The BBC has signed a partnership with the British Film Institute to bring each other’s vast cinema, TV and audio archives to the public through online distribution platforms such as the iPlayer. The pair have signed a “memorandum of understanding” covering the public access, distribution rights management and digitisation, though the Beeb isn’t releasing the finer details just yet. Roly Keating, recently appointed as the corporation’s archive director, is leading the BBC’s involvement, while the chair of the BFI is former BBC director general Greg Dyke. It’s just one of the projects the BBC has rolled out to use faster minimum broadband speeds, as promised in the Digital Britain review for public-service content provision. Release.

The release stresses that the deal is “non-exclusive”, meaning the BBC will still be pushing its own archive material, nearly one million hours, through bbc.co.uk/archive; and the BFI is free to monetise its vast library of films commercially if it wishes. Jana Bennett, director of the BBC’s Vision Department, speaking at today’s FT Digital Media conference, said no decision has been made on whether the BFI content will be paid-for, free or a mixture of both. “This is crucial, as the internet challenges old assumptions about the lifespan of a programme,” she says.

Bennett said that although the Competition Commission squashed Project Kangaroo, that hasn’t affected the Beeb’s focus on VOD: in the next month, the Beeb will launch a HD channel on the iPlayer, giving many their first glimpse of HD-quality video.