Slashdot Mirror
Big Ugly Dishes Grab Primetime Shows Early
ActualClient writes: "According to an article on CNET certain tech-savvy satellite TV customers are able to receive their TV shows days before they are actually aired. This has been going on for a while, the TV networks paying little attention, but now these people are taking it a step further and distributing these episodes online. Recently, season finale episodes for NBC's 'Frasier' and Fox's 'The Simpsons' were distributed along with the last-ever episode of UPN's 'Star-Trek: Voyager,' all viewed hours before they were aired locally. There is no end to what people will pirate(and I personally don't mind that one bit)."
Al Gore loses again, and gains another 40 lbs. Liberals everywhere bemoan the fact that we have laws, and the SCOTUS doesn't let a state supreme court try to derail the election via selective recounts, even though they wouldn't have changed the results. Hillary blames the 'Vast Right Wing Conspiracy' and shacks up with Ellen DeGeneres. Sen. Jeffords is tarred and feathered under a little known Vermont law. Gray Davis is sentenced to die in the California electric chair, located in Sacramento - much to his chagrin, since they're not powered by PG&E, and they always have power...
irc.dal.net
#startrek-central
voyager_7x25-finale-endgame_part_1_fe-pre-air-stc- .avi- .avi
voyager_7x26-finale-endgame_part_2_fe-pre-air-stc
(Both DivX's) They exist, and for all non-US Star Trek fans (like myself) I suggest you downloaded them now.
Yes, this 'piracy' exists, and you can use it....
Anonymous because I don't want a channel hating me...
I personally don't see a promblem here. First off only those with a high speed connection will even bother with the download (it'd take days at dialup speed to grab a DiVX'd version of a show (at 200+meg)). Secodly it exposes those people, with enough bandwith to download them, to something that may have never watched in the first place (since 90% of broadcast tv is pure crap!) so, if the shows are worth a damn, it may iduce the desire to start watching them on a regular basis, and thus increasing the viewing population.
...because you do not know what you are talking about. Lots of major distributors (Buena Vista, Tribune, etc.) still broadcast on either C-band or Ku-band. Lots of them are in the clear, but the major networks are known to scramble. The only distributors that I know of who have switched to digital are Paramount and Warner Bros., and both digital services suck ass. They glitch a lot (especially Warner Bros.) and generally look horrible on the air. So maybe the "big ugly dish" is not so dead, huh?
And before you try to call my bluff, I work at a television station and have experience with both C-band, Ku-band, and both Paramount's and WB's chosen digital services.
it's voila, not viola. Viola means "raped" in french.
If you're lucky, the season finale of The Simpsons will end up in your SETI@home work units. Just run an mpeg player on the work units and there you go.
My understanding from this FAQ is that the networks were already moving slowly to moving towards obscuring these backhaul signals. Regardless of the debate whether this is moral or legal, if this becomes more prevalent, the networks and their affiliates will simply speed up the process of changing their equipment so that these backhauls can't simply be sniffed from the air by someone who has a BUD. End of the distribution problem.
And cheaper for them for two other related reasons. By simply updating their upload/download method, they won't have to pursue this matter in the courts. This saves them legal fees. This may not concern them as much being rather large corps in the first place. But it also would allow them to avoid losing in court, which may set a legal precedant (although of little consequence since most stuff is going digital anyways and is already covered under the DMCA).
While this makes an interesting story, all those that participate in this are simply accelerating their own demise. Yes, plain signals will always be around for those folks with BUDs, but no one will care because it won't be NBC or some made for mass consumption network.
There's a story in YRO about something that looks really heinous but actually isn't so bad when you read the actual article.
There's a story about some pointless factional war between two microfactions of the open-software-free-source community.
There's a story about somebody who wrote something being pissed off about people using the Internet to copy it, with 200 slashdotters chanting "if I can see it, I can copy it".
There's a story about some corporation collecting marketing data and making copies of it for its corporate buddies and 300 slashdotters posting "that's my information, they shouldn't copy it unless I say so".
And there's an important story by Jon Katz, first in a new series, but I won't spoil the surprise by telling you about that one.
And finally, some troll named ThiotimolineDude keeps posting goatsex links way before the articles even come up. Forget first post -- he's going for -147'th post.
Here is a documentary called Spin about how Bill Clinton's team used this same sort of thing in the 1992 election. I believe that the guy that did this also made a movie called Feed.
--
Has anyone tried using multiple small dishes to achieve the same sensitivity as a large dish, like they're doing with telescopes? A 40 foot dish -- or even an 18 foot one -- seems a bit excessive for most of us, but (say) 7 DSS dishes could be much more easily hidden.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
:-)
This is *not* piracy. It has nothing to do with stealing and murder on the high seas. It is however *copying* and I suggest that that is what you call it.
Defenders say that there is demand for the shows among college students and those without VCRs or the time to program them, however.
Yep...I don't have the 30 seconds to set my VCR to tape Frasier, but I have the hour it takes to pull it down off the net (after I find it!!!)
I'm happy I had bigger concerns in college!
Right. I just don't tune in of my own free will to the specific parts of the web page that I don't like. Like graphics that are 468 x 60.
No one has an obligation to look at ads. You can not look at them in the newspaper, you can not look at them on billboards, you can not look at them on tv. There's no ethical or legal dilemma wrt that. If a web site thinks that it can stay in business because they assume that a certain number of advertisers will pay money for a _chance_ that people will see their ads, more power to them. But I don't have to make it my problem.
I hate ads, I don't look at ads, and I really don't care if people have business models that assume that this is not the case. It's just not my problem. Indeed, if people would start treating advertising like toxic waste, maybe we could get rid of some of it. I've never heard anyone say that it actually improves society or that is is absolutely necessary.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
While it's funny, and probably true (I'm also a brit), I have to say that from my experience, a population of typical Americans is far more likely to bitch and whine about a given situation (like a late plane takeoff) where a population of typical Brits would stoically sit and wait for things to get better.
I was in a cinema at the weekend watching Mummy Returns when the sound died, and people pretty much sat at waited for about 5 minutes while it was sorted without complaint.
So it's all relative, as Einstein said.
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
I've got a 9ft dish on my garage you can have (along with receivers, cables, etc...) and all ya gotta do is cart it away. It worked as recently as 6 months ago (I can't stand fiddling with it and got cable). I've also got lots of CB, shortwave and other antennas that came with the house. If you're in the Detroit area, and want some free stuff, mail to clintp@geeksalad.org.
Get off my lawn.
Whats kewler is that living in Canadia I get to see many programs before they're broadcast in the US. Unfortunately this also means I get the same Rosie O'Donnell show from two Provinces and two States all at staggered times (if anything would make someone impact-test their TV...)
Even more kewl is (and getting back to the topic) is that it's legal to view unpaid US satellite TV here, just not Canadian stuff. Presumably it's the same the other way round but most USAians haven't been turned on to the glory that is "North of 60", "Wind at my Back", "The City", or "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" but instead get by on "The Red Green Show" on PBS or Mike Bullard on Comedy Central.
Make friends with folks up North, we'll send you tapes of your favorite shows in advance in return for cheap gas & handguns (oh, keep the latter, it makes your TV news more exciting, we just get car accidents.)
(Allow pause before rabid nationialist-zealots begin required anti-any-country-but-USA rants)
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
I know this was done. I have a friend who does this all the time. She called me an hour before the season finally of X-Files and asked me to record it because. Fox change the channel that is transmits on. I guess they were worried about people nabbing it and putting it on the net.
This is Old News. Check the rec.*.tvro newsgroup archives. This has been going on for decades, not just years. Distributing via the net is the only new twist, and it's not that new (though perhaps worrisome for the networks).
I used to have B5 watching parties a week before the episodes aired locally. I'd record them in the morning on SVHS, then play them back over dinner with friends at 8pm.
As for open mikes, that's also been something going on for decades. Some announcers know about this, and some don't. Some even will talk to the sat viewers during breaks (such as the old ESPN Formula 1 hosts, and some other car-racing hosts).
So What... I remember going to a friends house a few years back, and watched DS9's season finale for its next to last season, and I think Voyager's first season finale all without those annoying things... called comericals right? Hell, my friend had an access database of TV satellite positions, times of what shows, and the freq. My friend was a little weird, he had a monitor deticated to NASA-TV, with a direct live feed from space. Scarry huh?
I never had any trouble finding them in Europe. I could even hand-tune my 80cm from Astra cluster to EutelSat cluster depending on whether I wanted to watch BBC or Sky news.
Sat mags from the uk include dozens of sets of coordinates for free-to-air analog and *digital* too. (free digital satellite, not a concept too many Americans would ever believe.)
But where are these resources in the US? I haven't found anything I could point at from Boston worth the investment in a receiver.
I'm so confused - how was that offtopic? Did you actually read the post before clicking on the little box? Are you maybe moderating the wrong article by mistake?
It's things like this that lead to "shaken moderator syndrome". The urge to discipline is just too strong in me, I guess :) Anger at poor moderation leads to hate, and hate leads to very vindictive meta-moderation (I hope).
...and I had even worked in AYBABTU, too. Damnit.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
On a related note, in my stint as moderator for rec.toys.transformers.moderated, I witnessed a related phenomenon when certain episodes (and in the case of Beast Machines, an entire season) were broadcast in Canada weeks or months before they made it to the U.S. Some Canadian fans digitized the episodes and put them up on websites and FreeDiskSpace folders within a couple days of their broadcast--meaning we American fans with high speed access got to watch them months ahead of schedule.
For that matter, I hear something similar happened with the Buffy season finale last year.
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Or maybe he didn't condone piracy in his article, thus making it not worth the editors' time?
Could be, could be ...
This isn't news to me...
I've done this about 10 years ago.
It wasn't anything majorly specal.
By the way... it wasn't an hour in advance.. but a week. Occasionally the satlight feed would have a problem and they'd refeed the next day. This way they'd have a day in advance to get the video to the local tv stations.
For weekly shows you get to watch all of next weeks shows. Occasionally you get a whole months worth of video in one night.. That is for sereous nocternal TV watching only.
Just having a satlight dish isn't enough. You need to be awake when the feed is done. This is becouse it's late at night and worse.. they will hop so you can not set a vcr and expect to catch the show in the same place every time. They'll leave a note in the traditional location and tell you where to go. You should set up like 5 to 10 min in advance.
We made an event of it. Everyone surrounded the larg TV in the living room.. I retreated to my bedroom to avoid the noisy group and watched on my own TV.
It was all good and fun.
Then the group would watch the same shows on cable and make bets with the poor saps who didn't know about the sat dish.
I feel sorry for the guys who didn't know...
Not much... They should visit me more often and find out thies things.
The advantage of the sat disk was watching news feeds before they went live. Some idiot messed that up by informing an advocacy organisation about one mans comments pre broudcast. This was effectively a private conversation we got to easedrop on and the poor sap got sued. Hack it wasn't even inflamitory it was his honnest opinion.
After that all news people were quiet when the sat feed turnned on. Then they'd flip the feed off so the reporters could talk and really be off camra.
I liked all the comments like "the food sucks here" and "I don't want to go home".
"They were asking us to leave again" "No we hid our equipment and they left us alone"
Stuff people hear about 10 years later I got live as it happend. Trivia..
Then... blat.. no more...
But I liked watching TV shows a week in advance that isn't being shown here and watching imbargoed news items.. items only one state will see..
I got a very diffrent view of the campaign to elect Bill Clintion. A lot of news storys that were limited to one state where Clintion made prommises local to that state that people in other stats wouldn't be happy to hear.
I figured it was fine.. they were broudcasting and didn't bother to encode. Not enough people could view the signal for them to care.
This however.. gee thanks.. By the time I get a satlight dish again everything will be unaccessable to me.
I don't actually exist.
_In Living Color_, first two seasons was pretty good two. Early stuff by Jim Carey, and you got to see a Waynes brother bee kinda funny.
That's the same description DNA uses of Arthur.
:)
-Chris
(err... s/uses/used/...)
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
Consumer time shifting is fair use (see Sony v. Universal City Studios ); but sharing your time-shifted copy of a TV show is probably not fair use. Sharing it in its entirety prior to airtime with everyone on the Internet is not fair use. (not that I'm saying it's wrong, just I'm confident it doesn't match the fair use factors of 17 USC 107 - in particular, see the part of the Sony opinion discussing the "market effect" fair use test.)
When I was able to do my own spam-armoring, you got a chance to email me. Now you can only hope I see your reply.
Fox's entire raison d'etre is that they had the Simpsons, which was just about the hottest show on TV in its day (and still is) and they figured they could just pad out the rest of the week with pure crap (well, mostly crap) and no one would notice. And guess, what? No one did.
Now Fox, does have a few decent shows, but generally they seem to air the dregs of the television shows out there that everyone else other than WB isn't too desperate to air. WB gets the leftovers.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Yes, I am overstating it a bit, but I was on a roll. It's fun to bust on Fox.
I will agree that Ally McBeal is a good show and Malcolm is currently the funniest show on TV, but I found Boston Public, the few times I watched it, to be painfully trite, overbearingly preachy and gratuitously smutty, as opposed to Ally McBeal, which can be pretty smutty, too, but also can be very clever and has good music.
I actually thought the X-Files season ender was the two best episodes this season (and better than most of last season too). Certainly better than that painfully tedious 3 part cliffhanger from last year. But, in general these days, the show's about on par with daytime soaps.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I think an average day on Sky One is 4 Simpsons, 3 Star Trek, and somtimes a few Xena for good measure.
People like to think they're in some sort of exclusive preview club.
That's not the only reason. I don't care about watching extremely-low-quality camera rips on my monitor instead of getting the whole experience in a movie theatre.
It's different for TV shows.
So-called pirated versions of episodes have the advantage of (1) not being dubbed by terribly untalented people who don't get 4 out of 5 Simpsons gags and (2) being available hours after the show airs in the US (instead of one or two years).
thats why you dont watch the dubbed/subbed versions
There is only the dubbed version because, according to the TV stations, "most people prefer it that way". So, if you're not most people, you're out of the game.
But when it comes to material copyrighted by someone they do like (e.g., pretty much any GPLed software), they scream like stuck pigs when there's even a suggestion that it has been pirated.
Clearly, consistency is overrated...
there are 2 types of wildfeeds
encrypted
and not encrypted
the technology, hardware, everything is there. the networks simply dont care. maybe they'll encrypt the last episode of seinfeld or something, but for the vast majority of shows, it doesnt really matter. think about it, are you going to lose a paying customer? not everyone has access to these, if anything itll create more buzz about a huge upcoming episode.
I used to do this years ago with a big dish and game shows. Watch the feed in the morning, then amaze your friends and family by solving Wheel of Fortune puzzles without any letters and answering all of the Jeopardy questions correctly.
This was actually something that some of the Survivor web sites were doing this summer in order to draw traffic and "spoil" the show. They would have someone watch the early feed and then post the entire episode. I'm not sure why everyone really wanted to know early, but the producers changed the way they sent out the episodes around midseason.
Invicta{HOG}
i used to be able to get from 5:30 - midnight only watching simpsons, frasier and seinfeld...
and thne i realized that i was wasting every 5:30 to midnight and got rid of my tv ...
tagline
... hi bingo
My Parents live out in the middle of nowhere and used to have a big dish. It was great to visit them and see the live news & sports feeds (and next weeks shows), but then the networks started to encrypt the news & sports feeds (losing 'paying' customers).
And that's all they'll do now, start encrypting the rest of the 'free' stuff available to the big dishes. Someone will say 'we'll just unencrypt it' - probably, you'll probably be done after the show's aired.
"But since you're not using any of the local stations resources, just those of the people sending the feed to the local station."
I disagree...what is the marginal cost to the studio of you (or one more person) receiving the feed? $0. Unlike snail mail, where it costs $X per person for each person to receive a copy of mail, everyone can receive the sat feed at the same time for one price.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Now I want satellite. Heh.
Anyone ever pick up that "Videodrome" show or anyhing like it?
I'll pay money to the first person who can stream a recorded show off a PVR, over the Internet. From home to work would be a nice demo. How often have you wanted to do that?
Too big to fail? Does that make me to small to succeed?
If the sat operators really don't want me to listen, they should go stick their signal on a cable somewhere and stop bombarding my body with EMF. Or they could try encryption, but two can play at that game :) [DMCA notwithstanding?]
As for "piracy", unauthorized copying has nothing to do with the brutal acts on the high seas. We don't know -- maybe RF emissions are brutal acts and broadcasters are real pirates. Some people think so, although there's no scientific proof of harm. But absence of proof is not proof of absence. It's tough to prove a negative.
"There is no end to what people will pirate(and I personally don't mind that one bit)"
So I guess that's why we see all these stories about real or imagined GPL violations, (which I wouldn't be surprised to find out were posted as the poster's XMMS plays some napster'd Britney Spears MP3.)
You can't have your cake and eat it too* folks, at least not without being hypocrites.
*unless it's a quantum cake.
Bang the head that doesn't bang!
thats why you dont watch the dubbed/subbed versions.
If only I could get early dibs on the lottery results, NASDAQ tips, and the latest mention of Nix releases
Project Megiddo a year and we still waiting
Want Root?
So, What is the difference?
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
This reminds me of a very interesting and amusing documentary I found here. From the web page:
"Spin by Brian Springer is a one-hour documentary which details the events of 1992 through the satellite backhauls. Backhauls provide unpackaged and uncensored news feeds which viewers do not see in the final edition. One interesting aspect of Spin is that it provided a glimpse into the actual Presidential election during the year of 1992, and
a context in which to consider the election of 2000."
--
And that's only if a person knows where to go to specifically find it, which isn't easy.
We're not talking millions of people here. We're talking maybe a couple hundred, at the most, on a good day, with the capabilites, know-how, luck, and communication channels to distribute something like that OR obtain something like that from a distributor. It's a short time window.
This is why nobody is too worried about this as a "problem", and why it's all a bit silly.
--Primis.
Big dish owners have always had access to feeds and alternates and such. This is something especially useful when it comes to finding things like sports broadcasts you can't find otherwise (and hey if they're feeds they're commercial-free!).
But when it comes to pre-recorded Tv shows, it's a few hours, people, almost always 24 hours max. Not the end of the world.
-- Primis
This sounds like a great idea!
I hear the MPAA has a great encryption scheme. Er, wait, maybe not.
Oh wait, the RIAA has an even better encryption scheme! Err..
I think ROT13 would be their best bet.
But what if in your country, all TV station only show dubbed versions? You can always get them from an "unofficial" source, but while you're at it, why not also profit from the improved "earlyness" of said unofficial source...
Oh, and as far as subbed versions are concerned: they are no problem, as you still have the original sound. And as an added benefit, you get to see in realtime where the translator screwed up, and how.
What if you could get the news several days in advance? Why, you could form a crappy little software company that releases total garbage, and still build it into a multibillion dollar enterprise through a series of "lucky" investments! Hmmmm...
A Billion For Boris, anyone?
Patent for digitizing satellite broadcast and distributing using network media
This patent describes a method for the reception of satellite feeds and the subsequent transfer of the video information contained in the broadcast into a digital medium suitable for display and distribution using standard computer hardware. This patent also covers the creation of 'channels' dedicated to informing computer users in the 'channel' of the location and availability of said converted broadcasts. Additionally, the users of these 'channels' are further enabled trade converted broadcasts among themselves. The creation of an online database is part of this patent. The database will contain a list of all of the currently available titles and the URLs of these titles. This database will be copyright the patent holder.
CBS and ABC started using VideoCypher technology (not VC-II, VC-I I think, if memory serves me) to encrypt their direct feeds, but wild feeds from affiliates were too infrequent and the scrambling technology was too expensive to worry about them.
The things I have seen:
-
Sam Donaldson eating a sandwich and swearing at his director during news stories when anchoring a report from Amsterdam.
-
Dan Rather's (rather heroic) struggle to stay on the air from China during the Tiananmen Square uprising.
-
Mary Alice Williams (used to co-anchor on CNN) dancing on her desk during a Christmas party.
-
Live cameras from MTV's Spring Break, and various VJ's in unglamorous moments.
-
What Larry King does during commercials.
The programs that were available were all randomly scheduled, and none of the high dollar advertizing supported big network programs were broadcast using unencrypted C band.-
I used to catch next week's Star Trek episodes on Telstar 1 at 3:00 PM on Sundays.
-
You could watch all of the weekly episodes of a game show, all at once. Anyone for two and a half hours of Wheel of Fortune?
-
Infomercials have always been transmitted in the clear
... Joy.
-
Locker room sports broadcasts could be a riot if the cameras were left live.
NBC went to Ku band to prevent its feeds from being intercepted (so C banders added dual feedhorns to grab signals from Ku birds.)If a studio is transmitting Frasier or Friends in the clear I would have to ask what happened to the networks' glorious encryption technology and covert transmission practices? As they realized twenty years ago, the airwaves are public. Do they need reminded that if they want to keep something private then they had better use encryption?
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
You get FOUR Simpsons episodes a night??!!! My local FOX station in San Francisco only shows three... =(
ONEPOINT, The only problem is, that how do you know where the people live that have downloaded it. Your commercials are for your market. If I do not live in your market, why do I need to see your commercials. Plus I believe the FCC frowns upon local advertisements being broadcast outside of the local market. Because how am I going to support your advertisers, if I live 1000 miles away. So it does not matter. But all TV shows are copyrighted and fall under US copyright laws, so you are by law not supposed to record and redistribute that without permission from the copyright holder.
Jamison Marsala -- Systems Engineer -- MCSE Windows 2000 -- WPMT Fox 43 -- A Tribune Broadcasting Station -- jmarsala@tr
I still watch these shows fron time to time but I've never thought of selling them or makin a proffit off it, sounds like fun though.
-- Any comments seen here are not mine, but a mixture of alchohol and lack of sleep.
--
Free Mac Mini
--
Free Mac Mini
TV shows I tune into by my own free will.. Same with web pages.
--
Free Mac Mini
Back-haul has been going on for years, anyone remember he shots of H Perot tearing some assistant a new goatsex ;) for not getting his coffee right?
hc
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
4 episodes that you've already seen 6 times as well : )
Sky in the UK is basically Fox + 6 months, and I guess it must be the same elsewhere too. I already know how cool it is to have seen the lastest movie (on holiday in the US) a few months before anyone else, so I figure there's going to be a greater demand for the latest Ally McBeal episode too.
This happened with Star Wars: Episode 1 - I knew loads of people who'd seen it before it was released because it didn't come out until the middle of the summer here. People like to think they're in some sort of exclusive preview club.
Now, if only BT would hurry up and unbundle the local loop so's I can get DSL....
The WWF has two major tv shows a week. One that is live on Monday nights and then they do a taping on Tuesday for Thursday showing. They still feed the Tuesday show live back to their studios so you can grab it then. But, they also show the Tuesday tapings "live" on Tuesday night at their NYC resturant.
--
andy j.
Stupid Cheap Guitars
Latest parts of the last episode of Star Trek Voyager (40x15mb) are being post right now on alt.binaries.startrek in case you'd like to watch it today like me.
For other tv-episodes check out alt.binaries.multimedia groups
-John
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
He didn't say. Alistair Stewart is his name.... however I found this which may help!
Twelve Ways to Distinguish an Australian from a New Zealander
I am dismayed that Americans so often cannot tell the difference between a New Zealander and an Australian. It's true that they look and sound alike, but it's important to tell them apart-- certainly, they care about the difference. So, if you meet someone from Down Under, here are twelve easy tests to determine which country he's from:
1.Have him pronounce "six" (as in his answer to, "How old were you when you acquired a taste for beer?") If it rhymes with "seeks", he's an Australian.
2.Say the words, "All Blacks". If he smiles, he's from New Zealand. If he frowns, he's from Australia.
3.If he can interpret the sentence, "May I bring my abo mate to your barby this avo?", chances are he's Australian.
4.Take a look at his hat. If the brim is bent up against the crown, or if there's even one cork, he's an Aussie.
5.If he says, "I love my country, but I also like being abroad, because I enjoy going out at night once in awhile," he could only be a Kiwi.
6.Have him pronounce "pool". Only an Aussie could make it rhyme with "curl".
7.Ask him what the local slang for "gay man" is. Aussies prefer "poofter", while New Zealanders use the more informal "poof" or "queer".
8.Say the words, "convict colony", and watch his hands. If he clenches his fists reflexively, he's Australian.
9.Listen to the way he says "today" (as in responding to, "When's the right time for our next big party?") If it rhymes with "to die", he's an Aussie.
10.Ask, "what's your opinion about the taste of muttonbird: 'love it', 'hate it', or 'don't know'?" If he answers, "don't know", he's an Australian.
11.Listen to him say the words, "Let's dance". If he sounds like an American, he's from Australia. If he sounds like an Englishman-- or if he waits for you to say those words to him-- he's a Kiwi.
12.Look for the familiar Union-Jack-and-Southern-Cross flag about his person. Generally, Aussies like to show the flag and Kiwis don't. But if you're in any doubt, just remember that the Australian flag has "seeks" stars and the New Zealand flag only four.
Al.
Years ago I remember a UK news reader telling the following story... (I paraphrase) "we went to the ad-break and I told a joke to the crew in the studio about the difference between Australians and New Zealanders. A week or so later I got a letter of complaint from someone in New Zealand about my joke".
The reason being the cameras were regularly left on as the programme was being bounced around the world to other networks in other countries.
Someone had a big ugly dish and rather than watch the broadcast via thier own provider including adverts, they watched the live feed from the UK.. and saw the joke..
Then, we flipped around to some other birds and found the Spice Channel, after which I've never been seen a gear-shift lever the same way again.
Interesting content, sidetracked by porn: Sounds like the Net we know and love.
--
If your favorite TV show aired early and nobody was there to watch it, did it actually air?
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Very few cartoons are broadcast live; it's a terrible strain on the animators' wrists
Here's how to take the strain off animators' wrists (i.e. make it even possible to do live animation): motion capture cartooning. Essentially, it involves motion-capturing actors (who now have the freedom to gesture at the same time that they're voice-acting), moving skeletal models to match the actors' movements, and rendering the result non-photorealistically.
Will I retire or break 10K?
congratulations, you are stupid (unless you were being soooo sarcastic that i didn't pick up on it). What the origional poster was refering to was the simpsons episode where they showed the exact same thing you described.
Does not having seen every episode of The Simpsons make a fellow stupid? If so, is being stupid all that bad? Not everybody has seven wires running into their head (think "Trip Like I Do" video), one from each major network (PBS Fox CBS WB NBC UPN ABC). I picked up the motion-capture concept not from The Simpsons but from a show on Discovery or TLC or something.
get on efnet, download the episode and see. s12e9.
Where do I start? I have never downloaded movies from an IRC network and have only a dial-up connection to the Internet (dial-up is currently limited to 50 kbit/s); therefore, I am a newbie and am likely to be shunned as a l4m3r. I chose dial-up because I move around a lot; not everybody can afford point-to-point connections such as cable or DSL running into each location in each city where they may connect to the Internet, as $50/mo times number of locations really adds up.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The problem is that you would need a tracking system for each dish to watch anything but DSS. DSS doesn't need a tracking system because it's only on one geosync bird, so you only have to aim it once. And even then, you'd still have to have a way to combine the signals from the receivers in each dish.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
The "(and I personal don't mind that onebit)" part is not Slashdot staff commentary
I stand corrected.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
There is no end to what people will pirate(and I personally don't mind that one bit).
Just give me a few days now to setup pirateslashdot.org, which does nothing but pass-thru /. and replace your ads with mine.
While I'm at it, I think I'll go get me a screwdriver and make me some "VA Lenux" boxes.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I have an 8 ft Paraclips dish in my back yard. I've had it for wel over a decade and it is still chugging along. When you tune into a digital C-Band station the signals are so hot that they put the little dishes to shame. For a affordabilty and ease of use though, the little dishes have it made. But for a true sat enthusiast you have to have the big dish. There are zillions of news feeds to tap into. I've been able to get lead news stories hours before they are even aired. I would put a big dish up against the itty bitty ones any day.
Big corporate America wants to push their content to you in a manner they see fit, when they see fit.
Us techo-geeks want to pull the content in a manner we see fit, when we see fit. This enables us to digitize it, make copies of it, strip out commercials, etc.
Pushing it, corporate America is in control. Pulling it, we are in control. That's what the issue is about.
Praying for the end of your wide-awake nightmare.
Here in Australia, where we have commercials every seven minutes I would do it. Not to see the show a few hours earlier, but to get rid of the ads.
I guess this is what the TV stations are really scared of.
"Do you think we could wipe out world hunger forever if scientists figured out how to make AOL's Free CD's edible?"-
... or would that be too simple. Obviously the TV companies aren't that bother about it.
It is interesting how many people don't know what is actually illegal, e.g. Napster.
"Slashdot discovers unpaid satellite TV, film at 11....or at 9.30 if you're viewing on C-band."
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jambo
system.admin.without.a.clue
-- js.
The slashdot 2 minute between postings limit: /.'ers since Spring 2001.
Pissing off hyper caffeineated
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Huh? What are you smoking? How can you call something piracy when it's given away free to anyone who wants it?
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with what the word BROADCAST means as applied to television. It means programs are transmitted from an antenna to anyone interested in buying a device capable of reception. It is not point to point. It is not subscriber based. Receivers are not tracked nor counted nor registered. Anyone is welcome to listen in. It's a give away.
It is not possible to pirate things freely given away.
So some satellite owners got a hold of the BROADCAST early and distributed copies. That's supposed to be "piracy"? Did the east coast PIRATE the Voyager finale because they saw it three hours before I did in Los Angeles? Get a life!
Either keep it private, charge fees, and keep the program safely SHOVED UP YOUR ASS in the beforetime or boradcast it and shut the fuck up about piracy.
Being able to watch something only a few hours a head of time isn't a big deal. Up here in the Great White North we've got this thing called StarChoice Digital Satellite. It comes with this amazing thing called "Time Shifting" or something like that. Means that my list of channels includes 8-10 CBCs, CTVs, and Globals (Local Canadian channels). Now each one of these is specific to a time zone. Like I really need CBC Edmonton, Regina, Calgary, Vancouver, Victoria, etc etc... but it does mean that I can avoid local blackouts for sporting events, watch shows when they air all the way out in Halifax which is 3 hours before it'll air here. Hey, Maybe I should move to BC and extend that an extra hour.
Oh the possibilities...
Jeshko
I love deadlines, especially the "whooshing" sound they make as they go flying by.
That's completely different. This is a two-way media. Satellite, and OTA broadcast TV are one-way.. broadcasts.
:P
/never/ get someone to back down by telling them to "play nice" when the object that you want them to back down from.. isn't.
They use the same resources if one person watches it as they do if a million people watch it.
And yes, I do support blocking banner ads and any other means of advertising. If it's a big site like AOL or NBC then they can very well support their webside operations with their current revenue, if it's a small site, then it's most likely a warez or pron site.. and if it's a median site, I'm not going to bother turning proxomitron off just for it
BTW, do you support spam? That's how those people make the money they need to live. I don't support it though.
Look, fact of life, you will
-since when did 'MTV' stand for Real World Television instead of MUSIC television?
uh, 10 years ago?
9 years ago I had a 170mb hdd.. that was in an expensive computer.
iirc, 1gb hdd's were more of a 1995 thing.
-since when did 'MTV' stand for Real World Television instead of MUSIC television?
I personally like a few anime shows that aren't being released for a US audience at all. However thanks to a few good souls I usually get a subtitled copy a couple days after it originally aired in Japan. As for people saying that DivX quality sucks, well the episodes I get are excellent quality. And when played back on a 21 inch monitor, you never want to see it on a tv.
I/O, I/O, its off to disk I go, with a read and a write, and a bit and a byte, I/O, I/O, I/O, I/O
It's easy to cheat on Millionaire. I have done it, (but not won). You can hit Ctrl-Alt-Del on a Win 9x/Me comp (because it suspends all processes) once the choices for the answer come on screen. Then wait for the answer to be revealed. Select the right answer and get full bonus points. I am sure there are other ways to cheat, but this is the only one I am aware of. -DexteR-
Instead of taping a show myself and archiving it on bulky VHS, I download episodes of my favorite shows in either VCD or DivX and burn them to CD. MUCH better way to store video IMO. I can store 50+ VCD episodes in one CD spool. The equivalent for VHS tapes would require some type of cabinet.
My favorite Canadian TV show is where they have this grizzled old dude who sits around in his bathrobe with a cup of coffee in the morning marking up the Globe & Mail with a yellow highlighter and giving his own sarcastic comments on the stories.
What, did he retire or something? I haven't been to Toronto since I got RIF'd from Nortel. Can I have his job?
Some of us do not have cable or satellite dishes (like me) and some of those people live in an area that only gets 2 or 3 channels on TV on a good day (like me). So I think its super cool that some people take the time to rip the programs to divx. If they did not I would have a hard time trying to watch Farscape, Star Trek, or Jack Ass. Now I understand that studios make money by syndicating there shows to regional stations, but I think a valid argument can be made that they could make more money by allowing people to down load shows directly from the studios that make them. I would gladly pay 20$ to 30$ a year to download new episodes of a series that I liked. I know that for some reason (lawyers) studio executives are fearful of losing control of their media. But this is all hyperbole; it would be like a magazine subscription. You never hear of Better Homes and Gardens crying about lost revenue from some one Xeroxing copies of their mag.
thank you satellite rippers you are the salt of the earth.
Yeah, but Slashdot cries foul every time there is a hint that someone is or might be violating the GPL. What a bunch of hypocrites. Either respect copyrights or don't.
Other than the huge progamming fees they pay to the distributors of the show
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
"No, Homer. Very few cartoons are broadcast live, it's a terrible strain on the animators' wrists."
Just a thank you for posting this link. I wasn't familiar with it and found it very enjoyable.
What you're doing is like bashing mp3s based on the poor quality of RealAudio. The large movies chew up a lot of cpu cycles, but the quality is amazing.
"Only people with big bandwith can download it, so it won't be a problem." Yeah, reminds of about 10 years ago - "A whole CD takes up almost half their hard drives - they won't copy it" "That song file is too large for their 28.8 Modem to download in a reasonable amount of time" And look what happened.
Between this and the ridiculous concept of secure electronic voting, some people will know who won the 2004 presidential election the day before the polls. Then they will know whom to cast a vote for--the winner.
Ewige Blumenkraft!
Ewige Blumenkraft!
This means that I will no longer have to use a VCR to record shows that I'll miss when I am out. I'll just buy a very expensive piece of hardware and get the shows a day early.
My question is: Where do these shows come from? Do they just materialize from the air for no reason or something? Or are these satellite dishes intercepting the shows as they are sent from one office of the broadcasting network to the othetr? Either way, it doesn't really matter; this is akin to the Logitech Wireless RF devices being suceptable to being tapped, and cell phones being scanned, and such. It's pretty interesting, but not much will come of it in the long run.
I really have to wonder how this even blips above anything less than Flamebait as a top-level post here on the Main Page. The entire topic just seems innane.
See, back in like 1989 or some such, my friend Tom and I used to watch NEXT WEEK's ST:TNG episode on the "Big, Ugly Dish"(tm?).
Also, I used to watch the nationwide news feeds, simply to see what the people would do. Entertained my entire family for hours on Thanksgiving, watching a news guy sitting in a newsroom doing absolutely nothing but drinking coffee, straightening his hair, and making the occasional remark to the guys in the studio. Well, anyway, I went and hid in my puter room like any self-respecting nerd would do on a family gathering day, but my step brother and cousins and all that thought it was hilarious.
I think they were just waiting for him to fart.
All your base are belong to XO
http://mi-net.dynup.net/
http://blackmagik.dynup.net/
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
File this one as "Yet Another Media Discovery."
<shrugs>
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You sure got a purty mouth...
Don't you guys remember Reagan's big pre-satellite feed faux pas? He was getting ready to make a statement from the oval office, and before the satellite feed was supposed to have come on he said (laughing and abviously joking), "My fellow Americans. I have declared war on Russia. The bombing starts in 10 minutes."
Someone was watching the live feed and taped it, it's been making the rounds on "presidential blooper" tapes for years.
As someone else has replied, many, many stations still use giant satellite dishes. Plus, they are a lot of fun. We used it for several experiments, including hooking up a giant antenna to the side of the 40-footer and bouncing signals off of the moon about two years ago.
Plus, nothing as impressive as turning a corner and seeing that monster. Scares the people who shouldn't be out there. :)
Random Musings
if you reply to a comment with "homer" as one of the first words that doesn't refer to a poet, then yes.
Where do I start?
efnet, #tv-rips and #futuramavcd
I am a newbie and am likely to be shunned as a l4m3r
a few easy cures for this one: follow the in-channel rules, don't ask dumb questions, and use your head.
oh, and the dial up thing... it would take awhile (12.5 hrs-ish per episode, as they are ~220 megs each) but hey, just leave your comp. on while you are at work or school.
further (on the needing high-speed in all of the cities you go to) you could always just buy high-speed at a base location and telnet (or whatever) in and d/l via ftp from there. While it may seem expensive, it is doable (this comming from a high-school student who pays for his own car (insurance and gas too), food, activities, and internet access) i do it making ~150$ per week at the supermarket at minimum wage.
just food for thought....
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so i says to mable, i says
the DSS is focus in only 1 satellite. With the big one you can change the satellites. and has more channels plus you can listen to telephone conversation radio, and many other goodies that the small dish don't have. And if you are well inform you can get early feeds from show. Like a week earlier. Also you get good foreign channels with the big dish. Stuff that US tv stations don't dare to show.
Well to counter some of the statement. The "broadcast" is copywrited. Re-transmission of the broadcast is not permitted. the broadcast is under one media not ment to be re-broadcasted in another.
Piracy, I believe is the re-transmision of the broadcast. I think we could use the case of the web site that was re-broadcasting the USA tv from his pickup feed in Canada.
As a broadcaster I would LOVE that people view my show prior to public transmission. I would want my advertisers in it also.
I would mind very much if you took my show and traded it on the internet. But I would not mind if you took the show and left the advertisers in their then traded it on the internet. All this "without me knowing".
It comes down to the $$$. I would not be very friendly if I caught someone ripping my show without the advertisers. On the otherhand, I would not use legal if the show was left as it's ment to broadcast. I would look the other way. Your doing me a favor by generating extra buzz for my advertisers and my show.
Without the advertisers I would not be able to produce the show.
ONEPOINT
if you see me, smile and say hello.
>Is hitting "Fast Forward" while watching what even you would agree to be a fully legal time-shifted recording to zip past commercials "theft"? I see no difference here.
If you want to hit FF that's fine. I have a responsibility to make sure that the show has it's advertisement. If your going to go FF over the commercial that is not my problem. The odd are in my favor (greater than 50% ) that the viewers ( normal broadcast) don't have an automatic time shifting abilities. Those that downloaded it should have the ability to time shift ( I would say 100% of them )
Now, if you adjust the recording to mark the advertisement, your making an adjustment to my broadcast to prevent me from having a revenue generated. That, I think is wrong.
Now, I would have to say this in my defense. MTV has 12 minues of advertising per every hour. I have the same. I need every dollar to make my show work. We don't get paid by the record companies to air the videos ( MTV does ). If the show gets traded on the net, I would love to inform the advertisers, because all it would do is generate extra buzz. And in the long run ( based that every 10 shows you only time-shifted 9 ) you would learn about the advertisers.
ONEPOINT
if you see me, smile and say hello.
No I don't realy think so, If it's downloaded, it's most likely someone that has no way to get the broadcast via tv. We broadcast the same show 5 times per week. So for me, If it get's downloaded 1000 time it's all good and if I get enough request for the show in a certain town, I get the broadcast there. I've grown the show from 3 cities to 46 cities, all on advertisers dollars and LUCK and viewer love.
ONEPOINT
if you see me, smile and say hello.
Any corp wants to deliver content with the most revenue. That is thier choice.
Your choice to change "any corp" content reduces the revenue.
your choice of pull and push was great !!
ONEPOINT
if you see me, smile and say hello.
my advertisers are not local, they are international firms and the advertising is more like branding remminder than anything else.
Plus I would hope for feedback. I currently think that my broadcast are being copied in France because I get alot of hits generating from France ( which I think it real cool ).
ONEPOINT
if you see me, smile and say hello.
Okay, so plenty of people in the world don't get to see an episode until months later, what do they care whether it's posted to the internet one day before the episode airs in the US?
This post has *very* little to do with the implications brought up by the article; if shows are posted after the US air-date, they'll still be 6 or so months ahead of the European air dates, and no one needs a satellite to do that.
The article says that the people w/ the satellites aren't the problem - it's the stuff that's posted to the internet... and to people who are trying to bypass months-long lag times, a day doesn't really matter... seems like this is post is offtopic, at best.....
Could happen.
So what? All that means is that some people get crap earlier than others. Ooh...I'm watching the season finale of Jackass hours ahead of time...look at me...I'm so special. My brain is now decomposing hours ahead of the rest of the populations'...
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm about to watch the results of the 2004 election...
I tried to download one of these once.. I set it up and started recieving on my 56k modem.. after getting bored I sarted channel surfing.. only to find the show I was downloading.. I havn't tried again since..
I want one of these to watch the World Series or the Superbowl 4 hours early, or even the previous day. Think about the betting possibilities of this...
downloading a 15fps divx in 67 340k segments? why bother, it'll only spoil it. i used to think that The Matrix was crap (gasp!) because the first three times i saw it was on the little lcd screens on planes - and that's better quality than you're going to get with divx. you can't just keep shedding quality and think that it doesn't make any difference.
The people who are broadcasting this could avoid the problem very simply with encryption. After all, there are only a few people who are actually meant to get these signals, why not just give these people a secret key?
This is a cool thing, but the networks can pull the plug on it any time they like.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
all viewed hours before they were aired locally.
Isn't time-shifting of a program considered legitimate under Fair Use?
Is there actually anything that says which direction it has to be shifted in...?
I got a BUD a few years ago. Added Ku to the C band, went from analog to 4dtv then added a DVB. I now get around
4900+ channels of programed TV and countless other "wild feeds". There is nothing like kicking back, channel
surfing from friday to sunday and never seeing the same channel twice.
Oh and UPN Star Trek feeds are the reason I bought the DVB receiver.
All in all i have around 1200$ invested and pay for standard service (equ. Basic Cable) It runs me around 19.95$ a
month. It relay is worth the investment. I also get a kick out of my neighbors, They get the little dish installed and yell
across the fence "When are you going to upgrade that old dish for a new mini-dish? I am getting 200 channels!" The
look on there face when I tell them the total number of channels I get is worth a mint!
All in all it is worth the investment!
It seems that unlike, say, burning pirated copies of games, there's no real advantage to TVrips. I mean, in exchange for hours of work in finding the rip you want, and another hour or so downloading the darned thing, you get to watch your TV show before it would normally come one.
:-)
I just can't see how this is useful. It takes so much trouble to get a rip, you reach a point of diminishing returns in your efforts.
Incidentally, what if the Aricebo telescope was used for TVrips and sent them out over seti@home? That might actually make the program useful...
I'm the stranger...posting to