Slashdot Mirror

The criminal arena. The first ever "felony" spam arrest, followed by two more spammers surrendering.

A cybersquatter goes to prison for pr0n linking to mis-spelled children specific sites. Not trying to be redundant, but this article is informative.

My personal favorite, "DVD Jon" acquitted.

Time Warner here in the Raleigh area has done a great job. All of the major networks (sans Fox, who doesn't do HD yet) have their own HD companion channels, along with HBO-HD. The local PBS outlet is in the act too, albeit a bit strangely -- their station is an endless loop of HD programming but is not anything from PBS.

WRAL-TV our local CBS affiliate is a leader in HDTV and produces a great deal of it's own programming in HD. All of the news, and many of the local NHL games are shown in HD by them in conjunction with Time Warner.

In short, the future for many of you is here and it is crystal clear for those of us so equipped.

Sure! Sprint is hiring!

What is that? Sprint is firing ? Oh, uh.. never mind...

From a Senator like Helmes, this is a old school shakedown of the Copyright industry. Once, he gets enough money his "objections" will disappear.

It better happen damn fast, then.. he's not running for re-election. His seat is being pursued by Erskine Bowles and Elizabeth Dole (yes, that Elizabeth Dole).

Given the choice.. I'd prefer Helms. The campaign in this state has been utterly shameful, bordering on laughable.

In case you haven't heard, Fritz Hollings is opposed to "cash-and-carry" government. What are you worried about? This has to be in your interest, otherwise, he wouldn't be bringing it up.

"How the hell do they propose to offer both HDTV and data at the same time? A 1080i video stream can easily take the full 20Mbps 8VSB channel. The truth is, they have no intention of carrying HDTV programming, because that would take up all the bandwidth."

This is not accurate.

Theoretically, the HD signal would take up most of the channel, but practically, with the latest generation of encoders, and the use of variable bitrates, there is always quite a bit of headroom left over.

This generally ranges from about 2Mb/s to over 8 or 9Mb/s depending on the program being broadcast.

Broadcasters can also choose to deliberately reduce the bandwidth even on a 1080i feed to make sure there is headroom. Nobody would really notice with the current generation of HDTV sets available anyway.

WRAL in Raleigh has been doing Datacast for almost a year in conjunction with DTVPlus.

They broadcast a special version of the WRAL website, as well as "video on demand". Basically, the most popular video clips on the website, as well as the various news broadcasts, are sent in a fairly high-speed version and stored on the receiving computers.

Most TV stations expect to be able to, with current and upcoming encoding technology, deliver an HDTV channel, at least one SD channel (albeit a low bitrate channel, such as a weather channel, or classified ads, or something similar), and some sort of datafeed.

An interesting development lately is that Networks seem to be putting in clauses in their affiliate contracts to reserve the excess data bandwidth for the network. I'm not sure how that's going over, but with most local stations being so technology ignorant, I wouldn't be suprised if its getting accepted alot.

Easy. The FCC gave them 6mhz worth of spectrum, good for ~19Mbps. The broadcasters have to use some portion of that for no-cost television, but they don't have to use all of it. WRAL in Raleigh uses a portion for an all-news sub-channel, and another chunk for PC data services.

Easy. The FCC gave them 6mhz worth of spectrum, good for ~19Mbps. The broadcasters have to use some portion of that for no-cost television, but they don't have to use all of it. WRAL in Raleigh uses a portion for an all-news sub-channel, and another chunk for PC data services.

I went through the news staff of WRAL, and the only person I would even begin to call hot is Lynda Loveland.

Is there someone I'm missing?

I went through the news staff of WRAL, and the only person I would even begin to call hot is Lynda Loveland.

Is there someone I'm missing?

WRAL in Raleigh, NC has been broadcasting in HDTV for over a year now. Here's what's playing

Due to a dearth of HD programming material, most of what's shown during the day is scenic landscapes. Which, IMO, is at least two orders-of-magnatude better than the usual opinionated airheads, soap operas, and crappy infomercials.

For those of you thinking about buying the AccessDTV card, you can also subscribe to receive datacasting services (Audio, Video, and Internet) over the spare HD bandwidth:

Chip H.

WRAL (the Raleigh CBS affliate) recently ran one of those lame human interest stories about a local band. The band (can't remember the name) posted some mp3s and order information on their website. They are now selling all over the world! They guy was talking about how great it was. So you're right, mp3s are hurting artists in about the same way a foam mallet over the head (soaked in beer) might hurt you or I.