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Yeah, and all of your virgins look like this.

The heading of this news story makes it sound as if the Jack Benny episodes were about to be disposed of, whereas this is not the case. They are being preserved and stored, albeit not "preserved" in a digital sense. The comments made by Film Preservationist are an important commentary on this case. As for other TV luminaries being unable to view their own creations, there are precedents on this side of the pond. Peter Cook, I read, wanted to see some of his earlier BBC series but wasn't allowed. Later he found out they had been wiped, and I get the feeling that this was after his request as he offered to pay for copies. The same applies to another celebrity (Sandy Shaw?) who wanted copies of her shows, which were wiped pretty damn quick after her request. I've been following the hunt for missing TV for some time, and a write-up is here.

Even if it were actually good, don't watch it. Or have you forgotten?

"The name Sci Fi has been associated with geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that, as opposed to the general public and the female audience in particular."

By watching anything on that channel, or, at least, encouraging those who possess Nielsen boxes to watch it, you are giving money to hucksters in suits who hold you in contempt and are incapable of distinguishing your interests from pro wrestling and ghost hunting.

First, FIOS isn't the only fiber-to-the-home...it's just the best known.

Second, it's probably not a good idea to think in terms of population for this, as households are a better count, and there are about 100 million households in the US.

Third, the latest figures I can find show that FIOS TV has 1.4 million subscribers. That's 1.4% of households. Since not all FIOS Internet subscribers can even get FIOS TV, if it was only available to 2% of all households, then FIOS can be considered the most successful ISP ever, and close to the most successful product ever.

Also note that the referenced article says that AT&T U-verse has 549K subscribers. Although it is not completely fiber to the home, the upstream speeds still don't have limits like DOCSIS, and can be just as fast as downstream.

Next time try the search function.

There is a thread about exactly that topic http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=399594

The short of it is (as the NYT article also explained), Unbox is "being replaced" only in the same sense that Apple's "dot Mac" service was recently "replaced" -- i.e. new services are being added while the old ones remain available but under a new brand name.

That thread has a more interesting reference tohttp://www.tvweek.com/news/2008/05/not_boxed_in_jim_denney.php/ where a TiVo VP of Product Marketing is reported to have said that Amazon Unbox will announce HD capabilities "in the not too distant future". Personally I don't find the quotes supplied in that article very convincing (they're awfully indirect and incomplete) as they feel like they may have been strung together to imply a context that wasn't present but it is a tantalizing prospect.

I'm so tired of these greedy companies. News Corp was already making plenty of money. http://www.tvweek.com/news/2008/02/broadcast_cable_web_growth_lif.php

There is no need for them to do things like this.

So, MySpace and Facebook have both now jumped the shark. What company is it time to move to?

North American high-definition television sales grew about 60% to 10 million units in the fourth quarter as Samsung and Sony gained market share at the expense of Sharp and other manufacturers, NPD Group unit DisplaySearch said.

While this doesn't confirm that 25% market penetration referenced in the GP, it does point to a fairly significant level. It isn't clear from the article whether the growth is relative to the previous quarter or to the same quarter of the previous year, which would obviously make a big difference (assuming the growth has been trending). Other growth numbers in the article do explicitly compare to the previous year, but that doesn't prove anything.

What does this mean? Well, as I said, it doesn't confirm the 25% market penetration, but it might indicate a higher level of penetration than you expected.

Also, your 80 million number for America is way too high because we need to look at the number of households, not the total population. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html gives the 2000 number of households for the US as 105,480,101 and gives a population growth from 2000 to 2006 of 6.4%, which gives us an estimate for the number of household in 2006 as 112,230,827. Throw in another couple of percent to get to 2008 as a pure guess: 114,475,444.

Back to penetration -- 25% of households is 28,618,861 -- call it 29 million. With 10 million sold in the 4th quarter of 2007, and at least another 6 million in the 3rd quarter (based on the 60% growth rate), thats 17 million HDTVs in just the last half of 2007. You decide how likely the 25% penetration is given this.

Another reference, http://www.rtoonline.com/Content/article/Oct07/Nielson_HDTV_Household_DMA_Estimates7975789103007.asp, gives the US HDTV penetration as 13% at the end of last October. Even assuming that a full third of the 10 million HDTVs sold in the 3rd quarter were sold in October, that still pushes the penetration up to almost 19%. Not 25%, but in the ballpark. Of course, this over-counts those purchases a bit since some are likely purchased as upgrades or as second (or more) HDTVs for a given household.

Amazingly there was only one intelligent thing said in the whole article. "Digital switching is key" is correct. Whats amazing is that some consulting has the balls to act like $great_prophet when proclaiming it. I mean, its not like Cablelabs hasn't been hard at work on the technologies to address the bandwidth issue. Both DOCSIS 3.0 (http://www.cablemodem.com/specifications/specific ations30.html) and Modular CMTS (http://www.cablemodem.com/specifications/m-cmts.h tml are designed to address this problem. M-CMTS basically works to divide cable plant into smaller sections by pushing the RF interfaces further out to the edge. This is done by placing fairly dumb/inexpensive edge QAM's out in the plant, these devices encapsulate DOCSIS frames into Gigabit Ethernet to carry them back to a packet processing engine. What this buys the operator is the ability to use fewer RF channels but gain more bandwidth at the cost of having some additional backhaul (to carry the GigE). Now some people might wonder if this consulting company is merely championing an idea that hasn't been developed, but sadly that isn't the case either. Many manufacturers are already producing EQAM's including big hitters like Cisco (http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/cable/ps22 09/products_implementation_design_guide_chapter091 86a00807c73c7.html/) These same EQAM's also handle switching of digital video so cable companies save on both switched video and normal IP traffic. DOCSIS 3.0 allows for bonding DOCSIS channels to create far more bandwidth, which is likely to be used for business services as well as more rich IP services. Comcast in my area already offers multiple HD on demand channels, for example HBO and Showtime. (http://www.comcast.com/HBOondemand/ and http://www.tvweek.com/news/2007/03/comcast_launche s_showtime_hdvo.php/)

Quite honestly it sounds like the "consultant" needs to do some research.

From 13 to 22 episodes... http://www.tvweek.com/news.cms?newsId=11755

This particular marathon doesn't mean all that much, but starting on Sept. 24, Firefly will be broadcast in high definition on UHD, which is going to be awesome.

http://www.tvweek.com/page.cms?pageId=212

*sigh* Yes, there is. If I have a hammer and you also want a hammer so you copy my hammer by manufacturing one yourself, just like mine, have you just stolen my hammer then? Even though I still have my hammer, right here? Because that's actually what you're saying.

You cannot make a big budget action movie by 'touring', 'selling merchandise' or any of the self-satisfied rationalizations people have suggested that musicians turn to.

No, but you can't realistically build a real movie theater at home either. Any way value is added, it can be exploited to drive sales of a good or a service. In Singapore, movie theaters have luxury seats and serve meals as an added value to the movie. Economically, there is no longer any added value in making a copy so it should not be used as the basis for value. Economics 101.

References:
Mindjack - Piracy is good?
International Herald Tribune - Imagine a world without copyright
A History And Possible Future Of Cinema
First Monday - Piercing the myths of p2p
TV Week - NBC: iPod Boosts Prime Time
Stealing Music
Roderick T. Long - The Libertarian Case Against Intellectual Property Rights

Have you considered the legality of what you want to do here, since by default such a stream will be visible by anyone, not just you? this story mentions some of the pertinent issues. Though you are allowed to record a copy for personal use, doesn't real-time streaming count as re-broadcasting?

Oh, Lucas knows that people don't like what he's done. The problem is that he thinks they are all wrong and doesn't want to hear it. In fact, CNN was refused access to Attack of the Clones based on a Connie Chung interview where she told Lucas that most people thought TPM was a disappointment. If you're going to kick the media off your property and deny them access to a major news story just because they suggested that the film didn't live up to expectations, I don't think you can honestly claim that you're open to criticism.

As far as his "reputation as a filmmaker", I think Lucas must realize now that he really isn't a filmmaker. He knows that Star Wars will be his legacy. So he really doesn't care about looking like some kind of great director because he knows he'll never direct again. That's probably one reason he's so possessive of the films -- he knows this is the last movie he'll ever direct.

GMD

This stuff is not just limited to broadcast TV (though it is even more obnoxious in broadcast TV, because it's OUR spectrum that they are using).

Check out this article which talks about changes that DirecTV is trying to implement. Here's a nice little nugget about controlling those damn Tivos:

News Corp. and Fox are striving to cushion their energetic embrace of personal video recorder technology in DirecTV's set-top boxes with limitations and standards that do not overly threaten the advertising revenue that is key to Fox's TV stations and broadcast network. They will include elimination of the 30-second skip button and place limits on the time allowed to download and store programs.

That's what you get when our wonderful FCC (the same guys that approved the broadcast flag) allowed a content producer - News Corp. (Rupert Murdoch's company, who also owns Fox), to buy a service provider. Don't you love our corporatist Bush administration?!? That sure was nice of Michael Powell's daddy, Colin Powell, to get him that job as the chairman of the FCC.

Unfortunately, you'll have to settle for a merger of TechTV and G4.

I don't buy this argument -

"Sorry dude I put the gun on you, and it misfired ... so lets just forget about everything because you are lucky to be alive"

.. how many businesses died because the this behemoth's intransigent attitude ... And they are STILL THREE times bigger than the nearest competitor ...

Reality Check But, hey who am I to say anything. Our Good old friend MS destroyed Netscape - so what are you going to do about it ....

I personally believe the conspiracy angle more .. after all this is the same FCC that adopted new rules that will permit broadcasters to expand their control of media properties. Michael Powell is not fooling anyone. From the same article "With even greater power, big broadcasters such as News Corp., Disney and AOL Time Warner Hey, look who's here ... will amass even more cash.", a lot of which will go to the Bush Relection coffers - so now you understand why Dean has to spam but Bush doesn't.

God help me ... I am so paranoid these days of this "New" world ... lol ...