Good idea but fscking boneheaded software move

The British Film Institute has committed itself to digitizing 10,000 films from its archive and putting them online ---but--- in a proprietary format and you must use their player to stream them. From the UK Guardian:

BFI to launch online player with 10,000 films from its archives
An internet "player", which will give unprecedented access to Britain's film heritage online, whether that's the innovations of the early pioneer RW Paul or the Mass Observation documentaries of Humphrey Jennings, was announced on Tuesday as part of a five-year plan for British film.

The British Film Institute, which has taken on a lead role for all aspects of film since the abolition of the UK Film Council outlined how it plans to spend over �500m over the next five years.

The organisation's chairman Greg Dyke said that included spending �50m a year of lottery money, which was "not as much as you might think". He promised a less London-centric approach and said the BFI's three priorities would be: education and audiences; film and film-making, and film heritage.

On that last priority Dyke said: "It's all very well having the greatest film library in the world but if you can't actually get to see it, it's of limited value. I keep on making jokes that I don't believe it's there, but they tell me it is."

In fact, more than 450,000 cans of the nation's film are stored at a secret location in Warwickshire and the BFI said it was committed to digitising 10,000 films by 2017, with experts and a public vote helping to decide which films should be included. The BFIPlayer, scheduled for the end of next year, would allow viewers to watch films on-demand.

A bit more:

Using new technologies will be a key element of the BFI's strategy, its chief executive Amanda Nevill said, and five different apps are being developed to help show content.

"Eventually this will lead to a BFIPlayer," planned for the end of 2013, added Nevill.

OK -- so they spent a couple months doing a thorough investigation and discovered that there was no available software to stream videos through the internet. Because of this stunning lack of video streaming software, they are now forced to write such an app themselves. Oh Nooeeessss!!!!111!!!ELEVENTY Fear not, as soon as BFIPlayer is released, a hack will be written allowing the films to be ripped into an MP4 video file. Estimated time - less than a week.