Zudeo, the new “100% legal” content sharing site launched by popular BitTorrent company Azureus two weeks ago, just nailed a distribution deal with the BBC. That just took them from a theoretically cool product to a player in the online video space.
Under the agreement, BBC will license a number of television shows to U.S. users, including Red Dwarf, Strange and Invasion Earth, Little Britain, Doctor Who, Fawlty Towers, Coupling, Keeping Up Appearances, League of Gentlemen and Ideal.
It is a tragedy that they didn’t include the only BBC show worth watching, The Office. Of course, that show is readily available on Azureus’ BitTorent client.
The benefits of Zudeo are pretty clear to publishers, who can leverage P2P networks to substantially decrease bandwidth costs and speed downloads for users.
This spells trouble for Pando and Red Swoosh, which offer competing products to publishers. Zudeo probably isn’t focused on those companies, though. There is a multi-party war brewing for IPTV eyeballs between iTunes, Venice Project, Zudeo and YouTube. Watch this space.
It is a tragedy that they didn’t include the only BBC show worth watching, The Office.
lol come on us brits make great stuff other than the office. Check out Red Drawf, Ok it looks a bit dated now but I loved it growing up.
also Little Britain, Doctor Who, Fawlty Towers, Coupling are pretty top notch stuff.
I think the beeb should release Blue Planet on there in HD.
Keeping up Appearances? Man I thought they’d burnt the masters for that years ago…now it will live forever in digital format.
BTW, The League of Gentleman is right up there with the best of BBC comedies…it may be a little odd at first, but stick with it. It gets odder (and better).
This stuff better not be free. We in the UK have to pay a license fee (TV tax) to the BBC every year. If they start giving it away like some $3 whore on the Internet they can stick the fee.
Chris,
It’s not mentioned in the post, but it’s with BBC Worldwide, not the license fee supported BBC. BBC Worldwide is funded by advertising and subscriptions, running channels like BBC World and BBC Prime that aren’t licensed in the UK.
They also do magazines and other media, so there must be some revenue stream in there?
Fawlty Towers, League of Gentlemen and Red Dwarf are fantastic.
its a tradgey that you decide to make broad sweeping generalisations while showing a typically american ignorance: see post 1 and 2 for other good shows
’twas a joke, alterion. I grew up in Surrey. And lived in London in 2001.
>> This stuff better not be free. We in the UK have to pay a license fee (TV tax) to the BBC every year. If they start giving it away like some $3 whore on the Internet they can stick the fee.
BBC Worldwide returns a sum of its profits back to the BBC to subsidise and contributes to keep the cost of the Licence Fee down.
http://www.bbcw...006/default.htm
They are also the force behind putting adverts on the international versions of the BBC News site
Michael,
Where in Surrey do you hail from? That puts an interesting local spin on the US-centric world of web 2.0
Keep up the good work. Most of us wouldn’t hear about a quarter of this stuff if sites like yours weren’t around to aggregate it to the masses.
Cheers,
Mark
>> I grew up in Surrey
“It is a tragedy that they didn’t include the only BBC show worth watching, The Office.”
Fawlty Tower’s is one of the best sitcom’s of all time.
Also, Coupling is ludicrously funny. Series 2, Episode 1 “The Man With Two Legs” being the benchmark in all adult themed comedy.
BBC Worldwide, got ya. Maybe should’ve put that in the story.
I’m only just seeing Coupling now, as it really didn’t make it in the UK (unlike the cult popularity of it in the USA). I can’t for the life of me understand why. It’s got to be the most hilarious contemporary comedy I’ve ever seen!!!
Mark – Leatherhead.
OMG, you’re f’in kidding me, right???
I worked in Leatherhead for the last six months.
Small, small world, my friend…
its about time a tv station started leveraging the technology out there. now to get the US tv stations from trying to control everything. Even if they re-released current shows with new ads through bit-torrent in hd divx the tv shows can grow and live a longer life than they can through random re-runs.
haha.. Arrington is an honourary Brit. Who would have thought.
Next thing you know, he’ll be moaning about the weather.
Actually TechCrunch had more UK coverage until recently (I recently left). I also live in Surrey. Kingston actually. 20 mins from Ye Olde London Town.
Maybe that’s why he went to live in California. I’m not sure even we could find a reason for weather-related moaning over there…
LOL and i always thought it was the americans who couldnt understand the british humour!!
– its not very clear in the post that you’re joking there mike.. 
I presume Zudeo are paying some sort of fee to BBC Worldwide..
whats the news on Techcrunch UK Mike?
So Michael, you’ve seen every show the BBC has produced, have you? Wow. You must watch a lot of television.
If all the content get licensed, why should I download it using BT? I’d like to watch it directly instead of waiting for the client to connect peers.
-Mike
Tech Tutorial: http://www.hotcoding.com
Red Dwarf … those are some good shows. Definitely an interesting (and quality) move
The only BBC show worth watching – my God man are you crazy?
Glad to see the BBC (ex-employer) go down the BitTorrent route. The tests made with the ‘iMP’ project used the Kontiki system which essentially set your machine up with a port 80 ’server’. Not good for many people.
I was the one who pointed out to the BBC that Dr. Who was available online. They were shocked. They had no idea about all this. They ran around like headless chickens
(fun to watch)
Usenet binaries are also your friend, if you seek more of their ‘quality’ content
Always has been – always will be.
Oh, and Somerset!! West Country! West Country!
When on earth will the people in the UK who fund the worlds biggest liberal diatribe ever get to see the crap they puff out at our expense?
I am glad for the Americans, who atleast have the right, to not fund this showing of cheap comedy – not to mention, their anti-Bush pro-Communist rhetoric “news station”.
“to U.S. users”
Does that really mean US users, or should that be ‘non UK users’?
eelco (dutch)
Bob : no idea if you’re in the UK or not. But we are ‘forced’ to pay for a TV License which funds the BBC. We don’t get much of a say or choice. If you’re in the USA, you see BBC World, which is a commercial entity funded from things like ads and other deals. BBC News 24 is different, but does/can provide content for BBC World News. It also has a public remit to be impartial. Unlike many many USA alternatives. My 2pence
Oh, I’m in the UK, Kosso.
I have the £134 bill to prove it – funding the many, many countless hours of seeing Natasha Kaplinsky.
As for BBC News 24, impartiality? It couldn’t be any more anti-Bush if it was run by John Kerry – it quite possibly would be less anti-West if it was run by Osama Bin Laden.
Bob,
The whole premise of your original post is flawed, since (as you would know had you read the above posts properly and stopped to think before flying off the handle)
“BBC Worldwide is funded by advertising and subscriptions” and “returns a sum of its profits back to the BBC [which] contributes to keep the cost of the Licence Fee down.”
Take a chill pill and merry Christmas
,
Mark
Poor Bob Jones. “Care in the Community” hasn’t been kind to him.
Anyhow, this sounds like good news, assuming the content isn’t going to be DRMed to hell and back.
No announcement or speculation on how BBC might be making money from this deal?? Has this already been reported on or what?
Is it through ads in the distributed shows (probably not) or through ads in the client or on the website?
Sorry if I’m out of the loop..
I know BBC Worldwide is commercially funded – but why can’t the people who fund the mass congom actually get to see the content?
BBC get £114 from millions of people yearly, in the UK, more than ITV could ever get per person … so why can’t BBC showcase the crap we fund? We get to see it one way, on the television.
Don’t know about you, but I’ve heard about various initiatives under discussion and trials ongoing. At the end of the day, this is still a brave new world for your average individual, for whom the idea of watching television from the internet would be way too complex. Cool ideas have to be balanced (to satisfy the charter) with some realism about how niche they are.
Michael! Why the flamebait?
Criticizing our beloved BBC is a bad idea
Tons of good shows; classics like Porridge and Only Fools and Horses to thrillers like Spooks!
I wonder where does Brightcove stand in this playground?
Yay! The cavalry has arrived
Hey Mike- I grew up in Southampton, not too far from you. Dr. Who was an indispensable part of my youth. Glad to see it resurrected by Zudeo. Red Dwarf and Faulty Towers are classics. And Coupling makes Friends look tame.
The BBC have more quality shows than any other broadcaster, and I personally think the license fee is worth it.
I think its essential that some of the BBC’s past library is made availible online in new ways, and I think them recently allowing to watch BBC Two programs online for free (to UK users) was a great move. I’m not so sure about this.
I’ve yet to see a UK broadcaster get this right. BBC Two site was great but only has a tiny amount of new shows and is only availible for a limited amount of time. 4oD or whatever is hugely overpriced (for most programs, not all).
I’m an American and much prefer British TV. “Afterlife” is a great show, a mix of “Sixth Sense” and those old Twilight Zone classics. You can see it in very good quality via Guba.com. The FCC would never allow this kind of programming.
Peter Erikson
Bakersfield
Interestingly enough previous references to a deal with Showtime (see this for more details: http://www.p2p-...m/item-208.html) seem to have disappeared from Zudeo.com …
LOL !
Pearls before swine…
Personally I’d much rather watch the BBC on TV than via the internet, and OMG am I so glad I don’t get any crappy US channels and such !
Honestly, you’ll be saying that Monty Python is crap next !
Yay! This always makes me happy to see – i’m a broken record (as some people probably recall from my past posts on TC) about what I think is going to happen in the Internet video/iptv arena. Very cool. I think the BBC has made some smart moves in the internet space – they’ve been a good example of what other companies should be doing, always kind of seem to have more of a pulse on the web and what’s going on than some of the big broadcasters here in the States. They were one of the first to leverage Second Life, for example (they held a concert in it, if memory serves), etc – I think they’re wise to stick their necks out a bit. They’re definitely one to watch.
@ Uri – I like Brightcove too. They’ve seemed kind of quiet. A lot of my friends in the space speak highly of them.
It’s going to be very interesting how this whole space plays out.
lol@bob
try working there and seeing how you feel (actually walking past Natasha in the flesh in the morning! LOL ;p)
I predict no license in the future in favour of a subscription-like mechanism once we go ‘all digital’. You simply cannot force everyone to pay the BBC for having a TV set when the choice of content providers is ever-increasing – especially via set-top-boxes and broadband.
ach well!
They better make it available to us UK users since we paid for the production of the episodes in the first place. It specifically says US users which is absurd, I know it’s BBC worldwide but thats not fair that US users get it free (even if it is with adverts) and here in the UK we have to pay for a DVD(or break the law
)
“It is a tragedy that they didn’t include the only BBC show worth watching, The Office. Of course, that show is readily available on Azureus’ BitTorent client.”
You forgot to add “in my opinion”. You Americans need lessons in writing.
Mike,
I know it was a joke but if you haven’t checked out Torchwood or the new version of Dr. Who they are both very well worth viewing, Torchwood I think may be the best SF show out at the moment (hmm I wonder how I’ve seen it here in the US…). I’ll gladly pay for future episodes (and for all the back episodes) when they are available to me in some form – I’d rather not pay to get cable – but will buy the dvd’s or even better pay for online access (and free access with embedded ads would also be fine – though preferably downloadable not streaming so I watch without being online and can download and then route to the best device on my network.
Shannon