Olivier Thereaux, George Wright, BBC.
Second W3C Web and TV Workshop,
Berlin 8th February 2011

You probably know us for…

In the UK: BBC iPlayer

On demand. Live.

Offline, too!

BBC R&D

• Mpeg
• TV Anytime
• MXF
• DVB
• EBU
• etc.

BBC and Web Standards

• Historically strong
• Major adopter (HTML, Semantic Web, etc.)
• Renewed involvement

Public mission implies:
Openness
Access for all

Same quality of service
with the
Open Web stack?

Content Protection

• Industry demand
• Consumer demand for varied, quality programmes
• Cultural evolution happening, but in the meantime?
• No need for absolute perfection - “good enough effort”

Content Protection (in practice)

• Geographical
• Time
• Make illicit copy difficult enough

Streaming ?

Streaming is not the solution

• Not always an adequate content protection mechanism
• Does not fulfil “offline access” use case

Standardise DRM ?

Standard DRM is tricky

• Not because “there is no such thing as perfect DRM” (nobody cares)
• …but because DRM necessarily involves some closed secret
• Room for some open DRM mechanism with minimal closed secret

Maximising the use of open standards

• Prepare for a (potential) future with lower demand for content protection
• HTML5 needs to interface with DRM-protected formats
• Plugins are necessary evil?
• Use CanPlayType() API?
• Other ideas?

Thank You