Who Controls Your Television? 245
Nurgled writes "The EFF, reportedly the only consumer rights organization to be granted membership of the Digital Video Broadcasting consortium, reports that TV and movie industry representatives have been pushing for DRM in the DVB technologies. This in itself is not entirely unexpected, but these talks have been going on in closed meetings. The EFF itself has been blocked from reporting on this until now as a condition of being allowed to attend. The proposed technologies allow rights-holders and broadcasters to severely hamper your ability to make use of broadcast television content, including the ability to retroactively blacklist any devices that consumers may already own that act in ways undesirable to the rights-holder or broadcaster. The EFF concludes that public interest and consumer rights advocates must fight back."
They may try and control the content, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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For me, I'm not too interested in TV, and I let most shows go by. I hear about new shows when my friends mention them, but that is rare. And the shows I do watch, I hate commercials, so I try to get them on DVD.
For me, I *AM* interested in music, and I still have the same problem. I don't listen to radio ever and
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The only shows I watch are dog whisperer and galactica.
I'm really overbooked between Mmorgs (1.5d), ultimate(1.5d), dancing(1d), and dating(2d) take up my time.
Also Boardgaming and D&D a few days a month.
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Yeah but there's a reason TV sucks (Score:2)
The reason TV sucks is because established "content providers" have a stranglehold on entry into the market, and will do anything (including, yes, make the Off switch illegal) to keep that hold.
Free the hardware platform for broadcast, and the possibilities for quality TV will explode
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Or failing that, a pair of insulated wire cutters. Or a large hammer. Or....
Hell, doesn't bother me any, I have two 13" tvs, one of which is having issues and about to be tossed. Its not being replaced. When the other one dies or is made obsolete by the final switch to hdtv only, it too will find a dumpster and not be replaced.
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This vision of your nightmare future was brought to you by the letter S, and the numbers 8 and 4.
20 minutes into the future (Score:5, Interesting)
Reminds me of an old Max Headroom episode [wikipedia.org]
Re:20 minutes into the future (Score:5, Interesting)
Might as well finish the list of episodes. The second season has only two (out of eight) episodes that can still be safely considered fiction:
Episode 2.1 - Academy - The "zipping" (hijacking of satellite feeds) in this episode was inspired by the real-world Captain Midnight [wikipedia.org] hack against HBO. More recently, Falun Gong types have done the same thing against Chinese TV stations.
Episode 2.2 - Deities - We've got fake TV evangelist hucksters hawking all sorts of crap (as we did in 1987), but only now do we have web pages as electronic gravestones. Probably only a matter of time before someone claims they can store your soul in a webpage.
Episode 2.3 - Grossberg's Return - "boost ratings by hacking people's TVs to watch a rival station while their owners sleep" sounds an awful lot like hiring a botnet to perform click fraud against online advertisers.
Episode 2.4 - Dream Thieves - OK, we don't have the tech to record dreams, and even fMRI isn't going to give us such technology within the immediate future, so that one's still in the "fiction" column. Finally!
Episode 2.5 - Whacketts - A "video narcotic" causing people to keep their TVs on 24/7... well... that's what TV's for. True, but almost redundant.
Episode 2.6 - Neurostim - "Zik-Zak introduces Neurostim, a device to directly stimulate the brain and bypass the need to use television for advertising." - we're not at the point of stimulating the brain to desire product, but neuroscience is being used to analyze [futurepundit.com] the effectiveness of advertising.
Episode 2.8 - Baby Grobags - is still fiction, since we can't grow humans outside a womb.
I skipped an episode, deliberately, because it's probably the most important one of the series.
Episode 2.7 - Lessons - "Network 23 censors go a step too far when they try to shut down a secret school in the fringes, because it's using pirated Network 23 instructional programming" could be ripped straight out of today's headlines. The episode is essentially a video version of RMS' famous essay "The Right To Read" [gnu.org], except that Max Headroom predated Stallman's essay by eleven years.
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20 minutes into the future... (Score:4, Interesting)
Janie Crane: "Edison... an off switch!"
Metrocop: "She'll get years for that. Off switches are illegal!"
- from Max Headroom, Episode 1.6, Blanks [maxheadroom.com]
Every year, another episode of Max Headroom comes true.
1.1: Blipverts - now we have ads designed to look OK at both regular speed, and at DVR-fast-forward "2 seconds" speeds.
1.2: Rakers - what's the difference between Raking and other "extreme sports" or "Wildest Police Videos"?
1.3: Body Banks - we now purchase organs harvested from Chinese prisoners
1.4: Security Systems - live, real-time monitoring of citizens, walled communities, etc.
1.5: War - both the Yugoslavian unpleasantness and Gulf War II appear to have been engineered for purposes of getting good ratings
1.6: Blanks - anyone without papers is "blank", and subject to arbitrary arrest, detention, and disappearance.
Anyone want to take on the last 6-7 episodes?
Re:20 minutes into the future... (Score:5, Funny)
Argh! Not released yet! curse you, media gatekeepers of the modern age: here all I want to do is legally watch a program which was once given away for free on TV, and you frustrate me yet again...
Screw netflix net is forever (Score:2, Interesting)
http://video.aol.com/video-category/max-headroom/
HOly Crap! (Score:2)
Most excellent.
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'You can turn it off!' he said.
'Yes,' said O'Brien, 'we can turn it off. We have that privilege.'
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TV is less and less important to me with each passing day.
About a year ago I realized that I had come to watch almost no TV. I never made any conscious decision to do so. It's just been a gradual progression. I do have Tivo and a lifetime subscription to it, and about the only thing I now watch is Lost, and only if my wife happens to be watching it at the same time. I tried watching Battlestar Galactica, and enjoyed it, but just couldn't keep up with the episodes and gave up on it.
I get my news from XM radio during my commute, and, besides, both national and loca
Advertising/market share controls TV (Score:2)
It is the revenue stream that controls TV. That revenue stream comes from either subscribers or advertisers. Both depend on viewership/marketshare, so you control the revenue stream.
Is MCDonalds made a TurdBurger and nobody bought it, they'd soon cut it from the menu. If TV viewership dropped by 50% the TV industry would soon change their tune.
Most people, however, just won't care and will take whatever is thrown at them.
You don't need TV. I have not had TV for approx 10 yea
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Oh, come on, man, the Arch Deluxe wasn't that bad.
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Is MCDonalds made a TurdBurger and nobody bought it, they'd soon cut it from the menu.
Oh, come on, man, the Arch Deluxe wasn't that bad.
Ironically, I stopped going to McDonalds when they stopped selling the Arch Deluxe - it was the only thing on their menu that was worth getting. All of their other products were the same as every other fast-food burger joint, only not as good. I don't think I've set foot in a McDonalds in at least eight or ten years, so maybe things have changed (I seriously doubt it, though).
Re:They may try and control the content, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
If they embed some kind of flag allowing me them to tell what day/time the show was broadcast, from where, and the ID of my decoder should I decide to illegally distribute my recording of their broadcast, that's fine by me, as long as I don't have to pay for any equipment upgrades to do so and can continue to use my existing TV and computer hardware.
I have no problem with them trying to protect themselves from blatant illegal internet distribution or rebroadcast without permission of content they charge for, as long as I can easily record, play back, copy, and store anything my receiver can decode without hassle, without additional equipment, and without enforced resolution degradation. I will not be bound to pay $1.99 for each TV show I want to store and playback later from DVD just because they're afraid I might give it to someone else, who could also view the same program for free anyway. If I want to capture a piece of TV footage and add it to a home movie, I have a legally protected right to do so. If I want to record a movie from HBO and watch it later at any point, I have a legally protected right to do that. As long as I don't re broadcast, distribute, or sell copies of it, I'm not doing anything illegal, and will fight vigerously to protect that right.
I think what they really want is a system for being able to easily back track any distributed content to the location at which it was originally received and recorded. This would make prosecution easy. As long as they do this without impacting my current rights, I'm completely OK with it. If it costs money to make the switch, or I have to trade out any equipment, I expect THEM to foot the bill and provide all the required labor services, cables, etc to replace my current setup.
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I control the "OFF" switch. TV is less and less important to me with each passing day.
Is that because you are downloading content (legally or illegally) that is usually viewed as broadcast television or because you have found an alternative source for entertainment to fill the void usually provided by things that are found originally on broadcast television?
My wife and I spend more time away from broadcast television content (no matter how we receive it) now than we used to. But there are still plenty of things found in the broadcast television library that we both enjoy, which I do not bel
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Fuck broadcast TV.
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it's a sad state of affairs when going outside, reading, having family time, etc, are considered alternatives to what is found on tv. your post makes it sound as tho tv is the default setting of how to spend time at home. of course, asking my family what they're doing when i speak to them on the phone usually has the same result.
I suppose it could be read that way. But the things you mentioned we already do. Television was just in the list. Now it's lower on the list and everything else is accented a bit more.
... informative ... emotional ... what-have-you. It can also be beyond a waste of time, to the point of destructive. TiVo, for us, has improved our television experiences by allowing us to watch what we want when we want to, and without the irritations of exceedingly bad advertisements
Broadcast television can be entertaining
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I went from no TV to cable just to get Dora the Explorer, Bob the Builder, and a host of other kid shows.
And yea it sucks to have kids watching TV, but when you are the only adult in the house and you need to take a shower, it is nice to have a few minutes as the kid zones into Curious George.
I have two kids (Score:2)
In exchenage I now have the cmoplte pokemon series, bob the builder, dora the explorer.
I jsut didn't want them changing channels ans seeing the news. This was shortly after 9/11/01.
I must say that I miss TV terribly. All kinds of great shows popped up. oh well, it's best for the kids.
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Get a TIVO. After awhile everyone in the house will stop wanting to see shows live.
Our kids (6 and 3) currently don't understand that their shows have been recorded. They just think that they are there always waiting for them.
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Small scale answer (Score:3, Interesting)
The one good thing about capitalism is that companies that try to grab more rights for themselves than for their customers go out of business and get replaced with companies that don't. There will be pirate stations that will broadcast analog still, and there will be pirate content creators who create digital content without the broadcast flag, or better yet with all the bits turned on.
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Have that ATSC tuner that ignores broadcast flag? great works for the 5 channels over the air, does not work on the 300 cable TV channels. you need cablecard tuner to get those. and only blessed vista systems can have that installed as they make sure that the evil user cant get to it outside their restrictions.... Oops that TV show has a self expire!
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Thought experiment (Score:2)
I agree we need a policy that whatever two consenting devices do in the privacy of *my #$^$#%ing house is their own business.
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Hoard recievers and other hardware built before 2003 NOW. Hoard hardware built buy manufacturers outside of this DVB consortium.
This is a great idea, and "NOW" is the key word. Governments can always stop you by implementing even harsher restrictions than they recently did in Japan, banning second-hand sales of certain electronics made before 2001:
http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/news-11230-2nd+ h and+electronics+sales+will+soon+be+illegal+in+Japa n.html
(Also covered on Slashdot, if you want to search
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Because they will be so useful when broadcasting goes all-digital. Feds unveil digital-TV subsidy details [zdnet.com], HD Radio rising [eastvalleytribune.com]
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Everyone starting in 2009! (Score:4, Informative)
Yay for the continued fleecing of Americans over this shift all of which benefits the coffers of the government when they resell the spectrum for billions.
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--jeffk++
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Sounds like a great opportunity for... (Score:3, Funny)
Seriously, if this crap goes down, I'm going back to reading Victorian novels -- and maybe watching the occasional episode of Entourage at a friends' house.
retroactive (Score:5, Interesting)
I prefer technology which makes it easier to do what one wants to do, rather than harder.
Re:retroactive (Score:5, Insightful)
They mean to blacklist devices that do not support DRM. Eventually your cable company would have to turn off your signal under penalty of law and tell you that they are not allowed to serve a customer that is using a device which allows recording.
Not only would the act be illegal, but allowing the act to be possible would also be
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*click*
%^&&*&$#%^^&&$^^^$$$...NO CARRIER
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There's still the good old a-hole. By which I mean a camcorder recording the front of my TV, since they'll be able to prevent normal analog interception.
For that matter, I could just tell my friends the plot of the show. Is that infringing? Will I not be allowed to go out in public unless I wear a ball gag?
Something tells me that the low-tech counterculture is going to be going through a huge upswing in the next generat
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I think it's time for "Tune it out -- turn it off -- drop out".
blacklist (Score:2)
Who controls *my* television? (Score:5, Funny)
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Piracy Always Wins (Score:4, Informative)
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Yes. Steve Jobs' thoughts on music apply to DRM content in general.
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and the mice have the cats massively outnumbered, though the cats have more money, so that might level the field.
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that is so true. cory doctorow wrote a great paper [craphound.com] on that very argument.
Is this something that has to be fought? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this a case of "fair use" activists trying to genuinely protect our rights or perhaps thinking they speak for everyone when they really don't?
Which is it?
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Why let the market take care of it when you can try and control the market through legislation?
Collusion (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it's possible that new content providers and models will provide competition, and there's all kinds of completely different media now capturing attention share that television used to command, and so I suspect that if net neutrality isn't destroyed that there will be enough alternatives to keep markets working, if slowly
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The market doesn't always take care of everything. The better product doesn't always come out on top. The fair laws don't always get voted in favor of. One who dislikes Bush (compared to Kerry) can say "look at the president we voted
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Because, if they do this the way they're doing it, it will have been foisted upon us and become a legal framework ... the market will no longer be able to do anything about it.
...
From TFA
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If we truly had a "free market" then we wouldn't have the DMCA making illegal to bypass DRM.
Because they are a monopoly, and have the DMCA (Score:2)
they apparently successfully perpetrated the bluff that they'd refuse broadcasters who didnt adopt DRM.. thus all broadcasted media is DRM encumbered.
because of this DRM and the dmca, any electronics maker that wants to enter the cable market (80% or so of the TV market in general) has to comply with hollywood's every monopolistic whim.
this is clearly a case of abuse of a monopoly position i
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My cynical self believes that the market will be put in jail before its allowed to decide what they want. People make noise and senators don't seem to care, after all your taxes don't compare to their sponsorship.
THEY control the horizontal (Score:2)
But I control the power switch! MUAHAHAHAHAHA!
You can't fault them for reaching for the sky (Score:5, Informative)
If I wasn't sadly jaded, I'd have put the article down to outrageous hyperbole
However, I think they are missing the big point. YouTube is successful not because it has clips and full shows of copyrighted material, but because it's chock full of stuff - amateur and professionally done - that's free.
I've watched how my kids use it (9 & 12, and the next big consumer generation) and they watch stuff that people posted that they'd done themselves.
TV is becoming less relevant to us old folks, who grew up on it
Kids aren't "into" shows as they have been in the past, and will skip or watch an episode of something they see in passing on TV on a whim - when they bother to have it on at all.
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TV is becoming less relevant to us old folks, who grew up on it
Kids aren't "into" shows as they have been in the past, and will skip or watch an episode of something they see in passing on TV on a whim - when they bother to have it on at all.
Talk about the d
Don't complain - just do (Score:2, Insightful)
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Correct me if I'm wrong... (Score:2)
My thoughts were if the gov. takes back the analogue channels and the content providers only sent us digital information, they could then easily control exactly what is done with content by forcing all said devices to
Let 'em (Score:2)
Q: How to stay in business?
A: Give the customer what they want.
Q: How to put yourself and your entire industry put of business?
A: Screw the customer in every possible way.
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The problem is trying to figure a way out of the "download everything for free" mentality that seems to have come up. There are lots of bad ways out of it, but not very many good ones. Actually making everything free isn't one of them.
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Downloading will come to pass I'm sorry to say. (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's look at two TV shows I enjoy very much, 'Lost' and 'Heroes'. For the past couple of years I would watch a TV program on my TiVo and then download the episode via torrent for reference if needed further on in the season. If I enjoyed the show "that" much, once the DVD set would come out, I would purchase said DVD set and delete the downloaded files. This was until a couple of weeks ago when my ISP informed me that an agent of NBC Universal was whining that I was downloading/sharing a torrent of an episode of Heroes. You bet I posted this anonymously. Those bastards are relentless in their pursuit of my misery.
Based on a lot of searching online, it appears the broadcast networks have stepped up their assault on people downloading broadcast TV episodes. So, this begs the following question: How would the broadcasters feel if the torrent creators left the commercials in the broadcast? Would they shut up and go away? My feeling is no. They want to ensure 100% that we are forced to watch the commercials. Of course we all know it would be very easy to just take them out of the file once we had them or move that slider forward 3-5 minutes.
I know advertising is main money driver of Television, but these media industries need to realize that society is changing their business model for them and all they are doing is resisting and creating terrible quality online content riddled with DRM which makes their TV episodes completely unwatchable in full screen resolutions.
I am so sick and tired of all this broadcast flag and control bullshit. All of the media industries have continued to piss me off at various times between 1999 and now. I don't see this stopping anytime soon either.
Those of us that are downloading TV to keep mid/long term are fans and the companies are doing nothing but ruining the fan experience.
'Give us what we want, or we'll go away'
'...and the geeks shall inherit the earth.'
Who controls my TV? (Score:3, Funny)
Who Controls My TV? (Score:3, Funny)
Nobody (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, I've got a DLP projector. And I do have an Avermedia A180 ATSC tuner for my Vista Media Center machine.. but that is mostly a "oh.. i guess ATSC kind of works" thing. My wife will watch 1-3 shows per week recorded over ATSC. If it stops working, it stops working.
Recently, I involved myself in a conversation about IPTV, how long it was taking to roll out, problems with it, and so on.
Sorry - I've been enjoying IPTV for a while now. I've got an HTPC, and I've got bittorrent. All the TV i care about comes in over IP packet.
The internet truly routes around defective nodes, irrespective of the reason for the defect. When they're political or social, the internet works just as well.
Sometimes the ATSC signal is weak enough (poor antenna placement, but fixing it is low-priority) that the recording is unwatchable. my wife will let me know and then i'll go find the torrent (usually within 12 hours of the show airing) and we'll have it in another 2 hours. That is IP TV and that is available today.
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More to the point, why do you think it is your right to "take" without any "giving"?
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Stopping pro flag laws isnt enough, we need anti.. (Score:2)
make it illegal to use such a scheme, period, at the federal level and this problem goes away.
How apt-get (Score:2)
What a coincidence.
direct-tv already does this with their sat service (Score:3, Informative)
I had problems with mine and wanted to cancel. I called their CSR and asked to disconnect my service since I was sending this POS back.
now, I had the unit for a few days and there were some unwatched shows on its drive. shows I had planned to see before returning the unit.
you can guess what happened. as soon as they sent the 'disconnect' signal, AND while my unit was plugged in (key thing) - it proceeded to LOCK UP my saved shows and not let me watch them!
un freaking believable. and the CSR rep acted like it was a surprise to him. when all along, they knew they were gonna lock up your data if your bill goes unpaid (shows you DID pay for and have a right to still see!). or, if your dish goes down you may ALSO be unable to watch saved shows.
we are already 'here'. and it sucks.
and that was one reason why I cancelled. I now have my own HDTV tuner (hdhomerun from silicondust.com) and while I get no premium (hbo, etc) content, I do at least have control over the PURE MPEG shows that I save, with zero drm. in fact, I watch more PBS (in high def) now than I ever watched PBS before. in a way, this whole DRM stuff is probably HELPING free and open networks like PBS get more viewership!
just remember this issue about direct-tv and probably dish (and cable, too). if your receiver says 'no' then all saved shows are ALSO a 'no'. just know that going into it - if you decide to go in, at all.
How is it legal? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's like selling a sandwich and requiring the buyer to agree not to open it to see what it's made of, and then following them home to make sure they don't open it because you're afraid they might learn how to make it themselves and post the recipe online along with *GASP* a picture of the sandwich! It doesn't matter that they told everyone that you made the sandwich, not them. It doesn't matter that this free publicity drew hundreds of new customers to your little sandwich shop. No, you're a paranoid control freak who thinks his sandwich sales will drop because people can get the recipe online, even though there's no evidence supporting this. In fact, you're considering selling the sandwich in locked lucite boxes that only expose the sandwich one bite at a time, and while you're at it, why don't you collect information on sandwich usage, kitchen appliances, travel habits, and social security numbers? All this security is costing so much, the sandwiches that should cost about $2.25 now cost about $19.95.
And now you're wondering why you're being outsold by those unprotected sandwich shops charging $2.25.
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not important (Score:2)
CNN and Slashdot (Score:2)
evasion of DRM? (Score:2)
Well, for one hour during the 60s.... (Score:3, Informative)
Managing Decline (Score:2)
There is a management speak phrase, "Managing Decline", and that is exactly what they appear to be doing.
WHAT content? (Score:2)
There's nothing to watch - it's all ads. The ratio of ads to content is approaching unity every year - on the worse stations there are four minutes of ads for every five minutes of content. Of that content, very very little appeals to me. And ads are creeping into content more and more - ads inserted into the margins.
I got so damn sick of it that I can't believe more people aren't ditching their TVs. Do people STILL use TV? Still use Geocities? Still use C
Cable companies control your TV (Score:4, Informative)
I found out this was because my cable company was setting the CCI flag to 0x2 for all channels in my cable system with the exception of local broadcast stations. This means my local cable company was overriding the wishes of the content provider (in this case Cable in the Classroom) and copy protecting the content.
Other people have been restricted from even recording a channel to TiVo [tivocommunity.com] because the CCI flag was set to 0x3.
When I complained to my cable provider, Comcast, about them blanketly applying the CCI flag of 0x2 to everything they basically told me to shut up and take it.
broadcast flag? (Score:3, Informative)
After all the equipment that has been sold without the broadcast flag, I assume they can't start encrypting broadcast signals, right?
This is just their attempt to have all hardware/software respect the broadcast flag.
I bought a HDTV compatible PC card (http://www.pchdtv.com/) years ago when the broadcast flag was supposed to hit. It got repealed and my wife yelled at me. Now, maybe I should get a spare?
What do we do? Write our congressman?
IN SOVIET RUSSIA (Score:3, Funny)
Arrr! (Score:2)
Performance loss (Score:2)
Property tax is hardly new (Score:2)
It's certainly a more classic "American" tax than the income tax is, which notably required a Constitutional Amendment to pass muster, and taxing property holders as an approach dates back to feudal taxes payed to the king by the landholder.
What does this have to do with corporations?
Can we please have one tax? (Score:2)
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Yeah. It surprises me how few people seem to have ditched the TV... but it's an easy choice from where I'm standing.
Retroactive Blacklist (Score:2)
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When I had TV I never watched commercials.
In fact, one time I build a device to turn the volume off when a commercial came on.