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youngNed04/01/20252 repliesview on HN

I find it weird that people don't think of the BBC as a tech company, from their work on microphones way back in the day, to launching iPlayer (before youtube, and launching on christmas day iirc) to regular live streaming of huge events in 4k (something netflix has struggled with). But yet they are never recognised for their engineering.


Replies

dkh04/01/2025

They've done a lot of great stuff and I've always followed their engineering-related tools and content as well! In particular they made some major contributions to media archival and analysis tools, and, yes of course, to web players. Unfortunately they haven't put as much focus on a lot of it in recent years, at least not in the tools they've opened sourced and topics they used to write about a lot

finnthehuman04/01/2025

I don't think they're not recognized for it, they just don't brand themselves as it.

For as long as broadcasting has been a thing, major broadcasters were involved in pushing the technology forward. For most of it's history the American network NBC was a subsidiary of the Radio Corporation of America. But NBC's brand is not tech, they want to consumer to associate the gliz of the picture.