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We are talking about the ability to manipulate a buffer. Or to work with something half-downloaded. I have personally re-invented this concept,

But I don't actually know enough about the patents in question. However, if the concept is simply "pausing live TV", then it absolutely was an obvious idea, in that anyone forced to use Linux video tools from that time period would likely have come up with the same thing.

Allow me to direct you to #6862681 on what is effectively "dd if=/dev/hda of=/media/my-flash-device/mbr.img bs=512 count=1"

• Updated a flag in bios indicating that this occurred
• Was invoked by a special "recovery utility" by the user of the computer
• The Bios could boot from the mbr.img file while on your flash device
• A failure to boot message were based on the flag in bios

I could go on. And on. The fact is, the patent system is so thoroughly broken right now that my first reaction to just about any patent is to question whether or not it should actually be a patent

Hmmmm... here's my output:

regionset version 0.1 -- reads/sets region code on DVD drives
Current Region Code settings:
RPC Phase: II
type: NONE
vendor resets available: 4
user controlled changes resets available: 5
drive plays discs from region(s):, mask=0xFF

Is this a region-free drive? Perhaps I could play DVDs without libdvdcss if I set my drive to Region 1, but reading this, it seems as though I might ruin my ability to play other regions' DVDs. Guess I'll stick with libdvdcss (I've got ubuntu-restricted-extras, etc., but I need libdvdcss to do the decryption for libdvdread).

Anyway, it seems as though we're both right: some people don't need libdvdcss to play DVDs, but others do (unless they want to play around with region codes and possibly limit themselves).

http://linvdr.org/projects/linvdr/index.en.php

> looking at the features, mythtv looks like it
> does more, a LOT more.

> including stuff like picture in picture, multi
> card support - and get this, transparent multi
> machine support: "Distributed architecture
> allowing multiple recording machines and
> multiple playback machines on the same
> network, completely transparent to the
> user.", rss, mpeg4, mpeg2
> decoders/encoders and a whole lot of other
> stuff.

Uhm, there are vdr plugins for all those buzzwords
(except for "rss" maybe, but I don't know what
that means in this context). (Multicard support
is of course supported by default).

It's been a while since I've looked at mythtv, but
vdr is much much more mature.

And the best thing about vdr; vdradmin with its autotimers:
http://linvdr.org/projects/vdradmin/

Thanks to vdradmin I seldom watch TV realtime
anymore, and I almost never program vdr to record
individual programs, I just feed vdradmin patterns
or regexps!

In the US, digital TV is the same as high definition TV (HDTV). This is not the case in Europe, where digital TV is mainly standard definition. (European HDTV broadcasts can be counted on the fingers of one hand.)

The advantage of going digital this way is mainly that you can squeeze four digital broadcasts in the same frequency spectrum where formerly you could put only a single analogue channel. This way, you open up the market for more broadcasters, more programming, more competition.
The US HDTV model allows a small number - say, three - HDTV broadcasters to use up so much of the available spectrum you effectively shut off market entry for newcomers. This would not be acceptable over here.

As far as DVR's are concerned: the linux vdr project http://www.linvdr.org/ is alive and well; however most websites about this project seem to be in German or French, some Finnish. Commercial DVR's exist, eg. Sky TV's "Sky Plus"; but their features seem unappealing when compared to the linux software.

You need to set the region before you can play any DVD-video. Having done that, you might want to upgrade to region-free firmware.