Following the recent closure of a legal loophole that meant the UK's TV license only applied to live-streaming of BBC content on the iPlayer (meaning you didn't need a £145.50 license to watch catch-up programs), the BBC has announced that it will be requiring all users to log in to view programs from 2017.
All users of the BBC's iPlayer service will have to log in with a personal account from early 2017.
Users of BBC services can already create an online account - known as a BBC ID - but this is not currently required in order to access iPlayer.
In another change, from Tuesday BBC ID holders will have to add a postcode to their account information.
The BBC says the information won't be used for [license] enforcement - but adds it may be in the future.
With young people watching less and less "live" TV, the key to ensuring they are even aware of what is on offer is to find out who's watching, track their tastes and try to tempt them with programmes that reflect their age and where they live.
It's unclear at this point how this will affect people using the get_iplayer script to download programs without requiring Adobe Flash / Air, but I'm confident the maintainers will find a way to keep going.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Tuesday September 27 2016, @04:13PM
BBC does good stuff. I hope they will eventually offer more online content to people outside the UK. At the moment, they seem intent on shutting non-UK viewers out.
Granted, it's UK tax money (or TV fees) that support the content, but either (a) this is good advertising for the UK or (b) they could charge some reasonable fee to access the podcasts.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Tuesday September 27 2016, @05:01PM
Or they could just embed ads into the video like YouTube does, and show the ad-laden version to non-UK IP addresses.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by richtopia on Tuesday September 27 2016, @05:41PM
Licensing is a headache in most markets, and probably the worst in the USA. I would gladly pay a subscription fee to gain iPlayer functionality in the USA for radio programs (maybe not 145GBP/yr for radio), but I think the bigger hurdle is distributing licensed content. It is probably even worse for television programming.
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday September 27 2016, @05:46PM
I'd pay $150-$200/year to have access to the BBC TV programs as an American. Just have every back episode available and I will have more content than I could consume in a lifetime. I already donate to my local public radio because they carry the BBC World Service on one of the HD sub channels and when I do donate I point out that is the reason. Every year I donate $120 as $10 a month seems reasonable for the amount of radio I listen to, especially since I am only listening to that one channel.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday September 27 2016, @08:37PM
Most of it is available on Netflix for a hell of a lot less money than you're willing to pay.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Wednesday September 28 2016, @05:04AM
Maybe for now, but how long do you think that will last? BBC pulled Doctor Who (both new and old) off of all streaming services earlier this year, and has been removing a lot of its other online content since sometime last year (Red Dwarf was one of the casualties there).
Lots of speculation about it being in preparation of BBC launching some kind of paid streaming service akin to what the GP wants, though nothing's shown up yet.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Wednesday September 28 2016, @06:30AM
In the case of Red Dwarf, I think this is related to the fact that UKtv (Dave) are now funding production of the show, not the BBC. Last week UKtv's streaming platform had tens of episodes, if not all, available to stream for free in the UK (with ads).
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday September 27 2016, @09:28PM
Yeah, but:
Not worth the invasion of my privacy. Nope.
Anything good from the BBC is also available on Netflix.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Tuesday September 27 2016, @04:17PM
I'm an American so I cannot use the iplayer anyway. At first this sounded expensive (iplayer is now requiring 145GBP every year for video content. It looks like Netflix in the UK charges 6GBP/month (72GBP/year) for comparison), but I happened to look at wikipedia for how the BBC is funded. The 145GBP is a television license charged from every household with a television.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC#Revenue [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday September 27 2016, @07:23PM
My apologies, I wasn't clear enough in the summary that the £145 covers all television/video use (and also funds radio, education programmes, etc). I am personally of the view that the BBC license fee offers excellent value for money.
A lot of people in the UK refer to the license fee derogatively as a tax, but it technically isn't, because the money doesn't go to the government: it goes straight to the BBC instead.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday September 28 2016, @08:59AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by gidds on Wednesday September 28 2016, @12:22PM
Eh? It would make just as little sense to say "It's hard to claim that Income Tax is a tax, when you can avoid it by not having any income.", or "It's hard to claim that Capital Gains Tax is a tax, when you can avoid it by not gaining any capital."
In fact, according to Wikipedia the TV Licence fee is a tax — but differs from most taxes in that it's raised for a particular defined purpose. It's collected by the BBC but paid into the Government's Consolidated Fund, and passed back to the BBC from there.
[sig redacted]
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Tuesday September 27 2016, @04:18PM
After that, I have no doubt we will soon be required to log in to watch the live TV programmes.
BBC have a problem in that their TV detector vans cannot find modern monitors like they could the old tube TVs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @08:58PM
The famous 'tv detector vans' were always a hoax btw. Do some research ;).
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday September 28 2016, @11:14AM
Back in the days of valve technology and cathode ray tubes, detector vans could very easily detect a television set that was being used. We discussed all of this [soylentnews.org] a few weeks back. [soylentnews.org]
It was still possible with early LED monitors but eventually ceased to be cost effective. Maybe you are too young to remember such times, in which case perhaps you ought to do some research.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by xorsyst on Tuesday September 27 2016, @04:24PM
How will this affect smart TVs? What about youview? I can see this breaking iPlayer on a lot of existing equipment.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by theluggage on Tuesday September 27 2016, @04:49PM
How will this affect smart TVs? What about youview? I can see this breaking iPlayer on a lot of existing equipment.
I'm sure that YouView and the main PC, Mac, iOS and Android iPlayer apps will get updated (maybe even in time for the change... although that may be a triumph of optimism over experience). Even the BBC should be able to figure out that they'll need to update the clients.
The problem is going to be the abandonware SmartTV functionality built into your 3+ year old TV or BluRay player now that the manufacturer has moved on to their shiny new EvenSmarterTV platform. However, I'm sure that most people here have worked out that having quickly outdated 'smarts' embedded in an expensive screen that'll be good for 10+ years is a dumb idea and, instead, rely on The iPlayer in my 6-year-old SmartTV has long since ceased to function, and the tumbleweed is blowing through the deserted streets of its app store...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday September 27 2016, @06:12PM
Upgrade to Kodi.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by dublet on Tuesday September 27 2016, @06:23PM
BBC is a stakeholder of YouView. Aside from this, the YouView platform already runs other applications that require login such as Netflix.
Notice: I am a YouView employee.
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome. [dublet.org]"