of television. Anyone that has a digital video recorder will know that in practice you can never have enough storage.
The peer-to-peer distribution mechanism also involves sharing access to your disk, and your broadband connection with other users of the grid network, although this is claimed to be secure. The asymmetric nature of many broadband connections means that this will use the more limited upstream capacity, as well as downstream bandwidth.
Peer-to-peer traffic, often of an illicit nature, already constitutes a considerable proportion of the bandwidth of broadband service providers. If downloading television programmes becomes a mainstream activity, it could have a significant effect on the business models of some providers, many of which currently impose limits on usage.
Licence
Before a programme can be played, the user must select the ‘Play’ button in a dialogue box to confirm the installation of a licence. This is associated with the Microsoft Windows Digital Rights Management scheme used, designed to ensure that programmes can only be played on certain devices within a seven day time window. Ironically, the American spelling of ‘license’ as used by Microsoft is used in the dialogue title bar and the server host name.
Playback
Playback of programmes is within a Microsoft Windows Media Player window embedded within the application.
Standard definition 720x576 resolution video frame is scaled in either of the two available window sizes. Double-clicking on the window or selecting the ‘Full Screen’ button enables full screen playback, in which case it is scaled to the resolution of the screen. As a result, it is not possible to view video at its native line resolution.
Video playback on a personal computer is generally less satisfactory than on a video system designed for the purpose, but is perfectly acceptable for general viewing. At full screen on a modest modern laptop, the results are quite viewable, especially from a slight distance.
Standard definition video is delivered at around 760Kbs using variable bit-rate Windows Media compression. This provides a reasonable compromise between download speed and image quality, although compression artefacts are evident even to the inexperienced eye. The subjective quality is not as good as MPEG-2 transmissions at 3-4Mbps, although in many cases these display evident artifacts. It is certainly not comparable to an MPEG-2 DVD at 6-8Mbps.
A BBC channel brand identifier is burnt into the top left of the picture, which seems unnecessarily intrusive, particularly as it is susceptible to compression artefacts.
Some television programmes are available with subtitles, which can be selected through a setting in the player, providing that captions and subtitles have previously been enabled in Windows Media Player.
In fact, once a licence key has been obtained, any of the downloaded programmes can simply be played back in the Microsoft Windows Media Player, provided that a valid licence file is available. This can be skinned and integrated into other applications or devices, meaning that there is actually no real need for a dedicated BBC media player.
The use of a separate media player also allows material to be conveniently viewed at its intended resolution, resulting in a significantly crisper display. Player options can also be used to keep the window on top of other applications. It also enables downloading to portable media players and home media centres. Less conveniently, none of the standard metadata description fields appear to be populated, which is a disappointing omission.
There has been some debate about the use by the BBC of Microsoft Windows Media format and associated digital rights management solution. The reality is that this is a pragmatic choice that will appease the rights community.
In practice, no software encryption system is invulnerable to circumvention, and the most they can ultimately do is keep honest people honest, while presenting a challenge to others.
It is ironic that the same programmes are freely broadcast over the air, without encryption, conditional access, or digital rights management, allowing them to be stored and copied for personal use by anyone.
Providing a convenient means to obtain a copy of a programme broadcast in the previous week, the iMP service is incomparable, but it has some way to go before it can compete with the convenience of what now must been seen as a conventional digital video recorder.
The use of digital rights management also enables high value programming to be made available, and ultimately monetised, without cannibalising the sales of physical product such as CDs and DVDs.
Satellite broadcaster BSkyB will use very similar technology, again from Kontiki, to support its own broadband download service available to subscribers of its top tier subscription packages.
While broadcasters will seek to restrict users to their own dedicated services, it is ultimately unlikely that consumers will want to have a different player for each. Undesirable as it may seem to some, Microsoft is the best-placed player to exploit this opportunity.
What the BBC iMP does achieve, however, through its use of Microsoft Windows Media and digital rights management, and the Kontiki delivery system, is to provide a legally sanctioned and relatively user-friendly implementation of peer-to-peer media distribution that has previously been the preserve of illicit downloads. For this, the BBC initiative must be applauded.
Dr William Cooper is an independent consultant specialising in the strategy and implementation of advanced and interactive media services. He was previously head of interactive at the BBC Broadcast division, now known as Red Bee Media, and former head of new media operations at the BBC.
Copyright © 2005 William Cooper. All rights reserved.
RSS