What new services will emerging technologies support?
Broadband gives us a big opportunity to deliver services in a different way, like the recent trial of the iMP [interactive media player]. It’s something other media companies are probably being more hesitant in looking at because of the potential rights issues. But we’ve come at it in a slightly different way and looked at a proposition where the end user can get a two-week window of programmes. So you can download a selection of the past week’s programming or mark the next week’s selection of programming for download once available. We’re using rights management technology to activate the file to be viewed once broadcast, and then deactivate the file seven days later. [This] is quite core to what the BBC is looking at in the future. Do you rely more on off-the-shelf technologies than less than specialised ones? IMP is an off-the-shelf technology. It uses peer-to-peer technology and we’re using Windows Media 9 for rights management and video encoding. It’s standard technology re-skinne
