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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)."
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.
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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!
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"
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.
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.
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
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.
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.
1) California doesn't use the electric chair. Heh. I wonder why not.
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.
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.
Now I want satellite. Heh.
Anyone ever pick up that "Videodrome" show or anyhing like it?
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.
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?
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."
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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
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?
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:
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Sam Donaldson eating a sandwich and swearing at his director during news stories when anchoring a report from Amsterdam.
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Dan Rather's (rather heroic) struggle to stay on the air from China during the Tiananmen Square uprising.
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Mary Alice Williams (used to co-anchor on CNN) dancing on her desk during a Christmas party.
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Live cameras from MTV's Spring Break, and various VJ's in unglamorous moments.
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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.
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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?
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Infomercials have always been transmitted in the clear
... Joy.
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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!
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Free Mac Mini
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Free Mac Mini
TV shows I tune into by my own free will.. Same with web pages.
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Free Mac Mini
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.
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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
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.
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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; }
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"?
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.
"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.
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.
This is the 2004 elections though, between now and then they decided to change to using the electric chair, and also move where the executions take place!
;-)
Gee, some people..
"No, Homer. Very few cartoons are broadcast live, it's a terrible strain on the animators' wrists."
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!
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
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..
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...?
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