The Napsterization of TV

Lefty writes "This article in today's Boston Globe talks about the napsterization of TV shows and how the PC as a media server is going to make it happen. Burning TV shows to CD/DVD, e-mailing your friends TV shows, streaming TV over the Internet -- all things the dedicated set-top boxes can't do... The article talks about Snapstream, a PVR competitor to Moxi and ReplayTV, that runs on the PC and has media server capabilities. from the article: "Already you can find a great deal of pirated video material online. If SnapStream gets installed on millions of PCs, there'll be plenty more. And the TV moguls will find themselves knee deep in the digital acid bath.""

Comments

No Guide

[nexex]

The problem I have with snapstream and the other PC based PVR software is there in not guide comperable to what is available to tivo, replay, etc...All you get is a grid of times without show name or length. If you live in UK, there is digiguide integration, but I dont live in UK :)...it is rumored that there will be us version this year sometime though

TiVo-like capabilities? Hardly!

[jlower]

SnapStream is far from offering the capabilities of TiVo. Just being able to tell the computer what channel to record and when isn't enough. Call me when I can tell it to record "X" no matter what time and what channel it comes on.

It seems that TiVo-like is becomming a generic term for any new recording gizmo produced.

Who E-mails Movies?

[Sentry21]

Seriously, I see in ads all the time, Windows XP lets you e-mail movies to family, my Quickcam software does likewise, but does anyone actually -DO- this?

My stepfather tried to e-mail me a (not too large) PDF the other day, and it was bounced because it was too large. @Home (what was @Home) also had a transfer limit. I expect most ISPs do. Who on earth actually e-mails 350-meg files?

--Dan

Re:Who E-mails Movies?

[KelsoLundeen]

LOL.

Here's a true story:

It's Christmas, so I decide to buy myself a Christmas gift -- since I buy the best gifts for myself. They usually involve a lot of money and computer equipment.

Okay, so this Christmas -- couple months ago -- I take the plunge and buy a miniDV camera. I also realize I need editing software. So I get Vegas Video. And what the heck: sound on DV cameras sucks, so I buy myself a couple microphones (a stereo mic, a shotgun mic, and -- because I can -- an XLR mic with a little XLR box that sits between my miniDV cam and the mic.)

Okay, so I've got my whole setup ready to go. I decide I'm gonna shoot some documentaries of my friends, my family, and my dog, Brewster. I spend a couple weeks shooting funny shit -- little movies, a couple of documentaries, and a 15 minute long video of family photographs set to Benny Goodman music. Sorta like what Woody Allen does at the beginning of his movies.

Anyway, the photographs were family photos -- old ones, black and white and color, and the finished video -- complete with zooms into and pans across the old photographs -- was very cool. Like Ken Burns. That sort of thing.

I get the bright idea: hey, I oughta *show* this to someone. So I do. I mail the video to my parents. Now, okay, it's pretty small -- around 5 megs or so -- but I forget my parents are still on a modem. So I get this angry call from my dad: "What the hell did you send us! The modem's been nonstop for an hour!"

A photograph video, I told him.

"Cripes, I couldn't figure out what it was! I thought it was a virus! I had to restart it five times before I finally gave up."

It dawned on me that, heck, I coulda just put the video on a web page. But I didn't think of that. I just took the edited video and emailed it off to the folks.

Okay, so three days later. I get another call. It's the old man: "Hey we finally downloaded the video! Fantastic! I mailed it off to your aunt!"

Um, I said. I could just put a web page up and she could download the video.

"Too late!" says the old man. "Make more! We love those videos!"

Couple more days pass, and I get this angry call from my aunt: "What the hell is the video you've been sending around? It took me hours to download it! I had to call my ISP! They thought it was a virus."

I pointed out that I didn't send it. I made it, but I didn't send it. "Blame your brother," I told my aunt.

"Cripes!" she says. "Don't ever send me another video. You don't know the headaches I went through to download that thing."

Did you watch it?

"Watch it? I had my ISP zap it off my email account. I was getting account errors, quota errors, you name it!"

But it didn't end there. My dad kept sending this five meg video around. More calls ensued. Angry emails came in from my cousins, uncles, aunts. The gist: don't ever send us a video again.

I'm thinking: cripes, my family is cracked. It's just a five meg video, for chrissake!

But who knows.

Anyway, moral of the story. Normal people do not send videos. Morons (like me) start the ball rolling and actually email videos. But, no, no one sends videos. It's just marketing bullshit.

There's still ill-will about the videos. I didn't think it was a big deal. And I apologized all around. But the damage has been done.

Re:Who E-mails Movies?

[b1t r0t]

I mail the video to my parents. Now, okay, it's pretty small -- around 5 megs or so -- but I forget my parents are still on a modem. So I get this angry call from my dad: "What the hell did you send us! The modem's been nonstop for an hour!"

Questions:
1. Are you or have you ever been a PHB?
2. Do you feel an inexplicable urge to use PowerPoint?
3. Does your home web page use any Flash?
4. Does your home web page have a "front door" page which contains nothing but a Flash animation?

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, seek help from your local BOFH immediately!

Re:Who E-mails Movies?

[Tackhead]

> y stepfather tried to e-mail me a (not too large) PDF the other day, and it was bounced because it was too large. @Home (what was @Home) also had a transfer limit. I expect most ISPs do. Who on earth actually e-mails 350-meg files?

Obviously a question from someone who's never had the, uh, "pleasure" of administering a network at a company with something called a "marketing department" ;-)

ReplayTV 'modified PC w/HD'

[aslagle]

There is a lot more to a Replay than a 'modified PC'. There is a stable OS that is designed to stay up without rebooting, a UI designed to access other Replays on the local network, broadband access to guide data and other Replay owners, not to mention other 'goodies' like auto commercial advance and recording conflict resolution.

Yes, there are programs that will add PVR functions to a PC, but none of them quite make it to the 'consumer box' level of integration.

My wife, an admitted technophobe, had no problem learning how to use the Replay, and loves it (my kids do also). If I had put a PC in my A/V stack, I'm sure I'd be the only one using it.

Digital Acid Bath?

[Brit Aviator]

Is it me, or is this article somewhat...breathless? No mention at all of the legitimate uses of digital copying, nor any mention of how the ability to copy and freely distribute television in the past (via VHS etc, albeit at lower quality) affected the TV industry and what correlation this has with the current situation as "digitizers apply their corrosive talents" to the same. I think I'll be shocked the day I hear a TV or movie exec stand up and say "hell, why are we stonewalling this stuff? Let's just evolve our company a bit and see if we can't make a buck or two off it!" Change is expensive, I know, but in the long run refusing to change may prove far more expensive: fatally so.

I can't wait for this

[mrroot]

In the mean time, anybody know where I can download "The Star Wars Christmas Special" or episodes 24 through 30 of Three's Company? This will surely enhance the quality of life for everyone.

Whre is the creativity?

[lorcha]

I understand and grant that the companies that produce the media that consumers enjoy (music, TV, movies, etc.) must make a profit in order to stay in business and continue production. What I do not understand, is why these media producers feel that the correct course of action is to attack technologies that threaten their current business models.

These companies pay their executives millions of dollars per year to create revenue streams and increase profit margins. Why can't those executives show some crativity and use the new technologies themselves?

For instance, they could seek out new viewiers for their TV shows by distributing content in unencrypted form so consumers can freely share the content with their friends. This would have worked especially well for the music industry who killed Napster instead of channeling their enormous user base into an enormous business opportunity.

For all of the money we pay execs, they ought to be able to come up with something better than "This technology threatens our current business model and must be thwarted." Business models can and must evolve with the changing climate.

Re:Whre is the creativity?

[WNight]

The printing press simultaneously made a market for books and threatened the newfound livelihood of the authors.

Without the printing press you couldn't have a career as an author. Authors had patrons who paid them, but not for each book, instead they paid for the originals.

With the printing press came the idea of selling many copies, and eventually the authors demanded their piece of the pie, but it could have very well continued such that they sold their work up front and the publishers took the risks and made the money.

I don't know why people assume that it's a natural law that authors get royalties. Should architects get royalties from each person who uses their building?

If we hadn't developed copyright, something else would have come along.

Build your own ...

[EisPick]

This week's issue of Business Week has build-your-own-PVR instructions.

When a meme leaps from the pages of Popular Mechanics and Wired to the pages of Business Week and the Boston Globe, it's probably time for the networks and studios to pay attention and figure out how they're going to deal with this technology.

Well, I *used* to do this...

[Teancom]

until kazaa stopped my linux client from working. I was d/ling whole series of television shows that I want to watch, but either 1) don't get the channel or 2) simply can't catch the episodes in the right order through syndication/reruns. That includes Farscape, Red Dwarf, Stargate SG-1, Dark Angel, and others. And the best part was, *every* episode was out there. Now, however, I'm a junkie in search of a fix. I broke down and started installing all the windows p2p stuff on my kids computer, but can't find a single decent replacement to kza.

Morpheus (supposedly the same thing) comes back with much fewer hits than was I was getting, and the connection seems to be worse (dropouts, "connecting" hangs, etc). winmx seems decent, but there is either no results, or the one person that has it is queued up to 11 or 12. Any given gnutella client (bearshare, etc) is plagued with the normal gnutella problems (large bandwidth usage, slow searching, limited results). Jumping on irc (dalnet) is almost useless, as the queues are jam-packed, and you have to sit there all day, just to get in a queue 20 people long. Am I missing something? I'm obviously not the only person interested in getting tv shows off the 'net (the point of the article), so there has to be a resource out there that I'm missing. What is it? And (please oh please), let there be a command-line linux client!! The ability to start screen, kick off a session of kza, go to work, check in on the progress, add some other things, go home, check up on it again, redo some searches, back and forth, was priceless. Bring back kza! Please!

/whine mode off....

Re:Well, I *used* to do this...

[yora]

In case you are looking for episodes of tv shows, then check out edonkey available here. I have been using edonkey for a few months now, and i have always found more stuff on edonkey than on any other network (kazaa/morpheus included). Also there are a few sites on the net which give out edonkey links which u can use to download verified files! There is a linux client available. Check out www.sharereactor.com for a guide on using edonkey along with lots of links!!

Any Day Now We'll Have...

[Greyfox]

Ha ha! You thought I was going to say "Any day now we'll have the ability to store our favorite shows digitally, watch them at a time of our choosing and be able to share them with our friends who may have missed that episode for some reason."

Any day now we'll have broadcasters encoding "Dharma and Greg" with copy-control signals and mandatory copy-control conformance for all digital hardware that has anything to do with video signals. It will be effectively illegal to record any show for any purpose (including time shifting) and it will be illegal to so much as talk about ways to get around these restrictions (Or indeed, to talk about how much these restrictions suck.)

Television networks have a way to fight it...

[NanoGator]

The main damage the television networks suffer from the 'Napsterization of TV' is the commercial time. Most of the TV shows you find on programs like Morpheus have the commercials edited out. I can only speculate on the reasoning, but my guess is that they are edited out to make the download time shorter.

How could Television networks fight this? It's simple: Provide streaming content from their website. Let's say that UPN provided a streaming version of Enterprise, for example. They could release it 24 hours after the show is initially aired. (This way, the original broadcast still has commercial/timeslot value) The requirement is that I have to fill out information about myself so they can target ads to me. Then, what they do, is when the server streams down the show, it inserts in ads targeted to my demographic at the same time that the original broadcast aird commercials.

This provides an interesting new twist to the Ad model. Not only is the demographic more far reaching, but it's no longer tied to a time-slot. If somebody discovers Enterprise 2 years into the show's run, they'll likely go back and watch the first episodes to get up to speed. This means that those commercials get aired again.

Current streaming technologies require several seconds of buffering, so it isn't worth trying to skip past them. And since I can start watching immediately, I have no need or desire to get them on a file sharing program.

With this model, not only could the networks minimize 'damage' done by these programs, but they'd also provide a potentially profitable service that works even better.

Heck, if they wanted to make even more money off it, they could charge a $2 fee to see an even higher quality stream of the video, or something like that. I wouldn't care about that for the Drew Carrey show, but I'd likely pay that to see a higher quality version of Enterprise since the sets and effects are so much more interesting to look at.

Re:Television networks have a way to fight it...

[frank_adrian314159]

How could Television networks fight this? It's simple: Provide streaming content from their website.

How could television networks fight this? It's even simpler: Write more obvious product placements into the shows...

[Interior shot - Crew room of Enterprise]

Crewman 1 (punching buttons on replicator) to Crewman 2: Can I get you a Coke?

Crewman 2: Yeah, but make it a Diet Coke. Ya know, it tastes just as good, but only has 2 calories. Fitness eval is coming up next month and I have to drop a few pounds...

... and so on. How do you skip comercials when they're woven into the fabric of the show?

Course they can always use crawls and split screens, too...

This is more about copyrights in a digital world

[IamTheRealMike]

Sure, we can all laugh about the idea of people emailing half a gig of video to each other, or downloading them onto their PDA, or say "wow, how cool would having digital archives of my favourite tv programs be", but the real issue here is - how do media artists make a living when their product can be copied an infinite number of times for virtually zero cost?

I don't see much discussion of that, perhaps because nobody knows the answer? It hasn't been solved for music yet - no wonder the TV execs are wetting themselves.

can your aunt do that?

[StrawberryFrog]

RTFA

The article is about how a technology that geeks could do is now going mainstream. Thier product is an attempt to make a mass-market PC-video solution that a non-geek can use, with consumer bells and whisles like downloading TV guide listings from the web, software bundled with TVcard hardware, scheduled recording, etc. If they did thier work right, it should have a point-and-drool interface.

And the article does have a point. When a few geeks trade thier favorite show, it's no big loss. When everyone and thier Aunt Sally does, the media industry is in the acid bath.

Only a matter of time?

[Otter]

Well, it's a matter of a long time. For one thing, the bandwidth and playback needs of TV are far higher than those necessary for Napster to take off. Traded MP3s sound decent to most listeners, and are small enough to be shared easily over a LAN, and painfully over a 56K. Warez enthusiasts may share video today, but it's too slow and far too low quality to be a competitor to TV and movies.

For another thing, part of the ritual of television is that it's tied to time. I'll sit in front of my TV on Monday evening and watch football but would never think of downloading a Falcons-Buccaneers game from 1994 to watch on a Wednesday night.

Besides, television is free, and there's already far more of it than anyone could watch. Are fans going to hoard Futurama or Bullwinkle episodes? Sure. Will that make a dent in serious TV watching? Not in this decade.

Yes, Guide (Was Re:No Guide)

[kazrak]

SnapStream 2.0 includes a tie-in to the guide at titantv.com, which includes links you can click to automatically set recording times/lengths.
It's out, I use it. The site also claims to provide dynamic links for Win-TV PVR, WinDVR, and PowerVCR II, although I've never tested them with it.

Pretty easy problem to solve...

[curunir]

As a die hard Simpsons fan, I have nearly every episode archived so that I can watch them whenever I choose. I used to have every episode, until they came out with the whole first season on DVD. I bought it and promptly threw away my cd containing those episodes. When they release subsequent seasons on DVD, I'll buy it and get rid of my copies.

The answer to this seems pretty simple to me. Release the content on DVD. I think most people would rather shell out 15-20 bucks for a high quality copy.

Besides...how does it hurt them that I own a copy of the episodes. I still watch Simpsons episodes when they come on (both prime-time and syndicated versions).

Edits

[SomeOtherGuy]

By the time you get done editing the commercials out of a 2 hour TV show -- you will finally feel like you are getting your money's worth out of that new Athlon :) In other words: It takes a steady hand and a little patience and alot of spare time to make these edits. (and then more time to Archive to CD) Some people may get off on this kind of stuff -- but after about 5 episodes of the Simpsons and another handful of Seinfield and Threes Company -- I was burned out -- and my fingers hurt...)

What we already have

[roystgnr]

Copy control signals (for various reasons Slashdot has discussed to death) just won't work. If I can see it and hear it, I can copy it.

What will happen instead is what we're already seeing. TV station logos planted on top of shows, opaque and animated so they can't be edited out. Video squished, bent, and overlayed to accomodate advertisements while the show is actually playing. Scenes cut out of reruns so you'll have to buy the DVD set to get the whole show.

The only way to ruin TV copying is to ruin TV. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to bother anyone doing it.

The downfall for the MPAA & RIAA

[linuxrunner]

NO, not because of pirating music and videos, or movies... or even tv shows for that matter. We all still buy / purchase.

No, the downfall will be because of the ever surmounting lawyer bills they will receive after all the BS... After chasing one p2p network and then the next when a new one pops up... then the next... and so forth.

Learn to change / adapt, or become extinct.

Re:This is more about copyrights in a digital worl

[Jeremi]

how do media artists make a living when their product can be copied an infinite number of times for virtually zero cost?

They can rely on good-will tipping from their fans (see .sig, below), or fund themselves from their day jobs. You may think that's unacceptable, but I don't -- I think the world would benefit from having less professional/corporate/money-driven content, and more amateur/semi-pro content.

Just MHO.

Not Stupid, You Mean

[virg_mattes]

> TV program 'sharing' will not revolutionize anything in any way. It doesn't do anything that can't be done much easier using existing technologies.

Actually, it does. Digital recording allows for several things that "today's technology" (read: what's popular today) can't easily do:

1.) Digital data is much more portable than video tape. Where VHS can't go (handhelds, over the wire, in small storage spaces), digitized video can.
2.) Editing out commercials is a pain in the ass with video tape, and requires more than one machine. With digital video, chopping out the commercials doesn't require much in money, time or expertise.
3.) Sharing is much easier, for reason 1 above. I can readily share VHS tapes only with people I meet in meatspace unless I want to incur mailing costs, whereas I can send digital video anywhere in the world with ease.

I can see easily why TV executives are scared by this loss of content control. Imagine how concerned they must be at the prospect that I can capture VHS-quality recordings of a whole season of Buffy, strip the commercials out and store them on one DVD (which will be cheap enough for widespread use within two years, if the CD-RW market is any indicator).

Virg

Re:I'm not definately PRO this idea...

[ncc74656]

Bob Smith is the vice president of CD sales at Unknown And Barely Surviving Record Company. When Napster hits, he's out of a job. His family has no food in their stomach. Rent is unpaid. His somewhat-luxurious lifestyle is diminished to living in the slums of some cheap neighborhood.

Okay, the above is an extreme example. But, the same thing can happen to TV now if it all goes free. Tons and tons of people spend money on advertising with TV, for example. I'm sure people will have patches/progs to avoid this advertising. And what about TV set sales? They'll plummet. Hey, who needs cable? You can just get stuff off the 'net.

Under that logic, we should've been worried about the manufacturers of carriages and whips when the automobile came on the scene. How about all the people who ground away at lengthy calculations to produce mathematical tables and such whose jobs were eliminated by computers?

The entertainment business will either adapt to change or fall by the wayside.

Three's Company Synopsis

[dman123]

You don't need the actual Three's Company episodes, I'll give you a synopsis. Enjoy!

Episode 24: Jack gets involved in a sexual misunderstanding with the girls. Mr. Roeper thinks Jack is gay. Mrs. Roeper makes fun of Mr. Roper's sexual performance.

Episode 25: Jack gets involved in a sexual misunderstanding with the girls. Mr. Roeper thinks Jack is gay. Mrs. Roeper makes fun of Mr. Roper's sexual performance.

Episode 26: Jack gets involved in a sexual misunderstanding with the girls. Mr. Roeper thinks Jack is gay. Mrs. Roeper makes fun of Mr. Roper's sexual performance.

Episode 27: Jack gets involved in a sexual misunderstanding with the girls. Mr. Roeper thinks Jack is gay. Mrs. Roeper makes fun of Mr. Roper's sexual performance.

Episode 28: Jack gets involved in a sexual misunderstanding with the girls. Mr. Roeper thinks Jack is gay. Mrs. Roeper makes fun of Mr. Roper's sexual performance.

Episode 29: Jack gets involved in a sexual misunderstanding with the girls. Mr. Roeper thinks Jack is gay. Mrs. Roeper makes fun of Mr. Roper's sexual performance.

Episode 30: Jack gets involved in a sexual misunderstanding with the girls. Mr. Roeper thinks Jack is gay. Mrs. Roeper makes fun of Mr. Roper's sexual performance.

If you want, I'll let you know the plot of Gilligan's Island too!

True story: Actual synopsis of Dr. Who last month on DBS... "The Doctor must defeat various foes."

Re:I'm not definately PRO this idea...

[shepd]

>But, the same thing can happen to TV now if it all goes free

I seem to recall a strange time... I think they called it the "60's" "70's" or "early 80's", I can't remember which. At that time all TV was free to anyone.

I don't recall this being seen as a serious impediment to making money, however. I'm sure there were different economic forces at play then. Like giving the people what they want and then they'll watch the ads. You know, like ads that aren't so loud you wear out the mute button, or so long you can make a pizza while you wait for them to end, or so obnoxious you turn to another station each time they advertise the latest in feminine hygiene problems? And programs that are popular, action packed, and varied, like A-Team, Airwolf, Mission Impossible, and MacGyver; in contrast to being nothing more than offensive standard grade pablum, like AllyMcBeal or [insert latest crappy sitcom ripoff where some lame ass actor comes out of the closet here] or [insert stupid show where everyone risks their life for a crappy prize] or [insert latest "real life" TV show]? I seem to recall that at this time music video station showed (gasp!) music videos! And that 2 hour movies weren't cut to 1 hour!

>Hey, who needs cable? You can just get stuff off the 'net.

Who needs cable indeed? My BUD dish picks up all sorts of commercial free wildfeeds (makes Enterprise worth watching!) 100% legally. My 40 ft. offair antenna picks up the other 50% of programming worth watching. And you legally can watch DirecTV for free in Canada, for the 1 or 2 stations that you just can't get (period -- they aren't on Canadian satellite, or Canadian satellite only offers an inferior version -- thanks CRTC!).

I haven't paid for programming in months, and I've been doing it legally. I even get the same selection of programming that most in North America enjoy, probably more (I get the Nasa channel...). Not that it matters much, because I won't be watching a big name network TV show at all this week (they put the SuperBowl on instead... I guess that is actually popular, though, so I can't complain too much about that). Maybe I'm just living in a time bubble where TV doesn't suck?

Re:Nice idea

[maggard]

At last an affordable replacement to the (RIP) Tivo (although I think they still sell them in the US... more extremely rich geeks there I suppose).

They're in business, selling well, did great over the holiday season, just shipped v.2 hardware and secured a US$50 million round of financing.

It's a bit before its time, though. Home users haven't really got the bandwidth to use this (ADSL penetration in the UK is at something like 1.5% of households... the rest are on 56K). The kind of people who have broadband & don't mind waiting 3 hours for an episode of star trek to download can already get all this by trawling Usenet, and the rest haven't got the patience or the hardware.

Actually much of this has moved to the p2p services as Usenet is becoming clogged, retention times are down and really it's about the worst medium for distributing big binaries like these.

I thought the idea of putting your favourite programs on an IPAQ was amusing... 32MB wouldn't get you much video (about a minute if you're lucky, more if you don't give a crap about the quality).

Apparently you're also out of the loop on compression these days - figure each minute on something with an iPaq-size screen taking under 1 MB. A typical Star Trek Enterprise episode with intro and all at very good quality at a reasonable size clocks in at about 300-450 MB.

Wow - 3 for 3 and you were wrong on each, got anything else you need to be corrected on? This is /. y'know, news for folks who might know what they're talking about.

You forgot the local affiliate problem

[swb]

It's a clever idea, but the affiliates also make money off the shows.

Example: A certain number of spots are reserved for the local affiliates, who sell them to whoever, often its local businesses like the car dealership. There are some businesses that actually go around buying local time in large regions for regional products or for companies that want to be more discriminating about their media buys.

Anyway, the point is that UPN couldn't stream the content to end users without pissing off affiliates -- this is part of the reason that its taken so long to get networks on satellite dishes and why you can't get, say, LA affiliates if you live in Minnesota.

They may be able to do something that compensates the local affiliate for the spot views they lose, but it'd be complex math as the value of the spot time is directly related to the Nielsen/Arbitron numbers they get for that show. Ideally they would just show you the local spots, but that would be really complicated (insuring that all stations sent digital versions of their local spots for merging into the stream, etc). Another way may be to do a national spot and divide the revenue by the number of local station regions that had streamed viewers.

Re:You forgot the local affiliate problem

[Krelnik]

Anyway, the point is that UPN couldn't stream the content to end users without pissing off affiliates...

Sure they could. In his proposal, he had folks logging in so they could demographically target ads at them, right? Well the login information includes where the person lives, right?

You simply pay the affiliates a percentage of the ad revenue based on how many people in their area viewed the stream.

Voila, everyone is happy.

Wrong tool, wrong settings? I'd say so...

[Kjella]

Virtual Dub, direct stream copy. As there'll usually be a keyframe at commercial in and out, it shouldn't be any problem, no reencoding needed.. even if it doesn't get everything there's max 15 secs of commerical crap instead of five minutes. If you want the last frames out, reencode till the first keyframe after the commercial break, and cut and paste it together. I doubt I'd use more than 10 mins on an hour show total...

Kjella

Broadcast should end copyright

[Animats]

Broadcast over the public airwaves should terminate copyright on the content. Content owners who don't want that should have to do it the hard way, over cable, on physical media, and over the Internet. But if you're using state-subsidized bandwidth, you should have to give up copyright at first broadcast.

That's what to push for in legislation.

Not an issue until bandwidth increases for all

[Fantastic Lad]

I don't know what the percentage of web-users on 56K is, but I tend to think it's still at least half.

I run on DSL. Downloading a movie is unreliable, boring and the final image is usually pretty bad. I'd rather walk through snow and ice to rent some crap from Blockbuster. And I almost never even bother doing that.

T.V. sucks. Most movies suck. There are a million more interesting ways to be entertained. I hate television! -Bad writing, bad production values, bad acting, and all packaged in a sludge of mind-warping advertising and propaganda. Why subject myself to such a horrid assult? Why would anybody?

But nearly everybody does. And right now, it's a million times easier to flop down and waste away in front of whatever crap is being broadcast than it is to go hunting on-line for 50Meg low-res, shit color episodes of whatever (with the last two minutes missing because of some download failure).

Until cheep and ubiquitous download speeds arrive which allow for very easy, very quick access to high quality television content. . . Well, it just won't make much difference to the status quo.

And I am willing to bet ANYTHING that even if such a time does come, that it won't make a lick of difference. I don't care what distribution/financial model is adopted, there will ALWAYS be TONS of new and 'interesting' programming being shoveled up for the populace to waste away in front of.

Pardon me, but if anybody thinks that the Powers That Be are going to allow all the meat puppets to unplug themselves from their nightly borg-alcove brain-fry sessions. . .

Well anybody who thinks that has been watching too much TV.

Now, if you'll excuse me, the Scary Monkey Show is about to start. . .

-Fantastic Lad

A word of warning

[_ganja_]

I have purchased Snapstream and I would really urge anyone that is even thinking about it to read snapstream's own discusion forum first. This is one software purchase I really regret, the trial version kinda works but it is of course fairly limited, its only when you really start using the software seriously that the flaws show up. Crashes are fairly common, tunning is a major issue if you are outside the US and the *only* recording format that is supported is Windows media. The quality of the recordings isn't exactly great either (when the software actually does record that it).

What does surprise me is nobody has really stated that they are running Linux to do PVCR functions. What software is around on the Linux front?