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Television Media

DirecTV Can Disable HDTV Reception Remotely 188

Posted by timothy from the sneakiness dept.
Marty writes: "Most of us are still waiting for HDTV to arrive. There have been some alternatives available to people who don't live in an area with a HDTV-broadcasting station, like DirecTV. However, it looks like DirecTV has chosen to go the content-control route with the MPAA. Their set top boxes now contain the CGMS, or Copy Generation Management System. Part of the scheme allows for the remote disablement of the HDTV (480p, 720p, and 1080i) analog outputs on the set-top box, allowing the user to only view the low-grade 480i picture, even though the programming is broadcast in HD. So, now that you've spent $2000+ on your HDTV, $1000 on your DirecTV HDTV box, and your DirecTV subscription, someone else decides whether or not you can actually take advantage of that investment. You can read the full details here at E-Town."
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DirecTV Can Disable HDTV Reception Remotely More

DirecTV Can Disable HDTV Reception Remotely

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  • EEs - possible to bypass? (Score:3)

    by AntiNorm ( 155641 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2001 @07:07PM (#485617)
    Part of the scheme allows for the remote disablement of the HDTV (480p, 720p, and 1080i) analog outputs on the set-top box

    As an EE student in college, that for some reason sounds like it would be possible to bypass in hardware. Solder the output pin(s) of this chip here, break this connection, etc. Can any real EEs comment on this?

    ---
    Check in...OK! Check out...OK!

  • They'll quickly realize this won't fly... (Score:3)

    by Gendou ( 234091 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2001 @07:07PM (#485618) Homepage
    DirectTV may, as soon as customers realize that their investment of a large sum is in danger, reconsider. Now, they most likely put this in the fine print (a TOS perhaps?) that most people won't read, but there is no way that this is going to be quiet. Also consider the salesperson level of the deal. They'll be sure to point out the cons of a cheaper product (I think :).

    I'm not sure on this, but I'd wager that this will seriously hurt their business and they'll change if they want to survive.

  • Is it just me or does it really seem like the content providers (studios, networks, et all) are simply paranoid about piracy? It's not a non-existant issue, but compared to legit sales of product, piracy is an incredibly small issue.
  • Does anyone else feel like driving a truck bomb right into the corporate office of these people?
  • There is enough hacking of DirectTV that I am sure someone will try.

  • Though I am not a big audio/video file (I still have a 2 head VCR), just the idea that a remote company can have control over how I use my personal equipment scares me. All I really have to say is that hopefully, once this stuff really starts to hit the market in full force, the mass market will soon figure out that they're being led like calf to slaughter and all of this content control management crap will die a death of 1,000 DIVX's.

  • But, if DirectTV is the one sending it, why don't they just disable HDTV broadcasts? I don't get it.

  • Is it just me or is HDTV DOA? (Score:5)

    by evilned ( 146392 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2001 @07:13PM (#485624) Homepage
    With all of these content restrictions, wont HDTV pretty much be dead? I mean really, are you gonna tell me what I cant video tape? It really sounds like the big corporate giants want to kill it, from the bitching about broadcasting at 1080i, the content controls, the slowness with which it is being rolled out, I get the distinct feeling that the broadcast industry just created this HDTV thing to get the free bandwidth, and not to actually improve TV. My thoughts? Take back the spectrum, and auction it. These jokers dont seem to be in any hurry to use it.
  • Would it be better for recorded digital programs to be watermarked with the recoder brand, date of recording and a not for resale at the top or bottom of the screen, and this would defeat most piracy.

    I support watermarks on recordings so both sides can have their cake and eat it too.

  • Let's all scream and yell, DON'T READ the article (Score:5)

    by alexhmit01 ( 104757 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2001 @07:14PM (#485626)
    Okay, I love hysteria, but this is silly. DirecTV can cut off HDTV... They can also cut off your service in general. That is how it works, you pay them for service, they give you service. Remote stoppage is useful. They aren't rendering your TV dead, they are rendering your DSS system for them dead.

    If they were to use stuff like this randomly, they'd lose customers. Come on people. DirecTV isn't a necessity, it's a luxury and a monthly service that they can end (barring a contract).

    Alex
  • "Now that the TV reception is okay, the programs are lousy."

    -- Charles M. Schulz, via Lucy Van Pelt

  • I still don't get it (Score:4)

    by kreyg ( 103130 ) <kreyg AT shaw DOT ca> on Tuesday January 23, 2001 @07:15PM (#485628) Homepage
    How much money does the MPAA lose from average people taping stuff that's being freely transmitted? ZERO? How much are they going to lose if people get fed up with these sorts of restrictions and find something better to do with their time?

    I see two possibilities for such absurdity:
    1. Somebody's getting paid a lot of money to LIE to the management of these companies (paid by the company as consultants I would imagine). This person would cease to be paid if there were no problems, so they get created artificially.
    2. These companies are consciously trying to monopolize content distribution by making all distibution methods under their sole control.

    There are probably more, these just popped into my conspiratorital (that's not a word, is it?) little mind the most quickly.

    &LTsigh&GT

  • i've had an hdtv set for almost a year now, and i have to say, im significantly less than impressed, there is an extremely poor programming choice available (in my area anyway)

    it seems to me that the users of hdtv may make this another one of the pay-per-view options, and make the higher resolutions available at a special higher price (watch this movie in high-resolution, click

    • Here
    ) of course, with the rate of hdtv's inception, i feel it's going to be awhile before this is an extremely pertinent issue.
  • One poster has said that people will never buy it then. But, I am afraid they still will. That's what people said about bad TOS, DVDs, etc. But most people don't care, and make up enough of their market. I saw some Slashdotter say in a post a day or two ago that: "If you put a frog in boiling water, it will jump right out. But if you put it in cold water and heat it, the frog will say there until it dies." That is so true about the general American public. Anyone who complains, boycotts, or dislikes something like this is branded as "crazy" or "paranoid", and most people will just ignore them. It's sad but I'm afraid it is true.
  • It is all about revenue.

    Once the providers decide on more ways to make money (i.e charging viewers $9.99 to watch a game 2 hours after it is over instead of $19.99 Live) There *ARE* people who record a game and dont watch any news shows or read the paper till they have watched the recorded show. This would be an excellent way for them to capitalise on people who work during the show time.

    Piracy is the lowest item on the list. Piracy is possible for Pay-Per-View movies, but by then the video is already in your corner video rental.

    IMHO this is all about controlling and adding a revenue stream.
    But for the life of me I dont understand why they would want to reduce the grade on the picture? Is this the "Go stand in the corner" punishment from them?


    The number of the beast ...
  • ok, i haven't read the articles so [flame suit="on"], but seriously...

    1. tv sets and video playback equipment is not an 'investment'. you don't sell it years later and make money on it (as always there are exceptions that prove the rule.)

    2. this is just my (somewhat (un?)informed) opinion, but hdtv doesn't seem like it's really ready. i'm sure i'll get flamed for that, but i just don't know alot of people who have them, and they don't seem to be selling like hotcakes.

    3. i'm just a poor college student, so it's not like i have the cash to buy one (hdtv set) anyway, but i wouldn't (won't?) even consider it while all these arguments over control are going on. RIAA, MPAA, DVD's, HDTV, blah blah blah... there is a lot of fighting over control which will translate into money vs freedom, and who wants to get caught in the crossfire? i dunno 'bout you, but i'm waiting to see who wins and THEN i'll worry about to buy.

    4. lots of freedom issues... why give them money to take more of your money AND your freedom away from you, etc. important things to consider.

    anyway, i've really wandered off the beaten track here, so here i finish. flame away.

    eudas

  • Eh? (Score:3)

    by microbob ( 29155 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2001 @07:19PM (#485633)
    Hmm, I need to do some more investigation. Currently I get two channels in HD (1080i) from DirectTV, one HBO and a demo channel that shows other stuff (the Discovery-HD rules!!).


    But, I can get three local channels too: CBS and local weather (oh boy!).


    Having experienced full 1080i I'll never go back to regular TV.


    Even the digital channels on DirecTV blow away a regular TV tube on my 62" HTDV.


    Down with analog TV.


    Unless you have tried it, don't bitch or you'll be a fool.


    Micro

  • Seems to me that DirecTV is taking the stance that more is better. Since more channels can be broadcast at a lower definition, they might theorize that they could cram more channels in their service and thus entice more users with obscure channels (Competitive Icky Poo TV anyone?).

    However, they could also use this in a beneficial way. I am not really sure on how their system works but if the system can affect how a single decoder receives the channels it could allow the user to have more control over their content. More channels at a lower definition, or less at a higer definition; or maybe a mix, pick the few you want in HDTV and leave the rest at standard definition.

    What all comes out of it really depends on how they use this system as it could be either benificial or harmful to the viewer's experience. Having the choice to customize HDTV viewing options would be great if more stations actually broadcast in HDTV.

    Like everything else in technology, the tech itself isn't inherently evil, just the way you might use it.

  • George Orwell was close (Score:3)

    by Gunnery Sgt. Hartman ( 221748 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2001 @07:20PM (#485635) Homepage
    Big Brother isn't watching you. He just doesn't want you to watch.

  • Re:EEs - possible to bypass? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think the idea is they can send a 1080i signal, charge a higher "HD" rate to certain customers, and send 480i to everyone not paying that rate.
  • It does seem like they're just ridiculously paranoid sometimes, but my impression is that in a lot of cases the amount of money lost to piracy is significant relative to legitimate sales. I guess that impression is based on how much I hear about international piracy of M$ products (which is just hilarious, but that's another issue). But the more important point is that their whole god damn conception of how to make money is totally wrong in this era. There are too many people holding jobs that simply have no place in a market structure like this (with people being able to exchange content).

  • Looks like people will have to go inside their TVs to get the signal they need to exercise their legally-granted rights to time-displace content.

    Then what, the TV sets will be manufactured with an explosive charge which will destroy the insides unless a smart card is used to open it?

    So people will have to use TEMPEST-like tactics to construct the signal from leakage and feed it to their recorders.

    Then what, HDTV sets will be constructed with Faraday cages, adding a few dozen kg to the weight and several cm all around to the dimensions, requiring substantial extra power to make up for the intensity lost by viewing through a steel screen?

    So people will use cameras to record the image displayed on the screen, together with software that counters the distortion created by the glass shape and pixel fuzziness.

    Then what, TVs will display encrypted content directly on their screens and people who want to watch PPV wrestling events will have to have a chip mounted along their optic nerve to decrypt the signal en route to the brain?

    I for one can't wait. I am sick and tired of all these morally bankrupt thieves thinking they can just watch shows they've paid for and listen to music they bought. I mean, where do they get off? Actually, "thieves" is too weak a word. I will henceforth refer to these foul malefactors as Intellectual Property Rights Murderers, for their offenses against the most hallowed recording and motion picture industries are tantamount to murder and should be punished as such. Until the State wises up and handles these heinous crimes accordingly, we can thank God that technology will provide suitable interim measures.

  • Lawyer says "Failure to disclose limiting hardware and software" is bad. Can you say.. freedom to enjoy a hockey fight in all the thousands of pixels available gone... no way. I say that the distributors of media signals should have to pay for the hardware to limit signals.. let people purchase what they want.. and watch those wasted dollars go away.
  • It's a satellite dish! Everyone's getting the exact same signal. It's not like they can say "Okay, this guy paid for our premium service, so we need to beam 1080i to his house and 480i to everyone else's house. Everyone gets the same feed from the satellite, the receiver determines what to do with it.


  • What the industry does not grasp is by placing all these restrictions on devices, they create the pirate market. If I want to watch the HDTV broadcast of a superbowl at 2am I will find a way to do it. Be it a hardware hack/dongle or a software solution, this industry will FORCE me to violate the law. And for those of you you say "I don't see them twisting your arm", anything the prevents me from viewing content, whether ad supported or pay per view, can only have one of two results, me changing the channel or me fixing the problem.

    I aplogize for not being a good lemming and accepting the crap the RIA/MPAA dish out. And remember, all these steps are being taken to represent the corporate interests in the distribution channel and not necessarily the interests of the content creaters.

  • Sure you can probably bypass it...but that's also probably illegal under the DMCA.

    Sad...

  • EchoStar Advertisement (Score:3)

    by tokra ( 302892 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2001 @07:36PM (#485643)
    Although the article is quite informative, I find it to be advertisement for EchoStar. How convenient is it to point out that DishNet offers equipment without the circuit. Hmm! I have the RCA DTC100 with DirecTV and have NEVER had them switch HDTV OFF. HD HBO is awesome if you have ever seen it on a real good HDTV Set. If they choke the chicken with this circuit they will cook their goose in regards to my being a customer. I don't think they will do that personally. At least I hope not :-)

  • merci (Score:1)

    by kreyg ( 103130 )
    Apparently I can't type (conspiratorital?) even though I can make up real words. :-)
  • I know, there are other reasons, but this might be another reason why no one is buying these. So many restrictions on the HDTVs... it seems almost pointless. Can't watch broadcast... can't watch cable now... DVDs are about the only thing they're good for, and I bet the MPAA is going to lobby for some wacky restriction (have they not already... actually, I'd bet they have). More and more, every day, I want to live in Holland... too bad I don't speak Dutch. I hope most speak English. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
  • But, just like broacast ethernet, it is posible to send signals for certan users by having everyone else 'ignore' it.

    Amber Yuan 2k A.D
  • So you just dropped $2k on your brand new HDTV.

    You then dropped $1k (or whatever)for a HDTV box.

    You're probably dropping more than $100 / month for service.

    And you're using the analog outputs on your HDTV reviever?

    You probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the different resolutions anyway. Digital connections (s-video, for instance) are the only way to go with HDTV.

    This is just as bad as the people who drop $1k for a nice 5.1 reciever and plug it up with RCA cables.

    -BlueLines
  • I mean this whole fucking country. For every possible aspect of control we could possibly have over our own lives, there's a corporation, government agency, or corporately-controlled government agency plotting to take it away. It's time to leave. Maybe go to the UK? Nah, they're moving in the asme direction as the US; just look at the crypto policies. It looks like my only two options are Canada and Japan. I don't know Japanese... but it's probably easier to get used to than Canadian, "eh?" Bye bye, I'm heading over to Priceline.com, where I can name my own price to expatriate myself via one of a dozen international airlines.

    All generalizations are false.

  • No, really.. i don't care. If I had 1 billion dollars, I'd raise a private army and kill every lobbyist in the nation.

    Fuck it, I hate politics. The best reaction to control is a sharp knife. Call that ignorance, I don't care. I'd like to put a hole in the back of every person's head who pushes shit like DeCSS [being banned], copy protection, and other horseshit litigation.

  • > Digital connections (s-video, for instance) are > the only way to go with HDTV.

    Svideo is analog, and NTSC. Svga is analog. Its ALL still analog. There are no TVs out there that support digital in, and no receivers that support digital out. NONE. That's the whole problem.

    *EVERYTHING* has to be scrapped. Thanks a buttload and all that cruft...
  • Understandabily, we're frustrated... but let's look at it this way.. let's make them enforce a pay rate based on the resolution you can view... as a factor of 10.. $1.00 for highest.. $.01 for lowest.... hmm?

  • Re:EEs - possible to bypass? (Score:3)

    by tzanger ( 1575 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2001 @07:55PM (#485652) Homepage

    As an EE student in college, that for some reason sounds like it would be possible to bypass in hardware. Solder the output pin(s) of this chip here, break this connection, etc. Can any real EEs comment on this?

    Unfortunately the various signals you're looking for probably don't exist on any pins; the chip which does teh decode also does the conversion for various output formats. Flip a bit in a register and certain outputs are disabled from within the chip itself.

    As a longtime hacker The proliferation of ASICs and FPGAs are disheartening. As a designer they're great. It's not easy being me.

  • Dish Net has NO restrictions for mode shut downs on their boxes, and has nearly identical content. I used to work at DirecTV in Castle Rock Colorado (actually back in the woods behind there) at their uplink facility - and you must remember that GM and Hughes pull the strings there.

  • They really can't use this as DirecTV must compeate with Cable...

    I can't think up a good anolog... :)
    But theres a flawed one..

    If Ford were to design a car that could disable the heater when ever they felt like it.. You'd buy a diffrent car wouldn't you?

    Admittedly this switch is in the HDTV not in DirecTV however.. If say Ford built such a switch and then never used it... you'd never know...

  • Big Brother is you watching.
  • If everyone did this society might very well degrade to the point where people were worrying about many more basic issues than this type of legislation-the sharp knife control you support isn't the most effective means of effecting change that can be used.
  • Sure, anything's possible. However, I doubt if it would be obvious (even to an EE) and may require extensive modification, e.g. if a microcontroller is used for the control. It's not easy to reverse-engineer hardware (I didn't say it's not possible, just not easy).

    Of course, there are people out there with enough time and knowledge to do it and spread the info, but I doubt if an inexperienced or unmotivated person could do it.

  • Re:typical /. overreaction (Score:3)

    by bmetz ( 523 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2001 @08:02PM (#485658) Homepage
    s-video is NOT digital. It simply splits the analog signals in a different way to help minimize distortion compared with RCA or coax.

  • If I read the article correctly, they don't turn off the 1080i signal, they turn off the 1080i signal being sent through the analog output. Their worry is that you could plug an HDTV analog signal into an HDTV analog recorder (which the article says is not yet available) and get a perfect copy of the movie.

    I would assume this means there is also a "digital" output which would plug directly into your HDTV.

  • Most of those satellite systems require a telephone connection for 'Premium' services, such as PayTV and such. They could also embed signatures in certain signals that dictate which decoders are allowed to decode the signal and which aren't.

    I'd be more distressed by the fact that all of this is going to do nothing more than drive costs up, since anyone who wants to build a 'licensed' display will have to pay the royalties for that decryption technology. And I imagine they probably built-in a capacity for key revokation (like DVD CSS), so should someone break into the company that made your TV set and release details on how the system works based on that manufacturer's keys, all that manufacturer's customers get to suffer. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

    I wish the MPAA would lose it's paranoia about copying and copyright infringement. It's not like a copying free-for-all has happened under the current system even without crappy MacroVision, so there's very little reason to tighten the noose. Maybe if they started charging reasonable rates for their product, people wouldn't feel the need to copy it without paying for it. I suppose the concept of 'fair use' has been a thorn in the side of organizations like the MPAA and RIAA in their neverending quest to gouge customers for every last dime, so I can see how removing that capability completely either via technology or via litigation would appeal to them.

  • How MS determines piracy:

    2,000,000 computers were shipped last year in the US.

    1,500,000 Windows licenses were obtained.

    1/4th of all people using computers are using pirated copies of windows.
  • That was a combination of the Karma Whore's Rules 2 & 3. Clever.

    The Karma Whore's Rules:

    1. "I'll be modded down for this"
    2. "don't you read the article?"
    3. "cool down people, this isn't that bad"
  • Okay, I'm not 100% up on tech stuff. Can you explain please what a watermark is? Have I seen it on TV before? Is it like those little um, geez, they look like watermarks, they show on the lower right hand side of certain TV shows that has the logo of the network on it? Are you suggesting that the recorder itself displays it? Yah, that would be a Great solution, because it would disable the ability to re-sell the tape, but you could record a show and watch it in all its HighDef glory. Um, never mind, I think I answered my question [blush].

    Notice that corporations are Not Democracies, especially when they are Monopolistic? As they agglomerate more and more, coalescing into larger megacorps (Time/Warner/AOL, out here we have Verizon and Adelphia, which seem pretty national), they are less beholden to what in a free market would be 'what is best for the consumer'? In this instance, we do have the choice of Echostar/Dish Thank God (as long as you are an informed consumer, they seem to be trying to slip stuff under the rug), but many other market areas are becoming sole-source. The argument that 'we have a choice as consumers' loses weight if our choice is 'take it or leave it'. It ain't the government that is going to be our advocate any more, either, folks. It wasn't under Clinton and it damn sure ain't gonna be under Shrub. What protections are being offered in other countries anyway?

    On a side note, I still have about 150 phonograph records. heh... wonder where I can get my record player repaired... It's funny listening to an old crackly album anymore. Kind of like having a little fire going in the fireplace while you're listening to your music. A constant, repetitive, annoying little amplified fire...

  • Re:typical /. overreaction (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    > Digital connections (s-video, for instance) are the only way to go with HDTV.

    I can't speak for every HDTV out there, but mine only has analog inputs for everything from 480i to 1080i.

    S-video is not digital. Neither are composite or component (PYbYr) connections. If you're using a typical computer monitor (not an LCD panel with DVI connector), it is also analog.

    Analog is not a synonym for low resolution. This is just another good example of how rapidly changing technology and irresponsible marketing and salesmanship can quickly spread misunderstanding.

  • Exactly. Apart from a knife being a very low and barbaric form of opposition, it is also not the most effective. One person with a knife will stab one person and then get thrown into jail. If that person instead fights with their voice, they can't be thrown into jail and will be able to fight long and hard like that.
  • Forget tampering with the insides...
    Create a simple external disabler..
    This box filters out the signial for disabling the higher quality...
    Such a box would be cheap.. maybe $5 a unit.. simple.. easy to build in any home.. sold illegally at flee markets and on-line outside the united states (where they are legal).. to those inside the united states (where it is illegal)..
  • It really sounds like the big corporate giants want to kill it

    Yes! That is a very distinct possibility! I seem to recall that when the government (FCC) was handing out HDTV bands to the broadcasters they were about four times as large as current LDTV bands, and an option to transmitting one HDTV show - when there was no HDTV show scheduled - would be to xmit Four LD shows. I read somewhere that the broadcasters were perfectly willing to quadruple their revenue-generating schedules and ditch HDTV in the process. This seems underhanded to me. Does anyone have any more info on this topic? I don't even know where to look to get it.
  • The Committee on Energy and Commerce which is handling FCC issues is meeting on the 30th to set their agenda for the 107th congress. The committee is lead by Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La. Now Billy's second largest compain donation was from Disney, so I think a lot of presure will be needed.

    I recommend writing the committee directly about how your right to timeshift if being taken away.

    Committee on Energy and Commerce
    U.S. House of Representatives
    2125 Rayburn House Office Building
    Washington DC 20515

    Also, you can go to http://www.house.gov/commerce/ to get the names of the memebers.
  • Of all the people on Slashdot who bitch about what the MPAA and RIAA are doing to consumers and how horrible the DMCA is, how many have actually written law makers, MPAA, RIAA and associates there-of about how you feel?

    ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WILL CHANGE WITHOUT YOU! period, don't expect the rest of the world to fight your battles. It's time we start pushing congress to balance the laws. Copyright laws need to be revised. It's time lawmakers start asking if such laws infringe on the rights of consumers. For those of you who have written these people don't stop. This is the first step to changing something and nothing changed without action.

    Once the letters start coming in Officials will have to pay more attention to the issue. Once we can show them that many americans do feel that XYandZ are wrong they will have to take such things into consideration. If they choose to ignore it we will just have to be louder.

    need to know how to contact your senator or rep? House of Representatives [house.gov]
    Senate [senate.gov]

    Now don't give me any of that crap that this is off topic because this is Direct TV's decision. It's obvious that the MPAA's anticopying tatics are to blame. This is what happens when we stay quite. It's all been trickling down from the DMCA.

  • A napster for video has them wetting their pants (Score:3)

    by eclectro ( 227083 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2001 @08:24PM (#485672)
    It's quite interesting really. When CDs were first invented, napster was nowhere in anyones imagination. Not to say that it couldn't have been done through a dialup BBS, just that it never crossed anybody's mind. However, the RIAA was in the fray with demanding all sorts of copy protection on DAT and successfully killed that format (except for hi-end audio yadda yadda yadda).

    The thing about movies is that unlike a song, once you see it, you're not gonna play it over and over.

    So, if their is ANY way that a consumer can trade a copy with somebody else, they want to stomp it out before it is ever invented. If history is any indication, HDTV is a form of visual DAT.

    I really don't see HDTV off the ground by 2006 when the FCC is suppose to shut off regular TV. I'm not gonna spend $2000 on a TV set. maybe $300, but any higher and I start reading more books.

    Who knows, maybe this will usher in an era of literary renaissance. :-)

  • I'm getting to the point where I don't know that I can trust any of the new media sources (HDTV, DVD) enough, with regard to playback control, to invest in any technology just for them.

    However, I do have a PSX, a SNES, two PCs, a video camera and a still camera that can output to video. As far as I'm concerned, my TV is for them. If it so happens that I feel that FoxTel (Oz PayTV) can provide an incoming signal that's worth subscribing to (I do), then so be it. If it doesn't work with whatever I've chosen to purchase for my own projects, then I'll stop paying for it.

    I hardly ever watch Free-to-Air TV anymore. Just Stargate, Buffy, Dilbert & the SBS world news. I'm not going to be buying an A$8,000 TV for four programs, one of which isn't currently on and another is currently showing repeats.

    You want control over content? Go out and create some of your own.

  • It's an urban legend. The frog will hop out anyway. It's a nice analogy, but it is also a false one.

    http://www.fastcompany.com/online/01/frog.html

    Vermifax

  • Re:typical /. overreaction (Score:3)

    by Jeffrey Baker ( 6191 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2001 @08:38PM (#485681)
    You are misinformed. No consumer television display technoloy uses digital transmission between the video source and the video display. This is certainly true of television. Today's most advanced telelvision sets use either YPbPr component inputs, or RGBHV component inputs. The latter is likely the technology you use to connect your computer and your computer monitor.

    Analog does not equate to poor quality. Given the bandwidth required for a video component, and the distance needed between the source and the display, it is easy to make that connection in the analog domain with everyday cables. 1080i and 720p look stupendous using analog connections.

    The only people that have digital video technology today are those that are playing DVDs on their computer and running the signal out via a DVI connector to a digital LCD flat panel like this Apple Studio Display [apple.com]. These people have spent significantly more than $3000 just to watch movies on a digital display that can't even display a proper black.

    Last point: any CRT-type television with digital inputs will not have any significantly better performance than an analog model. All the digital model will do is move the video DACs closer to the guns, and allow a longer run between the source and the display. Big deal.

  • I hope you're right. I just worry that people won't understand what is going on. The general populace probably doesn't have any interest in thinking about technical issues like this, and they won't hear about it from their normal news source (What else? TV!)
    --
  • 1. tv sets and video playback equipment is not an 'investment'. you don't sell it years later and make money on it (as always there are exceptions that prove the rule.)

    True, a TV set is not part of an "investment portfolio," but the above is a very limited view on what an investment is. A TV is an investment because you lay out a large amount of cash with the expectation that it will eventually pay back in utility (that's the economic term, I prefer "happiness"). If you pay extra for the utility of a higher definition screen, and you cannot get that content, then the money you've invested (over the cost of a normal TV) is lost, because you can never get that utility.

  • This just in, your phone company can disconnect your service remotely!

  • This is not like DirecTV turning off your service because you haven't paid. It's more analogous to MTV being able to instruct DirecTV to degrade your audio signal to mono because you've got the wrong kind of stereo -- and you can't currently buy a TV reciever that will ever be able to plug into the right kind of stereo.

    It also has to do with terms of service that are not published (yet), and that are imposed by an entity (movie studios, presumably) with whom you do not have a direct relationship.

    In other words, you are purchasing hardware that may, at a later date, be largely useless not because of actual technical obsolescence, but because copyright holders are developing a philosophy of guilty-until-proven-innocent -- and, further, believing that there is no acceptable proof of innocence.

    There's always a penalty for early adopters, but it usually arises out of circumstance, not as deliberate policy.

  • Re:Pananoia? (Score:5)

    by Valdrax ( 32670 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2001 @08:55PM (#485690)
    Not really. Movie studios make their money from controlling the distribution of a product. Modern technological advances make cost-free distribution and duplication of materials a possibility. To justify selling something with potentially $0 manufacturing cost beyond the original movie production, they have to have absolute control over its distribution so that they are the only source. If they have competition who can offer their product for less than them, they won't make up the original cost of production, much less the rich profits they rake in beyond it.

    If they can go further and make sure that they not only control the hard copy distribution but also the individual viewings of the material they own, as they are moving to do, they can force even greater profits out of the pay-per-use model that companies are working towards.

    Modern companies realize that they have 3 choices:
    1) Compete with people offering their own products for free.
    2) Squelch that competition and go about business as usual.
    3) Squelch that competition and take advantage of the copy control schemes to squeeze even more profits than they have now out of users of their products.

    Guess which one any publicly-owned corporation, who has nothing to answer to except their stock owners and the pockets of their executives, would pick?
  • They can also cut off your service in general. That is how it works, you pay them for service, they give you service.
    Except this is "You pay them for service, and they still cut off your service.". I wish that we could look forward to the day where Hollywood would cry wolf too many times, but they have practically the perfect division of politics there - the executives are predominantly Republicans, while the producers, directors, and actors are predominantly Democrats, so no matter who is holding the reigns of power, there are like-minded Hollywood types with money to claim that the masses are only a recorder away from rampant illegal copying which will End Western Civilization As We Know It, if not for the valiant anti-piracy efforts of Hollywood.

  • Re:I still don't get it (Score:5)

    by SomeoneYouDontKnow ( 267893 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2001 @08:57PM (#485692)
    Sure they lose money if a home viewer copies it. See, if that viewer copies it, then that viewer isn't likely to buy it. Have you seen the ads on places like the History Channel offering to sell you a tape of the show you just saw for $20? Have you then thought to yourself, "I don't need to spend $20 for their tape. I'll just tape the show the next time it airs." Now do you see their angle? With copy controls on digital broadcasts, they can put an end to your taping session before it even begins. As for your speculation about why they're doing things like this, I'd say your second choice is closest to the truth. My guess is that the content owners see the situation this way: 1. We own the content.
    2. Consumers want the content.
    3. We have the technology to make consumers pay us in various ways for the content.
    4. We will therefore charge whatever the market will bear and impose whatever restrictions are necessary to ensure that we are paid the price we have set.
    5. Piracy shall not be viewed as a protest of these charges. It is a criminal act that we will stop in whatever ways necessary. If we can eliminate piracy, consumers who may have pirated content will have two choices: pay for the content or do without. People here have often commented on the failure of the DiVX format as an example of how consumers will reject such intrusive content restrictions. This may be a valid point, but another lesson can be learned from it: If you're going to impose a system such as DiVX on the marketplace, then you'd better make damn sure that a less restrictive alternative, i.e. DVD, is not available. In other words, if the entertainment industry had it to do all over again, my guess is that they would still roll out DiVX, but they'd never allow standard DVDs to see the light of day. In such a scenario, DiVX might just succeed, since the consumer has no alternative. They'd probably even make the argument that if a consumer wants unlimited viewing rights, he can stick with VHS. If, however, he wants better quality, he's going to have to pay the higher price of DiVX. If enough consumers buy into this view and start using DiVX, then the content owners turn a profit. For those who don't see this as fair, well, they'll just have to find something else to do to pass the time. My point here is this: If you feel that content restrictions such as the ones discussed daily on Slashdot are harsh/unfair/immoral/whatever, then you'd better either figure out a way to organize one hell of a boycott and make it stick, or you'd better lobby for legislation to prevent or regulate these practices because, if you don't, the content owners are going to push these things as far as they can. If they could find some economical and legal way to have a guy looking over your shoulder 24/7 to make sure you comply with whatever content restrictions they devise, they'll do it and feel completely justified in doing so. From their point of view, they're protecting their property, and if that's somehow inconvenient for you, that's just tough--unless, of course, that inconvenience has a negative effect on their corporate well-being.
  • It's a satellite dish! Everyone's getting the exact same signal. It's not like they can say "Okay, this guy paid for our premium service, so we need to beam 1080i to his house and 480i to everyone else's house. Everyone gets the same feed from the satellite, the receiver determines what to do with it.
    And, as I understand it, the receiver has to call in periodically and get its marching orders. Disabling 1080i for one customer and enabling it for another is really no different than disabling Showtime for one customer and enabling it for another. To be honest, I wouldn't have (as much of) an objection to it if they were to do something like that - charging customers for increased levels of service seems to me to be a legitimate business practice. Unfortunately, that isn't the way this article makes it sound like it will be. Instead, it's more along the lines of "Our customers are lousy stinking thieves who can't be trusted, so we're not going to permit them to view what we're charging them for, regardless of how much they're willing to pay.". That strikes me as not just bad karma, but bad business.

  • Re:Is it just me or is HDTV DOA? (Score:4)

    by mikegross ( 181325 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2001 @09:05PM (#485696) Homepage
    I think the major problem with HDTV is the cable companies. They don't want to shell out the dough to bring fiber to the curb, so HD over cable is still not feasable. I just got Adelphia Digital Cable, and while it's a nice image, almost DVD quality, my $5000 Mitusbishi HD1080 is going to waste. People don't want to put up ugly antennae on their roofs just to see Leno's chin in glorious 1080i, nor do they really want to shell out the outrageous cash needed for DirectHD. If cable companies were bringing HD into the home over cable people already have, then we'll definitely see a lot more people buying TVs they know they'll get good use out of without a whole lot of extra costs (I still haven't bought an HD decoder, because, why do I need it?). When people have the TVs, then we'll see full broadcast schedules in HD. Maybe even with some interactive features!
  • We've had HDTV in Japan for a long time (it was invented here, after all, and only politics has kept it that way). It isn't so great. They want you to BUY it, sure, just like they try to convince you that every little technical innovation must be instantly bought before it becomes obsolete. But let's face it, it's still TV we're talking about here. Do you think TV programming will improve if you buy a more expensive receiver? Think again. Also, think about stretch mode which is what happens to your regular TV signal when you try to display it on the HDTV screen. Sure, it's an option. An option that renders the people you're watching just a little bit fatter. If you don't like that, then enjoy the big blank spaces on the sides, which will no doubt be full of banner ads once there's a market base of HDTV viewers.
  • But for the life of me I dont understand why they would want to reduce the grade on the picture? Is this the "Go stand in the corner" punishment from them?

    They only degrade or disable the output on the non scrambled outputs so it can't be recorded and herd the sheeple to the protected content enabled TV's. To see the big game in HDTV (which is avaliable) it must be watched on a scrambled content enabled display.

    As I said before, this will not be sold to the sheeple as a limitation in a set but as an added feature. It is able to display the PPV fight in HDTV. The VCR or TVIO on the RGBHV output is SOL on this broadcast. You will have to buy both the reciever to recieve HDTV and a scrambled content enabled TV. Expect the cable box to eventualy be built right into the TV as a PPV appliance. Hooking up your old 19 inch computer monitor to the RGBHV output will not show the PPV event. It will get the nag screen instead. (you need to upgrade again) Sheeple will follow the content to the new medium as the unprotected medium goes to infomercials only. (kinda like C-band tv did and people followed the content to DSS subscriptions)

  • Speak for yourself! I love movies, but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay thousands for a modest increase in television resolution. And I'll have to say...my home video setup is mediocre at best (20" TV with composite inputs, DVD player, and an old Fisher vacuum-tube amplifier) and in the middle of a good movie...it just doesn't matter. THE SEARCHERS is a good movie whether it's shown on a screen fifty feet across, or a black-and-white twelve-inch television. But then, my idea of a "good movie" is a little different, and doesn't include films which stand or fall by their special effects such as THE MATRIX.

    And I don't think people like my lover, who makes half the money I do and works ten times as hard to get it, care either. And I daresay there are a lot more people like him than like me. HDTV is a luxury item for the geek with more money than common sense, and (the gods willing) will remain such for a good long while.

    hyacinthus.
  • The PPV event will be broadcast (scrambled full bandwidth) but only the non-scrambled outputs from the receiver will be in low quality mode, shut off, or display a nag screen saying use the other output to see the show (the scrambled unrecordable output) in HDTV format. To use this output you do need a monitor with a descrambler built in. This is how the sheeple will be convinced to spend the money on the content protected TV's. It will be required (as a feature, not a restriction) to watch the show.
  • Well, if you drop it onto freezing cold water, you'll stun it into shock, and then if you heat the water fast enough, you can boil it indeed. But it has nothing to do with complacency on the part of the frog.
  • It's interesting, but in Australia, though we still have the same issue of availability of HDTV sets, receivers, etc. But as of 1 Jan this year, all of our television stations *are* broadcasting HDTV signals...
  • ... but my impression is that in a lot of cases the amount of money lost to piracy is significant relative to legitimate sales.
    There are three kinds of untruths: Lies, damned lies and statistics.

    Statistics like what the MPAA put out are probably based on worst/best case assumptions. e.g. that the MP3 that I downloaded to figure out if I wanted to buy the album would have been paid for at full retail album price on top of my physical purchase. -- and even if It turns out to be a dud song/album, I would have bought the whole thing anyways.
    `ø,,ø!

  • It's more like turning your service off not because of your stereo, but because you might wanna use it in a way that you *can*, but isn't liked by the "owner".
  • That's not the issue. A full HDTV stream is being transmitted to your DirectTV box. The box processes the full HDTV stream. And then for no legitimate reason, the box suddenly downgrades the output. It actually cost them (and thus you the consumer) more money to force this downgrade (additional circuitry) and yields DirectTV no additional income or profit at all. So why do they do something which makes their service less valuable to their customer (and without telling the customer explicitly) which costs them more money to do? Collusion with the media industry and illegal government regulation (DMCA).

    This is a very important example of a very important issue. What you have said about the market is mostly correct and should mean people won't use their service, except it seems every company is doing the same thing and any company which doesn't gets sued (under the DMCA, etc) or else, it is apparent, there is widespread industry collusion. This is very troubling. I wish it were a free market as you envision, but it really is not. Disparate things are being forcefully tied together by powers that seem to be way outside the reach of the normal consumer and demand.

    What's Wrong With Content Protection [cryptome.org]

  • A good book... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I know this sounds stupid, but if the shit gets too deep, just purchase a book, or borrow it from the Library, and read the story. It costs a hell of a lot less than an HDTV and all the other crap.

    Damn, I'm starting to sound like my grandfather (may God rest his soul)... Maybe the old guy had an idea after all.

    But, I'm sure they'll may an ink that fades after you read the book or pages that curlup and fall apart... *grin*

    My grandfather once said that he could remmember when they got their first radio, and then their first TV... But, he allways thought that T.V. was just a fad, a long running fad mind you... But people would find their way back to a more mentally challaging way of wasting ones time. With a movie or TV you always wish it would have played or looked different, at least with a book, it can be the way you want it, the journy is yours to take, the writer is just a guide... Beside, you can start and stop a book and time you want, and you can even give the book to another after your done.

    Jason
    Dayton, Ohio
  • Why does everyone think it was the copy protection and copyright holders that killed DAT? I think DAT failed because it had all the disadvantages of tape: no instant random track access, delicate media that geats eaten by complicated expensive transports, little high speed duplication capability, etc... That made DAT pretty lousy compared to the CD's that people wanted to duplicate and make mixes of. Note that MiniDisc is much more sucessful than DAT in the consumer market even though it has all the same copy protection AND serial generation degredation from the lossy compression (i.e. it's even worse for copying from a consumer wanting to pirate things perspective). CD-R will eventually win out because it plays in many/most of the bazillion CD players already out there, it works in harmony with a computer, the blanks are closing in on dirt cheap, and you can burn at 8X. Yeah, it sure doesn't hurt CD-R that copy protection is non existent on the computer burners, but it isn't the only factor.

    Burris

  • Prices are falling dude. Adding Over the Air HDTV reception to my turner was $99. The displays are now under 2K. Even watching the content downconverted to 480i is great. The local reception is cystal clear with nothing more than some rabit ears.

    Two years ago 32 inch TV's were floating around $1000-$1200, now they are in the $500 range. Same thing is happening with HD.

    From a consumer standpoint content really makes this work. PBS does such a great job with HD content I can't believe how bad the big three are.
    The PBS station delivers 4 subchannels, One has weather, one does the normal PBS content, a third does PBS kids, and the last does PBS-U.
  • Okay, I normally don't flame, but whoever lowered that down as "off-topic" was the bigest gaylord focher I've ever seen. The Committee on Energy and Commerce specifically deals with this. I even said so in the message. They already have several HDTV issues on the docket relating to fee based Datacasting over free air bandwidth. The FCC has already rubber stamped these content control systems. This is the last chance for oversight. This is how things like the DMCA get passed!

    If we don't make the stand here it's "Game Over Man!" This isn't a market acceptence issue since the turn over to HD is not optional. Prices will go down and consumers will be lead into virtual slaughter house we know as Content Control.

    Write a letter and get it there before the 30th:

    Committee on Energy and Commerce
    U.S. House of Representatives
    2125 Rayburn House Office Building
    Washington DC 20515

    Also go here: http://www.house.gov/commerce/ and see if any of the goonies on the list are your bitch!

  • Simple Solution (Score:3)

    by tbo ( 35008 ) on Wednesday January 24, 2001 @12:26AM (#485727) Journal
    Don't watch TV. I don't. Once you break the addiction, you'll be amazed how much more time you have, how much more you get done, and how much happier you are. Read or play on the internet or get some exercise instead.

    If you're feeling like you really need to do something, write to your local cable provider/broadcasters and everyone else behind Digital TV, and tell them why you decided to stop watching TV.

    Writing your Congressman about important issues like copyright, 'net censorship, etc, is a good thing, but don't waste their time on TV. Not being able to tape Star Trek is not and should not be a Federal concern.

    Worst case--only you and a few other people stop watching, and you discover how much more time you have. Best case--consumers start leaving TV en mass (already happening), and companies change their tune. Capitalism will work for you if people actually give two shits.

    I agree that this is part of a larger, worrisome trend, but if TV is the issue that finally gets us off our collective asses, what does that say about us? Does it mean that we don't care about our basic liberties, but not being able tape Simpsons is a crisis? What a sad social commentary that would be.
  • Bah. 'Bye Hollywood, it was fun while you were sane.

    They never were sane. They've been trying to get control of our enterainment habits since the inception of the phonograph & radio "threatened the whole industry". It's just that, until now, the courts have held their control complex at bay.

    Now, however, they've got control of congress, and the courts are going to be hard pressed to stop this 500Kg gorilla.
    `ø,,ø!

  • Nice to see Ergen not bow to pressure (yet) My friend just got a 65" Toshiba widescreen HDTV and the DISH 6000 receiver with HDTV off air tuner. I was less than impressed with the differnece when watching a DVD, but he doesn't have a progressive scan DVD player yet which improves the picture markedly. However, our local CBS affiliate here was one of the first to start sendign HDTV. While the primetime shows look better, you can't really tell the difference until you see a show shot entirely in HDTV with HD quality gear. They show a NASCAR short on a sunny day, clear sky, and all the color of a NASCAR race. It blows you away the clarity and vibrance of colors. Sure, me pal plunked down a cool $5K for his complete setup (new TV, DISH rcvr, and DVD player), but it is impressive. Needless to say, I think this decision could significantly hurt DirectTV is DISH manages to hold off putting CGMS in their boxes. The reason is the folks that would jump ship to DISH are the videophiles who don't want DirectTV to control their outputs and those customers are the ones paying $50 to $100/month in programming. This issue won't mean squat to your average DirectTV user, but they only pay $25 or $35/month usually. So it will be interesting to see how this shakes out. Needless to say I better get my DISH 6000 quick before the MPAA pummels DISH into submission!
  • DirecTV has a feedback [directv.com] form right on their main page. I just went there and posted this complaint and request for information.

    Your comment or question:

    I currently have Cable TV, but plan to move to Satellite when our new house is completed early next year. However, an article at E-Town ( http://www.e-town.com/news/article.jhtml;$sessioni d$H1OHSLYAABGNNTYPVYXSFEQ?articleID=3944 [e-town.com] ) says that DirecTV is now requiring installation of devices that can allow for remote disabling of HDTV-quality analog output. This, to me, is totally unacceptable -- anyone who pays for a signal, especially for an HD-quality signal via DirecTV, should be able to view that signal at full resolution with no restrictions. Discussion is raging about this issue at Slashdot ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=01%2F01%2F23%2 F2032213&cid=&pid=0&startat=&threshold=1&mode=nest ed&commentsort=3&op=Change [slashdot.org]), and it may behoove your company to read and contribute to the discussion there, especially if people are misinformed. However, if we are NOT misinformed, and Hughes/DirecTV feels it is their right to restrict how your customers view contenty they've already paid for, then I can promise you that your company will no longer be my choice for a satellite provider. Thank you for your time.
    I don't expect to hear anything, but if they get /.ed through this kind of customer feedback chain, then maybe they'll say something publicly or set the record straight. It's worth a shot.

  • www.callmeaconsumerandillkickyourduff.com (Score:3)

    by SubtleNuance ( 184325 ) on Wednesday January 24, 2001 @04:37AM (#485746) Journal
    Please, write your representatives, but for God sakes dont call yourself a fucking "CONSUMER" when you write your members. Calling yourself a consumer only reenforces the image that every person's sole purpose for existance is to function some way economically. Conceiding that you are a 'CONSUMER' is fucking absurd.

    Try calling yourself a 'citizen' or 'person' or 'individual' or 'constituent' or anything else.

    While your writing these notes; why not add that you feel the USA should remove itself from the WIPO and WTO also.
  • "Maybe if they started charging reasonable rates for their product, people wouldn't feel the need to copy it without paying for it."

    I think this is the rub. By locking down "protections" and control over digital technology that they didn't legally and technologically have with analog, they are setting the stage where they simple CAN charge out the wazoo.

    And rates have been climbing towards unreasonable for quite some time. Basic cable rates of $40/month?!! DVD movies costing $25-30??!

    While I do NOT advocate piracy, in some ways, the threat of piracy is a check on the power of cartel monopolies like the MPAA/RIAA. By knowing that their media CAN be pirated and that it WILL be widespread if given enough reason to, the MPAA/RIAA knows there is a limit to how much they can charge.

    What they want is a world where there IS no threat of piracy at all. However, people like Valenti are babes in the woods when it comes to truly understanding how technology works. They simply do not understand that the more onerous, annoying and intrusive their "copy protection" becomes, the greater the chance that it WILL be broken. Also, the higher the price becomes, the greater likelyhood that a larger number of people WILL pirate.

    Since consumer video and recording tecnology HAS to have a certain shelf-life (most peope will simply NOT put up with replacing their players, TV's etc as often as we upgrade computers), advancing technology will pretty much render ANY copy protection obsolete and crackable.

    However, the existance of the DMCA does suggest that they have at least thought of this in some ways, by getting these circumvention devices declared illegal.

    But, it's only a matter or time until at least some of the teeth are jarred from the DMCA. By striking first, the MPAA was able to handpick their man ("judge" Kaplan) and get the ruling they wanted. In the near future, DMCA cases are going to be heard in a lot of locales by a lot of different judges. I have to be optimistic and hope that Kaplan only represents an extreme minority. If he does represent the typical judge, then you might as well order your jackboots, and practice singing your Corporate Hymn.

  • Thank you MPAA for improving my mind (Score:3)

    by Phaid ( 938 ) on Wednesday January 24, 2001 @05:09AM (#485749) Homepage
    My wife and I are at the point in our lives where we're starting to think seriously about having children. And we're the sort who, while we read a lot, do tend to watch a fair amount of television (not mindlessly mind you, and not more than a couple of hours a day -- Iron Chef, Junkyard Wars, X-Files, Farscape, Voyager, Sunday morning cartoons, stuff on Discovery/A&E, the news, etc).

    The point is, we don't want to raise kids who are glued to the set all day. So we've been planning to wean ourselves off television, set time limits, etc, so that when we do have children we won't reflexively turn on the tube. But now it seems that the MPAA is kindly helping me to make that transition a lot easier. I no longer feel any desire to buy a big bad TV with HDTV and 1024 lines of resolution and such, just to pay $60 per month for channels chock-full of commercials whose content I can't timeshift or record at one set and watch on another. On the practical side, it's just much more inconvenient than TV is currently ; on the moral side, I don't want to be made to feel like I can't be trusted with the valuable "content" that these media companies are kindly providing me out of the goodness of their heart.

    I refuse to spend money on hardware that is deliberately crippled just so that I'm forced to watch these shows when and how someone else says I have to. At least with books -- paper books, thank you very much -- I can start reading in the living room and finish in the bedroom without asking the publisher's permission.

  • Re:Eh? (Score:3)

    by Shotgun ( 30919 ) on Wednesday January 24, 2001 @05:17AM (#485750)
    Having experienced full 1080i I'll never go back to regular TV.

    Down with analog TV.

    Unless you have tried it, don't bitch or you'll be a fool.

    I haven't tried it, but I'll bitch about it anyway and not be a fool. I've got DTV (mainly so that I don't have to worry about returning tapes on time when I want to rent a movie), but I switch over to regular broadcast every Tuesday to get my fill of Buffy and Angel, since DTV doesn't broadcast the WB.

    Guess what. HDTV and all the other new, expensive, 'better' display technologies can kiss my ass. There I am, with my snowy reception through a pair of rabbit ears, completely engrossed in the story line, plot, and character development of the only show that makes TV worth the electricity. I'm totally oblivious to the snowy picture.

    Why is that? For the same reason that my kids enjoy me reading them "The Chronicles of Narnia" more than they like the Cartoon Network. A movie/show that is about telling a good story will always beat out 2 hours of eye candy. HDTV does nothing to improve the situation of the good script writers and actors. It just make the execs think that all a movie needs is something blowing up or a clearer picture of some singer's half exposed buttocks.

    I go back a forth between the digital DTV and regular broadcast on a regular basis, and I can say with a straight face that I don't give a damn which I have. Just put something worth watching on the signal. At that point, the technology really won't matter.
  • "Don't watch TV. I don't. Once you break the addiction, you'll be amazed how much more time you have"

    I haven't watched TV regularly for some time. When I do, it's only for sports or news. Most of my entertainment comes from reading and the Internet, though I do buy a lot of movies. Which I will definately STOP doing if prices rise or else they start annoying me with commercials, etc.

    In fact, the main reason why I do NOT watch broadcast or cable TV channels is that it's mostly commercials and marketing with a little bit of idiotic programming jammed in.

    Same reason why I don't listen much anymore to popular music, it's become lowest common denominator stuff that is marketer driven.

    Clearly, I think we are heading towards the point where the dividing line between the intelligent and the ignorant can be discovered by finding out how much mass media is consumed.
  • Almost everything HD sold to date is analog only. The ability to turn off analog output means the ability to shut down everybody who has bought HDTV so far.

    So you thought you'd get special treatment for the early investment in HD equipment didn't you??? Well it's a special shaft through your least-preferred orifice! (more specifically, it's requiring an orifice that you don't currently have -- on yourself or your TV). You paid the extra money early on to find out that the really good content isn't going to be available to you unless you buy an entirely new box (that isn't available yet).
    `ø,,ø!

  • ...where you paid a higher rate in order to connect at a higher speed. (Oh, and since I'm 19,200 feet from the CO don't even mention ADSL ans its pricing scheme to me.)

    What's next? Art museums where you can pay a lower admission fee but you're forced to wear a pair of glasses that blur your vision during the visit?

    This is the kind of crap that will kill HDTV for a lot of people. Frankly, news like this makes it easier and easier for me to justify renting movies or spending even more time just sitting in an easy chair and reading a good book.
    --

  • My vision is about 20/30. Not exactly perfect, but not really bad enough to require glasses or contacts. What I'm wondering is will I even be able to tell the difference between regular and HDTV if I'm sitting more than 10 feet away?
  • Ever since I realized that I could watch my football games at a sports bar, I've favored removing the television, but my wife won't go for it. But there's that faint glimmer of hope that analog broadcasts will end entirely and that I can just refuse to buy a new one . . .
  • I don't understand at all why the megalithic media corporations (MMCs) do all these stupid things. It presumably sounds so reasonable when they convince themselves that they need to "Protect" their precious Content against piracy, and that's why they absolutely feel they need to ship the precious Content with so much "Protection" regardless of what that means to the end users. They're just mere Consumers, after all. Consumers.

    It appears that the media industry sees the ideal and most loyal consumers as immobile slabs of credit card enabled lard in la-z-boys, watching all the prepaid piped-in garbage (including the noxious advertisements) exactly on schedule when it's being broadcast, happily or meekly dealing with any and all obstacles the MMC throws in their way. The mere consumer should not be permitted to record or timeshift a show he already paid for; nor should the mere consumer be permitted to somehow access the precious Content outside the Proper Region. Imagine if those heathens in Europe or Asia got to see precious Content on DVD before their mandatory 8-month waiting period was up.

    The future should have been so sweet. All the amazing technological media advancements over the past couple of decades have led to this point where affordable super high quality digital precision reproduction of sound and picture is available, often with greater fidelity than what was available in the recording studios just a few years back. The technology exists.

    So what does Hollywood and MMCs do? They FUCK IT UP. About 1993 or so I saw an analog demo of HDTV. It was running off a special laserdisc, using a high resolution RGB projector to display the picture. It looked gorgeous, and the picture quality was stunning. I couldn't wait for HDTV broadcasts to begin and sets becoming available. Now, 8 years later ... I'm not so sure it was worth the wait.

    Oh, those demo HD sets showing Barney in vivid purple and gree down at Circuit City look ... vivid ... sure enough, but where's the signal? From satellite. HBO. Pay per view channels. Schedules. You can't choose what movies you want to watch. You can just see Todays Movie. Content Packages and Crap. Barney the fucking dinosaur.

    Where's the recording and playback devices? Oh, you can't have any. We the MMC don't want you to record our programming, that's PIRACY! We're not ashamed to spit our expressed contempt of your kind in your face. So no you can't record. Or playback. Or do anything. HD content will never be available as prerecorded DVD-like media, even though the technology exist, and it would be incredibly cool and convenient, because you'd just PIRATE it. So you'll just have to be content with watching precious Content and Barney the fucking dinosaur when we tell you to watch it.

    Really, who'd PIRATE a HD movie? Someone with smarts, motivation and access to expensive equipment. Someone who'd have the skills to eventually hack and bypass whatever digital encryption measures you throw in their way. These people will find a way to make their HD set top boxes playback analog signals and they'll tell everybody how to do it. Sooner or later they'll find a way to build devices to record the encrypted signal and use it with a recorder to allow timeshifting or whatever. It's the way things work. Progress moves around obstacles, and eventually erodes them.

    A particularly hated and obnoxious obstacle will not be bypassed, it will be demolished. The technically able will have the stuff no matter what. But "average" users of the digital media systems (who pay as much as everyone else) will suffer and have nothing but crippled useless technology.

    So who benefits? MMC think they're doing the Right Thing to Protect their IP and the mere Consumers should understand and appreciate this. And Hollywood cheers. But the future is not very bright, it's littered with useless roadblocks, barbed wire and legalese. Any new Thing that comes out will have DRM and all kinds of copy protection shit and the whole culture of taking a music tape on the road in someone else's car or bringing over some old MST tapes to watch, will be illegalized and made impossible if MMC and Hollywood has their way. The only way to stop them is to not fall for the hypocrisy and bullshit, never EVER feel sorry for them, and do try to get the technical smarts - use the net, look around, you'll find ways to bypass all this crap they throw at you, like zonehacked and macromedia hacked DVD players or DAT tapedecks or whatever. You still pay for the content, but you can get to use it on your terms, which is the same right you always had with the old VHS and cassette tape systems. So in fighting the good fight you're just maintaining status quo; by letting the MMCs get their way they gain territory and they shouldn't be permitted to control more than they already do.

    That is, if you still care to get the Latest and Newest thing, and use all this New Fancy Tech, because if you ask me, it's getting harder and harder to appreciate any of the precious Content. I can't watch TV anymore, it's too full of Stupid Rays and Junk. I sometimes turn on TLC for Junkyard Wars or something, but that's it. And I can only get TLC if I buy a PACKAGE with 200 otehr channels I don't watch. I'm disgusted and fed up with MMC. Yet I like movies. Old movies. Not necessarily the Box Office shit HBO plays on HDTV subscription service.

    DVD is probably the Last New Thing I am going to subscribe to for a while ... ever since I got a Technical Solution to the MMC roadblocks on DVD, I've been able to watch any time I want and as many times I want any of the old movies I've collected (and paid for) from several Regions (zones 1,2 and 3), in nice quality on analog component video and I can make S-video duplicates if I -want-. It's too bad that it's still in the resolution of the Old 1940s TV standard, but the Fancy New High Definition Tech is too utterly fucked up right now for me to even consider getting into that market.

    Maybe someday I can get a cheap HD set where I can playback my DVDs digitally and watch timeshifted or pre-recorded HD programming on a presumably illegal TiVo equivalent box.

    Or whatever.

  • I'm somewhat confused.

    Why would DirecTV do this at the customer side when they control the broadcasting side?

    DirecTV has to encode all stations via MPEG themselves; it seems perfectly sane to think that if they wanted the same functionality, they'd simply encode everything at a lower quality themselves and transmit the lower quality content.

    This has the added benefit of saving bandwidth for other channels.

    DirecTV already controls quality of the encoding based on the type of show. Sports broadcasts get significantly more bandwidth than the average movie due to the rapid camera movement.

    It seems to me that the only reason they'd want to do it at the customer's end is if they wanted to shut off individuals. This would make sense if they wanted to charge different rates for quality.

    Maybe I haven't had enough caffiene yet.
    • However, the existance of the DMCA does suggest that they have at least thought of this in some ways, by getting these circumvention devices declared illegal.
    As the entire software industry will confirm, copy protection is almost worthless. They've been searching for this "holy grail" for decades. Even laser etched holes in floppies didn't work. Hollywood, having a much greater hold on Washington, simply makes it illegal to break their "copy protection". However, their system is flawed from the get-go; their system does not hinder the people they are most afraid of -- those being the bootleg CD pressing factories (de-compositing a DVD is harder, but I'm certain it's only a matter of time.)

    For the record, Valenti is not an idiot. We may all classify him as an ass, but he does know what he's doing.

    Anyway, as I've said repeatedly, this whole "digital thing" scares the hell out of Hollywood. Video tapes take time to duplicate and lose quality in the process. Digital is always the same series of ones and zeros. DVD's are fast and cheap to make (both content and fabrication) which screws up their economics -- 1000 VHS tapes takes a few hours to make, 1000 DVD disks can be pressed in a few minutes.

    Face it, people are greedy little bastards. Technology allows them to screw you repeatedly so they do. And then they push through laws to make it illegal to try to prevent them from doing so. All they care about is their bank accounts. They have no evidence that DVD piracy is any worse than VHS tape piracy. They tout things like "billions of dollars" but fail to prove any of it -- and shouldn't they be enforcing the existing copyright laws these people are breaking?

    [Personally, I think society is collapsing. There are just too many petty bullshit laws to ever enforce them all or even know your breaking many of them. I break a multitude of laws everyday -- I drive faster than the posted speed limit; I run red lights; I change lanes within 50ft of an intersection; I pass people on the right...]
  • <preach href="choir">

    Let's take a look at history: Popular media is full of images of pre-television people huddled around their radios listening to favorite radio shows. The public was conditioned to plan their lives around radio. Then came TV. This was a great leap forward as people could actually now SEE their favorite personalities. And since radio had conditioned people to plan their lives around a broadcast schedule, they had a large and obedient audience. Then came the VCR. And suddenly, people didn't have to plan their lives around broadcast schedules. Can't watch your favorite soap opera because work gets in the way? No problem! Can't watch your favorite sit-com because little Kimmy has a piano recital that night? No problem! Want to watch your favorite movie anytime you want? No problem!

    Each of these technologies succeeded because they offered something truly revolutionary. Radio brought visitors into our home who would entertain us. TV added a second sensory input, enriching the entertainment experience. VCRs gave us the power to decide what we wanted to watch, when we wanted to watch it. We as a society became accustomed to being able to decide for ourselves how we spent our time. At the same time, television's all pervasive nature has somehow made it less important in our lives. How many of us live in an area where the local broadcast TV station doesn't broadcast 24x7?

    And now, with the advent of digital copy controls, the content producers are once again in a position to dictate when we can watch what they produce, and even how or where we watch it.

    I think we as a society have reached the point where it no longer matters; that TV has become a convenience, not a necessity. And if we are no longer able to time shift, most of us will never miss it. We'll move on to other activities. We'll find other things to occupy our free time. TV will become just another media form trying to grab our attention. The signal will devolve into so much noise, much in the same way as Usenet has reached max entropy. And we won't miss it.

    In the big scheme of things, it's the media companies that will lose.

    </preach>

  • "Hey, the History Channel is pretty good. So is the Discovery Channel. Fuck, if I could pay $8 a month to get just those"

    Ever wonder why you can't do that? Because they don't have to. They want your $40 for "basic" service and it's a "take it or leave it" deal. Why do you think that the lower and middle satellite plans leave out "just one or two" channels that you would want, which ends up costing you $10 more a month despite the fact you don't want ANY of those other 25 channels extra.

    If cable and satellite were sold "a la carte" they'd not generate revenue from most of the crap channels.
  • Have you seen the ads on places like the History Channel offering to sell you a tape of the show you just saw for $20? Have you then thought to yourself, "I don't need to spend $20 for their tape. I'll just tape the show the next time it airs." Now do you see their angle?

    And because noone would bother to buy them, they bother advertising why?

    Do you see how your argument falls down? Clearly someone is buying them or they wouldn't advertiser them. Walk into a video store in the UK and you can see tapes of Red Dwarf, Babylon 5, Star Trek etc etc. These videos are often on sale at the same time that the shows are being made on TV.

    Logical conclusion: People are wiling to pay fair dues for a decent product. We are not all thieves and copyright infringers and don't deserve to be treated as such.

    As much as the MPAA and RIAA like to rant and rave, most people know right from wrong and most people try to do "the right thing"(tm)

    People use Napster because, although copyright infingement is illegal, they know that the current system is "wrong". Massive coporations soaking up sackfuls of money, using their strangleholds to force manufactured drivel down our throats, artists getting paid a tiny fraction of proceeds. The days when we all though popstars were automatically multimillionaires (They sold a million copies at $15 a piece, they must have made at least $7million right?) are gone. This is the information age and the information is that when you buy a CD, you are giving your money to liars and scoundrels.

    The funny thing is that the more draconian measures the RIAA and MPAA introduce, the more they will revile people and the less willing people will be to give them their money. I used to want a huge CD collection and when DVDs came out, I fancied a huge collection of them. I now only buy second hand CDs (no, I don't have Gigabytes of mp3, I just listen to the old ones more) and one(1) DVD (The Matrix of course). I considered buying another recently but just couldn't morally bring myself to.

    To paraphrase someone a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, "The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.". See which way the wind is blowing, there are the seeds of rebelion in it's infancy here.

    Rich

  • Of course some folks are buying them, but some are not.

    That is true of course. But I think you clearly understand why that is no reason to penalise honest people. And the original implication was that noone would buy them since they could copy them from the TV

    However, if the shows are copy-protected, then taping is suddenly out of the question, and all the folks who would have taped now must buy the tapes if they want a copy. Perhaps most will simply do without, but some will buy, and therein lies the extra profit.

    But by restricting the content, you are reducing the utility of the service provided. This directly affects the balance of the cost/benefit equation. If we have PPV miniseries X with runs Monday through Thursday and I know I am going out Tuesday (or even might be going out) and I can't copy that episode then I won't buy it. Yes, I know this argument can be refuted by content-on-demand but it is merely illustrative.

    On the other hand, if you're saying that as controls get more restrictive, then consumers will simply turn away from the entertainment companies, then you have a legitimate argument, assuming it really happens.

    That's exactly what I'm saying. There's an army of people out there who want the convenience of "content now" at low to no cost. Now, that's a group of potential consumers. At the moment, their needs are not being met by the traditional cartels but are being supplied by *copyright infringers (and some small independents) which for some (most) people, pushes the cost too far above "low-to-no" (moral cost to high). Hopefully while the old dinosaurs are sleeping someone will jump in and find a way to meet these consumers demands and kill the dinosaurs dead. It's just waiting to happen. The dinosaurs have nothing to offer anymore. They provide poor quality content at high prices and rely on their stranglehold and the law to do it because they have nothing real to offer anymore.

    Of course, nothing is certain, it may not happen, the dinosars may change and adapt to the new market but hopefully whatever happens, it will come sooner rather than later.

    Rich

    *I had originally used the word "pirate" but I think it is important that we get out of the habit of playing to their rules

  • And rates have been climbing towards unreasonable for quite some time. Basic cable rates of $40/month?!! DVD movies costing $25-30??!
    That's not entirely fair. If you go back to 1988, the cost of a VCR copy of Ghostbusters (4 years old at that point) was about £100, maybe £30 for an ex-rental copy. Now you can buy Gladiator for £20.

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