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Philips Targets Wireless TV Retransmission At Home
cadfael links to this EE Times story, excerpting: "Philips is attempting to start yet another industry initiative to tackle digital rights management, this time focusing on the wirelessly networked home. 'At stake here,' said Leon Husson, executive vice president of consumer businesses at Philips Semiconductors, 'is the "free-floating" copyrighted content that will soon be "redistributed" or "rebroadcast" to different TV sets throughout a home by consumers using wireless networking technologies like IEEE802.11.'"
After all, I could just run coax to all the TVs in a house. Is this somehow different because it's wireless???
I mean, whenever I buy a special package, i.e., a pay-per-view, I can watch it on all the TVs in the house...
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
I didn't used to think that people would pay for cable on a per-tv basis. Then along came digital cable and satellite programming which required installation of a decoder for each tv (or at least each tv that didn't want to watch what everyone else was watching at that moment).
This tech will make its way into the market and content providers will quickly glom onto the idea. Customers will upgrade or face having 4 broadcast channels.
Just when we were starting to like them for that whole red-book thing...
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
Here's something I'd like Hollywood and their friends to think about: at some point protecting one's IP becomes more expensive than stopping possible pirating. And while the cost will be passed on to consumers, that just makes entertainment devices that much more expensive, meaning fewer of them will be sold with a lower profit margin.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
The problem with this digital rights management solution, just like all of the others, is that they cannot force people to upgrade. Although there is a certain segment of the populace that will desire to own the latest and greatest everything multimedia, and therefore trip himself into owning devices embedded with DRM, the average American won't want to spend the extra money to upgrade.
Therefore, unless you give them a major incentive, the RIAA/MPAA is foiled again. No upgrades means that all of the time they spent plotting up yet another scheme to control what we can and can't watch is ruined by consumer apathy.
If they really wanted people to upgrade, they would (a) develop a new, proprietary format, (b) stop release of all current and future products on CD/VHS/DVD, (c) release ONLY on aforementioned proprietary format. Eventually, enough people would switch to make it worth their while.
Even with this, though, people will find a way around the Digital Rights Management schemes, as they also do.
To use a famous quote, "Where there's a will, there's a way." And when it comes to copying CDs, VHS tapes, or DVDs, there is most certainly a will.
Gawyn
Freedom of Speech?
At what point will some create an analogy quick reference card for these people. This is so stupid I may have a stroke. How is this ANY different from sneaker netting a VHS tape? I know its technically a broadcast, but from a REALISTIC standpoint? Big deal, my neighbor just MIGHT be able to pick it up, or he could just ask to borrow a videotape.
Apoplexy now!
This certainly seems analogous to me. How can they justify this. It is effectively telling me what I'm allowed to do inside my own house!
That's crap.
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
One existing specification, called Digital Transmission Content Protection (DTCP), defines a cryptographic protocol for safeguarding audio/video entertainment content against illegal copying, intercepting and tampering as it traverses high-performance digital buses, such as the IEEE1394 standard.
Once again, we are shown that digital rights management hardware is by definition defective. They seem to think their only protection from profit stealing pirates (gasp! seeing stuff on another TV?) is to make broken equipment.
I, for one, will be voting with my wallet. F*** phillips, and anyone who follows them. I thought the hardware guys where on the side of logic and fair use...
Maybe I'll write to them and tell them that I won't buy crippled equipment from them that purposely interferes with radio transmissions- and I think the FCC would also take issue with this.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Basically, the large media companies want control over their content because they want to "keep the honest people honest." Though this sounds very Big Brotherish in nature, keep in mind the fact that if 80%, 90%, or 100% of the population could make unlimited, perfect copies of digital media to share with their friends, it would likely put the entire industry out of business.
The part of DRM that many people here miss is that it is always breakable. And we geeks are the ones who will always have access to the knowledge, technology, and software that allows us to circumvent these schemes. And you may be surprised to hear it, but the media companies really don't care whether or not a few of us slashdot geeks, living in our parents' basements, can copy a DVD or decrypt a wireless feed from our satellite system. They care about tools, like DeCSS, that could potentially be used by millions of Windows-using lusers to rip them off, and that is the only reason why they cared enough to sue 2600 into oblivion.
So, this is yet another area in which we can enjoy our superiority to average non-geeks. While they "pay per play" on their new HDTV sets and are forced to pay for content, we can sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labor. We've worked hard for this right, and there's nothing "they" can do to take it away from us. We deserve it.
-Isaac
That depends. Am I the company that won't get to sell you the additional DVD player, or am I the company that won't get to sell you the wireless receiver?
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
I, as have many others, have been doing this for years. Back in the day when most households only had one VCR, there was a little gizmo called the rabbit that allowed you to watch the VCR on multiple TV's. More recently I picked up a little device from SmartHome that allows me to send audio visual signals through walls using a 2.4 Ghz signal. VIOLA! Wireless rebroadcasting of recorded shows. I have been watching taped recordings of shows as well as dvds on more than one tv in my house for some time now, I guess because there is no computer involved it's all ok. 2.4Ghz is so 1990s. -peel
Computers never mkae mestooks. - Atari 800
This is mostly a moot point, until a TV can be so integrted as not to need an external source in this is all moot. The industry will not for 100 years agree on a standard for that. The signal leaves whatever device you are playing from AND MUST be understood by your common average dumb TV set, NTSC, PAL what have you.
NOW that said that is the weak link and an Ideal place to transmit from or encode to an alternative Digital Medium, I just got Mplayer encoding right, and guess what was horking all kinds of signals off line, my 300 gig box is just about ready to start filling up with TV shows, movies, races,etc. I want, as soon as I can get the damm remote working with this box.
Because of the above set up I dug out an OLD (15 year plus TV transmitter, I had , you hook it up and Channel 3 gets vid audio. Im too lazy to wire the upstairs and may be moving soon, so my 32" tv in the bedroom gets REBROADCASTED signaal. They sell these things on ebay for 30 bucks, they work like a charm, you could make your own with 1/3 of that in parts, no IC , all coils trimmers and pots.
My computer has a tuner card as well, and antenna and I can catch anything I want off my "TIVO KILLER" EITHER via the network, or antenna, I would LOVE to put a box in my trunk and pump over 802.1b so my kids can watch flciks on drives, upload a playlist the night before from my computer in the house to my car in the drive. (I do plan on doing this with my MP3's)
Sooooooo.....
As long as a TV can understand the signal there is NO possible way (at present) to keep that signal from being rebroadcasted. With TONS of MONEY being pouredinto this sort of DRM research its amazing our TV sets dont cost $3000 !
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
Back in the 80s it was perfectly legal to use the wireless Rabbit (remember those?) to transmit TV signals from the living room to the bedroom. This went for broadcast, rented movies, etc. Heck, you can even legally transmit on the FM 88-108 MHz band as long as it follows FCC Part 15 (no external antenna, and under a certain wattage... 100mw I think). Considering that these allowances were made for home-based Fair Use usage, I would consider this a clear-cut violation of Fair Use rights just like copy protected CDs. If you want to make *public* broadcast over 802.11 illegal... Well it already is. Just like it would have been illegal to use the Rabbit back in the 80s to re-transmit cable for the whole neighborhood.
This is all about HIGH DEFINITION content, not existing content like today's DVD's which are:
- standard resolution
- digital content delivered via analog signals (for all consumer level DVD players at least)
Until you have an HD set and HD dish/cable/OTA, this won't affect you.
All future HD devices will have Intel's HDCP (the HD version of DRM) embedded, complete with certificate revocation lists so that devices which are hacked can be retroactively disabled. Believe me, this won't be a trivial hack.
Welcome to the brave new world.
>>Content owners, for example, can start charging consumers every time their digital content is re-distributed within the home, or viewed several times during a certain number of days specified by them.
Sounds a lot like DIVX' game plan to me. If that's what they are really going for, I expect it to fail just as quickly.
Sorry, I'm just not seeing how wireless piracy is a big problem
It isn't that it is a problem. It's that Philips wants to develop digital broadcast technologies that will not piss Hollywood off. Hollywood's nightmare is that you could by a $50.00 device that sniffs the packets being sent from your wireless DVD or cable broadcast box to your wireless TV.
Is this a problem yet? No, of course not. But then MP3 ripping wasn't a problem when CDs were invented either. Now Hollywood wants to figure out the DRM issues but it is too late. The installed base of CD players is too large. Unfortunately, the big companies are now in a mode where they will not release new technology until after they feel like they've got the DRM security issues worked out.
If Philips doesn't move on this in advance of the demand then the initial market will be captured a tiny little company that doesn't care about DRM. Remember the first MP3 players?
Am I in favour of DRM technology? Absolutely not. But what they are trying to do makes sense from their point of view. And doing it sooner rather than later makes even more sense.
It seems that the only way consumers in the future will have freedom to use the content they have paid for (think of it as media functionality) is to turn to pirated works. And once they have put forward the effort and expense to track down a suitable pirated work, one has to wonder how often the consumer will feel like bothering to purchase the legitimate product for that added bit of moral highground.
Content owners seem deturmined to shoot themselves in the foot. And its the various technology companies, and their sales/marketing team, that are assuring the industry of an oportunity ("them's feet are good eatin'") and selling the shotguns.
A student in a dorm room could broadcast a rented DVD to every other student in their building
you mean, instead of showing it on the widescreen TV in the lounge, the way college students have been doing ever since the invention of the VCR.
I'm just waiting for Hilary and friends to start raiding college dorms looking for DVD players in public spaces.
And hah hah, it's all funny, except for this: The computer as digital operator allows us to take all the communications that flow through our homes and do really neat things with them... and these content bastards are going to just screw it all up wanting to sniff every signal I send and impose all sorts of cumbersome rights management bullshit on my gear? Fuck them. I'm sick of these pissant media mobesters content tail wagging the giant, potential filled dog of digital media and communications technology. I'll buy another Phillips product when hell freezes over.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries