Peter Griffin: BBC TV's move to the net is a progressive idea

You have to hand it to the BBC. When it comes to using technology, it's one of the more progressive media companies around. British households must hate stumping up with that 126.50 ($330) a year TV licensing fee, but at least it results in some decent programming and helps fuel technology development.

I've been listening to the BBC World Service on the internet for a couple of years now. It's one of several radio station feeds available on the British broadcaster's website, at www.bbc.co.uk/radio.

And in September, the BBC will begin an ambitious trial making all of its TV drama, sport and news content downloadable via the internet.

A piece of software called the interactive media player (IMP) will be the route to all of the BBC's TV programming, which will be available for seven days after broadcast.

The bad news for us is that it doesn't appear as though the BBC will offer access to its online service outside the United Kingdom for now.

But if it works, this will eventually have big implications for TV watchers everywhere.

This is the so-called "on-demand" method of watching TV that's starting to catch on around the world.

You can do it already with devices called personal video recorders (PVRs - not the same as VCRs).

On-demand is also taking other forms. TVNZ makes video clips of news footage available on its website, and you can even download clips to Telecom mobile phones.

But here will be a new, convenient delivery path for TV programming - the internet. Download The Office or those great documentaries the BBC puts out to your computer hard drive for viewing when you want to. Maybe send the digital feed to your TV screen via a home network to watch it in the comfort of the lounge.

It's a service I'd pay for, but one that is awkward to economically provide on a global scale. Sky TV has the rights to broadcast the BBC in New Zealand and TVNZ is able to show BBC news in the early hours of the morning. The BBC gets hefty licensing income from pay TV operators around the world that broadcast its content. It doesn't want to jeopardise that revenue by giving Kiwis the feeds for free, or even a fee, via the internet.

Don't think you'll be able to get your mate in London to email you the latest episode of East Enders. The content can only be viewed using the IMP software.

Radio sits in that funny licensing vacuum on the internet where it's generally given away because there are no physical stations in other countries beaming out the same content.

Streaming radio over the internet is also relatively light on resources. TV requires much more bandwidth and video servers to supply the feeds.

The BBC's use of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing in its new service is another major advance and will help out in this department.

P2P file sharing means that as more people start downloading files, they begin downloading not from the BBC but from each others' computers. On a 512Kbps connection, it's expected to take half an hour for a 30-minute programme. If you cut away halfway through the download, you'll be able to pick up where you left off - another virtue of P2P. It will be interesting to see how Britain's high-speed internet connections handle downloading TV-quality broadcasts.

Telecom has been testing internet TV and video on demand for some time, but won't be able to successfully release it until we are using faster connections to access the internet. At the moment, most New Zealand broadband subscribers are connecting over 256Kbps connections. A 2Mbps connection - eight times faster - is recommended for receiving high-quality internet TV.

P2P technology is currently being given major endorsement by Microsoft, which has set up Avalanche (www.research.microsoft.com/~pablo/avalanche.aspx), a project to try and improve on P2P systems used by the likes of Bittorent.

For Microsoft, P2P is a nice distribution method for the regular patches it releases for its software. Rather than have its millions of Windows users bombard the Microsoft website when a new patch is released, P2P networks can more quickly spread the patch among users.

But it also wants to develop a system geared for TV downloads and to get around the biggest problem of P2P networks - where there are too many downloaders and not enough seeders to pass on the files.

Illicit P2P networks have shown us how painless it can be to download good-quality movies and TV shows to your computer. Now the legitimisation of the technology has the potential to stand the TV viewing model on its head.