It's Not TV, It's MythTV 437
ChipGuy writes "The New York Times looks at MythTV (an open source PVR technology), Bit Torrent and Videora and how they are disrupting the television business, especially the lucrative business of selling TV DVDs. Unlike the music industry, television folks are trying to get ahead of the curve and offer TV downloads in a legal and easy to use manner."
Finally... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Finally... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Finally... (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, that company is strugling. I bet they're out of business by next year!
Re:Finally... (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words, don't expect the TV industry to be the messiah of digital, downloadable content. They have too much invested in the current infrastructure, and they are too closely tied to the bass-ackwards film industry to have them swoop down to be our savior.
Re:Finally... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're not paying for their content, or not providing them with the viewers they need to charge money to their advertisers, you're not their customer.
Re:Finally... (Score:4, Insightful)
To paraphrase Syndrome's observation in The Incredibles: the only reason the industry is paying attention is because the leverage possessed by its consumers is a threat. A *threat* gets their attention. Nothing else... not, for example, a simple desire to please their customers or create good will.
Re:Finally... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh how I miss the TV that I grew up with: the commercial free BBC. They would even go as far as covering up product names and describing them in a generic manner (do they still do this?) What resulted was good quality TV aimed at the viewer. The British shows on TVO, CBC and PBS are some of the highest quality enterainment I find on N. American TV, and my Tivo makes the ones that appear on Showcase and A&E watchable. It's too bad that most N. Americans haven't experienced commercial free TV (or if they have on a visit to the UK, they always seem to pick the time of day when it's just cricket
Re:Finally... (Score:5, Insightful)
No matter what you do you're not really a customer, you are a consumer. And as a consumer you are supposed to accept what they are given and be damned happy about it.
Screw that.
Re:Finally... the commercial free BBC (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, they do still cover up some cartons, like on the makes on Blue Peter (a kids program where they often make things out of junk).
However, they advertise their own programs (eg on other channels) incessantly. It's almost like watching commercial telly. They also have a strange idea that the [BB] Corporation is a business. Thus they do things like spend half the license fee [a tax on TV owners in favour of the BBC] on Premiership football [ie Soccer] which is a huge advert in it
Re:Finally... the commercial free BBC (Score:3, Insightful)
Bear in mind that the reason why Soccer became so expensive was because of Sky outbidding everyone else in an effort to corner the market; just after the dotcom bubble burst, the prices started to fall, but not within the reach of ITV, so the BBC is essentially the only real bidding entity in what would otherwise be a fairly nasty little mono
TV is disrupting its own business! (Score:5, Insightful)
You are so, so wrong. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:TV is disrupting its own business! (Score:5, Interesting)
And if TV isn't going to entertain me, then I'm going to watch Family Guy and Futurama reruns until the cows come home. Or I'm just going to throw the damn TV out the window and go find entertainment on the Internet. Because playing Enemy Territory is a heluvalot more entertaining than watching a frigin busload of women redecorate their houses and elimidate each other.
Re:TV is disrupting its own business! (Score:5, Insightful)
and...
And if TV isn't going to entertain me, then I'm going to watch Family Guy and Futurama reruns until the cows come home
Wow. I wish I could even convey my disbelief. Let me hit you with the clue stick a couple times: In Family Guy, Peter is an idiot. In fact, the entire show centers around this. Same with Fry. Who are the intelligent, assertive characters that typically point out their counterparts' idiocy? Peg and Leela. You are too retarded for words.
-truth
Re:TV is disrupting its own business! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:TV is disrupting its own business! (Score:3, Insightful)
I "The Family Guy" you have (besides a talking matricidal baby and a talking/smoking/drugging dog) a father who quite obviously isn't a 90's guy. He is so politically incorrect that he redefines the scale.
Sitcoms make fun o
Re:TV is disrupting its own business! (Score:3, Insightful)
Dude, you need to chill out. Family Guy is so far over the top that if you don't get that it's satire, you really shouldn't be watching it.
(Also, a hint for you: nobody is a better
Re:TV is disrupting its own business! (Score:5, Funny)
Neither am I. I get enough of it at home.
Re:TV is disrupting its own business! (Score:3, Funny)
Man, I think you're on to something! Women redocorating shit, then going on dates with each other (hot! hot! think the US market is ready for this? Maybe try euroland first), and at the end of the evenening eliminating one of their own (did she go too far on the first date? not far enough? eliminate!). Behold the elimidate!
Well you know what they say. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:TV is disrupting its own business! (Score:3, Interesting)
Have ya watched "Joey?"
In high-def?
I used to think Drea de Matteo was hot - very sexy on the Sopranos. Then I watched a few episodes of Joey in 1920x1080. She is worn out. Hardly looking perfect and then there is her character, quite far from perfect. On that show, everyone is a total doofus.
Sometimes the nephew isn't quite as big a doofus as everyone else, but that's about it.
Heck, Ling's character is a parody of the "perfect woman" -- she lo
Re:TV is disrupting its own business! (Score:3, Funny)
Here in Finland there's five major tv channels. Four of them suck and one has all the good shows from Star Trek to Sailor Moon, from Knight Rider to Neon Genesis Evangelion. Guess which one doesn't show where I live ?
Well, at least the other channels have Get Smart...
Re:TV is disrupting its own business! (Score:3, Insightful)
Or commercials for food that talk about how moms choose awesome food for their kids? Because obviously dads are never involved in that process. And dads never drive minivans to take their kids to soccer practice. Nope, never happens.
Those are the commercials that infuriate me. I hate the stereotyped portrayal of either sex. If the commercials you speak
Before it's /.ed (Score:5, Informative)
A few days ago, I wrote about Videora, a BitTorrent+RSS client which makes it easy for folks to find and download torrent files from the web. The post, picked up by others generated mostly positive responses to the software. Think of Videora as TiVo-for-torrent, using RSS feeds. In an effort to shed more light to the product, I did an e-interview (via email) with Sajeeth Cherian, a Canadian student, who has hacked together this wonderful product. Here are excerpts from an e-interview.
OM: Tell me a little bit about yourself?
SC: I am a student attending Carleton University, which is located Ottawa, Canada's Capital. I am in my final year, perusing a degree in Communication Engineering and let me tell you, engineering is as hard as everyone says it is. Lately I've been interning at a couple high tech firms around the Ottawa region to get some real world experience and finish up the work experience requirement for my degree.
OM: What prompted you to write Videora?
SC: My roommate likes to watch anime and constantly scours the web looking for his favorite anime to download. (Anime is the Japanese term for Japanese animation, cartoons that are broadcast in Japan and which are then subtitled into English by groups of volunteers or commercial companies). About once a week he would complain to me how he was wasting all this time searching for these shows. I think he was wishing that these shows would just somehow download themselves. Well after a few weeks I got sick of hearing his complaints so I decide to look for a solution to his problem.
OM: Now aren't you a good roommate? mine just finished my cup-a-noodles and never replenished the pantry. Still, RSS? SC: After searching some of his favorite anime BitTorrent sites, I came across one site which offered an RSS feed. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a simple format that is used by web sites to send article headlines, summaries and links back to full-text articles on the web. Anyways, this RSS feed was special, instead of linking to articles on the internet, it linked directly to the very BitTorrent files that these sites linked to on their web pages. By simply scanning the RSS feed and downloading the desired BitTorrent files it linked to, I concluded that he could download his anime automatically without ever having to surf to an anime BitTorrent website again.
After discovering this RSS feed I began to envision a product. Some thing simple, which allows users to find shows easily and a couple clicks later (after the shows are added to their 'season tickets') would automatically download these shows to their hard drives in the background. With this, users wouldn't have to look for certain video to download, because the video they want would already be on their hard drive. Thus giving them free time to do more interesting things, rather than scour the same old websites. This seemed like a killer idea with more potential than just quieting my roommate so I began to develop this idea into computer software. Along the way, I added a few other features including the ability to aggregate video files into 'want lists' which allows users to easily manually download videos of interest. Needless to say, my roommate doesn't complain to me anymore.
OM: I have seen that most of the cutting edge work on peer-to-peer and torrent type programs is happening outside of the US? Does being in Canada make it easier to work on such P2P products? SC: I don't think being in Canada makes it any easier than being in the United States to work on peer to peer products. Anyone, from any country can work on a peer to peer program without any trouble, all you need is a little computer programming know how. I read recently about a professor at Princeton who wrote a P2P product in 15 lines of code. I don't think he had any trouble producing it.
OM: What do you think is the impact of BitTorrent, RSS and other such technologies is going to be on the media - both d
myth (Score:3, Interesting)
A MythTV PVR isnt so hard to make for the slightly above average user and is a great excuse to try linux.
Re:myth (Score:2)
fixed.
Re:myth (Score:5, Informative)
MythTV was hard. I loaded up KnoppMyth, and immediately needed to tweak it so I could use LVM on my video partition. OK, no big deal, there are good HOWTOs.
Soon, I absolutely needed to update the kernel to 2.6 because ndiswrapper on my wireless NIC panicked the kernel.
Sound has always been a struggle. One kernel worked clearly with OSS but crashed the sound driver on recording way too often. The next kernel didn't work at all with OSS so I needed ALSA (which I preferred anyway) but now the sound is not great. Very distorty.
And the absolute toughest was getting a serial IR dongle to change channels on the satellite box. I needed to custom-build a second instance of lirc and mess around with the IR pulse parameters (like randomly changing the numbers this way or that). No documentation apart from "change these numbers"
I got it working, and I absolutely LOVE my mythbox, but more than once I contemplated Windows MCE, so I could just get the dumb thing working without so much fuss. I just wanna watch some TV...!
Well... (Score:3, Interesting)
With good hardware, MythTV is easy to get running. The hardest part on my Gentoo box was getting ivtv (drivers for Hauppauge PVR-x50 cards, etc) running on 2.6.
Re:myth (Score:4, Informative)
Install Debian, apt-get install mythtv. It's not very hard. Took me an hour including the FTP install of Debian to setup my last MythTV system. The only complicated part is if you want to use Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250 or 350 cards in which case you have to screw around with the kernel modules because Hauppauge isn't very open with these proprietary mpeg-2 encoder cards so they've had to be reverse engineered. If you're just using a generic tuner supported by Video4Linux out of the box like a Hauppauge WinTV 401 model that uses the bttv kernel module and btaudio module (included with any vanilla Linux kernel) for capturing the audio then the Debian install and MythTV debs are all you need really.
MythTV has not even been updated for a whole year.
Quit making stuff up. The last stable release was in September and they put out a new stable release every 4-5 months. In the mean time nothing is stopping you from running the CVS version of it if you're so inclined. I'm still running MythTV 0.15.1 from May because it's very stable and 0.16 has no new features I require. The box is up 24/7 and it's simple enough that my wife has no problem figuring out how to use it to record her shows.
Re:myth (Score:3, Insightful)
Who knows? They might even learn something and become less of a n00b.
Re:myth (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know where you get your info from but mythtv.org [mythtv.org] disagrees with you. (September 2004 for the 0.16 release, this weekend , apparenty for 0.17)
This is not a project for the linux newbie.
But, learning to get mythtv from cvs and compile is relatively pain-free
Re:myth (Score:4, Insightful)
I think a new US law requires that in July, all HDTV recievers will be mandated to respect the "do not record" bit so that the networks can limit what you do with "their" tv stream.
Old encoders will be grandfathered in, so I just bought a pcHDTV that works with linux. http://www.pchdtv.com/
Buch of crap. HDTV has been such a mess. What, 28 different broadcast "standards"? That is not a standard. Go ask the Best Buy drone if any of their pretty flat screens support 1080i. None do, some tube sets may.
My crappy 21" CRT does 2000x1500 which is more than enough for 1080 lines of resolution.
Blah blah blah
Re:myth (Score:3, Funny)
The fact of the matter is... (Score:2, Interesting)
TV Downloads official=Not free.
BitTorrent>Official downloads. We live in a very capitalistic society, or at least most of us do. It makes sense that if you can get something for free, why would you pay for it? Even if that means not getting a third season of that great tv show...
Even so, shutting down the BitTorrent sites, as sad as it is, well placed advertising, and a few gestapo style raids will make a difference. Until a new technology for sharing e
Re:The fact of the matter is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The fact of the matter is... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The fact of the matter is... (Score:3, Informative)
But then I figured out how to configure my router/NAT box to foward BT ports to my computer.
Battlestar Galactica takes me just over 24 hours to d/l. 350 Mb in size, about 5kb/s download speed.
I'm on a dial-up, so that's about as good as it gets.
Re:The fact of the matter is... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The fact of the matter is... (Score:3, Insightful)
TV Downloads official=Not free.
But if Offical downloads are fast and less obnoxious and easily available to everyone regardless of where in the world they live, then the TCD (Total cost of downloading) for Offical downloads approaches and perhaps even beats unoffical downloads.
At that point, the only people who will still download all their TV shows illegally are those who either can't afford the legal option or object to paying to watch TV that they want to
Re:The fact of the matter is... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the important point. Available to everyone in the world at the same time. If it's a choice between getting a TV show via BitTorrent now, or watching it on TV (or via a legal download service) next year, guess which one people are going to choose? I would be more than happy to pay directly for the TV shows I watch (very few at the moment) for the convenience watching them when I choose, for not being forced to watch adverts, and for the pleasure of knowing that the money was going to those who made TV shows I want to watch, and none of it was going to reality TV producers.
Re:The fact of the matter is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Since this demographic cannot afford the legal option, they never were a possible customer.
Obviously, you can't claim a loss to someone who can't afford your product*, but I'm betting the distributors will anyway.
*That is unless it is an item that decreases the amount of items that can be sold to other customers. Since downloads are limitless, it applies here.
Re:The fact of the matter is... (Score:2)
That's not economics, but sociology.
Re:The fact of the matter is... (Score:3, Interesting)
The way to get people to pay that can is to open the books to the public for any particular show.
Exec: "See folks, we can't afford to bring you another season of Popular Show #15 because not enough people are paying for it. Sorry, but if some of you non-payers paid, we might be able to bring back Popular Show #15 for another season."
If the books are not
Re:The fact of the matter is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The fact of the matter is... (Score:2)
Re:The fact of the matter is... (Score:2)
I guess you have never paid for bottled water, or know anyone that has.
It is precisely because we DO live in a capitalistic society that someone will figure out how to sell a product that the public could otherwise get for free (and this is not a slam on capitalism).
Re:The fact of the matter is... (Score:3, Insightful)
You are writing that BT is slow and obnoxious. People have to pay for bandwidth and their own time. Few people want to spend their Sundays downloading music or TV show from weird places. They just want it quickly and painlessly.
That means not too expensive, but it can carry a price and people will still buy it.
Re:The fact of the matter is... (Score:2)
They only have to convince a small percentage of ipod users to use it and they make a fortune.
Already beaten? (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, the "illegal file-sharer providers" kind of already meet my needs. I've no need for 90% of the TV channels currently available, or the commercials that are on nearly all of them. All I need are the few shows that I follow. Click, click, BitTorrent away!
Of course, none of these files give me super-high-quality video and audio. For that, I will buy the DVDs.
Argh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then why don't they fucking sell their shit online in a convenient, reliable format? Or don't they want to learn from the music industry, instead ignoring the solutions and only imagining the problems?
And it could further endanger what for the past 50 years has been television's economic linchpin: the 30-second commercial.
That *particular* business model is dying, and legislation should not protect it, just as "horseless carriages" shouldn't be required to carry horse whips to keep horse whip manufacturers in business. Note I didn't say *advertizing* or commercialism is dying, because it isn't. Merchants have managed to get information about their products to people, and subsequently have them purchased, over the years and through changing technology. Tomorrow will be no different. It's just that the volume of revenue from "forced" advertising, supporting $1M/show paychecks for actors, might not still be there.
And what a tragedy that would be...
Re:Argh... (Score:2)
Re:Argh... (Score:5, Interesting)
That *particular* business model is dying, and legislation should not protect it
I was thinking about this just a few weeks ago, and I think that the current cable companies have the technology to overcome a bunch of problems here, without obsoleting this business model (which makes it more likely to happen).
Most people who have TV have probably said/thought at some point "wow, 200 channels, and nothing to watch". Me and my roommate have a fairly large collection of shows we watch, which is pretty nice because it makes it a lot easier to follow a series, as well as you can watch whenever you want. I got thinking how the cable companies could do something similar using their video-on-demand systems they currently use for movies.
Say you have a system where you go to the channel, and you get a list of shows to pick from. When you pick one, it instantly starts playing that. What does this do? It allows the viewer to watch what they want, when they want, yet still leaves a fairly large amount of control with the station, and also importantly, leaves the concept of a "tv station" in place.
Obviously if you try to start a system where the cable providers do everything, and TV stations themselves are obsoleted, it's not likely to get very far - there would just be too much opposition. Each "channel" would provide their own limited list of shows, and there are lots of ways of providing them. For example, you could allow the user to select "The Simpsons" and see one simpsons episode that day (each day you'd air a new one). You could also provide a list of a few, or even all, episodes to watch. This could in fact start a new breed of specialty stations that provide ie, every simpsons, family guy, and futurama episode (and hell, I'd subscribe to that).
Another power it leaves in control of the station is the ability to air commercials. This is a huge power - you could presumably get info on what the person watchs and tailor ads to each viewer (of course this is fraught with privacy issues, and being slashdot, I'm sure I'll get jumped on for suggesting that). You would also be able to air current ads, even if they're watching a show that originally aired a long time ago (basically, syndication).
The station would also be able to overlay text in real-time, much like they do now. Down at the bottom: "New epsiode available next Sunday at 8pm!". They could still air live events (sporting, etc), and basically if you want to watch it, you have to tune in at the time it's on, or wait until it's over and gets archived for on-demand viewing.
In the end, you get a system that would benefit both sides: the viewer gets to watch what they want, when they want. The station still gets to get revenue from commercials, still acts like a "tv station" (with promos for their shows), and hopefully gets to curb some downloading, since why download when you can just watch it without having to get out of your couch?
Yes, it means that the viewer still has to watch commercials. The trade off, I'd hope, is that there is no extra fee for this service, it would just be a standard offering. Cable boxes could be set to accept either these enhanced stations, or the normal broadcasts.. if you tune to a station with enhanced features, then you get those extras. Satellite providers of course could do the same, but it would require either a two-way satellite (upstream is going to be low-bandwidth anyways) or a broadband or other constant internet connection (the current method of dialing up, picking a show, and disconnecting would be too slow).
I'm guessing that the majority of this could be done with current technology. Video on demand movies already work this way from the viewer's end. The stations or cable companies would just have to write the head-end software to insert commercials and promos.
Uh, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ugh. I hate it when industry propaganda gets reprinted by reporters without comment or common sense. OK, let's talk about this sentence. What exactly did happen to the music industry? During the rise of P2P, their business improved. Then a recession hit, and their business slowed. They then attacked their customers, which is bad for business too. Then iTunes and the like came out, and the recession eased, and business went up.
So what exactly went wrong for the music industry?! They certainly moaned about losing business, but check out those bottom lines and you'll see they are still in business and raking in the billions, thank you very much. Bah! Bad, John Markoff! Repeating industry propaganda is not good for a reporter to be taken seriously.
Dumbass: (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Well, why *don't* they move into a new medium? Or are you saying they should have just stuck with OTA delivery, instead of cable and satellite? Or maybe VHS? Or perhaps film? Or maybe hand-drawn flipbooks? The internet and various media formats are just another delivery mechanism which they should be JUMPING at, AND making a lot of money doing, to boot! This isn't about anyone stealing, this is about content providers responding to the marketplace.
ANT is not TV (Score:2)
Also, WritTorrent [sf.net] has a plugin that lets you post to your blog a
I honestly think that BitTorrent + RSS is a perfect software model of a worldwide broadcast. Despite your available bandwidth, you can host a show with a global audience.
Somebody's getting the idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Mr. Poltrack of CBS said that according to his network's research, a large number of viewers would welcome the chance to pay $1 to watch each television show, if they could do it on their own schedule and with the ability to skip commercials. With commercials, they'd be willing to pay 50 cents. And because the average viewer sees only half of a show's episodes, he said, this on-demand viewing won't hurt the regular showing.
Hey, somebody's on the right track! I pay $1 for a commercial/DRM/BS-free copy of insert-name-of-TV-show-here and I can do what I want with it. $0.50 wouldn't be bad at all with commercials, either. If the quality didn't suck, and I could watch it an unlimited number of times, that'd be perfect. The only thing I wouldn't ask to be able to do would be to share it with the world, but I should be able to at least burn it to a CD/DVD and whatever else I should normally be able to do within fair use.
But will it ever happen?
Re:Somebody's getting the idea (Score:2)
Re:Somebody's getting the idea (Score:2)
Re:Somebody's getting the idea (Score:2)
Re:Somebody's getting the idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Impending Lawsuit in 3 ... 2... 1... (Score:2)
They'll never get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Region encoding sucks. Downloaded shows don't suffer from stupid region encoding. I see syndicated shows that also have DVD box sets, so where's the issue there? The DVDs still sell.
"from video-on-demand offerings that could let viewers order up an episode of "CSI" any time they like to a device that allows viewers who tune into the middle of a live TV broadcast to restart the program instantly"
Comcast has ads for that all over this area but I don't know of one single person that actually has the VOD feature available to them, and isn't it more costly as well? You have to have digital cable (iirc) which can run your cable bill well over $100/mo (more if you have a cable modem too) - that's a lot of dough.
Are the VOD shows commercial free, too? That would be nice to know..
Of course they're going to blame the PVR as well. There are a few things that media execs seem to overlook:
* People are SICK AND TIRED of advertising.
* People have busy schedules and would LIKE to watch TV shows, but cannot always watch them right when they're aired. Hence, the popularity of DVR units.
(I'm not even going to get into the "but you don't have a right to steal the content" crap, because I sure as hell don't think that downloading a TV show is "stealing content" when my Tivo does the exact same thing.)
And last but not least, the "Broadcast Flag" is going to be a total and complete failure.. just like the "V-Chip."
Re:They'll never get it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Most VOD programs are simply small selections of a daily program. For instance, a 5 minute segment of The Daily Show is available on demand. Hardly ever did I see an entire episode of anything, except some Aqua Teen
Just after I pressed the play button, I was called away for a moment. I didn't worry about missing anything because I could always rewind it or restart, etc. After being
Re:They'll never get it. (Score:3, Insightful)
What a lot of people don't know is that when a show goes into syndication, it's only a subset of the episodes, usually the ones with lower ratings. This way they can show a rerun of the higher-rated episodes and still get people to tune-in and not think, I saw this on the local channel 50 times already. When was the last tim
Re:They'll never get it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just like Macrovision on all VHS and DVD releases.. When it's mandated, we will have it. The video stabelizer for it will just cost more and be harder to find, but the broadcast flag will be there. You won't have the option of using it like with the V chip, just like you don't have the option of buying a consumer VCR with a manual gain control. (Macrovision screws with the Automatic Gain
Re:Not stealing if you are not a Neilson veiwer (Score:2)
That being said, you still make an excellent point.
Could be good... (Score:4, Informative)
If the television networks or maybe the producers want to allow me to download their shows w/out ads, the same day they're aired at a fast download speed for a reasonable rate, then I'd probably bite. I sure as hell won't buy a DVD set of a single season of any TV show for fifty bucks. Maybe a subscription service for 20-30 bucks a month that lets me download the shows I want might be worth it to me.
Of course what I just described is a pipe dream, so for the moment I'll remain content with the hdtv rips available.
BitTorrent + RSS (Score:2)
iTV (Score:4, Interesting)
However, what would make my life more convenient is if there was something like iTunes (iTV?) where for a small fee (50 cents a show, possibly a dollar) I could download and burn the show of my choice.
Admittedly I could use P2P to find the show for free, but I would rather have the convenience of a sophisticated search interface and quick downloads.
I wonder how the US networks will react when the BBC finally posts it's huge archive of shows on the web.
Media Portal? (Score:2)
Re:Media Portal? (Score:2)
Re:Media Portal? (Score:2)
The phoney black-and-white issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead, there's a much finer gradation in the real world. I have some music that I've found on the net (most of it in almost certain violation of copyright, but most of it music either not widely available, such as small-run remixes or out-of-print recordings), and I've watched some episodes of TV shows like the Simpsons that my dad's taped over the years. (Before I bought him a boxed set of a couple of seasons, that is.) Some of it's pretty ambiguous -- some laws are a hindrance to perfectly reasonable day-to-day actions, and the law is of necessity always playing catch-up. (And I wouldn't want it *not* to be playing catch-up; the alternative is far scarier.) For instance, I like to listen to old radio shows; many of them are now in the public domain, some of them are of ambiguous copyright, and usually listed (I think quite sincerely) on the websites of collectors with earnest invitations to report if a particular episode thought free and clear is not. I've never been able to work up much moral indignation with myself for listening to widely available audio material that I'd never otherwise encounter.
(And moderate, curious downloading, no matter what the copyright issues, seems qualitatively different to me than proudly downloading current popular music by the bucketload just to fill up Ye Olde iPodde, to "stick it to the Man" or whatever. High-end grocery stores I've been in don't mind customers sampling a grape or two; they know it increases sales either directly or through generated goodwill. That doesn't mean that carting out a case of oranges is the same thing. There are slipper slopes going both ways, I realize, but there are some slippery slopes worth venturing around the upper stretches of, or something.)
Appropriate moderation also applies to the whole concept of copyright. I'm not opposed to copyright (in fact, as societal constructs go, I think it's high on the Good list), but [even / especially] as a rabid free marketeer, I know that copyright is an extended rather than a natural right; the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, by contrast, are inalienable. Copyright is different -- it's a societal convention codified in law, to grant certain privileges (temporary monopoly) in exchange for certain later transfers (into the public domain). It shouldn't mean people can't remember and repeat lyrics, and (let me whack an obvious mole), it shouldn't mean that superficial cultural aspects like the words to Happy Birthday are forever off limits to TV characters. Copyright law is perhaps not as broken as patent law, but it needs some overhauling. Specifically, I'd like to see the temporary monopoly bit be clarified as applying specifically to wide-scale copying likely to affect commerical endeavors of the copyright holder. This still leaves messy edges, but ones I think easier to deal with the current system's mess.
With TV, back to the Simpsons box set: I'd not see much moral problem with anything I do (record, re-watch, commerical skip, dub with voices of my relatives, use as the inspiration for a novel) with television shows unless I've explicitly and with full knowledge promised not to do those things. But for certain shows (glad to see Northern Exposure's box sets, and Monk's) I'd *like* to get liner notes, extra features, snippets, outtakes, etc, and paying for them seems fair. [On the other hand, when DVDs are available from the library, is there moral harm in recording them for later watching, before handing them back to the library? For private, non-commerical use, is the maker actually likely to lose revenue fr
Better schedule, no ads... (Score:5, Interesting)
Pretty much sums it up right there. Viewers want to watch it when THEY have time, and WITHOUT advertising.
People are SICK TO DEATH of advertising. Anyone seen the Caltrain cars on the SF peninsula that are "wrapped" with a Target Stores advertisement? They make Caltrain $25,000/month. Riders *HATE* them. The recent Caltrain newsletter actually has comments from riders saying that they hate them, but Caltrain goes with them because of the cash flow.
Corporations love ads. People hate them. Corporations have more money than people. People want less ads on TV, corporations want more. People try to skip ads with ReplayTV, corporations bitch to the courts. I hate how it all works.
Re:Better schedule, no ads... (Score:2)
Do I hate commericals? (Score:4, Interesting)
Cable Descramblers (Score:2)
NOW - if I buy a cable descrambler, that would be illegal, right?
But surely you can set up MythTV or the like to do the same thing in software (I assume the cable box does it in firmware but I don't actually know.)
So - would software that does the same thing be illegal, or not?
And can MythTV do this?
Re:Cable Descramblers (Score:2)
Re:Cable Descramblers (Score:5, Insightful)
I've had folks ask what legitimate use anyone could possibly have for a cable descrambler -- I've had one for a few years.
My TiVo has a lifetime subscription (which is for the lifetime of the box) but the antenna connection is busted, so i can't just plug it into the cable line. I bought a cable box off eBay for $25 and use it to give me an SVideo feed into my TiVo -- problem solved. Yeah, i could pay TiVo $50 to fix my box, and be without it for 4-6 weeks. Or I could "rent" a cable box from my cable company for $5-15 a month. My solution works and is exactly the kind of situation the US Congress was thinking about when they eliminated the monopoly on cable boxes.
Re:Cable Descramblers (Score:2)
5000 saved programs... (Score:3, Funny)
Unfortunately (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately probably not an affordable one. Have you priced TV DVDs lately? Something like Law and Order is like... 40 bucks a season or something. And there's like nine seasons. That's insane, and I don't think it's the cost of the media that's setting this price. I think it's that they're setting that price because they're expecting you'll pay it, and I think they can just as reasonably expect they can set comparable prices on internet media and you'll still pay it. Well, I for one won't pay it. And I don't think we're going to see TV downloads reasonably priced enough that the cost is less of an imposition than the bother of me paying money to see Aqua Teen Hunger Force on my computer instead of waiting until Adult Swim time, going downstairs to my neighbor's apartment who has cable, and saying "hey can I watch your tv for a little bit?"
Look-- there's this place in New York. It's called the Museum of Television History or something and it's just this little nondescript place on the bottom couple floors of some skyscraper. They've got the entire last 60 years of television on tape. Not quite all of it, but all of it that's been preserved by anyone. That's what they do. They preserve television history. And if you go in and pay them... I don't know, It was like $8 or $12 or something rediculously cheap, they'll let you cram in as many people as you can fit into these little nicely furnished viewing booths and watch in comfort three television programs of your choice out of everything ever recorded. Now that's a nice offer.
That's not what we're going to get. By the time the dust settles and these services are up, we're going to get like.. select from this wide variety of random television programs, some of which are the ones you might actually want to watch, and we'll let you watch them once with periodic graphical glitches, hunched over in your cramped little computer chair with the tinny sound, after a 10-minute buffering session. You can watch that TV show you've forgotten from the 80s with the kid who can stop time because her dad is an alien for just a dollar an episode! Oh, what, you'd rather watch Law and Order? Well, that costs a lot more. You'd rather watch Sliders? Well, we have about six unlabeled episodes from different seasons, so good luck following the plot. But, hey, you like Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You can watch the show's entire run for just the equivalent price of a new XBox and two RPGs which cumulatively take 120 hours to finish! You like Sifl and Olly? Oh, sorry. Go watch the show from the 80s with the alien kid instead. But isn't our service great? Aren't you grateful that we're offering you on aribtrary terms and at relatively steep prices the same uneven entertainment that we offered at one time for free, and that you could continue legally to watch for free indefinitely if you or someone you know had just been forward-thinking enough to turn on their VCRs the first time they were broadcast? Man, those people who still download tv shows over bittorrent must just be so greedy.
It's bullshit. Much as it pains me to say Russia got something right, we really need to copy their compulsory copyright licensing program [allofmp3.com].
Re:Unfortunately (Score:3, Insightful)
I dunno, I'd call that affordable. That's probably a couple bucks an episode, max? And without commercials, and possibly with extra features (some of which people may not want, *shrug*).
MythTV == stealing TV? (Score:4, Interesting)
Turned out a waste of time, I tried downloading episodes of shows I missed that week, such as the first episode of Alias this season when I did not know they moved to Wed. night instead of their old Sunday timeslot. I never get a complete file, so I quit trying...
But really, how is downloading the episode of a show I missed last night stealing? It ain't for sale on DVD yet, or I'd buy it like I already got the first three seasons of Alias. As for commercial DVDs vs MythTV recordings, I'd rather have the DVDs. I've got a PVR-250 TV card, but the quality isn't nearly as good as DVDs. The quality often is rather disappointing on my recordings.
I had for a while kept recordings of Futurama reruns, but ended up getting DVDs because they look so much better on my TV, and that's a freakin' cartoon that shouldn't be affected by quality as bad as live actors and stuff should.
I dont' often even bother to skip commercials. It still gives me a place to visit the kitchen or restroom. And while I have seen the quote from some TV executive that those things qualify as stealing TV, sorry dude, but when nature calls, that's more important than watching another instance of some ad I've already seen way too many times.
Yeah that'll happen (Score:5, Insightful)
By downloading them off the net, I can get them now, without the sucky translation - but it's also illegal. It's lose-lose all the way. I have given up hope of enjoying the shows just like a normal viewer in the USA can, long ago. DRM is going to make us pay very thoroughly. And by paying I don't only mean money but also the freedom to choose content you want in a format you want.
Despite all this stuff like MythTV, thinks aren't exactly looking so bright on the consumer front.
Non-Zero (Score:3, Interesting)
And if a portion of the money goes directly back to the show's production instead of subsidizing some reality tv crap, then all the better.
Although, I'll hold judgement until we actually see an iShows.com that offers all that they promise.
Msg to TV companies. (Score:3, Interesting)
The 30 second spot is dieing. Studies already show that people are so immune to commercials it takes an insane number of repetitions in order to have any kind of chance to be rememebered. Instead the Web is leading the way with largely opt-in advertisement with paid for placement.
If Google can make money providing free search and massive bandwidth, a great deal of R&D for new content all through on demand ads autogenerated based on peoples request. I have a sneaking suspiscion that a network that offered its content for free and had targeted paid for advertising around the process could do the same.
Imagine a FOX websight that works like Google. Go search for a show, or go to the shows site. Paid for adverts are to the side like every freaking web page in existence now. Some click through some don't. Download the show with a streaming advert delivering method aimed at the users login which lasts ONLY while the content selected is loading.
Of course to do this you have to completely revamp Nielson or out right replace it. Turn the marketing industry upside down. And set up massive delivery infrastructure and reorganzie the way your basic TV station works.
no biggie.
The rules (Score:4, Interesting)
2. They must be available for download before they are shown on television anywhere.
3. They must be reasonably priced.
If these three rules are followed, I look forward to kissing bittorrent goodbye for my weekly 24 episode download, and paying a bit of money for them. I'd prefer to transfer a chunk of money to the service and then have credit stored on there for a few weeks worth of television shows.
The big lie (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright infringement is not theft, but we see the industry repeat this lie repeatedly. Why, oh why, do people fall for this crap?
As well, please keep in mind that originally, copyright protected only the author and only for a limited time. In fact, most of the so called "copyrighted" material no longer even belongs to the original creator. Indeed, most of copyrighted material would now be in the public domain.
Jeez people, face facts, the overly affluent have corrupted the law and are using it to exploit you.
It simply amazes me just how many Americans love to talk about freedom and responsibility but then are silent in the obvious presence of tyranny and exploitation.
Not really a "Product" IMHO (Score:3, Interesting)
Article quote, +1 Insightful (Score:3, Insightful)
This guy sums it up for me. I've been running Bit Torrent to get the only 3 TV shows (Simpsons, Daily Show, Chappelle Show) I every watch. I would pay $1 for pulling a hi-res, color and sound corrected copy in a heart beat.
Don't forget FCC restrictions (Score:3, Insightful)
The FCC won't allow it. How stupid is that? If I'm already paying for the local stations, I should be able to buy other feeds. It boils down to perceived advertising exposure.
It's not JUST the content providers, the FCC has something to do with it as well.
Now, if Discovery and the BBC would broadcast the same shows on both sides of the pond and if Canada wasn't excluded, boy, that would be nice.
Time-shifting rocks. (Score:5, Interesting)
The PC has an AthlonXP 2000+, 512MB ram, onboard nforce video/TVout/audio,a 802.11b pci card, and a crappy 79AUD PCTV video capture card that came with a remote that works very nicely with MythTV. I have a cvs version of mythtv that I update and build every month or so.
So , how do I use it?
- With the 4 FTA channels that are available to me, I've got it set to record about five regular shows for me and my wife, plus a few movies on occasion. I watch the recorded shows when I come home from work, and possibly browse about 15-20 minutes of "real" tv. I will never go back to "real" tv, more importantly, neither will my wife.
- I use the MythDVD portion of MythTV for ripping rental DVD's. Wait, hold the flames! I use it in this fashion as I work shiftwork, my wife rents DVD's and I normally see them on the table about 1/2 hour before they're due back... rip them to Mythtv, watch them later at my convenience with the MythVideo portion.
*Side note: If anyone's looking for convenience in ripping DVD's , this is it. Insert DVD, pick which title to rip, select bitrate ("Good" on my system equals 750kbps xvid,2 pass,720x576 - works nicely for me) , press go. The DVD is ripped to a file in 15 minutes, and a Xvid encoded version appears in the MythVideo section in about 3 hours (on my Athlon XP2000+).
- I also have about 20 DVD's at home for the kids ripped and watchable in MythVideo. Oh, *cough* and a few movies I got from teh intarweb. First release movies arrive in my small town about 6 months after a good DVD rip comes out, so occasionally I use a fair sized chunk of my 16GB ADSL download allowance to get a few movies. I've also been busy lately downloading Enterprise episodes (have all of them S1-S4 now). Enterprise got canned on Australian TV at the end of series 2, I think.
- I listen to about 5 GB of mp3's/ogg's with the MythMusic portion and my wife is slowly ripping her giant CD collection to it.
- I plug in the USB gamepad and kill time by playing about 500 MAME and Super Nintendo (yay mario!) games with the MythGame plugin.
- I listen to a number of internet radio stations with the Radio plugin. Gotta love "the 80's channel".
- I have just about every digital photo I've ever taken in the Mythgallery area, which allows me to browse through and start a slideshow of images.
- I get a weather feed with MythWeather, with a 4 day forecast, current conditions and animated satellite imagery.
- I also have MythNews, a RSS browser... but I don't really use it often, as I have one in Thunderbird on my PC.
All up, it cost about 1000AUD to put together+ a few days of cursing to set up initially. It's been running now for about 18 months. The rest of the family's addicted to it now, so I don't think it'll ever be leaving.
I call bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
I pay the local cable company for access to the programs I want to record with Mythtv.
All of my songs are purchased via iTunes
The simple fact is that I use mythtv as a recorder just like I would use a vcr. I do not steal any content even though the article suggests that I do.
I have 2 cable boxes (which I pay for) connected to my mythtv system. I pay the local cable company for the content I may want to record.
Re:First Post. (Score:2)
Re:First Post. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:First Post. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bit torrent poses no threat (Score:3, Informative)
It sounds to me like you are behind a router/firewall and the packets aren't being routed properly.
Re:Why do we pay these people? (Score:3, Insightful)
Teachers are almost infinitely more useful than actors. But I pay lot more for tuition than going to the movies. Now, if we had superstar teachers whose lectures were all over the media and people paid to watch, they'd be millionaires too. I'm sure there are
Re:Why do we pay these people? (Score:5, Insightful)