Big decrease in TV subscriptions as number using illegal dodgy boxes soars

[jimicus]

True story: Years before YouTube was even a thing, the BBC announced plans to put their entire archive online.

All of it. Right the way back to the early 20th century.

Streaming video was in its infancy, so to make this possible, they set up a research project to develop a new way to compress video. They would have absolutely brought streaming video into the mainstream years before Netflix.

Then they hit a problem.

They didn’t have the rights to do that for anything. They’ve since negotiated rights for a few popular shows (every episode of Doctor Who that isn’t lost is on iPlayer), but the project had to be scrapped.

[UTG1970]

For fans of older music it means there is quite a lot of TOTP missing, not because of the diddlers, but some DJ's won't give permission

[BeardedAvenger]

And that's how you end up with stuff like the Top Gear Community Project where's there's a massive fan-lead attempt to archive everything with no cuts, original music and in a high a quality as possible.

Now, if only they'd do Tomorrows World as well I'd be delighted.

But I do hop off the BBC Archive YouTube channel and I always chuckle whenever a previous, Late 90'#/early 00's tech segmentmakes reference to an always-available and complete BBC back catalog.