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Another Free Cue* Gadget At Radio Shack
dizgusted writes: "DigitalConvergence, fine purveyors of the infamous CueCat, are back with CueTV. URLs will be encoded in TV programs. A free gadget, again from Radio Shack, will send them to a PC where a browser can load the page. Now one can be mesmerized by two devices simultaneously. More here." The article's a few weeks old, but apparently within the week is when these devices will show up at Radio Shacks.
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"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
Does anyone think it's kinda stupid that it queues up URL requests if the machine isn't connected to the net?
Something like this *could* be useful if it was integrated with TV like hyperlinks are with the web. You would need Seinfeld to put these cues into the show at points that demand them.
I could really see this as useful for something like Junkyard wars or Connections3. The reliability is dubious too.
It seems like a niftier idea than the CueCat, but if they haven't gotten their crap together after the last time, who knows how bad it'll bomb.
So...I need to get about 75 feet of wire to patch my desktop into my TV? Right. For some fucking reason the local paper here has decided to put CueCat barcodes in the paper now as well as charge me 50 fucking cents for the daily edition. They must be itching for money. So I have to drag the paper over to my PC and fumble around with a CueCat to try to scan a barcode? When will DigitalConvergence get the fucking clue that the keyboard and mouse are pretty decent ways to interact with a computer from meatspace. Another damn dumb gimmick. If you want people to visit your website after seeing your commercial put subliminal hypnotic suggestions in it.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Well, at least I'm more likely to find a use for that than I am for the twelve :Cue:Cats I have laying around the shop.
I say Digital :Convergence is getting better, not worse ;-)
Does anyone have any info on this? Sounds like it would just about have to be a similiar setup, with mpeg capabilities. How great would this be? I hope this means simply DVD-r. PLEASE, let it mean DVD-r...
"Now one can be mesmerized by two devices simultaneously"
Now? You mean I am the only person who plays EverQuest while watching Oprah?
I just check the link and actually this is more then just a cable, it's wireless too. Hmm....may be worth the trip to get this thing (imagining reversing the link for wireless MP3 playing on my stereo!).
Gorkman
Gorkman
ABC Enhanced TV has been doing what it needs to do since 1999, without any extra hardware. They control when things are broadcast on your television, and synch the content on their web site to that broadcast. Of course they have to offer something you'd be interested in, like additional trivia for statistomaniacal sports nuts, or real-time polls or whatever. That way you'll put up with the Enhanced Commercials on your computer :-).
Perhaps the most touted benefit was a gimmick for Monday Night Football viewers. They had a well-educated representative from Britannica.com provide real-time explanations of Dennis Miller's notoriously obscure references. (Yeah, they could have done this with text on the TV - like I said, it was a gimmick).
Cue's idea could theoretically allow the same sort of thing without the need for precise scheduling. You'd be able to synch web info even if you're watching a videotape, for example. Or marketers could record the "links" right into their infomercials, broadcast them whenever local rates happen to be cheap, and still be able to launch mounds of pop-up ads on your computer before you can hit the mute button.
The idea of allowing television broadcasts to control proprietary closed-source software on your computer that connects to the Internet has some amazingly evil possibilities. It's an almost Microsoft-like idea, except for its being doomed to financial failure.
Why would anyone want to have those "cues"? It is not easy to put wires on the floor (or hide them in walls, ceiling), so some effort is needed. But where is the benefit? Even if I once in a blue moon see a useful ad (can't recall such case though) I can always write down the info and research it later. At least the cat was a novelty. A bunch of wires isn't. Most people don't even have the computer on when they aren't using it. DC apparently thinks people run their PCs non-stop... but that's not true.
That would be great...
TV: "My name is inigo montoyo. You killed my father. Prepare to die."
Computer: TAKE TWO DRINKS
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Head Engineer: We messed up big time. Why did we make a product that was useful in other ways than what we designed?
Head of Marketing: Meh. We need some type of product that's useless to anyone.
HE: I know! What if we have a way to connect your TV to your computer? Geeks use TV tuners cards in their computers, and REAL geeks- the kind who can reverse engineer anything, don't watch TV!
HM: Genius.
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Just sit back down and relax as we plug this IV into your arm. No need for you to think anymore. We've taken care of that for you.
Imagine how cool this could be, you could make a music video, set up (say) 100 pages of pictures on a website, and have 'stereo' video productions.
Or maybe a video on the evils of the Cue corporation, with embedded links to sites describing how they cracked down on reverse engineering of the CueCat !
If no one will help you, consider "Self Help" measures. ;)
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
A new form of TV advertising, computer control. Just like product placement.
Fight Spammers!
This page showed how a :Cue:Cat can be useful, I'm sure this audio thing can be used to a simular end. I, personally, found it useful learning how to Over Clock The :Cue:Cat. Pushing hardware like this to it's outer limits is very important to the geek comunity so I suggest you check out the link, and go through all the pages.
--Josh
There are exactly 42,935,718 letter sized sheets in a square mile.
Trust the Computer.
/Brian
I don't, personally, see that as a bad thing. There are certainly many pieces of information you don't want to give out, like your SSN (which you have to give out for every little thing these days), your mother's maiden name (likewise), etc. But really, the fact that you go to watch, say, various heavy-breasted commercials can only be a good thing for them to know. Then, more ta-tas will show up on your tee-vee.
Not only that, but they will be able to find out what you're watching - This is good! First, nothing on the TV stations that'll carry this content is the kind of thing that will get you into trouble, unless you're trying to establish an alibi and talk about some show that wasn't even on or something. But really, don't you want the shows you watch to be successful? This is your chance to keep the shows you like on the air.
I'm not sure I believe what I'm saying here, but I like to do the satanic advocacy thing.
Also, I wouldn't sign up unless the T&C said that no one would ever get my address or email address from them. I'm quite willing to be a statistic, but I don't want targeted spam. I DO want my needs to be known, I just don't want anyone specific to know about them. I want to tip the scales, not be the only weight on 'em.
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ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I picked mine up at the shack on Wednesday. Its basically an audio patch wedge on one end, and a stereo mini-jack on the other. Go get one and give fake info. For some reason, they dont even include software with them, but you can get it with a cuecat.... if ya WANT it.
All if can imagine is the effect on house pets. Obviously it has to be above the range of human hearing. But if it gets into bat range, then it is far more directional.
Presumably they decided to do it this way instead of using IR because otherwise all of the sequences in the scanning of URLs just interfered with too many other remotes.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Hey, this could be the new method for doing accurate real-time Nielson ratings. When do we get our chips embedded into us? These were available at the State College, PA Radio Shacks on June 1st. Its just an RCA cable with an end that plugs into your sound card. If anyone wants free cables, go grab them. How many losers can a company create and still stay in business? I guess two at least.
When I started writing about the CueCat last year, the promotional material I received included what purported to be recordings of television cues. I didn't have the analysis tools I have today to try to determine how they encode digital data in the sound, but my short attempt with a spectrum analyzer didn't expose anything obvious.
I do know something about the audio chain used in television stations, and can tell you that the chain is unable to pass anything outside the passband 50-15,000 Hz. Remember, television sound is transmitted using FM modulation of a subcarrier at the top end of the channel. (Picture information is transmitted using AM, and color information by phase modulation.) Transmitting anything about 15 kHz at any significant level would cause the audio signal to splatter outside the allowed passband. Not only that, but most television reception equipment -- especially for the home -- wouldn't pass the out-of-band signal out the RCA jacks anyway.
Now that I have a copy of the SDI watermark attacks, I can try some of those techniques to find the embedded information without having to reverse-engineer the stupid Cat software, which doesn't work on Linux anyway...
(It also means I now have a reason to install the TV-tuner card into my PC and get a cable hook-up to it, assuming that I want to try to capture this stuff anyway. Because the TV-card is supposed to play through the computer speakers, I should be able to grab the sound stuff as it goes by.)
I just check the NBC/CueCat web site and saw that the show that will have "Cue-enhanced commercials" is none other than
Now, how appropriate can that be? I mean, one of the lamest game shows on television today being the vehicle for testing your CueCat link? It is to laugh...
The C-Text service was launched in, if memory serves, 1973. This used one of the top lines in the vertical blanking interval (line 16? Anyone remember that detail?) to transmit text at a respectable rate over a standard TV channel. The data stream was organized in numbered frames of about 300 characters each, and the system transmitted 15 C-Text data frames per second. A set-top box would scan the datastream for a frame with the frame number selected by the user; when that frame was received by the box it would put the data into a buffer and display the text on the TV screen.
In the system demo I saw, the frame numbers were three decimal digits. Mini-computers (DEC PDP-11/70s) would structure the datastream and feed it to the transmission system. One reason for using the PDP-11/70s was that the head-per-track disk that seemed to be standard equipment for those computers could ensure that frame assembly could be done in real time. The software kept a "play list" of frame numbers, so that common frames would be transmitted frequently while less-common frames would be transmitted at less frequent intervals.
The reason I saw this demo was that Rockwell was thinking about launching a C-Text type service in the United States. When Marketing was done chewing the numbers, the resulting opinion was that offering the service didn't have a large enough ROI to justify the expense and risk. So Rockwell said "thanks, but no thanks." Broadcasters were worried that C-Text data would interfere with the transmission-quality test signals built into lines 18 and 19, and the telcos echoed the feeling.
Might want to be prepared for some hassle here, I got an ATI all-in-wonder Radeon, and the TV-on-demand is flaky at best. I havn't had much time to play with it, but it seems to be some sort of codec problem. (i.e. fixable in software)
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I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I know this is too late to be noticed by most of the Slashdot crowd, but the USB adaptor does not need the Cue Cat software or scanner! It does the job of other adaptors costing up to $40 US. I needed to teach computer skills to a handicapped person and needed to add a second keyboard. This little jewel did the trick. It does not work with PS2 Mice however.
The truth shall set you free!
Why do these fool-ass companies come out with these idiot marketing plans and devices that are guarranteed to fail?
This plan ("People own TVs. People own computers. We've got to be able to make money off of that somehow...") reminds me of the underpants gnomes on South Park:
Step One: Collect underpants
Step Two: ???
Step Three: Profit!
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords
Think about this one second. They can send the data at specified times to certain areas of their TV networks, and when the next time you log on your computer, they can then match up that data with your computer and know the general area where you are located (and to a very good degree). No more hassle with haveing you input you address anymore, cause the only way you would have gotten that signal was if you had a TV that got that signal.
The only way I would EVER think about getting one of these is if they:
1) would gaurentee that they would not share or sell the database information to anyone else
2) would allow me to view and edit any and all information collected about me
3) if the company goes out of business, the data in the database can not be considered a company asset and thus be sold to anyone, specificly a clause that would state that the data about me ultimatly belongs to me, and that I am only leasing to the company the rites to view and use the data.
I don't want to sound like I am paraniod or anything, its just that I truely feel the internet has become just a comercial entity in which the users of it are just giving more food to the corporations in a much easier way for them to collect and keep checks on that information. I would truely rather be an anonymous entity in a huge group of anonymous entities, thus giving me the freedom to express my opinions and beliefs without any fear of personal backlash. A place where I can be whoever I want whenever I want, do things that I would never even dream of doing in real life and not have to worry about those actions comming back to haunt me at some later time because someone was cataloging them and had a way to tell exactly who I was EVERY SINGLE TIME I go online.
I always laugh about people freaking about sites trying to match ads to consumer bowsing habits. Sure, it means they might know I spend 24 hours a day at ninenine.com :) but that the price you pay ;)
Now before you privacy zealots get your panties in a wad - I'm not saying I want no privacy. Its just that to me, a company with my browsing habits via cookie is not a huge deal and actually provides me with some potential benefit. Same goes for TV. I'd love the advertisers to know it was me watching TV - then they could play Victoria Secret commercials for the whole time I'm watching! BONUS!
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Still, I don't see how they're going to convince thousands of people to string audio cables between the TV and the computer.
ABC's enhanced tv much does it smarter. By syncing the web site to the television timing you get exactly the same effect. TV commercials on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" result in the same ad on your computer screen..
Was done by Illiad..
...but not for their intended purpose. I loved the original CueCat and audio cable because the cable was great for audio capture, and the cuecat - well! Taking that sucker apart for spare parts (wires primarily) was a very nice way to spend an afternoon. I wouldn't want to pay for these things, but if Cue wants to give me cheesy electronic gadgets to take apart or do something useful with, more power to them.
Idea for Cue: Why not give away CueCams, digital video cameras that connect to your computer and send your browser to any URL they see on any visual media? I promise I would not use it as a webcam. Honest.
I'm the stranger...posting to
Hah, try and get a USB one! The packages say "For distibution with a new Compaq computer only."
I talked to a dumber-than-usual salesdrone who offered me a Cue Cat, PS/2 of course. I told him I don't have a port for that on my computer cause it's a Mac (okay, I do have a Mac, so it's not entirely lying - but I never use it.) and asked if he had any Cue Cats with a different connector... He gave me a USB Cue Cat. Finally. Trying it out wasn't all that exciting though, it's HID compliant and doesn't need any special drivers to work with the current windows hacks.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.