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I think you're completely missing the point. Does anyone remember Phantom Edit, the edited version of Phantom Menace that tried to make it tolerable? Now, Phantom Edit was probably boarderline legal. With open source media, raw materials will be created that will be accessible to anyone who wants to build upon it. So if you don't like the version that was created, you can start with that and create something that you like. I'm sure that with open media, there will be a lot more forking. But that, I think, is a good thing. The whole point is that a new collaberative, forkable method of media creation is being explored. And this, I'm sure, will have new and surprising benefits for everyone

Too late, it's already been done.

As far as I can tell, it probably would.

For those who don't know, the Phantom Edit is Star Wars episode 1 with all the Jar Jar cut out. More info here

North Korea built a humanoid automaton last year. Seen here, it is somewhat more lifelike than the South Korean effort.

You could use a RF extender, that would have a base within range of your IR remote and a receiver near the device being controlled. They're supposed to work up to around 100 feet away even through walls. Not necessarily a great solution, but a solution.

Problem #3.. Where do you get your schedule feed? I'm sure there is a way to get a free feed, I'm asking this in earnest, cuz I'm curious...

http://www.zap2it.com/index is what the free GP-PVR software uses. You have to create an account but that's free.

For those who say it aint so...

Most responses to this post so far mentioned XMLTV, which is an icky solution that's no longer supported by MythTV. The far more elegant one is to use MythTV's relatively new Zap2It support.

All XMLTV did anyways for North America was query Zap2It, and the DataDirect service of Zap2It that Myth uses now is much less errorprone and much faster, although you have to take a survey every 3 months if you want a free account there.

umm.... http://labs.zap2it.com/ztvws/ztvws_login/1,1059,TM S01-1,00.html zap2it data direct or xmltv...

The latest version of MythTV uses Zap2It's datadirect service which does not scrape webpages. They have also said in their forums that it will remain free, your only obligation is to fill out a survey every three months to continue the subscription.

They are working on it: Zap2it Labs. I don't know if MythTV can currently import the data, but from what I've heard the quality of the information they provide over the normal screen-scraping process is much better so they're working on updating mythfilldatabase to support it. I would imagine this would get rid of the requirement for the hokey xmltv stuff which 99% of the time is the reason MythTV breaks mid-release. i.e. Zap2it changes their website one character, xmltv needs to release an entirely new version, MythTV doesn't work right with it so they need a new version, etc. It's a pain in the ass. If we could get the xml stream right from Zap2it in a non-changing format then everyone is happy. I'd gladly pay $5/month for guide data directly from Zap2it provided it was a single fee and not "per-box" or some other stupid licensing.

By the way, for what it's worth, my MythTV 0.14 setup has been the most stable I've ever had. Dual PVR-250 tuners in a dedicated backend system running Debian Sid with 600 gigs of space (4x200GB drives raid-5). The frontend is a Via Epia M10000 Nehemiah box running Minimyth (boots via PXE over the network from a TFTP server so it's entirely diskless and potentially silent, although the Nehemiah board has a CPU fan, others don't. Plug the hardware MPEG-2 decoding on the board works really well now with the latest Minimyth and the open source drivers for the chipset. It's a fun project if you're looking for another reason to get back into playing with Linux other than setting up yet-another Samba or Apache server. If you are squeamish about messing with Linux though, do everyone a favor and stick with your lame TiVo. :-)

Slightly off topic, but there is a report that Alton Brown (who once sat for a slashdot interview) will be hosting a new version of Iron Chef.

reason; there never was a Fox News vs. Simpsons tiff.

Groening came out and said his comment was just a joke; Fox News never complained about the Simpsons parody, much less threaten to sue.

Unfortunately for the free PVR software packages, there is no free guide data. xmltv can be (and is widely) used, but it typically grabs data by scraping from zap2it, where there the TOS explicitly forbids this ("you may not modify, copy, frame, cache, reproduce, sell, publish, transmit, display or otherwise use any portion of the Content"). If Freevo or MythTV got large enough to show up on Tribune Media Services' (the owner of zap2it) radar, they'd be squashed like bugs.

Too bad no one offers a subscription-based xmltv feed.

Unfortunately for the free PVR software packages, there is no free guide data. xmltv can be (and is widely) used, but it typically grabs data by scraping from zap2it, where there the TOS explicitly forbids this ("you may not modify, copy, frame, cache, reproduce, sell, publish, transmit, display or otherwise use any portion of the Content"). If Freevo or MythTV got large enough to show up on Tribune Media Services' (the owner of zap2it) radar, they'd be squashed like bugs.

Too bad no one offers a subscription-based xmltv feed.

That was Bono from U2. Happened at the Golden Globes back in January. The FCC didn't announce their decision until October, though.

Listings

Gotta get me one of those Blue Sun MindBlasters

Then I guess you'll be happy to know that John Doe was not picked up for a second season.

Ripper was put on hold indefinitely some time ago. A lot of us thought it dead, but it's mostly on hold from what I can tell. Here's something I sent to some friends a while ago:

Regarding the series "Ripper", exploring Giles's past:

It's not dead yet. I found this on the BBC website:

Buffy News 05 August 2002
Head talks film/Ripper

The Scooby Gang prepare to sing Tony Head has revealed yet more on the future of Buffy and Ripper.

"Joss wants to make a movie," Tony told the ET Online website. "I'd love to make a movie. I don't think Sarah does at the moment, but who knows what is going to happen in two years' time. Joss' imagination is so wild, fertile and unstoppable, you know whatever it is going to be is cool."

As for Ripper, Tony suspects it won't now be happening until at least 2003.

"[It's] somewhere down the line. Joss really wants to do it. Jane Espenson has already written one script, and they are talking about putting six scripts together. [With Firefly, Joss] has quite a bit on his plate right now. It suits me because I have a fair amount on mine. I think possibly [it will happen] sometime next year."

To get something more recent, say, 18 November, from Zap2It:

"It's still there, it hasn't gone away... I had lunch with [BBC2 head] Jane Root just before I came back. [I]... couldn't resist the opportunity to say, had she heard anything about 'Ripper' and what were her feelings.

"She said she basically knew as much as I did, which was that Joss is just up against it. With these three balls up in the air [Buffy, Angel and Firefly], there's absolutely no point in throwing another one up there. I guess one would fall, and there's no need for that.

"Ultimately, along the line, everything can find its place and its time and succeed. Jane thinks we're still going to do it. I haven't even bothered to talk to Joss about it. The last he said, he really wants to do it. He's got three or four scripts he's got in progress with Jane Espenson."

I guess I'm jonesing for more Joss these days.

Their problem is that they spend a lot of money to consolidate the tv schedules - and they offer it free on their site using the advertising model. When people scrape it for their own use, they're subverting the ads, and zap2it loses money instead of making it (bandwidth, servers, staff, syndication). It's a much larger problem because of the way XMLTV scrapes - hundreds, if not thousands of pages must be retrieved and parsed to get the complete schedule.

Now before you all scream anti-corporate statements, realize that if enough people "steal" their content, they'll simply shut it down, as no company (and no one) wants to lose money.

For an interesting previous thread on this very topic, check here.

So... um, they expect us to spend $8 to watch what is basically a 2-hour commercial? And this is preferable to TV... how?

"Not only is MGM spending $30 million in advertising, according to Variety, the movie studio enlisted more than 20 marketing partners who are reportedly contributing at least $100 million in promotional support for the franchise."

Heck, even Iceland shelled out a wad of cash to get its country in the movie. They seem to have almost broken even on just product placement alone. Even if the movie bombs in the box office they'll still make a profit! Perhaps in the future we might see movies paid entirely by advertising, and maybe they'll show them for free... like, I don't know, TV?

--RiverCityRandom (who dreams of the day movies were flowing art, not shouting billboards)

Zap2It also has details:
The Cartoon Network will soon expand its "Adult Swim" block of animation for grown-ups (in age, anyway) to five nights a week.

Starting Sunday, Jan. 12, the two-hour block of comedies and Japanese anime will air at 11 p.m. ET Sunday through Thursday. Adult Swim currently airs only on Sundays and Thursdays.

At the same time, "Futurama" will makes its Cartoon Network debut as part of the block. The cable channel recently acquired rights to all 72 episodes of the Emmy-winning series (it returns to FOX Nov. 10), which will air at 11 p.m. Monday-Thursday.

"Since we began Adult Swim, the goal was to build it into an across-the-schedule franchise," says Jim Samples, Cartoon Network's executive vice president and general manager. "Now we have the depth in our Adult Swim programming portfolio to make it happen."

Sunday's lineup will be devoted to comedies, with "The Oblongs" at 11 p.m., "Mission Hill" at 11:30 and "The Ripping Friends" at midnight. The 12:30 a.m. slot will feature a rotation of Cartoon Network originals "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," "Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law," "The Brak Show" and "Sealab 2021."

In addition to "Futurama," the weeknight slate features "Home Movies" at 11:30, "InuYasha" at midnight and "Cowboy Bebop" at 12:30 a.m

The company that provides all the data is Zap2it.

www.zap2it.com

I don't know SonicBlue's source, but TiVo gets its guide data from Tribune Media Services, which also publishes the same information on the web and likely in print publications all over the country. To sabotage PVRs would require corrupting TMS's database, who provides data to more people than just PVRs.

No, to corrupt PVRs and only PVRs would require TMS to take an active role in feeding misinformation to TiVo, for which TiVo could sue under breach of contract. Either that, or TMS refusing contract renewals with PVR companies.

UPDATE (05-06-2002, 4:05 p.m. ET): Zap2it has talked with Steve Stephens, James Doohan's agent, and said that the actor is not comatose, and actually is home undergoing extensive rehabilitation after being confined to bed for 13 weeks for pneumonia.

The Zap2it report comes following a source report that the 82-year-old was in worse shape than previously reported. SyFy Portal, which is a news and rumors site, had been working on confirming the report which stated that doctors did not anticipate a recovery. The We did note in our initial report that details were still in the rumor stage.

hmmm... there was great need for the phantom edit. Let's see what odd characters George Lucas felt compelled to introduce to the sequel. Hopefully there won't be a need for a version 1.1 this time.

I don't have a transcript of this interview, but he has done some interviews in the past.

I don't have a transcript of this interview, but he has done some interviews in the past.

free guide data here It's html so it should be easy enough to decode and the search engine works well so some simple queries should do something similar but more limited to tivo.

Better article at here at zap2it.

We're a nation of idiots. Rather than change our behavior we look to ways of minimzing the impacts. When it comes to disease, we don't invest in vaccines, we create drugs that reduce the symptoms AFTER you've contracted the illness.

Similarly with terrorism. It's something I learned in grade school but apparently spoiled rich kids never picked up: STOP PISSING PEOPLE OFF ALL THE TIME and it's pretty likely they won't try smacking you. I keep hearing people say that we should emulate the Israeli example of dealing with terrorism. I have two things to say in response to that:

1) I hope we never have to lead the life that the Israelis live because whatever they're doing is only making their lives worse.

2) Put yourself in the shoes of a Palestinian for just one minute and think of what you would do and how you would respond. I mean the actor James Woods came out with some racist blather (diaper heads) about how he would wipe them off the face of the earth without perhaps realizing that he sounds no different from the people in that part of the world who had the exact same reaction to their greivances with us.

"'World' Series Baseball? - That's almost as sad as the choice of Hollywood action movies that are running months at my local cinema, blocking anything worth seeing."

This year's world series was the best ever played. With 39 Million viewers tuning in to watch game 7 (http://tv.zap2it.com/news/ratings/networks/011104 network.html, the series blew Titan 'Friends' out of the water. I have been looking through the archives and I don't even see Futurama rounding out the top 20.

I thought Neo was The One. Anyway, the movie is getting average ratings from papers across the globe. Here they are if you'd like a second opinion:

Chicago Tribune: 3 stars

Detroit Free Press: 1 star

E! Online: C-

Entertainment Weekly: C-

Did you know that the movie was originally going to star Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson of WWF fame?

Training Day

Here is a link to Amazon's review of the movie. Here is a link to Yahoo's review of the movie. [User Rating: (4.1/5) ]

Chicago Tribune said this about Training Day.

"Training Day," for most of its length, is genuinely thrilling, explosively cynical about life on the streets and in the squad cars. More strikingly, it lets Washington play a really juicy heavy: hard driving, acid-tongued Detective Sgt. Alonzo Harris. Harris is Washington's meanest, most brutal and dangerous character in years -- an L.A. cop who's adjusted so completely to life among the wolves that he's become a wolf himself. Washington is magnificently vicious and wily in the role."

"Dares to be a cop movie based on character and not on pyrotechnics."
-- Jeffrey M. Anderson, SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER

"The film works a bit better as a vehicle for Washington, and it often gets by on his devilish charm. But it loses all its punch as he becomes more hissable."
-- William Arnold, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

"A taut -- if violent -- police thriller."
-- Ken Fox, TV GUIDE'S MOVIE GUIDE

"Washington's performance is so good, in fact, that it may temporarily blind you from seeing that the movie has obscured its message."
-- Sean Means, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

All Posters.com as a poster of the show if you are looking for one.

Here is the director Antoine Fuqua's filmography. I was interested to see if he was an action director that is continuing his specialization or if he directed mainly heart felt drama's and was crossing genre's. With a limited filmography that includes previous B+ rated action flicks as The Replacement Killers, it seems that he has the background to provide us with an entertaining medium grade action flick. I would definately see this movie over The Musketeer.

IANAKF (I am not a Katz Fan), but CSI was already a hit even before it was moved to Thursdays for the Survivor crowd. Going back to the last week it was on Friday, it was still the 13th ranked show of the week without the help of "reality" crazed viewers.

Certainly the new placement has helped it even more, but it has not doubled the numbers as you might believe. There were about 16 million viewers the week of 1/15, and 21 million for the most recent weekly ratings of 2/29.