Think about this – what are the big sites for online video?
Youtube and Vimeo (both have H.264 in beta), CBS are trialling it and iPlayer is also there if you’re in the UK. Other than Youtube, Vimeo and iPlayer, I only watch TED videos and now that’s going H.264 too.
After this it’s just Hulu for the Americans and what are you really left with? The ITV player? 4OD? Do we care?
I met with the BBC Trust several months ago and recommended that they look at H.264 across the board. I also recommended they push hard to beat their most fervent competitor (video piracy) and offer a better service than can be found on bittorrent. Bittorrent, to the BBC, is little more than a distribution channel they have no control over. It should be in their interest to provide a better service which will give people high quality video that they do have control over, that they can gain useful statistics of, that they can count eyeballs from.
I guessed it fell on deaf ears. Have to see what happens.
The BBC also needs to wake up to the fact that people outside the UK would gladly pay a frikkin “online license fee” to access their programs. BBC America on cable TV here is just crap and I won’t watch it. Right now, BBC gets zero dollars from me unless I buy a DVD associated with them. They could make that change quickly. And make many, many people happy.
And, oh, I’d like to see another site go H.264/HTML: Big Think.
http://bigthink.com/