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Comment by veeralpatel979 | Hacker News Reader

The article seems to imply that if BBC launched its own video streaming service when Netflix was still sending DVDs, it would've become the next Netflix.

I have to disagree. The execution is what really matters, not the idea.

- Could BBC have hired the talent to build and scale a credible competitor?

- Could BBC have popularized the model of on-demand, subscription based TV?

- Could BBC have acquired and created content people want to watch?

If the answer to these questions is yes (and the regulations in question aren't a problem), I would highly encourage BBC to launch a video streaming service today!

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The first two, yes. The BBC have a long history of being a place UK techies want to work at, and they're already subscription-based, more or less. But they never in a million years could have created the breadth of content Netflix created, even if they were rolling in money. They would have made BBC stuff but with higher production values.

BBC Worldwide and content production has been as purposefully hobbled by Murdoch and anti-monopoly laws as the rest of the Beeb

wat?

> Could BBC have hired the talent to build and scale a credible competitor?

Yes, iPlayer pre-dates digital Netflix by a significant margin

And BBC content is sold widely worldwide.

Well, Minitel predated internet, yet they were forgotten about, too.

I would presume it’s the British exceptionalism that would make a difference here?

The challenge isn't building a website that can stream video. The challenge is streaming 15% (I think it used to be even higher) of total internet traffic, which is what Netflix does. iPlayer shows the ability to do the former, not the latter.

This isn't to say that BBC couldn't have pulled it off, just that iPlayer isn't evidence that they would have.

Within a year of launch, in 2008, iPlayer was 5% of UK Internet traffic.

(It's not available outside the UK.)

Whilst certainly not at Netflix scale, the BBC do have their own decentralised caching infrastructure called BIDI [1] that is frequently deployed inside large UK ISPs. This is similar to Netflix's OCA, Google's GGc or Facebook's FNA.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/8c6c2414-df7a-4...

iPlayer streams about 350 million shows a month. It accounts for a fair bit more than 15% of UK internet traffic and is more popular than Netflix within the UK. I know former staff who have disclosed privately some of the traffic numbers to me - they have the capability to do this sort of traffic, yes.

Edit: you may be interested in the detail here: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/iplayer/iplayer-perfo... - it should be clear the iPlayer is not just "a website"

Early versions of iPlayer were peer-to-peer to cope with the demand.

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