See how SeeSaw could soon be seen in CI
SeeSaw is the name of the online video service that was born out of the ashes of the fallen Project Kangaroo – purchased from the consortium of broadcast partners by the telecommunications infrastructure company Arqiva.
Arqiva was born out of a history in broadcast infrastructure running transmission faciltities as Crown Castle. Now they’ve moved into online transmission with the launch of SeeSaw, a service that will allow you to watch a raft of old and new television shows online.
The shows are displayed through a flash player, streamed and at the moment support by either advertising or pay per play.
SeeSaw wasn’t the first of its kind to launch in this space, beaten by offerings from both Google (YouTube) and Microsoft (MSN Video Player).
The YouTube offering has content deals with a number of content providers, most notable are Five and Channel 4 and for MSN their content deals are with BBC Worldwide and Channel 4.
SeeSaw has content deals in place with the BBC, Channel 4 and Demand Five as well as hints at a much wider range of content in the future.
Not to mention my favourite of all the online video services, BlinkBox, which has a huge range of content from the BBC, Channel 4 and American networks to view for free, pay per view or to keep forever for a fee.
And then there’s iTunes – a download you can put on your iPod, iPad (more on this in my next post) or iPhone and watch when you like.
This all sounds amazing, something I could easily spend hours using, catching up on shows I already own on DVD but can never be bothered to open – or shows I would like to watch but don’t want to spend money on the DVD.
Six different video players
But it isn’t that simple for me – because I live in the Channel Islands.
I’m not complaining about the fact that I live in the Channel Islands – I love it, I chose to live here and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else – but the perculiar political situation means some things work …. differently.
One of those things is content rights.
Yes we have the BBC in the Channel Islands, we have Channel 4, Sky and pretty much everything people in the mainland UK have – our television and radio is more or less the same.
However, when it comes to the internet things get a little bit more complicated.
For the iPlayer, 4OD (on the Channel 4 website) and Demand Five things are fine – we can access and watch shows on all of those services as if we were in the mainland.
But when those shows move across to YouTube, MSN or SeeSaw – things are a little different.
I recently got a beta invite to SeeSaw – very exciting, couldn’t wait and first impression were good – it’s usable, easy to navigate and seems to have a reasonable selection of content for a beta service.
But when I went to click play I got the same message I’ve become used to from Hulu, MSN and YouTube shows – they allow follow the ‘sorry this content isn’t available in your location’ structure.
My intitial reaction to this message, something I’ve not had confirmed despite several e-mails, is that it’s down to the fact that they’re using a GeoIP list that doesn’t include Channel Island IP addresses.
However, a little bit of research and an actual response from one of the companies involved (SeeSaw) suggests that in fact it is a rights issue.
This isn’t the first time I’ve come across ‘rights’ being used as a reason why a service isn’t available in the Channel Islands.
iTunes isn’t officially available here and an Apple spokesperson told me late last year that it was because they haven’t got rights agreements in place for the streaming of samples for the Channel Islands.
The e-mail from SeeSaw explained that: “Unfortunately, SeeSaw is not currently available in the Channel Islands (or the Isle of Man) as we don’t yet have the rights to show programmes there.”
However all is not lost as the next paragraph in that e-mail explained that they were in negotations with rights holders.
“The good news is that we are currently in negotiations to make our service available to you, so hopefully you’ll soon be able to watch your favourite programmes on SeeSaw.”
What I don’t understand is how I can easily watch the full range of 4OD shows on the Channel 4 website – with 4OD actively going out of their way to fix an issue that blocked access to CI users last year – but I can’t watch it on YouTube, MSN or SeeSaw.
Fortunately I work for a large UK corporation so my computer at work is behind a proxy that IS in the UK – so I got to try SeeSaw out, even if I didn’t have enough time to watch a full show.
My second impressions are that, although it is completely lacking in ANY social or sharing functionality it does have some nice features.
It is EXCEPTIONALLY easy to use and has a couple of nice touches like a fade to back on the background on the player page when focus moves away.
It has a lot of information on the programme you’re watching, the advertising isn’t OTT and it is very easy to find previous and future episodes of the same series.
So for a beta service with a limited user base and no external access (where sharing and social stuff wouldn’t be that useful anyway) I’d say it is pretty impressive.
As long as they work towards introducing social and sharing for launch in March I’d say this is a real contender for the television site of choice crown – especially as they’ve launched so far ahead of a UK release of Hulu.
But if they want to compete with Hulu when it launches - the social, sharing and ratings content will become increasingly important.
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I was wrong about TG sale
So a long time ago I wrote a blog post saying that we will never see Top Gear box set DVDs – this was based on a chat with someone responsible for commissioning BBC DVDs.
Basically the argument was that it can’t happen because of music rights – to sell it they would have to re-negotiate all the music rights and some couldn’t be cleared at all – so it was better to not sell it.
I also seem to remember saying – proudly and loudly – that we will probably never see Top Gear on iTunes. Well that happened a while ago in the USA with the release of Series 10.
I wasn’t worried then because this was the the cut down BBC America version – with different music.
Well – although we don’t have a DVD box set it does look like you’ll now be able to buy Series 12 of Top Gear, in full as broadcast on BBC TWO – eight days after the BBC TWO broadcast on iTunes.
This seems to be done as part of the same deal that BBC Worldwide has in place to put other BBC shows on the Apple digital media store.
Basically it airs – it goes to the iPlayer for seven days (although Top Gear is stacked so is actually up on the iPlayer for about 10 weeks) and then after eight days makes its way to iTunes where you can buy it for £1.89 – or £14.99 for the season pass.
As there are ten episodes it makes sense to get the season pass – or find alternatives ways of downloading TG – but I didn’t tell you that and think you should go out and spend £14.99 RIGHT NOW on the legal version from iTunes.
BBC on itunes but not here
With the launch of Top Gear on iTunes in the USA – but not here in the UK I thought I’d take a look at what was on iTunes there but not here.
Although it isn’t ‘really’ Top Gear on the iTunes store in the USA – it is in the sense that it includes Jeremy, James, Richard and the Stig – that it has the Top Gear name and that parts of it did appear on BBC Two originally.
But it isn’t in the sense that it is the cut down (for adverts and non-relevant news content) version for BBC America – that also has different music in certain parts to the original.
So first lets look at all the shows from BBC Worldwide on iTunes here in the UK:
Gavin and Stacey
The Mighty Boosh
Life on Mars
Spooks
Ashes to Ashes
I’m Alan Partridge
The Catherine Tate Show
Little Britain
The Young Ones
Planet Earth
Torchwood
Hotel Babylon
Saxondale
The Planets
Spooks Code 9
Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps
The League of Gentlemen
Nighty Night
Massive
Dr Terrible’s House of Horrible
New Tricks
Beautiful People
Mutual Friends
Robin Hood
The Keith Barret Show
Michael Palin’s New Europe
I Am Not an Animal
Teletubbies
The Wrong Door
The Secret Show
Merlin
Now we’ll look at the BBC America shows on iTunes in the USA:
Top Gear
Little Britain
Torchwood
Robin Hood
Primeval (not in UK)
Skins (Channel 4 in the UK)
Doctor Who
Gavin and Stacey
Doctor Who: Classic Series
How clearly there isn’t nearly as much there as there is on the UK version – but BBC America is one network whereas BBC Worldwide has four networks plus a massive archive to draw on.
But its interesting that the American version has Top Gear and the new/old versions of Doctor Who available for download.
We have none of those on the UK version of the iTunes store.
I guess the main reason is one of rights and I imagine that’s also the reason more shows haven’t been added to the American store.
After all – surely you’d want as bigger stock as possible as the only real cost (I’m assuming) is rights and that would be covered by any download sales.
Actually lets look at costs. Some things are pretty fair – a series of Little Britain will cost you £9.99 or £1.89 per episode.
In the US store it is $11.94 for the series (six episodes) or $1.99 per episode.
At the current exchange rate that would be £7.28 for the series or £1.21 per episode.
For anyone interested Top Gear series 10 (9 episodes) is currently on the US store for $14.99 (or $1.99 per episode).
Oh and why is Bonekickers listed under ITV – are the BBC that ashamed of it (I actually thought it was pretty good).
Make it funny
If you want to have a really successful podcast in the UK it seems you need to stick to a number of key rules – at least if the top 25 chart on iTunes is anything to go by.
ITV joins iTunes
As I reported on the BBC and Channel 4 joining the iTunes library, I figured I should probably report on ITV doing muhc the same thing. Read more
A new guilty pleasure
I’m going to admit to something but you can’t tell anybody. For years I’ve been saying that I hate all American sitcoms – they just don’t get comedy (with the exception of The Office US which is a British creation anyway). But that isn’t the revelation.
Spaced on iTunes
TV programmes have been available to buy from the iTunes store in the UK for a while now – but until a few weeks ago there was so little on there worth buying (nothing of note made in the UK) that I never bothered to look at it.
Read more
How I split my music
Over the last few years I’ve interviewed a number of bands and musicians, from bands just starting out with their first gig up to bands with top ten albums and major recording contracts.
Spooks on iTunes
I’ve just downloaded an episode of Spooks on iTunes and I’m pretty impressed with the quality. It’s 640 wide video, comes in at about 600mb for the one hour show and can be played even before the download has finished.