BBC2 first to broadcast simultaneously online

24th November 2005

Quoting from the MediaGuardian article:

"BBC2's controller, Roly Keating, yesterday revealed that it would be the first of the corporation's channels to be broadcast simultaneously over the internet next year as part of the BBC's efforts to reach viewers via the internet and mobile phones."

According to the BBC R&D department, when the BBC TV channels start simulcasting via the Internet they will use multicasting technology to distribute them because this technology vastly reduces the amount of server bandwidth the BBC needs, and this will allow the BBC to provide TV channels at a far higher quality than would be the case if they used unicasting, which is currently by far the most common method of distributing live streams.

Only people that are on an ISP that supports multicasting will be able to receive the live streams, although it is expected that once one of the BBC TV channels is made available via the Internet then a lot more ISPs will choose to support multicasting.

Once your ISP supports multicasting then you will be able to receive the BBC radio stations via the Internet at far higher audio quality than via DAB.