ABC, CBS, and NBC Block Google TV 227
markjhood2003 writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that 'ABC, CBS and NBC are blocking TV programming on their websites from being viewable on Google Inc.'s new Web-TV service. ... Spokespeople for the three networks confirmed that they are blocking the episodes on their websites from playing on Google TV, although both ABC and NBC allow promotional clips to work using the service.' Google has responded, 'Google TV enables access to all the Web content you already get today on your phone and PC, but it is ultimately the content owners' choice to restrict their fans from accessing their content on the platform.'"
Sickbeard & XBMC. (Score:5, Informative)
Sickbeard [sickbeard.com] makes one hell of a DVR program. (When paired with sabnzbd [sabnzbd.org] or a torrent program).
$25 for a 180GB block from Astraweb has lasted me since August and I haven't even burned through 1/2 of it yet. (I used to have the $10/month unlimited until I realized how much I really didn't use it). Programs available within a few minutes of the show ending. 30 minute TV shows take 2-3 minutes. Hour long never take longer than 10. (Heck when I saturate my cable I can have a movie in 8 minutes).
XBMC [xbmc.org] makes one hell of a nice front end. I come home from school or work and just browse to the 'latest episodes' and watch something.
Re:meh (Score:1, Informative)
Re:meh (Score:5, Informative)
There is one solution that's legal. You could get a dual C band dish or a C and K band, or a K and Ku band with a non-branded digital receiver and pay a satellite channel clearinghouse for channels rather than a satellite service with integrated packages of receiver and set station lists.
You'll pay more. It won't be as convenient. You'll have a positioning delay as your dish tracks to the different distribution satellites instead of a dedicated customer feed satellite like with Dish Network or Direct TV. You'll have to pay for installation and support on a consulting basis because you won't have the dedicated support staff of a subscriber-based company like Dish Network or Direct TV. You'll have increasingly uncommon equipment to keep maintained at your own expense.
On the bright side, you can get a few free satellite channels. You'll also be able to get free audio distribution channels for syndicated shows in extra audio channels of the video channels sometimes. You won't have to do business with someone also wanting to sell you Internet access. You'll just have a lot of cons to get the few pros.
Re:It baffles me (Score:5, Informative)
If anyone cares...
CBS Feedback Form
http://www.cbs.com/info/user_services/fb_global_form.php [cbs.com]
NBC Feedback Form
http://nbc.researchresults.com/?s=3 [researchresults.com]
ABC Contact Form
http://abc.go.com/site/contact-us [go.com]
Re:It baffles me (Score:5, Informative)
My apologies, for NBC this is the contact page...
http://www.nbc.com/contact/general/ [nbc.com]
Re:Boo hoo, this battle are the so difficults D: (Score:4, Informative)
If I, personally, was given the choice between being called a dinosaur by morons and working thanklessly for them for free, I would rather be called a dinosaur. I'm not sure I could afford anything different.
Cable companies are now supplying DVRs, and, like I said, providing free versions of their shows online. I can't think of a format shifting example, but then again, I can't think of anyone who expects to be able to format-shift their TV. Bitch all you want, but cable companies are adapting, and you whiny pirates are revealing yourselves to be the greedy, inflexible ones in all of this. Whodathunkit?
Citation needed. Why on earth would I want anything like that?
What I do want is sustainable practices when it comes to art. I don't mind if we do away with copyright, only if we have a working, implemented, and already used system that replaces all of copyrights functions. I'm sceptical that we can find one that embraces the self-justifying pirate's sense of self-entitlement and abject greed, but like any good sceptic, I'm open to the possibilities.
Have you spouted this same crap before to me? I'm sorry if I don't remember you; you sound just like all the other self-entitled pricks I've argued with: rhetorically empty, with arguments pasted together purely out of insults.
As for the $300mil blockbuster, I think the market should decide. Nobody is forcing you, or anyone else, to see them.
Let's get this straight. You took a half-truth like "eyeballs are the product" (advertising is only a portion of their revenue), you used that to create a laughably bad analogy, and then concluded something from it about something that was only tangentially related to thing you created the analogy about? That is seriously the worst argument I have heard in at least a month or three.
I certainly agree with that. Supporting alternatives is what will get us off our dependence on Big Media. Not just downloading more from them.
Let's get this straight. Choosing to search for and illegally download from a torrent is not the same as walking down the street, hearing buskers and seeing billboards. To claim otherwise is utterly dishonest.
High definition was for text (Score:3, Informative)
What is the source of this myth that "computer screens" and "televisions" are different things, having different sizes and used in different rooms?
Until 2006 or so, high definition was for text.
In the mid-1980s, home computers lost the ability to output standard-definition television as a standard feature. One needed a special monitor to display the EDTV signals (480p RGB component) from the new "VGA" video cards; TVs could handle only 480i or 576i depending on the local AC power frequency. PCs of the time were designed to show text, not video, and they added high-definition "XGA" modes to display more text on the screen. There were adapters called "scan converters" to turn 480p, 600p, and eventually 768p into 480i, but few people knew about them, and for this reason, even fewer applications were specifically designed for them. Instead, computer monitors surged toward higher resolutions to show even more text: 864p, 1024p, and 1200p.
The fundamental incompatibility between standard-definition TVs and high-definition computer monitors didn't change until the late 2000s when HDTV took off. By then, there had been two decades of tradition of separation of TVs from computer monitors. Only geeks have both the knowledge of how HDTV actually works and a culture of experimentation (as opposed to a presupposition that if one plugs two things together that aren't traditionally plugged together, it could fry one or both) to break this tradition.
Where did people start to get the idea that turning on a "computer" is different than turning on an enclosure with a CPU and RAM and HDMI-out which just happens to be labeled "cable box" or "DVD player" or "Wii" or "Roku"?
That's because nobody has come up with a national (in the United States) ad campaign for a nettop HTPC.
Re:Sickbeard & XBMC. (Score:5, Informative)
Sickbeard [sickbeard.com] makes one hell of a DVR program. (When paired with sabnzbd [sabnzbd.org] or a torrent program).
$25 for a 180GB block from Astraweb ...
Since I never heard of Sickbeard, sabnzbd, or Astraweb, I figured I'd do a little research, and post my (Score: 5 Informative?) findings here. Please correct me if I made any mistakes....
Sickbeard is an open source, GPL licensed Python application (so runs on Windows and Linux and other platforms), that watches newsgroups, looking for announcements of TV shows whose torrents have been put on the web. In Sickbeard, the user can specify which shows he is interested in, and it keeps an eye out for those shows. Once it finds shows that the user has specified, it can queue up a retrieval program, but Sickbeard doesn't retrieve them itself.
Sickbeard will request the show from sabnzbd. Sabnzbd is also open source, Python. Its function is to go retrieve binaries from newsgroups. So it seems to me that the newsgroups have both the announcement of the availability of a TV program (like a torrent tracker), and the actual program. Sickbeard is watching the announcements, and Sabnzbd is grabbing the program.
Astraweb is a newsgroup website that apparently allows you to download newsgroup posts. This is a paid service, and the parent post signed up for a $25 service for 180GB of downloads. Based on my MythTV experience, I'm guessing this might be 180 half hours of TV (please correct this number if I am off!).
So for $25 plus 2 free open source programs, I can have almost 200 half-hour programs that I can watch anytime (starting a few minutes after they air). Interesting!
----
I'm looking for a "to go" solution for watching TV at a cottage (where we have no cable, and no internet). We've been getting by with taking Netflix with us each time we go to the cottage (combined with a small DVD collection), but this might be an interesting supplement! (Other suggestions welcome!!)
Re:God damnit.... (Score:3, Informative)
>>>Because Google ( a business in the business of making money ) wants to make boat loads of money on their product without paying for it?
Ooops! ABC, CBS, and NBC are public broadcasters.
They don't charge to access their content.
You can watch it for free (via antenna or internet).
I can't think of any logical reason why these broadcasters would block Google or any other web device. Perhaps the FCC ought to revoke their licenses to public frequencies, and give channels 2 to 51 for cellphone/internet usage? Why? Because ABC, CBS, NBC are acting like turds. Not that I want that to lose free TV, but it would be a friendly reminder to the Big Three where they sit (their use of the People's airwaves is a *privilege* not a right).
.
>>>If Google wants to make money off of them, than perhaps they should pay the networks a cut of the take?
Why? CATV doesn't. DishTV doesn't. Neither do I (all of them I get free).
Re:It baffles me (Score:3, Informative)
>>>The ratings provided by Nielsen et al only count live viewers.
False.
The HouseHold ratings only count live viewers, but the Same Day and 7-Day Ratings add the DVR homes to the total.
Re:Sickbeard & XBMC. (Score:4, Informative)
In the US, both are illegal. It's just that it's far far easier to go after the uploaders, and even that isn't working out that well for the RIAA/MPAA.