Slashdot Mirror
ReplayTV's Remote Remote
plasmar writes: "ReplayTV has announced a new service due to roll out this Fall that lets you control your ReplayTV unit from a Web browser anywhere in the world. Full story available here." Just what I need, someone reprogramming my settings. I come in from dinner, and all of a sudden I'm watching 30 hours of Ron Popeil's Showtime Rotisserie Grill.
The Kill Your TV Website:
http://othello.localaccess.com/hardebeck/
No this is serious. He claims that Sesame Street may teach your kid to recognize letters and numbers, but it shortens their attention span.
It happens that, when I was a kid, I stopped watching television when my sister left for college. I had never really actively watched TV before, but would sit passively while she changed the channels. With my sister gone, I would at first just sit in silence in the empty house. But I started listening to music which, unlike TV, allows you to devote your attention to other things while you listen.
I read a lot, ground telescope mirrors, acted in the high school theater and eventually became the set director, started college at 16 while still attending high school, scored 890 out of a possible 900 on the SAT Math II achievement test and was accepted into CalTech, where I published in the astrophysical journal and did research on the 200" and 60" telescopes.
I still don't watch TV, and have a successful software consulting business.
Mike
Note - you can find refs to my papers in the "Publications" section of my resume. Abstracts are available online. I didn't say it in my original letter but the work that was published I did while employed as a research assistant the summer after my freshman year.
One
Two
Three
Four
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
People who like to watch TV and want to make a few extra bucks would sign up to be commercial monitors. Either they'd enter the station they're watching into their handheld web browser or this would be handled for them by a set-top box.
When a commercial comes on they press the "commercial start button". When all the commercials end they press the "commercial end" button.
People who subscribe to the service would receive a little unit that plugs into the internet and, when a commercial is on, turns off the sound, maybe blackens the picture and pauses their VCR.
For this to work reliably there'd need to be a voting system so you'd only skip content if a lot of monitors said there was a commercial on. Monitors who were consistently outvoted would be dropped from the monitor pool.
If you don't blacken the picture the subscriber could notice there was an error and override to turn the content back on (or if the commercial looked interesting)
There are things you can do to try to detect a commercial technologically (like have hardware listen for sudden changes in audio volume) but I'm sure advertisers will pay technologists to find a way to defeat it. I don't think there's a way to defeat the power of thousands of bored couch potatoes who feel they're putting something over on the corporation.
This invention was conceived by me, Michael D. Crawford a couple of years ago. I place it in the public domain as of Friday, August 11.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Consider this:
You are at work.
Server crashes.
Southpark is on in an hour.
A) Miss the show and save the server
B) Screw the server and catch the show
C) Save the server, record the show and watch during your comped time off
It seems that this would be usefull, just keep those script kiddies away.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
The danger is not from crackers filling ReplayTV's harddrive with Matlock, but the fact that it gives ReplayTV, Inc. (Or whoever...) A deep insight into what you watch.
I can imagine being at work and reading on the web that something good was on - Sure, being able to set it to record would be a convenience. (Of course, I would then like it to FTP the show in DiVx format to my X-Drive, so I can watch it from my desk the next day, but from what I hear, that's 2-3 months away...)
But do you really want some company knowing that not only do you secretly watch 'Anne of Green Gables' you actually *tape* it? I thought not.
(Broadcast) TV and Radio are one of the few places that you have this kind of anomynimity anymore. Imagine what Nielson will do with the database of "What People Tape".
Remember the 'Bork Tapes'? Years ago, when Judge Bork was nominated for the Supreme Court, the Washington 'City Paper' did a story listing all of his video club rentals. Good ol' Bork had extremely boring tastes with nothing scandalous, but the fact that anyone's rental history is fairly public scared the crap out of enough lawmakers to very quickly pass some legislation.
This is worse.
One question for ReplayTV:
Does the net connection report what you are watching, even when you are not taping?
Also, when are you getting that super-secret X-Drive thingie done???
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
Seriously, why would you want to control your TV from a web browser in the first place? Are some people so lazy that they can't even budge from their computer to adjust the volume? This all just seems like an invitation for script kiddies to mess with peoples' TVs. If I was a ReplayTV user, I'd be pissed.
Still, I can see how this would have some advantages, so hopefully ReplayTV will implement a secure-enough system (hint: security through obscurity never works!) that the lamer members of our population won't be able to ruin yet another new thing.
I think the real possibilities here lie in the user interface. The ReplayTV/TIVO are simple and easy to use, but not that powerful.
Add the web and some powerful database servers and you could do some pretty neat things:
a) Have it record every movie that Roger Ebert and Co gave 2 thumbs up to for ever.
b) You could quickly pull up a list of the top 400 sci-fi movies of all times, check the ones you liked and presto, they would be recorded if they ever came on.
c) etc...lots of possibilites...
Simplistic versions of these sorts of things exist or are coming to the set-top boxes themselves, but I think it will be tough to make them really work well.
ps - I'm a TIVO owner and love it. All you doubters should get one (or a replayTV) from circuit city or someplace else with a 30 day return policy and just give it a spin. On the down side, I no longer exercise or read books. sigh.
It will get better ratings than Survivor and Alley McBeal's kissing Ling Scene. People will just hack into it and have every system out there record The Hacker Channel during sweeps week.
Talk about must see TV. :)
Fight Spammers!
Can anyone think of ANY good reason to have something like this?
Presuming that you think that there is a good reason to have a ReplayTV/TiVo in the first place? You're recording programs while on a business trip, and find out about a special you would like to see, but will be on before you return. With a service like this, you could have it recorded.
Some of you seem skeptical of why this would be a good idea. As a ReplayTV owner for almost a year, let me explain.
Replay is designed to be a very simple "set top" type box. It has no keyboard, only two LED's and one button on the front panel. The entire UI is manipulated via the remote.
It works OK, but there are certain operations that are undeniably tedious when attempted via a remote. For instance, entering "Clint Eastwood" via an on-screen keyboard, to program it to record all movies that Clint is in. You have to use arrow keys to move around an on-screen alphabet and press ENTER on each letter. You get used to it, but it can be quite annoying.
By providing a web-based alternative UI, it gives some users a way to work around the limited I/O capability of the set-top box. On the web site of course you can use your mouse, keyboard and so on. Conducting various searches to look for things to watch would be much less tedious when you can use a richer web-based UI.
And consider the possibility of building scripts that visit the site automatically for you. You could figure out arbitrarily complex criteria for recording programs, put them in a script, and have it run your replay for you. This would give you lots of flexibility that you don't have right now.
I'm sure from ReplayTV's perspective, this is also probably going to turn into another revenue opportunity for them. Remember, Replay's service is free for life, so they have to have an ongoing revenue from alternate sources. They already sell ad space in the "Replay Zones" menu. I will almost guarantee you they will be selling banner ads on MyReplayTV.com to generate more revenue.
I agree there are definitely privacy and security concerns here. For instance, a web site with banner ads would have the potential to allow ReplayTV to link viewing habits to other web-oriented habit information collected by ad services like DoubleClick. Replay also knows your zip code (in order to give you the right cable listings) so the potential for geographical demographics are interesting too. And then of course the whole idea of someone hacking the web site and using it to program other people's boxes.
That having been said, I think there is a good chance that the Replay folks will get this right. So far I've been impressed with the technical competency of their staff, both in their hardware and their web site. For an example, disable Javascript in your browser and visit http://www.replaytv.com. Unlike many sites which just go brain dead in this case, Replay's site recognizes the issue and lets you view a less snazzy version of the site. Very smart.