BBC Redux

BBC Redux is a BBC Research & Development system that digitally recordstelevision and radio output in the United Kingdom produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation. It has been operating since 2007 and contains several petabytes of recordings and subtitle data. It is notable for being the proof of concept for the Flash video streaming version of the BBC iPlayer.

It is an internal research project developed for testing which acts as a giant video on demand or personal video recorder (PVR). It contains a complete digital archive, recording both television and radio twenty-four hours a day, of all of the BBC's national and also some regional broadcast output since mid-2007, and is automatically compiled without human input. The BBC stated that BBC Redux is one of its major contributions to the field of digital archiving and preservation.

Some accounts for accessing the system on a temporary basis were made available at Mashed 08 and again at Culture Hack Day 2011, providing streaming-only access to BBC content broadcast during the weekend of the event. As well as streaming, the system enables high-quality downloads of television and radio content, and has had the option to download subtitles from programmes since 2008.

BBC Redux had originally been developed at the BBC's Kingswood Warren campus, in only two months, and with the investment required being significantly less than the iPlayer. The saved content can be used for broadcast compliance checking and by BBC programme researchers. As of 2012^[update], BBC Redux is only available to employees, because existing legal contracts with content producers limit how material can be broadcast, distributed and made available to general consumers. The Readme file for associated API frameworks hosted on GitHub states:

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