BBC's Film Network Site Offering High-Resolution Downloads

For a 12-month trial period, the BBC is offering high-resolution downloads on its BBC Film Network site. (Note: the site, which launched at the London Film Festival last November, aims to promote new British filmmakers by screening short films and profiling the people who make them. It showcases three new films each week as
broadband streams, and now has a library of over 200 shorts, including dramas, documentaries, animations and more. According to the BBC, the site receives over 60,000 visitors per month and has over 5,000 registered members.) The new feature is enabled by an application which is being offered to 10,000 visitors to the site on a
first-come-first-served basis, and which allows viewing of a selection of short films in full-screen mode in near-DVD quality. Users can also subscribe, free of charge, to automatically download three new high-resolution short films every two weeks (six films are available for download through the application at any one time) and to be alerted whenever new films are ready to watch. The application is based on
technology from Kontiki and ioko that is similar to the technology that underpinned the BBC's recent Integrated Media Player (iMP) trial: it uses a legal peer-to-peer network to deliver films as high-quality video files, and uses DRM software to provide end-users with a license to view each film for 28-days, after which the film's file will automatically remove itself from their hard drives.