CBS Hosts Ad-Funded TV Series, Incl. Original Star Trek 276
eldavojohn writes "On Friday, CBS launched a TV Classics section to their ad based online service. Which means that Trekkies can now watch all three seasons of Star Trek: The Original Series online at the expense of a few commercials. Alongside this CBS is offering all of MacGyver, Twin Peaks and even three seasons of the original Twilight Zone. A side note, they seem to work perfectly fine in Linux. "
"On Friday"? (Score:5, Informative)
Um, it's been there for over a year now. I watched the first season last spring.
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Yeah, no joke. I watched a few episodes of Trek and a lot of MacGuyver ages ago... was it in an unmarked "beta" or something?
Re:"On Friday"? (Score:4, Funny)
Obviously, the TV Classics section did a slingshot around the sun.
indeed (Score:2)
Indeed, it works just fine on LInux [as it should] It's nice to be able to *legally* watch TOS online and brainwash others in the way of Trek.
Re:indeed (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it would mean more to the viewer if they realized that the original series was written with both the Vietnam War and Summer of Love in plain view. Among all the firsts that the original series created they also created true science fiction; they created stories that told of the issues of mankind in a setting that is in the future and beyond our technology. It was a brilliant series that addressed issues of the day that were addressed in no other way that was as illuminating or cogent. They truly deserve the accolades they have received since.
The stories they told were bold and still apply to today, having stood the test of time even if the technology portrayed leaves a bit of questioning to a modern viewer. As an atheist I truly appreciate how they handled religions. Faced with racism every day I truly appreciate how they handled racism, and have continued to handle it in other series.
If we as a society follow what we are shown on television, I truly hope that we can follow the examples set by the Star Trek series.
side note: I don't wear red shirts anymore ... just can't do it.
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I don't wear red shirts anymore ... just can't do it.
Heh. I still wear red shirts sometimes, but every time I put one on I think "Dressed in red--soon be dead." I put it on anyway, just like I don't freak out when a black cat crosses my path. (Our pet cat is a black cat, so that's, like, eighteen dozen times a day, unless she just sits down in front of me and demands pettings.)
It wasn't just Red Shirts who died; any time you had a party beam down with Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Ensign Never-Seen-Him-Before,
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I suspect that Frankie Thomas and the other people who created Tom Corbet -- Space Cadet [wikipedia.org] would disagree with you, considering that they pre-dated Star Trek by almost 20 years. And, for that matter, Clark, Heinlein, Asimov, Smith and many others were writing it long before Tom Corbet was created.
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Don't forget Harlan Ellison and Alan Dean Foster. They also wrote some heavy science fiction. Oh wait... I understand why you forgot them. They also wrote Star Trek script material.
But, you could have saved yourself some time and typing, if you simply reminded the parent that he forgot two words from the end of the passage you quoted. Those two words being "on television". Go ahead. Add them to the end of what you quoted. I'll wait.
Now, when I read what he originally wrote, I never got the impression
Also works on Solaris (Score:2)
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that's why I said "as it should" as it is irrelevant what OS family you're running as long as it has a flash port.
Re:indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
well there wouldn't even be a startrek TNG without TOS and its "cheesy" effects.
Re:indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
The effects might look cheesy now, but they were much better than anything else on TV at the time. If you really want to see cheesy effects, watch the original Dr. Who sometime, or Blake's 7, for that matter.
Re:indeed (Score:5, Interesting)
TOS was campy and the special effects didn't quite match those of Enterprise, but it was the 60's! More importantly there was no Wesley or Riker!
Re:indeed (Score:5, Funny)
More importantly there was no Wesley or Riker!
What was wrong with Riker? It's not like he ever lost the Enterprise to the Ferengi [wikipedia.org], made out with a little boy [wikipedia.org], got kidnapped [wikipedia.org], accused of murder [wikipedia.org], or lost the Enterprise to an obsolete Klingon rust bucket [wikipedia.org]. Oh, never mind ;)
You'd think from increased insurance premiums alone Picard would have had ample reason to find a new Number One ;)
Re:indeed (Score:5, Funny)
You'd think from increased insurance premiums alone Picard would have had ample reason to find a new Number One
As opposed to Jean-Luc "I surrender" Picard? He may have had the British accent, but you could tell he was French by how quickly he was willing to surrender. To anyone.
To paraphrase the late Tasha Yar, "He surrenders at the drop of a hat. Any hat."
Off the top of my head, there was his surrender to Q.
He tried to surrender to the Ferengi in The Last Outpost.
In The Outragous Okona, he ordered the shields dropped "In case we decide to surrender to them."
and in A Matter of Honor, he surrendered to Riker (who had taken over a Klingon ship.)
Seen on Ebay : "2nd hand Phaser inscribed "JPL". Never fired. Only dropped once."
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Hey you weren't the one terrorizing all them convenience stores with the Klingon Batleth were you?
Outside the US? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Outside the US? (Score:4, Insightful)
No thanks. I'll stick with BitTorrent, if only because I live outside the US, and it won't be available outside the US, for some reason.
That reason is copyright law...which, unless I'm mistaken, CBS doesn't control.
Re:Outside the US? (Score:5, Interesting)
I find it hard to believe that they don't have control over their own copyrights.
Re:Outside the US? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's quite possible they sold the foreign rights to Trek long before the Internet came along...
Re:Outside the US? (Score:5, Funny)
yah, but if the CBS execs went warp 10 around the sun, they could go back and, uh...
Re:Outside the US? (Score:5, Funny)
yah, but if the CBS execs went warp 10
They could "hyper-evolve" into salamanders and have gross salamander sex?
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For the love of God someone mod this as funny. Silliest episode of ST:Voyager I ever saw.
J
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<NerdVoice
Uh, no. There's no mysterious "time boundary" at warp 10, it's just that NCC-1701-C couldn't effectively do it. However, in an alternate timeline, NCC-1701-D (under Commander Riker) *could* achieve as much as warp 13, and this was key to its victory, even though the alternate timeline was destroyed in the process.
I can't believe you don't know this... EVERYBODY knows that warp 13 is totally possible...
/NerdVoice
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Re:Outside the US? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but hasn't it already been proven that just because a site in one jurisdiction allows viewers from another jurisdiction they can't be charged because the other jurisdiction forbids the content thats legal in the first jurisdiction?
Theory predicts that that would cause a trans-jurisdictional warp anomaly, which could lead to a subpoena cascade. Very dangerous. But Data and I think that if we can reconfigure the deflector array to emit bogus affadavits in the "do-whatever-I-want"-band, the high-energy subpoenas will be completely neutralized. It would be like stuffing a mailbox with scrap paper!
Re:Outside the US? (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine you are an international TV station guy who just purchased airing rights of Star Trek and when you browse slashdot, you see this story, click and start watching the series you just purchased for $100K or even more. That is the issue.
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That wouldn't be solved by restricting the distribution by Ip address. It's fantastically easy to go through any of numerous proxies available on the internet.
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Why do people keep bringing proxies into these discussions? Sure, there are lots of proxies available, but how many free (or cheap) high bandwidth ones are there? We are talking video here. Bouncing it through a bunch of low bandwidth connections doesn't leave you with a very good experience.
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My guess is that there's absolutely no margin for CBS in trying to block proxy users. The only reason they block is due to the demands of advertisers and/or foreign licensees - if a user works around that block CBS wins an ad view.
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It's fantastically easy to go through any of numerous proxies available on the internet.
And the portion of the population that is knowledgeable enough to do that is small enough that Viacom really doesn't give a rats ass about them.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man [wikipedia.org]
Re:Outside the US? (Score:5, Insightful)
One problem is probably regional sublicensing, so it's more contractual than copyright, but there is copyright involved. CBS might have sublicenced the distribution rights series to other companies based on country or region, and they can't just violate those licenses. These contracts predate the popularity of using the internet for video, and they can't just go back on them without consequences.
They might have some problems selling ads for non-US viewers too, there's no sense in selling ads for viewers in the UK for products that are as yet only sold in the US.
Re:Outside the US? Like Canada (Score:4, Informative)
Browsing from Canada this is all I get when I try to watch videos...
"The video you requested is unavailable. Please visit www.cbs.com for current videos."
Is this just a coincidence or is anyone having the same issue?
Maybe you wanted www.cbs.ca (Score:2)
As an American, I suppose it is fair, you don't get American shows, even if they have Canadian actors "starring" in them, and I don't get Canadian programming.
Hmmm, on second thought, maybe you win?
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Same deal here....I was going in for a quick Macgyver fix, perhaps some things are best left to memory.
Wait, maybe with some bubble-gum, a proxy, and my shoelace.....ahhhhhhh, that's it. Yes, it's as bad as I remember.
Re:Outside the US? Hot Spot Shield (Score:3, Informative)
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I find it hard to believe that they don't have control over their own copyrights.
ORLY? [bittorrent.com]
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That's why proxies were invented, they don't know the difference...
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Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Re:Outside the US? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, and that's exactly why Bittorrent is the mechanism of choice for many. What CBS is doing is the future, and it's a pretty good future, where Bittorent isn't needed -- once they figure out that they can solve so many problems by making shows available to the entire world.
Low ratings in the US? Not such a problem, if your show is available globally instantly. Plus, your ratings aren't based on a Neilsen sample, they are based on hard numbers from actual views. You can make more than 100 times the revenue from advertising to a global audience -- there's plenty of global companies (and I'm sure it's possible to have local ad partners providing local feeds by reading IP addresses). There is no reason whatsoever that CBS is not a Network that broadcasts to every English speaker in the World simultaneously.
Yes, there are rights and distribution issues with the current system that prevent that from happening. Which is why that system is outdated and must be changed. Just as the world no longer needs record companies, the world really no longer needs distributors.
Once the Networks eventually figure this -- very obvious -- fact out, then we will see not only real progress, but perhaps we might actually get to see complete seasons of the shows we love. Firefly, for example, would never have been canceled if it was distributed under this model.
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Yes, and that's exactly why Bittorrent is the mechanism of choice for many. What CBS is doing is the future, and it's a pretty good future, where Bittorent isn't needed -- once they figure out that they can solve so many problems by making shows available to the entire world.
Online is great and all, but I also want the shiny pressed disk in case I have a system failure. I don't want my purchases to be lost because my UPS decided to fail while I away for the evening and wasn't able to turn my media server off before a freak lightning storm, only to find out later that my backup DVDs had dye rot.
I've always liked the idea of a subscription model. Drop two hours of content on a DVD (or Blu-Ray), take five to seven bucks off my Visa, and mail it to me. I wouldn't need to hit the
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You're only including countries that have large populations that speak English as a first language which is about 375M. If you also include countries that have large populations that speak English as a second (or even third language) then you're probably talking (pun intended) about another 470M to 1B depending on how literacy is defined. A pretty good sized target market for any advertiser. Add in subtitles which are easier than dubbing and you can reach most of the planet without too much difficulty.
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Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
This and Hulu make me very happy. It takes a bit longer to download than bittorrent, but I don't find the ads obtrusive (so short), the quality is good enough for me, and the option to stream live is handy.
I imagine they don't like you downloading it but sometimes I don't have tubes, and as the commercials aren't annoying I don't bother removing them.
Now if only they carried programming I liked more...and here we are:-)
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The big thing that bothers me about some of the ads is that they are much louder than the show itself. If they fix that they'll be much less obnoxious. (They may have fixed it already, it's been a few months)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't suppose the government should be wasting their time with writing laws for Internet ad volumes, but it's freggin' annoying.
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It's not just CBS. I like to watch The Daily Show and Colbert Nation online, and they raise the volume significantly too. They still do it today. It really pisses me off because it's outside of my comfort level, and often times I *have* to mute it.
The other thing I hate are repeated ads. It's super annoying that there are only like 2 ads in circulation at any time, and oftentimes I watch the same ad or from the same company for all 4 "commercial breaks".
I don't understand how the advertisers approve of this
Re:Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
I have been using Chrome + Privoxy for weeks and havent seen a single Hulu add. Recently I don't even have the 30 second delay, just a 1 second jump where the advertisement should be.
Try it out if you want to avoid the adds.
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Kaspersky's firewall automatically blocks the ads and instantly jumps back to the show as well. I haven't taken the time to investigate exactly how it does it, but I'm sure that any firewall could be configured to do the same.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want internet video to continue to provide you a service you have to actually accept having to view the ads.
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Its no different than me using a DVR to record the show, and then skip the commercials when I watch it later. Its like my grandfather used to do before the VCR, put the TV on mute until the commercials were over.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly I'm kind of bummed that these work-arounds to sites like Hulu exist. Finally I have a means of watching TV where i don't feel like I am wasting too much of my life on commercials while those that make the shows that I enjoy are able to make some money. Now that we're seeing a move back towards a reasonable level of advertising for TV we've got people abusing the system to the ultimate determent of us all.
I like the fact that I can honestly watch these shows without watching 8 - 9 minutes of commercials for every 21 - 22 minutes of show. It's really disappointing to find out that there are those that are actively ruining this for the rest of us because they can't be bothered with 2 - 3 30 second advertisements so that those who make the TV we like can make a bit of money.
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For me it's a mixed thing.
I want to support the site and would happily watch the ads. Ads are NOT why I rip Hulu video for later viewing.
Unfortunately, Adobe's Flash player is AWFUL and requires 2-3 times the CPU power of any other method to play back the same videos. My HDTV is fed by a somewhat older HTPC system that can happily play back most content I want to watch. This system can play back Hulu and CBS ripped FLV videos with 20-30% CPU usage at worst. The same videos played "legitimately" stutter
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If HULU still gets the revenue and I get to avoid the ad I'm all for it, but if it is like any other adblocker I'll suffer through it to support a great website. Hulu is one of the first media services who get it AFAIC, and I short of ORB it's the only service that I can rely on for something mindless to listen to while I'm working.
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... and you don't risk getting sued into bankruptcy this way ...
Star Trek should be required in schools. (Score:5, Interesting)
And by that, I mean, classic Trek. See, the current vogue is that every character has to have faults and be greedy and weak somehow... I mean, in the new Galactica everyone has more issues than a Windows Beta, and its like, it sucks. Men are all crying, cheating, pathetic, and I'm supposed to draw some moral lesson from these people? What a joke.
On the other hand, there's Captain Kirk, decorated, confident, successful. Now, he goes and tells me that there is a better way, that, I don't have to be a big jackass and we can solve social problems, learn about the world around us, and not be sissies about it, that's all good.
Re:Star Trek should be required in schools. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Star Trek should be required in schools. (Score:4, Insightful)
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There are times when I'd rather it was Debbie Does Dallas in space.
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Stewart played Picard so perfectly he really was a model of a leader: detached, confident, stubborn and strong. Kirk was good, but Shatner is/was not even 1/4 the actor Stewart is. I'm not trolling, but Stewart is truly outstanding.
Old news... (Score:3, Informative)
Twilight Zone episodes [tv.com] have been online for the last year, at least...
STTNG, Voyager, Stargate, Atlantis are online via ShoutCast...
Why are you guys so out of the loop...?
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STTNG, Voyager, Stargate, Atlantis are online via ShoutCast...
ShoutCast [shoutcast.com] is the Nullsoft/AOL internet radio site. Do you mean Fancast [fancast.com]?
Assuming you meant the latter, I went to their site and found ST:TOS, but nothing about ST:TNG. I don't think that TNG is available on any of these ad-supported, media-company-supported sites.
When did CBS get the rights? (Score:2)
If I remember correctly, NBC was originally responsible for Trek Classic.
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Wikipedia tells it better than I can: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBS_Corporation [wikipedia.org]
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:When did CBS get the rights? (Score:4, Informative)
It's an honest mistake for one so young...
You see, way back when, there were studios and there were broadcast networks. Broadcast networks weren't allowed to own studios. So they would buy the rights to air the program (and they would have some say over content and the like), but the studio owned the program. So when a network cancelled a program, the studio would make the money on syndication and, later, on DVD sales. The studios would make more money on syndication and DVD sales than they made from the networks for the original airings.
So, back then, all NBC did was show Star Trek on their network. Desilu (and later, Paramount) owned the actual rights to the show.
Of course, they got rid of that rule about networks owning studios (which is how the Fox network, etc. came about). Studios bought up networks (Disney bought ABC, NBC is part of Universal, and CBS is part of Viacom, which includes Paramount). This works nicely for the studios because they are no longer dependent on some outside source to make shows popular--they control everything.
Gotta love TV networks (Score:5, Interesting)
It won't let me watch from Puerto Rico: "The video you have requested is unavailable. Please visit www.cbs.com for current videos."
You really gotta love these TV networks. Here we have a global network -- the modern wonder that is the Internet -- and the TV networks can't think of anything better to do than to impose the same old territorial divisions through entirely artificial means. Reaching a global audience used to be a technical challenge, but with the Internet there is no longer any need for that. I can't wait for the day when these "old fart" networks are displaced by their modern counterparts.
Then there's ESPN, that wants to impose the cable TV model upon ISPs...
I say again... I can't wait for the day.
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Nope. Ads are very time and location specific. They can't advertise the same things everywhere at the same time. Sandals vs snowtires, & Miami vs Minnesota.
In traditional media (TV and print), it is easy. But retailers and advertisers are still trying to figure out how to manage that concept in the online world.
Re:Gotta love TV networks (Score:5, Insightful)
Or if that's not how it works, they could have a neutral start page and then have people select the country they're from and ta da, targeted advertising.
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Country specific ads? Maybe you're not sure of how they work, but CBS does not produce and air ads out of their own pocket. To serve 'country specific content' (ads), CBS would have to contract with some retailers/manufacturers/advertisers everywhere.
They're not that savvy yet. Or maybe they just don't want to.
And it's not just country, but region. The aforementioned Miami vs Minnesota situation looks at very different product
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Re:Gotta love TV networks (Score:4, Insightful)
Google makes billions of dollars on advertising. The international nature of the Internet has not impeded this.
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What amazes me is that some ISP's according to ESPN have drank the cool-aid and are paying the extortion fee. I suppose it's good to try new revenue models, but I sure hope this doesn't catch on.
Reminds me a project I was working on years ago where we had a device that processed video signals thought a pc. Someone engineer brought up the issue of macrovision (or product stripped out macrovision as a side-effect). So someone (engineer) checked it out and found out that we would have to pay the macro-folks
Unavailable for everyone outside USA (Score:2)
Are they dubbing over the original soundtrack? (Score:2)
I can see it now....tension as Amok Time climaxes with Kirk and Spock fighting to the death. /Queue melodramatic music
Kirk: Drink coke, Spock!
Spock: Eat at McDonalds!!! *Spock nails Kirk to the floor*
Kirk: No! *kick* Eat *kick* at *kick* Joe's *kick* Spock *kick*
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FYI: Can't have any adblocking (Score:4, Interesting)
I tried to fire up one of the episodes in Opera, only to be met with the message that the video was unavailable because I had ad-blocking software installed. Thinking it was some browser detect issue, I tried FireFox. No joy. Google Chrome, no luck. I sighed and fired up IE thinking this was one of those IE-only sites... no such luck.
Then I remembered that I have a pretty comprehensive ad-blocking HOSTS file.
If they want to get around ad blocking via a hosts file, they just need to deliver their ads through the CBS domain. Don't require me to open up to other sites' content to view yours.
Spyware Blocker - Blocks Twilight Zone (Score:2)
It appears like something out of Twilight Zone -
My Untangle Spyware blocker is blocking me from viewing episodes of the Twilight Zone
Lots and Lots of "Doubleclick ... blah blah" rejects in the event viewer - looks like this:
2009-02-08 9:58:11 pm
block
172.30.254.158:1171
http://content.dl-rms.com/rms/mother/6401/nodetag.js [dl-rms.com] : http://content.dl-rms.com/rms/mother/6401/nodetag.js [dl-rms.com]
in URL List
128.242.186.203:80
2009-02-08 9:58:11 pm
block
172.30.254.158:1160
http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/CBS/classics/the_twilight_zone/s [doubleclick.net]
I'm tired of TV networks like this. (Score:5, Interesting)
Boo! Put it on Hulu so Canadians can watch it too!
I don't understand these networks. They don't seem to understand that the internet is a global community. With TV there's no guarantees that you're hitting the correct audience, so the desire to filter the audience(so that it is "correct") is understandable when the opportunity arises - but what they seem to forget is they lose out on evangelical advertising because of that filtering.
I'm Canadian, but I spammed all my American friends about Hulu, and now they all watch TV there. If a show isn't available on Hulu, then we'll look for it elsewhere. If we have to jump through hoops to watch it(AOL, ABC, CBS, BBC, etc. etc.), then we won't; we'll just torrent it.
I think they'd be best off streaming it with or without ads to other countries, just to capitalize off word-of-mouth advertising. Stuff that can be watched by anyone on the internet spreads rapidly - See: Dr. Horrible [sitepoint.com], Monty Python [slashdot.org]
Networks like this will never get my endorsement - but not because of me; it's because they block me.
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You don't seem to understand the internet is a global community either. Most of Hulu isn't available in 99% of the worlds countries.
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How do you get Hulu.com in Canada?
What took them so incredibly long? (Score:2)
It's hard to believe that major networks around the world have been unable to bring their traditional business model to the Internet until now. The elevator speech is incredibly simple: "Imagine that instead of broadcasting using radio waves, we use streaming video to reach people who have abandoned traditional broadcasting in favor of the Internet." Of course, it all boils down to copyright - the rights holders simply didn't want to their content streamed on the Internet because that prevents them from sel
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Uh, you're making a big assumption here: that Slashdot carries timely news. You'd be better served to assume every single Slashdot story has at least one critical flaw to it before making any posts; it's almost always true.
These episodes have been on CBS.com's classics section for at least a year. I don't know where the hell the "friday" date in the article comes from, but I'm guessing it's either from an old news article (which isn't linked), or the submitter just pulled it out of his ass.
What was the name of the MacGyver Ep where he was (Score:2)
What was the name of the MacGyver Ep where he was messing around the with the in sides of the computer systems and messing with rom chips?
define "perfectly" (Score:3, Funny)
"A side note, they seem to work perfectly fine in Linux" (with the proprietary Flash plugin).
I tried watching it for a while... (Score:2)
Watched most of season 1. Then I got really annoyed when the video would halt partway through and reloading it involved watching the same number of commercials that I had watched up until that point. The quality is also pretty terrible. Its better than SD on youtube but its not really great. To make matters worse you cannot make the crappy image full screen. The best they do is a severe letterbox. I gave up and downloaded twin peaks and star trek from thepiratebay. they were dvd rips and the quality is supe
Not too bad (Score:2)
The commercials are few and short at least. But I'm not a fan of the modified Trek. I prefer the old special effects. I think they should have learned from George Lucas's mistakes and not rework special effects of a classic.
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I'm sorry, but I much prefer Vapor Linux, thank you.
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Be your own boss. Problem solved.