After news that the Beeb were looking into streaming out BBC 2 over the net a few months ago, a trial was setup. Now while this needed registrations and suchlike it was a bit of a flawed system. Locked into Windows Media Player, the interface was buggy, it wasnt that fun to use.
However, the boffins at BBC R&D have been tinkering away and have released a Trial Multicast of BBC and ITV channels. Yup, ITV are involved as well, this is how big this move is. The multicast trial is only avaliable to users of certain multicast enabled ISPs, if your isp is one of these :
- JANET
- C & W (but not Bulldog)
- clara.net
- NetServices Plc
- PlusNet
- Zen Internet
- KeConnect Internet
- InterVivo
You’re in luck. However, as NTL isnt on that list i cant actually test it, BUT Janet is, and Uni machines (and henceforth laptops on that network) are multicast enabled.
Check out the BBC Test Page here
The channels avaliable are: BBC News, 1,2,3 and 4, ITV 1,2,3,4, Local, and all the BBC National Radio Channels. Its a brilliant move to the future, sod this crappy MPEG digital wireless nonsence, go REALLY digital with upgradable codex, variable bit streams and general cleverness.
Huzzah to the BBC
[ BBC Multicast Trial ]
