Fancy watching 'Bake Off' together with mates and alone at the same time? The BBC's built a tool to do that The BBC has launched a new service that will let users watch or listen to its programmes over the internet in the company of friends and family. Named "Together", the system is built on top of BBC's Standard Media Player and works with any video or audio BBC content, including BBC iPlayer, BBC Sound, Bitesize, BBC News, and …
Yeah, but this is a long term plan. If they don't weave themselves into our Internet lives they will increasingly become irrelevant with younger viewers. It's driven strongly by the need to find excuses in the future to change the law to keep capturing as many as possible in the 'you need a licence' trap.
The Beeb will lose millions if they lose the licence fee -- I saw somewhere they said it would cost them £200m if the removed criminality from licence fee evasion.
This keep getting people to continue to pay for the licence is a real headache. :-(
I was thinking something along those lines.
Are there actually that many people who care about watching any programme at the same time as their friends/ family etc?
I ask as someone who only turns a TV on at New Year's Eve for my wife who likes that kind of thing.
Well yeah lots of people watch sport together of course. Lots of people (used to) get together for shows like Bake Off, Masterchef, as a social event. Probably others. When we relied on live TV this was actually much easier so this is recapturing something that's lost through on-demand services.
I am sure it's a bit of a niche thing, but it seems a nice enough feature especially during lockdown.
Maybe there are people in this world who aren't married and maybe live alone and/or away from their partners - talking to someone on Teams and watching a TV program might be the difference between serious depression and loneliness or not while still sticking to the isolation rules. It seems very short sighted of people right now with family and loved ones around them assuming everyone else is the same.
I am not a network person, so please bear with me. My question is, how much could the synchronisation be screwed up by network latency effects?
Different viewers could be in different parts of the country, using different ISPs, and with different equipment and quality of connection between them and the Beeb.
To enable people to enjoy a big reveal or a punchline together, the sync would have to be pretty good - no more than a second out, say.
Even assuming no buffering, which would really screw things up, how feasible is it to maintain almost perfect synchronisation over, say, an hour?
Even assuming no buffering
You need at least enough buffering so that the lowest latency link is delayed to match the highest latency link. At least in principle, each frame has a time code defining when it should be presented to the user (relative to the start of the programme). If you can measure the latency, or estimate it, you can adjust the effective reference clock to ensure each frame is presented to everyone at roughly the same time.
You can use direct feedback from the player app to give you latency information or estimate it based on the requests you're getting for the next chunk of programme material. You can change the effective reference clock either directly in the data stream, by adding and removing frames from individual streams or by adding further metadata. If there's a substantial difference in bandwidth, you can use adaptive streaming to change the quality. I'm not sure exactly how the BBC are doing it, but it should be possible to do it with less variation than people chatting about it on their mobile phones at the same time will experience.
I must then be an antisocial abnormality, because I can't get it why the fuck would anyone watch in sync something, anything, remotely with their "mates" (as in "friends", rather than "sexual partners") hundreds of miles away, etc. I get that you might want to watch something together, because a) there's something interesting on the telly / usb stick AND b), you happen to be living in the same household, aka "a family", (and 50 years later it gives you those fond memories you were one loving family, cause you 'always' watched robin the hooded man together. But I don't get the remote ersatz at all. I might just as well watch the same youtube video with millions of other mates at the same time. Or do something better with my time.
...
on the other hand, probably million of Brits sat at exactly the same time - "together" - to watch Boris Johnson say nothing one day and not much earlier, they sat "together" to watch a rather old lady say nothing, they got up and felt, presumably, some much more "we're all in it together" (never mind those wrinklies dying quietly away from their mates in care homes). And an unspecified number open their windows every Thursday and clap their hands "together", rather than start thinking why it is that they pay their 1st world taxes in 1st world country and, in return, get a non-1st world country daily health care system because the health care system is chronically underfunded and mis-managed by every next government?
Don't worry, nobody wants to watch with you.
You mention YouTube... YT and FB both allow scheduled viewings. FB has "watch party" so you can have a online chat built in as you watch together (I haven't used it myself but I think that's the idea).
In the modern world, people view being together remotely as still being together. Video-chat probably makes a huge difference compared to just being on the phone.
I'd give a you a downvote for the first para (it's nice to watch stuff with friends & family who can't be in the same location, and to be able to make comments like you would if you were together), and a big upvote for the second. So, overall -->
perhaps I am strange, i.e. I watch something when I want to watch something, not because I want to be with someone. If I want to be with someone, then I am with someone. If I want to talk to someone, I talk to them, directly, or on the phone. If I want to fuck them, I fuck them, as long as they want the same thing. I don't need a telly to help me facilitate "being together". Perhaps that's why I don't 'enjoy' restaurants and such, as places that facilitate human interaction. If I want to talk in private, I go to a private place, rather than one full of people. That said, it's hard to find such a private-public place in urban environment. Still, the beeb idea is bizarre. I mean, it's not like you can exchange those meaningful comments on the show you've seen x times already, etc, unless you sync with whatsapp or whatever. You're just watching the same show at exactly the same time, nothing to do with "together".
>If I want to be with someone, then I am with someone. ...
In the current lockdown, you can only do this (and some of the other things you list) with someone who is a member of your immediate household...
I did a variation of what the BBC is offering (same time different place) with a movie for my teenage daughter's birthday recently, she and her friends watched the same film, whilst in a 'meeting' (*), so whilst not as good as being in the same place at the same time, did permit some real-time interaction and viewing control (pause, rewind).
(*) Need to be careful about sound feedback. I would hope that someone will implement some form of noise-canceling (on the movie) which would enhance the meeting experience ie. would permit audio/spoken word conversation.
>Still, the Beeb idea is bizarre.
Given the omission in your comment, I suspect you also don't see the point of multi-player gaming and in game chat - something my teenage son does a lot with his friends.
"hundreds of miles away"
Or, thanks to "social distancing", your mates who live next door, or in the next street, or you would normally meet at the pub every Friday night that you now rarely, of ever see face to face. Why not have an easy to use technolgical solution to "movie night" or getting some of the feel of going to the pictures with your mates? Just because you don't do things like that and clearly have no issue with being isolated (or are you one of the lucky ones who gets to go to work and meet people?) doesn't mean that many other people are not suffering at one level or another because of it.
As a trendy tech company I am a little surprised Netflix hasn't added 'social' functionality so you can have 'friends' on their system - recommend shows to each other, see your mates' reviews and comments, etc. Adding communal viewing would then be a natural evolution. Integrating their own chat, or Twitter, even VOIP (like multiplayer gaming but for TV).
I am not saying I WANT these features because I fear it would be a mess of "Jeff just watched Tiger King" but it does seem like something a lot of younger users would use!
"I am not saying I WANT these features because I fear it would be a mess of "Jeff just watched Tiger King" but it does seem like something a lot of younger users would use!"
Likewise. When looking for something to watch I rarely, if ever, look through the "Currently Trending" or "People are Watching" simply because by definition those are lists of lowest common denominator shows. I might, but usually don't, look at the list of "Because you Watched..." The first few recommendations may show similar shows I might like, but by the time I scroll off to the right they similarity with the show I watched seems to tail off exponentially just so they can fill the row, Based on that, I suspect it's unlikely I'd want to watch a show just because someone I happen to know has already watched it. Individuals might personally recommand something to me and I might even watch it, but I don't really want a blow by blow account of every recent show each of my friends has just watched. It's possible there may even be shows I'd like to watch that I'd rather my friends DIDN'T get told about. :-)
It's not supposed to show you things similar to what you watched. It's supposed to show you things you might like based on what you watched (it assumes you liked the things you watched).
Netflix have invested millions into this algorithm - they ran a contest for programmers to tune it years back.
Have you tried watching suggestions? If you do, you should rate them and it will get better.
I have often been put off shows recommended, only to find they ARE exactly something I'd like.
IPlayer does have subtitles, but only on past content, not live streamed content.
They generate the subtitles (because they add them to the broadcast version) but they don’t put them in streamed content (streamed live as distinct from on demand)
If it's live and being broadcast, there can be subtitles and are sometimes. Neither my wife nor I need them, but there are odd time when a word or phrase is unintelligible so it's possible to rewind a bit on the PVR and switch subtitles on to find out what was said. I'm not the best statistical sample because as I said, we don't normally use them, but when we've needed to, they were there, at least on news programmes, maybe others.
I've not yet seen subtitles on programmes played at their scheduled time. They seem to be added on catch-up though. No idea why and it makes viewing "live" pretty hopeless for someone deaf like me.
More annoying with BBC4 as they changed the multiplexes around for S London (and elsewhere?) a couple of years ago and many people with fairly standard-type TV aerials can't get BBC4 terrestrially, so the only option is via iPlayer. The claim is that it's temporary so I don't want to change aerial for something temporary. Plus it looks like they're dumping BBC4 at the end of the year anyway.
I'd read about this earlier today, and it uses a site called BBC Taster that I wasn't aware of. Before I knew it, I had decended into the hole that is the BBC Computer Literacy Project 1980-89. I started watching Series 1 Episode 1 and just couldn't tear myself away from the nostalia and amazing predictions. If you remember 1980 and have 40 minutes to spare, treat yourself.
https://clp.bbcrewind.co.uk/
I'd forgotten how good some BBC programs could be.
It's so typical of the BBC these days to have a site like Taster that shows off the amazing work of BBC Technology (often through international collaborations with the EBU and NHK), but not promote it because they're worried the licence fee refusenik wankers will moan about their money being wasted on something that doesn't directly benefit them.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
