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Networks and Studios Against PVRs
HiredMan sent in an LA Times story talking about more suits against PVR makers
like Replay and Tivo. The most bizarre quote to me is that the
suit argues that "it's illegal to let consumers record and store shows based on the genre, actors or other words in the program description." Huh?
Next thing you know they won't allow people to take snapshots in Vegas because they're afraid people will be seeing all there is to see.
Useless opinions, worthless observations, and more!
PVR's throw a wrench into the finely tuned machine that is mainstream television. They make their money from ads, and the more people sitting through those ads, the more money they make. Well, what happens when advertising firms start paying channels less because there are less people actually viewing the show than recording it? You can guess that the channels will be pretty pissed off. They're just trying to protect a source of money there, really.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
OK... take the PVR away. We will still do what we are doing now - taping and blowing by the commercials. We watch a few programs eah week, have the VCR programed to nab them, then we watch them COMMERCIAL FREE on the weekend WHEN WE WANT TO WATCH THEM. The only nice thing about PVR is the quality and the ability to pause real-time.
I guess the networks are pissed more that they didn't come up with it first.
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
Why is it that every large corporation or entrenched business needs to be so afraid of change. Did 8-track kill music revenues? How about tape? MD? CD? MP3? Nope nope nope nope. It simply amazes me how afraid most folks are of change. Don't they realize that without change things don't get better? I see this time and again in all facets of life.
A lawsuit by the Buggy Whip Manufacturers Association against the automobile industry, because the change from carriages to automobiles has decimated their markets. The Horse Manure Shoveler's Association is expected to sign on as co-plaintiff.
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Seems like an industry that hasn't heard of the term: "value-added".
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? - Joshua (Wargames)
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
Users don't need to know when "Friends" is on.
Neither do I, but the rest of America makes sure I do. =P
"Anonymous Coward" is for whistleblowers, not unpopular opinions.
The REAL fear is that they failed to forsee where the future was (obviously) heading, and are now suing to stall and slow down developing tech in order to figure out how they can take control of it. Heaven forbid consumers have control over their own entertainment. Just another ploy of the Man to conrol that which shouldn't have been theirs to begin with.
Just my two cents.
Nobody's suing people who actually infringe copyrights anymore. Everyone is suing people who make devices...
True. They aren't going after all those who actually infringe copyrights, since that would number in the millions. Instead, they are going after the makers, for contributory copyright infringement, much like the way Napster was sued. Napster itself did not violate copyright, but its users did, and Napster provided a convenient way to do it.
In the case of PVR's, its a little different, since fair-use does allow for time shifting, IIRC. It's the sharing of the "perfect digital copies" that the industry fears.
They are suing device-makers as a preventive measure. Without these devices, many will go back to using VCR's to make imperfect copies.
I'm not afraid of falling, it's the sudden stop at the end that frightens me.
What does editing commercials out have to do with copyright protection? I can understand having a problem with sharing movies but sharing TV shows that broadcast for free seems just a tad over the top.
Here, you can have this free product but you may not give it to others.
Cat
The networks are scared more then likely. Speaking as a VERY HAPPY TiVo owner I can say that my viewing habits have changed dramitically. I only really watch what I want to when I want to and I don't EVER watch commercials (fast forward is great) and I sometimes don't even know what station the program is from.
So the problem the networks have is they end up basically showing programs for free, so advertisers are probably applying pressure (ie threatening to pull sponsership) unless the networks fix the situation (ie sue PVR companies into the ground).
Personally, if it becomes illegal to use a TiVo or TiVo gets shutdown, I will stop watching TV, heck I have already stopped going to the movies (boycotting the MPAA) and I don't buy any music (boycotting the RIAA) might as well stop watching TV and just read.
I agree this PVR trend has gone quite far enough! If we continue to let people use these "magic boxes" to record TV shows, pause them, skip the commercials, or pretty much view the shows as they want to view them, then its only a matter of time before we slip into total anarchy!
It's a snowball effect....even today, I've been hearing rumors of people that buy blank reels of magnetic tape and put them in short, wide, black boxes to record shows when they're not home! They even use other buttons on their new-fangled "remote controls" other than Play, Pause, and Stop."
Someone stop this insanity before the child-actors from "Different Strokes" become destitute and are forced to rob convenience stores!
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
...it'd be illegal to watch shows based on the genre, actors or other words in the program description. There would be only one channel. Advertisements 24 hours a day, except, if we're all good little sheep, we might get a half hour of news & traffic reports at 6:00 am and 6:00 pm.
I am the very model of a modern major general!
Actually, meta-information is all the rage, in science and in consumer data. So, if they establish that precedent...
"It's illegal to let companies record and store people's profiles based on the location, income or other words in their profile."
My goodness, we could eliminate demographics entirely!
A.
The most disturbing part of the story is that they claim deleting commercials is violating the copyright.
So, here's my prediction (guess I shouldn't be handing them ideas, but someone's bound to come up with it someday anyway, or probably someone has already):
In the future, we will have TV shows where you are forced to watch commercials. Something like: to view the second segment of "Friends", you have to enter the code flashing on the screen during the Pepsi ad that was aired after segment 1.
This should be perfectly feasible (technically), especially once everyone has a PVR.
I guess I should patent this idea...
MSN 8: Now Microsoft even has bugs in their ad campaigns.
"it's illegal to let consumers record and store shows based on the genre, actors or other words in the program desc" Huh?
You see, the genre is copyrighted by Miriam-Webster and the network executives are fighting for them out of good faith, becuase they understand that unless Websters protects their copyright, they will lose their trademarks on the English language. The actors/actresses' names are copyrighted by their parents, unless, of course, the parents picked the name from a name book, or in the event that they named the child after somebody else, in which case the copyright would be for that person's parents. However, copyrights only last for 70 years, so if your name is John XXIVth, then you're probably alright, and can use the name without violating any copyrights. And the words in the program description below to TV Guide, of course.
Now the questions remains, why would NETWORKS fight to protect somebody else's rights?
And here's my theory: banning these aren't that big of a deal, because only geeks use PVRs and geeks are hackers, and therefore anarchist terrorists and against the glorious US government, and they shouldn't have any laws anyways. So of course, this would go through the courts relatively easily.
However, they need to protect their ingenious lines in movies, like "Dude where's by car?" or "Alrighty then" which have been relatively common phrases for pubescent teens and dumbshit americans. However, they know that there are far too many average Joes that they could not win that kind of court case right now, so they are slowly leading up to it.
Be cautious, be very very cautious. Bad vibes are in the air.
Oh, and IANAL, DTWISS, BBB, YYY, L8R
Actually, I think that PVRs are less of a threat to purchase of TV shows than VHS would be. It's a lot easier (and cheaper) to archive programs long-term on VHS tapes than to store them on a hard drive. Most PVRs are used for time-shifting and viewing once or twice, not long-term storage. I suppose folks could start burning CDs or DVDs with content from their PVRs, but that's likely to be a pretty small minority. I think the bigger concern here is the commercial skipping aspect. Notice that the Tivo boxes that get sold through AT&T Broadband don't have the "commercial skip" button on the remote? If I were a network, I'd be worried too. If there are fewer eyeballs watching the ads, then eventually revenue's going to drop, but the costs of production stay the same or increase. Not an easy problem to solve. As clumsy as the broadcasting industry can be, in fairness, they have a real problem on their hands. The business model that's worked for 50 years (programming's free, you just have to sit through the ads) is starting to break down, and it's unclear what will replace it. Remember, there's no divine right that obliges the networks to create and broadcast The West Wing, or whatever - if we can't find a way to ensure that doing so is profitable, then it ain't gonna happen.
This is BS as "Fair Use" is well established. It's an obvious extension of technology to use hard drives instead of video tape, and computer searchable guides instead of paper guides. If anything, you would think that studios would WANT people to watch their bad movies / shows. What they are REALLY pissed about is the ability of people to fast-forward through commercials.
Frankly, if there is a show I want to watch, I let tivo record it and watch it later as commercials are just too annoying (one of the worst offenders is TNN which turns a 1:45 movie into 3 hours. Who the hell is willing to put up with that?)
Tivo and friends are are pure time-shifting devices. The don't have the ability to save off to an archive except by playing the movie and recording it with a VCR. If you are going to do that, you might as well just have recorded the damn thing with a VCR to begin with.
If they really don't want people to record by name, actor, director, they also need to sue TV Guide, all the newspapers in the US, movie trivia sites, book authors and publishers, film / entertainment magazines, etc. who also publish this info.
The upshot of all this is that the functionality is readily available and easily implemented and consumers overwhelmingly love it when they try it out. The network execs can kick and scream and throw their little tantrums all day long, but they will have to adapt to times or go out of business. This has always been the case and it will always be the case.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I think that a lot of the value on TV for advertisers is created by people just turning on the tube when they have no specific plans of what to do. They channel surf here and there, sometimes never pick a show, and as a result, manage to see plenty of ads on plenty of channels.
(And have you ever noticed that when one channel goes to ads, all the other major networks seem to do so as well? I suspect they designed it that way so even though you may switch away, someone else on another channel will switch and see the ad that you missed.)
The ability to pick out what is wanted by category and then circulate such things between friends obsoletes the practice of channel surfing, since the machines do the harvesting of choice shows for you. Since this can already be combined with the ability to strip the ads from the content, the PVR technology could bring channel surfing into obsolescence.
This would be good for us because we spend less time wasted with ads, TV guides and watching things we don't want to see, and more time watching the shows we like (probably saving some time every day to do other things.)
This would be bad from the TV Network and Hollywood's point of view because it devalues regular TV airtime and ad-time, thus earning the networks less ad-revenue. It would also be bad because people would be less likely to get hooked into new shows (thus, Hollywood shudders) since they would not be surfing or seeing the ads.
No wonder the networks are fighting this tooth and nail. They (very rightly) see it as a threat to their survival. Heaven forbid that they be forced to design a new business model. (Hmm ... now what other industry is waking up to the necessity of this kind of change?...)
I think the tivo is cool, but I really dilike devices which require subscription services... seems like we should demand simplicity and independence.
As long as these companies continue to make devices that connect to central servers and require the company to be involved in my life beyond the purchase, then the devices will continue to be fundamentally flawed in my view and I will have trouble defending them against even these frivilous law suites.
Computers should empower people not subjugate them.
Despite the doom and disaster rhetoric that the studios greeted the personal videocassette recorder with in the 70s, these days most of the studios derive a substantial amount (sometimes the majority) of their income from home video sales and rentals.
They apparrently have a hard time taking "yes" for an answer.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Interesting phrasing here. It seems to imply that recording the entire thing with commercials is OK, but skipping commercials violates copyright.
That in turn would mean that it's not just the show - it's the entire presentation of the show, with each specific commercial at that point, that is the entire "show". I think Domino's would be rather surprised, though, to find their copyright was swallowed up by Ally McBeal's production company.
One also has to wonder if this means that when a local tv station (Hi, Global!) replaces the national ads with their own, are they committing copyright infringement by making a derivative work?
(yes, I know it's taking it to an absurd conclusion)
You know, the death of television has been direly predicted each time one of these "TV enhancers" has debuted.
Betamax will kill TV
Cable service will kill (network) TV
Videogames will kill TV
VHS will kill TV
Rentals will kill TV (and movies)
Internet will kill TV (and movies and music and the American way blah blah blah)
Now PVR's will kill TV
OK. So why hasn't TV died yet? We've been TRYING to kill it, but it just won't die. Maybe we're not trying hard enough. Lord knows that if Network TV died, I certainly wouldn't miss it, and I doubt the rest of the world would miss it either.
Just let the model die and a newer more better model will emerge. Guaranteed.
I'm no PVR expert, but I believe they know when commercials come on so you can skip right over them - on VCR's u eithere have to hit stop and record a lot or fastforward through the commercials, a lot more effort than just skipping them all together.
This is the price we pay for "free" tv. If you don't want ads, you're going to have to pay for it, because no network CEO is thinking, "let's make shows for free!" They have a bottom line, and ad space is how they meet it. I guess product placement inside of shows is going to become more of the norm to counteract PVRs, so more Trunman Show-esque plugs, which could be a good thing if they're done with some regard to the show that is being aired, IMHO.
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
Stuff like this really scares me. I have had my TiVO for a couple of months and I have to say it was truely the BEST $200 I have ever spent. I never watch Live TV anymore, nor do I worry about missing my favorite shows. I watch Enterprise friday nights when I come home from the bars, and ER saturday morning while I eat pancakes. What really scares me is if the studios win, I lose big time. In college I use to stay up late studying because I didn't want to miss a show (ER for example). You might argue that is a stupid reason, but screw that. I worked damn hard and if I wanted to enjoy 1 hour of TV so be it. The problem was, I hated having to enjoy it whenever the TV Guide said so. Now that I have an extremely active lifestyle, I still watch the same amount of TV, just when I want to.
Not to mention I don't even know where the heck my VCR is. I'm pretty sure it moved across the country with me, but I'm not certain.
BTW, I think its funny that Studios are getting upset about this. How many times have you heard "TiVO" in a show this programming season? I know Fox and NBC have plugged it a couple of times. I know Friends, Will & Grace, and Undeclared have plugged it. AND if you look in the girl's apartment on Friends, you'll see a Silver TiVO sitting next to their TV. Huh.
"What difference does it make how I do it?" Wood said. "The dilemma is, the technology is turning the business model upside down. But that doesn't mean it's copyright infringement."
The media companies only care about forcing you to watch what they want, when they want, how they want. Just as with aural media companies and MP3s, the visual media companies are missing the boat. They're too locked into the current business model to want to change.
The record companies blew it with MP3s. Most people I know used Napster/Morpheus/Bear Share to find music that they either couldn't get in their own contry, or were previously unaware of (found through a keyword search). This, in turn, would lead to more music sales. The record companies panicked. They got scared and attempted to close off what could have been a promising new business channel.
Now it's the turn of the tv/film studios to resist change. I have a TiVo. I love my TiVo. When a friend sees a cool show, he tells me about it, and I tell my TiVo to look for the repeat. This is convenient for me, and what the studios are missing is that I JUST WATCHED MORE TV THAN I NORMALLY WOULD HAVE. Isn't that what they want as an end result? You'd think so.
There is no such thing as new media, only new ways to consume it. Apparently, we're not allowed to choose how we do it...
Look, the article only mentioned commercials once, and in passing. Thats not the issue here. I mean, what the hell does Universal care which commercials you are watching? They want the revenue from the movies and shows - that includes VCR, DVD and royalties from pay networks.
What they're more worried about is the fact that you can record and store digital quality shows and movies. That means, that they think they will lose revenue from all the folks who would normally buy the Simpson's DVD, but instead catalog all the episodes on a hard drive somewhere.
What they don't realize is that people are not likely to do this nearly as much as they think. Movies often come out on DVD before they come out on pay TV, I believe that the benefits of the DVD far outweight the value of taking the movie from HBO and storing it somwhere on a disk. I also believe that most people who would buy a Simpsons DVD set would still buy one, owing to the fact that syndicated episodes are cut for time. In short, people who normally would buy these DVDs would still do so, regardless of TiVo.
Yes, these lawsuits are useless, and generally a waste of time. But ever since the beginning of time, the industry has been unable to keep up with technology - and running to the courts has always been the great equalizer.
Do you have Linux and a DotPal? Click here now!
"The dilemma is, the technology is turning the business model upside down. But that doesn't mean it's copyright infringement."
That about sums it up for Napster as well as TiVo. New technology has basically made the old product no longer tenable. The only real complication is that since it removes the potential for the studios to make money at it, then no one will make any new content at all.
END COMMUNICATION
-- A video capture card + a PC + software = a PVR. This has already been done, though primitively. You can outlaw anything you want, but you can't stop everyone (and it only takes one) from capturing NTSC/PAL content.
-- PVR users aren't generally intellectual property Robin Hoods intent on stealing from you. They just want to watch TV, and help build mindshare for your programs. If you push them underground, though, expect to see commercial free versions of your programs on P2P networks.
-- Your copy protected HDTV, D-VHS, "rights managed" media, etc. will fail in the marketplace. Should you purchase legislation to mandate them, people will simply turn elsewhere for entertainment.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
They're trying to foce the PVR makers to add "features" like this which would allow the TV station to prevent a program being recorded unless the viewer paid an additional fee.
Detroit, MI - Nations Bank, Wachovia, and Citibank have brought a lawsuit naming Ford, Chrysler, and GM as defendants. According to the lawsuit, the auto manufacturers produce powerful cars that make it easier for consumers, using the vehicles as "getaway cars", to rob banks.
A spokeswoman for the banks involved in the suit said that although the banks favor automotive advances, "new automobile technology must go hand in hand with financial institution protection" and that "the consumer should bear the full cost and inconvenience of protecting the financial interests of huge, multi-billion dollar banking empires."
The networks will continue to generate revenue through advertising by ramping up product placement within the shows.
It already takes place to a large extent (watch the 'entertainment' shows- they are infomercials for the entertainment industry)
This type of advertising is much more subtle and probably more effective anyway.
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
...with increased non-linearity of television. Just like web-based advertising is struggling because of its awkward fit with the medium, so will traditional commercials with on-demand or pseudo-on-demand (e.g. TiVo) television. They will simply HAVE to rethink their revenue model, which may very well end up very different from what we have today. They might try DVD-like forced viewing, where embedded codes prevent the playback device from skipping certain segments (i.e. commercials), but I don't know how well this scheme would go over with the much larger TV-watching public. Still, I fear that it's in our future, simply because it's technically feasible and requires a minimal change of revenue model.
With on-demand programming, a more natural model would be pay-per-view, but where the viewers pay the actual cost of producing the content. Of course, adjustments would have to be made at both ends: PPV costs would be higher, and content producers would have to learn to cut costs (i.e. get budgets back down to earth). It seems that one of the upshots of on-demand television will be less programming, since only saleable programs will make the list. Then again, with broadband distribution many more small shops with more modest budgets and salaries could get access to your living room, increasing the choice of programming.
Don't count the current advertiser-supported TV paradigm out yet. Commercials will still persist in live feeds like news and sports. The standard commercial in entertainment may be a dying breed, but there's plenty of other opportunities that are much harder to avoid. Watermarks, pop-ups, and on-screen banners could become more prevalent. Most significantly, product placement will surge. New methods even allow you to digitally insert products where they weren't before. Advertising will never go away completely - it'll just get more insidious and harder to avoid.
I for one don't think that a commercial-free future in which all TV either costs money (via pay-per-view, channel subscription, and show subscription) or is publicly/privately supported is such a bad thing. There's the obvious lack of commercials (yay). The direct relationship between content producer and consumer will allow more flexible dynamics of how much money will go into making a show or channel, and how much it will cost, even more flexible than theatrical films. Consumers will be much more picky about how much they're willing to spend and where they do, forcing quality to rise and less shows to be made. If channel subscription models prevail, a relative few networks will dominate with exclusive, tailored content, and syndication will boom amongst the players to reach as wide an audience as possible with lesser shows. Show formats, freed from the restraints of commercial breaks and standard lengths, will diverge. The big media players will force expensive package deals on the consumer rather than cheap individual channels... oh wait. They already do that.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
they should make a deal with them and/or change their business model. They could put programming information into their video signal (like in teletext and vps) and using those make them include commercials when recording. Since there are virtually no privacy laws in the US, they could get back detailed information about the viewing audience. Or they could find another more innovative way to make money with their material. But no, they have to throw away their money to lawyers. In the end, all the attempts to prevent people from copying something which can be heard or seen anyway, will waste more and more money.
The only way to protect their copyrighted material is to implant chips into the viewers brain, and nobody wants that. If you give people a convenient and fair way to pay for the things they like, you just might make some money, but if your only goal is to suck every possible cent out of them with low grade cheap entertainment people will always find other ways to get what they want.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
And there are other Digital Rights Management features in Replay 4000 that have NOT yet been reported upon. I'm a Replay 4000 owner, and I can comment on some of these.
SonicBlue licenses Macrovision's technology, which is the same signal-munging technology that keeps VCR's from recording the output of your DVD player.
The interesting part is that a Replay 4000 will let you record a Macrovision-encoded program. I personally tested this by feeding the output of my DVD player into the secondary input on my Replay 4160 as a test. The Replay reproduces the Macrovision signal when outputting the program. This means you can time-shift copy-protected shows, but you cannot dub them out of the Replay onto a VCR!
Also, according to this press release, when a Replay 4000 sees that a show is Macrovision-encoded, it will not allow the user to share this program over the internet.
I think this is a pretty decent compromise between preserving the customer's ability to time-shift programs, and the program-owner's right to control copying of that program on permanent media.
And vis-a-vis the big conglomerates, this is a big change from the early Replay units. I've owned a Replay 2004 for over two years, and those early units would strip the Macrovision encoding from shows you passed through it. Thus they could be used as an intermediary for dubbing DVD's and other protected content to tape.
For this and other reasons I really think the media giants are going to fall on their face in this lawsuit. No judge is going to side with them when its so obvious that SonicBlue has made these efforts to accomodate their interests.
Actually those of us with a DirecTivo record the digital signal coming from space perfectly, without ever passing analog.
Granted, the signal wa MPEG encoded at some point before getting beamed to the satellite in the first place, but it can be of very high quality.
What's scary is that I was in the lobby of a movie theater the other night, and a group of mildly rowdy people were goofing around and snapping pictures of each other. An attendant stormed up and yelled, "You can't take pictures in here. Those posters are copyrighted!"
Jeez. This isn't the US Mint you know, it was a movie poster.
Let's face it, network programming is just there to attact people to watch commercials. Pure and simple. Yes you can record stuff on the VCR and skip past the commercials but it is a pain in the butt and most people don't do it. Networks were intially worried but it didn't turn into much of a problem for them.
PVR's make it easier and more convenient. More people will skip the commercials. I think they really do have a reason to worry now. PVR's seem to modify the way that people watch TV in a way that the VCR's never have.
You can sit down for the evening and watch your programs 30 minutes delayed and easily skip through the commercials. With a VCR you had to wait until everything was finished recording before you watched it.
As these things become more common prices will drop and they will be connected to every TV in the house. It won't be long before you will be able to pick one up at WalMart for $100.
If this happens I wouldn't feel to secure if I made my living trying to get people to watch commercials.
It's called Prime Time. It's what advertisers pay them bigtime for, and when all the most popular shows get scheduled. After all, this is the time the largest target audience is going to be watching.
Now, VCRs aren't such a big deal, because they're clunky and inconvenient. Programming them is a pain. Manually recording defeats most of the point, since you still have to be there.
Throw into the mix PVRs, though, and Prime Time becomes any time. If everyone has a PVR (and they could eventually... they're cheap, and so convenient), there's no reason to schedule a show during any particular hour, since that's probably not when it'll get watched. There will be no time-based competition. Advertisers won't see the point in paying extra for any particular timeslot. By controlling the horizontal and vertical, they're getting more money, and now they see PVRs taking that away.
So everyone go get/build a PVR if you want to stick it to them.
On a somewhat on-topic note, it's really easy to build one of these things, too. The software is already there in parts, it just needs a little glue. Check out mp1e for encoding, or anything else you like such as low-bitrate DivX. Combine this with mplayer or something and a little at, cron, or various web-based TV recording stuff on freshmeat and there you've got it. I already do this all manually and it works better than TV (skipping ads is really worth it, not to mention not missing shows), and I'm planning on putting together a box with 3-4 TV cards to do this in a dedicated manner. Go PVRs.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
The only time that really matters when you watch a show is the first time, yet the Industry expects to profit off repeat viewership anyway. This is seriously impacting the assimilation of these new technologies. If they were to move to a purchase-once, watch as many times as you like model things would go much smoother for everyone involved, but the industry is too dependent to put the crack pipe of repeat-viewer-profits down voluntarily.
It started with TV. Shows were limited, and viewers often missed them at their first showing. So they started rerunning them so they could catch them later and to fill up time. And that's when they figured out that people would watch these shows more than once, sometimes even over and over. Advertising became deliberately more ambiguous, so people would start watching just to make sure it wasn't a new episode. Pretty soon the whole TV model depended on it. The same happened with the birth of VHS for movies, and with the soaring cost of "blockbuster" movies some first-run releases actually NEEDED people to watch more than once just to turn a profit.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Wrong, yourself. You don't have the right to free television just because the airwaves are public any more than you have a right to a free vehicle because the government supports the highway system. The networks broadcast to everyone without charging for the signal itself (think encrypted signal like premium cable for contrast). In exchange, they air advertisements to pay for their costs. This is why they feel so threatened by devices like TiVo and Replay.
Virg
Better yet ask why no one has ever marketed a VCR that edits out the commercials.
They have, the feature is called Commercial Advance and it's the same tech used in the Reply 4000 series. Here is just one VCR that has it, for the princely sum of $120.
The internet isn't killing TV because it hasn't advanced far enough. Maybe the combination of several factors will kill TV broadcasting:
- Broadband internet to every middle-class home.
- An effective, secure, and private internet micropayment mechanism.
- Shows sold directly on the internet, AT A REASONABLE PRICE.
No one is going to spend $5 for a half-hour sitcom, but 50 cents seems reasonable to see it when you want it, without commercials. With piracy and replays, that might come out to about 5 cents per view -- and I'm pretty sure that's more than the show producers get from the networks.
How do we get from here to there?
Of course, the networks are going to fight this, since they get cut out of the deal entirely. And the advertising agencies will have to come up with a whole new method of brainwashing passive audiences into buying more than needed. Tough shit. "Manure shovelers suing automobile manufacturers for loss of business..."
The vast majority of the viewers out there (i.e. "The rest of us") want to WATCH THE SHOW more than they want high quality video and audio. While we certainly wouldn't turn down nicer quality and will pick it over lesser, how much more money/trouble we're willing to put into better quality ranges from zero to small. I'm more than willing to put up with a little digital or analog signal degradation if it means it costs less or is easier to come by, so long as the viewing quality is acceptable.
With PVR, it's the ease of use that makes all the difference, not the quality. Videophiles (along with all other snobs) just don't seem to understand this.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Do I have the right to watch or not to watch what is being broadcasted?
When a commerial comes on, should I be forced to watch that commerial or should I have the right to change the channel, get up and get something to drink, use the bathroom, make a quick phone call, or do anything else? Should I have the right to mute the TV during commericals. Do I have the right NOT to watch a commerical?
I say yes.
The TV stations and studios can not force me to watch something I don't want to.
Oh well, it's not like any high quality programming has come out of Hollywood in a long time any how.
(Side point; I won a Tivo, and have not used it once).
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
A DMCA reference! And was totally unrelated to the topic, as well!
- Have a picture
Some people will say that PVRS allow people to skip commercials, and cost the producer money, this is a myth.
Ad prices are sett by ratings.
IF I am not a "Nelson" then whether or not I watch a commercial has zero impact on there ad price.
If I am a "Nelson" then the box on my tv tracks what I watch, it has no Idea if I am, in fact, actually watching it, or if my pvr is recording it. So the ad revenue should be the same.
What next, a going to the fridge during a commercial fee?
In fact, the studiios should get rid of there "Nelson" system, and just buy the info from the PVR providers. This will have a wider distribution, and greater overall accuracy.
Unless they don't really want us to determin what we watch...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
See what you're missing here is it's not so much about the specifics of how consumers are not allowed to record programs, but it's about the consumers choice, or more specifically, the studios not wanting us to have any.
It's happened time and time again, most recently with CDs. The high-ups in the industries want to decide what you watch and when. If you could watch just the new simpsons you probably would, but hollywood, or fox, or whoever has decided that unless you switch stations you have to watch show X before it, and show Y right after. The chances of those shows all appealing to you for more than two or 3 half hour segments are very slim, but give the consumer the choice to watch what they want when they want it!?
This is the same reason you have to buy a cd with 1 or 2 good tracks on it and the rest (generally) "filler", and the same reason why the RIAA wants to stop people making their own cds and mixes.
This whole "share your recordings over the internet" thing reminds me of that stupid my.mp3.com service. You take a perfectly good business that is legally "sticking it to the man", and then you add a gratuitously and blatantly infringing feature to it. WTF?!?
Replay will get bitchslapped over their oh-so-clever (yawn) feature, making the whole PVR scene look shady by association.
Is somebody trying to sabotage this market from the inside?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I think somebody mentioned down below that these corporations need to evolve. It's time to find other sources of revenue. If their only salable "product" is airtime for advertisements, they're in real trouble. Every business that I know that stuck with a single product has gone down the tubes.
These are the same folks who anticipate using the free digital channels they were given to provide revenue by forgoing HDTV in many cases, and using the additional space for revenue data type services.
But the 'illegal' to copy using keywords like titles, authors... it sound more like a slap suit than copyright suit, and someone should slap back. I'd love to see them site case law on that one. It'd be like the publishers going back to the Supremes and asking to revisit the Xerox case because instead of copying a page at a copier, one can now use search engines by keyword to get that page you want for your book report or thesis and then print it on the printer. That's an exact analogy to the theory they're using.
I'd say if we ever go back to the stone age, it won't be through nuclear war as was once thought, but it'll be due to the RIAA, MPAA, Valenti (who's from that age anyway). This is all about control, and trying to get back what they lost in the Betamax case. They should get censured for filing a frivilous suit on that keyword thing, and then go from there. (standard IANAL disclaimer. I actually was prelaw, but decided early after meeting some real jerks, it wasn't for me. I see many are still practicing.)
Um, but if the courts have already determined that recording television content for personal use is not copyright infringement, then how does this become a problem? (Yes, this should be tagged as redundant; yes, it's the theme of the entire story, but this poster doesn't seem to get it)
The important difference between this issue and the false analogies you brought up is that of redistribution. I am allowed to record television content for my own use, and I am allowed to make MP3 copies of my own purchased music. What I can't do is then rebroadcast those copies for the whole world. (And nobody here, besides you, is suggesting this)
The problem with Napster was that it made it very easy to redistribute copies of my music, which is not allowed under copyright law. (end of mostly-off-topic napster discussion)
As for your other analogy:
A Christian company copies a few airwaves and edits the shows to remove any 'sinful' content.
That's not a problem. Anyone can copy 'a few airwaves' and even edit them, for personal use. Then you come up with this:
You may subscribe to their service for a low fee of $299.99.
This would be illegal, as it is rebroadcasting of copyrighted materials. The only problem is that no one is doing this. No one has proposed this, and the availability of PVRs has nothing to do with this. If someone did do this, they would be fairly wasy to identify, and would be (rightly) be punished under copyright law, whether they used a PVR or not.
Oh, and BTW, you can't circumvent copyright. You can circumvent a copy-protection mechanism (and incur the wrath of the DMCA if you live in the wrong country,) or you can infringe on copyright (which you do not do by recording something off of your TV).
Living better through chemicals
Yeah, but what's more painful, passive product placement or having to stop every five minutes and enter some friggen code?
The settlement is that everyone now has to go out and see the movie. My favorite quote is when they're interviewing people coming out of the theater and the reporter asks one movie-goer, "So what did you think about the movie?"
His response: "I saw the shit out of it!" We laugh but who knows... it might get to that point.
Ivan
There is no graceful way to eat an egg salad sandwich.
"The dilemma is, the technology is turning the business model upside down"
:(
That last line says it all. Much like the music industry, the business model is CHANGING. Instead of trying to compete head on to this change, the existing monopolies are reacting by suing their new competition out of existence. It's unfortunate that our legal system is helping them do that. It'd be nice to see free competition, instead of who ever is the biggest (old) company that's bought the most politicians wins.
PVR's have changed the way I watch TV. I'm actually watching MORE, because there's always something *I* like on. I find it very frustrating that the big monopolies are going to end up crushing this new way of watching TV (For now.. I"m sure they'll come up with their own after all the competition has been killed off by the lawyers).
"If a ReplayTV customer can simply type 'The X-Files' or 'James Bond' and have every episode of 'The X-Files' and every James Bond film ... it will cause substantial harm to the market for prerecorded DVD, videocassette and other copies of those episodes and films," the lawsuit states."
Ok, so I'm supposed to care about harm to their markets? What's better.. the government is supposed to care?! This seems like a whine to me, rather than a legitimate grievance.
As Ian Clarke once said [paraphrasing].. "If you make money by selling water in the dessert, and it starts to rain... it's time to find some other way to make money."
Well folks.. it's started to rain, and the studios are turning to the government to supply the umbrellas.
Let them get wet, I say!
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
Really, all the features that are on a PVR could be implemented in a VCR; VCR stands for Video Cassette Recorder - it's only named for the recording medium, not the other features. I think this lawsuit would would be summilarly dismissed if brought against a PVR that uses tapes to store the shows (and was referred to as a VCR).
science is a religion
Mabye the lawyers in this case are ACTUALY on OUR side and they just filed this thing in such a stupid fashion as to ensure that a legal precident gets set in favor of PVR devices.
God I sure hope so. Either that or the Gene Pool is even worse off then I thought!
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
TV started out being ephemeral. You couldn't even tape shows to edit them before broadcasting them. Everything thing was live, sometimes with disastrous results. Soon, however, there will be millions of PVR's out there, and the possibility of them networking together in P2P fashion. Imagine storage getting cheaper and cheaper, bandwidth getting better and better (as they do year by year) and eventually, you'll have access to everything that's ever been released over the airwaves whenever you want it in digital, HDTV quality. Plus, you'll be able to edit commercials out. Bye-bye goes the need for recordings of movies or shows (Sopranos, Friends) that have appeared on TV, bye-bye goes ad revenue, bankrupt goes the industry.
The solution is for content producers to show some friggin' brains, accept that this is inevitable, and act accordingly. First off, accept the fact that anything you put on the air is gone, forever to be viewed and skipped through by people whenever they want. We no longer have a real schedule of programming, more like a pool of available shows that gets added to each day regularly by producers of content. Get rid of DVDs, Tapes, etc. We no longer need them. Get rid of commercials, which are useless now that people can skim through programs. Start using things like ESPN's bottom line to add banners of advertisment to shows while they're running (much like what they do to soccer games in Europe right-freakin-now. Change the way you do it every so often so that you can't easily code a way to strip them out, and make them unobtrusive enough that people will notice them but not hate them.
There. You now have a world where people can get much more out of TV than they do now, no one wants to ban Tivo's, and everyone still gets paid.
This tagline is umop apisdn.
I agree. There is one little problem - how do people figure out what shows they want to watch? People choose what shows they want to watch by sampling them and seeing advertisements, just like they choose which movies to watch via attached trailers and TV Ads. Word of mouth and critical reviews play a role, but it's minor and unreliable. Same goes for the premium channels and pay-per-view!
I think if ppv TV does come about, there will be a number of free channels/distributions that do nothing BUT run ads and sample episodes/pilots for other shows. Carefully chosen episodes would be offered for free for every show. Even so, when nobody is flipping channels, how will they come across them? Word of mouth will play a bigger role, but it will have to be agressively pursued.
Unconventional tactics will have to be invented. For instance, watching the preview channel or commercials may give you the chance to win a subscription to a show or channel. Studios may turn to patronage to make new shows based on consumer demand for pre-existing concepts (More Star Trek!), studio reputations (Gainax can do no wrong!), and talent (Sandra Bullock is hot!) The expectations would be much higher for such shows, though, and failure to deliver would be ugly.
There's one other problem too - viewing clubs will flourish. The more expensive, the more popular, the younger and poorer the audience, and the more cult favorite something is, the more people will be watching it together for the price of one. Even if prices are kept low, the number of subscriptions sold won't be directly proportional to the number of people watching (unless it's something really anti-social like porn), since you can't charge at the door. It's the law of diminishing returns, and they'll have to take it into account with all seriousness, because there will be an asymtotic limit to the the money that can be made.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Well, there's paying, and then there's paying. If you watch three hours of commercial television, you are seeing about two hours of content and paying for it by watching one hour of advertising. But how many people really stop to think just how much of their time they are giving up to the advertisers? I have my "guilty pleasures" programs, and I have bought back an hour on Tuesday nights by timeshifting and skipping the commercials.
As to charging the cable and satellite providers, well they already do. A couple of years back Disney/ABC got into a pissing contest with Time Warner (houston market at least). It seems Disney wanted Time Warner to carry Disney's answer to the Cartoon Network, and was withholding rights to the regular ABC programming as a bargaining chit. Both "channels" are considered "free (advertiser supported) TV". TW stopped carrying ABC for a brief period of time and all was eventually worked out, but somebody pays for it - and my basic cable bill keeps getting raised without any change in programming that I can see. So it looks like I'm paying with cash as well.
Personally, I think that going to Video On Demand is the answer the studios/networks need. Stop selling audiences to advertisers and start selling entertainment to audiences. Of course, if I pay a dollar (I figure that would be a good fee) for a forty minute (1 hour less commercials) program, then I should be able to record it and do anything else I like with it except those actions which would prevent the shows copyright holder from selling it to other people (like sharing it with 20 million close personal friends via a P2P networks)
Of course, this is a whole new business model for the studios and they just don't adapt well. Let's see, using my example, I'd pay fifty cents for an episode of Seinfeld - how many people would it take to get the 5 million per episode that Jerry turned down?
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
The only way nowadays to guarantee that people actually see ads it to integrate them INTO the content that people actually WANT to see... a couple examples are:
-product placement (using a certain product, or showcasing it in the content, etc.)
-TV banner ads... as much as you hate them on the web, I'm sure they're not far off for TV.
-ghost-overs... just like the ghost-image of the network logo on the bottom right corner of almost every program these days. How long until these are used for advertising?
-subliminal advertising... ok, outlawed years ago, but it is a possibility too.
SOMEBODY has to pay for your content... if it's not the advertisers, it's gonna be you, directly out of your pocket. What's the worst of these two evils?
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Here's what I expect the networks to do shortly with the advent of PVRs: Place banner ads on TV much the way they are placed on the web. I realize it might not be too difficult to program a PVR to automagically remove them, but would still be harder than to simply stop recording when ads are on. Also, networks may have a stronger suit against PVRs if they removed portions of the broadcast screen as opposed to simply not showing commercials.
So by the quote does that make VCRplus equiped in most VCR's illegal because it allows you to easily setup recording of your favorite show by punching in a simple code. Why, I could look up shows by genre on my cable box and program my VCR to record those shows, the horror, oh my God I'm stealing TV programming. Next they'll be banning TV guide for facilitating customers avoidance of bad programming and over abundant commercials.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
"If a ReplayTV customer can simply type 'The X-Files'...and have every episode of 'The X-Files'...recorded in perfect digital form and organized, compiled and stored on the hard drive of his or her ReplayTV 4000 device, it will cause substantial harm to the market for prerecorded DVD, videocassette and other copies of those episodes and films,"
What drek! ok, the replaytv 4000 can hold up to 320 hours at it's worst quality. If you recorded at the best ratio, you'd get something like 55 hours. The X-files has (roughly)191 episodes. Anyone see a problem here? They're not going to be recording every episode at the best quality if they plan to record anything else and their life is going to be dedicated to saving to the external hard drive....
I'm sorry but I have better things to do with my time. My suggestion to the network exec is to price the x-file DVDs in a range where it's not worth the bother of saving them to external sources.
Plus the network exec never seems to mention my favorite part....being able to get that rare one that is never played except at late night or is never availible at the store. As a fan, I'm willing to fork over the dough to get a good, clean legal copy of the stuff I love (dvd/cd/whatever.) However, it's hard to see the harm when the man isn't releasing the goods any more.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
And recomended reading for this topic would be chaper 3 of "NEXT"
Information wants to be free like speech wants to be free, not like we want beer to be free.
Looked at a certain way, the whole edifice of network television along with "branding" is a device for delivering entertainment, and it's a remarkably inefficient device. You buy products, for which a sizable chunk of the price is advertising, which is allocated by highly paid marketing drones to highly paid advertising agencies, who buy airtime from TV networks, who buy programming from producers, who pay cast and crew to make the show.
Doesn't this strike anyone else as incredibly wasteful? How much inefficiency and featherbedding are we supporting by buying products we see advertised on TV?
I mean, come on, the shows I like to watch mostly cost less than $200,000 an episode, and have an audience of around half a million weekly. I'd pay dime, or even a quarter, per episode of Farscape, which would be far cheaper for me than paying $2 more for a box of Tide, *and* would be more lucrative for the producers.
The reason why the networks are scared is because this whole house of cards is built on their being the only conduit between the talent (the production companies) and the money (the advertisers).
Okay, let's get off our "Content control is evil" mindset, and imagine a world where strict copyright controls apply. Someone can charge you money, and send you via broadband a TV program you can only watch *once*. Why do you need anyone between you and the creators of the show taking a cut? Where does the existing (incredibly inefficient) business model fit?
These poor bastards are doomed, they just don't know it. With shows amounting to only 44 minutes of a TV hour (including credits) when it isn't worse (taking 4 hours to play a one hour football game), they are killing the geese that lays the golden eggs. Even if they win, they lose. Strict content controls could be the worst thing to ever happen to them.
--Dave
Every now and then someone says something so outrageous that it demands the response, "Are you on crack!?" The American entertainmenet business must be shooting for a monopoly on this question.
-- Will program for bandwidth
As much as we all malign advertising, it does on rare occasions enlighten us about things worth spending our time and money on, and even entertains in its own right. The problem is, most of the time it's trying to sell us on a slew of competing-but-otherwise-identical products, or just plain crap, and it's frequently irritating. The bigger problem is, people listen to the advertising and waste their time and money on a lot of unnecessary and crappy products, which is why they keep making them. The biggest problem is that our consumerist economy depends on us buying all this crap, to a certain large degree. How much of what you buy do you really use and really need? Not a whole lot really. It's wasteful, but it keeps the economy moving and people busy and employed, creating a rich society in which even the poorest can afford the essentials. The only way to reduce that waste is to create a more economically equal and stable society.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
It's sad that the networks don't realize the power of the PVR, it is right under their nose. Do you think the communication between your PVR and Tivo or ReplayTV is only 1 way? After the Superbowl, Tivo mined the data they received from their subscribers to discover that the Britney Spears commercial was the most re-watch commercial from the Superbowl.
Starting to get the picture? The PVR and thus ReplayTV and Tivo know what you watch, when you watch it, whether you skip commercials, what commercials you do in fact watch, etc., etc., etc. How is that information not a boon to advertisers?
If the networks and advertisers would pull their heads out of their hottubs, they'd realize that there is a huge potential for targetting ads. They could partner with the PVR companies (or buy them outright) and build an ad system that is based on actual viewer data. Instead of having to sit through 30% worth of commercials per network show, you could watch your favorite half-hour show along with 1 ad that is targeted specifically to you. I'd wager most people would actually watch this commercial, too, if only to see what the advertisers think they want!
I realize it isn't an easy or overnight process, but it seems to me to be a worthwhile endeavour, especially considering the pitiful ROI of today's ad-blast paradigm.
My $0.02.
-Scott
(Yes, I have read "Next" by Michael Lewis)
Why would an advertiser spend huge sums to place an ad during the 20h00 run of a prime time show if people with PVRs are just as likely to watch an off-hours run of the same show? For example, UPN runs "Enterprise" as a prime time slot on Wednesday, and in a non-prime slot Sunday night. If an advertiser knows that people are just as likely to watch the Sunday transmission as the Wednesday, why would they pay the premium fees for the Wednesday prime time run?
PVRs also mean a lot of the "filler" shows that run before and after their big hits don't get any audience, because they aren't scheduled in the PVRs. Suddenly their advertising fees are tied to the popularity of a show, not the time slot, and that means they have to invest a lot more effort into producing something people want to see for it's own sake.
Given the quantity of drek on the airwaves, it's no wonder they're running scared. How dare the audience demand quality shows!
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
It's not the job of the courts to protect your revenue from other business. This is like Hershey suing Mars because their damned M&M's are taking away from the sale of Hershey bars!
SIG: HUP
Anybody know what the networks originally thought of the remote control? You know, the device that let's a viewer watch a different channel other than commercials without getting up?
Don't forget that as television viewing mushroomed in the 50's and 60's, movie studios clamored that the new technology would destroy their business. It's interesting to see who owns what now...
-h-
We must get more offshore manufactures like china etc. to build more dodgy devices - DVD players that strip macrovision, let you fast-forward anywere. PVRs that don't give you _any_ limits, and allow you to tinker with them. Not to mention pre modded games consoles. These countries are our only chance, and they could make an absolute killing if they mass produced these devices and sold them cheap to us.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Courtesy of the New York Times:
'The growing and dangerous intrusion of this new technology,' Jack Valenti said, threatens an entire industry's 'economic vitality and future security.'
Mr. Valenti, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America, was testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, and he was ready for a rhetorical rumble. The new technology, he said, 'is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman alone.'
It was 1982, and he was talking about videocassette recorders.
And they're still as paranoid and as utterly wrong now as they were 20 years ago.
HH
Consumers blame the corps. The corps blame the recorders. The recorders blame the advertisers. It goes around and around and around. I think things would be just a bit simpler if everybody involved accepted one simple truth:
NOBODY LIKES ADVERTISEMENTS!
It doesn't matter whether they put the ads in between scenes in the show or the use glaringly obvious product placement or anything of the sort. Time and time again the consumers have said "We don't like advertising." Hell, 99% of the advertising industry is trying to find new ways of advertising that the consumer literally cannot avoid, because even they know...
NOBODY LIKES AdVERTISEMENTS!
Do you think the anti-spam group would be so vocal if the content of these bulk e-mails wasn't advertising? Would various groups be unhappy with the way they're portrayed in commercials if their portrayals weren't used in order to sell something?
Now I admit that there's always a time and a place to inform potential customers about a product. But we have systems that allow business to do this that nobody minds. The phone book. Signs near the point-of-sale (soda fountains with "Coca-Cola" written on them). Hell, even QVC can be considered in this light.
If you're going to insist on putting advertising into a medium where the consumer does not want to see it, they will always find a way to avoid it, even if it means simply not paying attention to them. And frankly I don't understand how such advertisers are able to say that they earn their customers a profit with this.
If the broadcast networks insist on using intrusive advertising like this as their only means of income, then they deserve exactly what they get when, lo and behold, people avoid those advertisements. Hell, I wonder how many network execs own a PVR, because (lest we forget)...
NOBODY LIKES ADVERTISEMENTS!
The problem here is what is the new business model going to be? Soem assumptions:
- People won't pay for shows. I don't mind paying a little extra for HBO, but I don't think I could swallow paying $10 / month for each channel that I would like to watch.
- Advertisements become less affective as less people watch them, and hence don't pay networks as well
- Networks expirment with new formats... Possibilities Include:
- No commercial breaks. Instead, advertisers will pay for their products to appear in the show. Is this an improvement??
- Smaller, more annoying commercial breaks. Instead of 2 minutes breaks, there will be 5-30 second breaks, too fast to make it even worth it to fast forward. These would occur extremely frequently to compensate for the fact that they don't air for very long.
- Open Source Philosophy... let anyone watch it whenever... who cares. Regardless of how people on this board think, this isn't goign to work.
- Interactive Programming... programming that adds value by watching it live, rather than time shifted. Possibly by allowing the users to vote to see a different ending etc?? But its not going to happen because noone wants to use the internet and watch tv at the same time. Cue Microsofts upcoming HomewreckerStation.
- Sue the pants off anyone who threatens the current model.
Like it or not, the industry is going to change, and PVRs are not necessarily going to make it better. It may be nice for you and I, but eventually the networks are going to come back (and why not... we really are getting something for nothing from them) and pull something...So instead of bitching and complaining, why don't we try to come up with a better, less irritating, but still financially rewarding business model that would allow them to produce the content that we enjoy, without the advertisements that we despise.
Thoughts?
Captain_Frisk
"SOMEBODY has to pay for your content... if it's not the advertisers, it's gonna be you, directly out of your pocket. What's the worst of these two evils?"
Somebody has to pay? Fine. I'll pay. As an electronics engineer, I have a fair idea of just how little it costs to get the signal to my house. Any costs they have probably have to do with the thousands of hours of drivel they need to produce and cut to pad their adverts.
Why should I pay tens of dollars per month for lots of cut re-runs AND have to watch adverts? I _hate_ adverts. When I want to watch TV, I want to watch a particular program. I usually end up doing something else cos I couldnt be bothered to watch something that had 5 minutes cut out of it, along with almost 20 minutes of added crap that I mute and ignore.
The fact is that adverts do NOT give people something they want. The networks are basically there to produce shows for the advertisers. This marginalises you the viewer.
If the viewers pay for their TV, and only have a quarter of the channels, but they're actually worth watching, then the viewer wins.
Ok, so the networks might have less money. I certainly don't care. I'd have a service worth paying for. Unlike the current crap. The broadcaster wouldnt be treating me as a slave and an enemy either, because I WOULD BE THE ONE PAYING, not some dingbat who wants to sell me a worthless piece of junk.
FYI, I have happily moved from AT&T Digital cable with all the bells and whistles to no TV at all. I don't seem to be missing that much. I'll accept adverts on a free channel (because I won't watch it), but that's it.
I know that it is possible to produce good, cheap subscriber-only programming without adverts, because I used to have it. I can't get it here in the USA though.
---
Do you happen to know what TV tuner cards are known to work in Linux, or where a list of such can be found? I've been thinking about building myself a PVR-type system lately, but TV tuner cards cost a bit, and I sure don't want to make a $100+ mistake buying a card that I end up not being able to use.
Integrating ads isn't the only way to make money. Better advertising sometimes works, too. Make ads into stories. Make them funny and entertaining. Other countries do this, and enjoy a much higher viewer enjoyment of ads. I doubt this would seriously increase ad costs... but it might require a different sort of advertising industry. American TV advertising has been made sluggish by American's addiction to TV and our willingness to sit through anything in order to get to the next plot installment.
SOMEBODY has to pay for your content... if it's not the advertisers, it's gonna be you, directly out of your pocket. What's the worst of these two evils?
I might be willing to pay not to watch ads, but it depends how much it'd cost. I'm curious how much an average viewer would have to pay in order to compensate the networks for the ability to skip their share of the advertising.
Big Media is looking at this all wrong and they really stand to gain the most if they could stop preaching the mantra of the traditional TV format. I think as /. commentary proves there are a million ways to skin this cat. You could sell on a per season/per show basis, you could provide promotional tie-ins, shorten commercial breaks, pay-per-view, etc. But these all smack of TV v2.0. Not really a TV rethink.
I actually think that the future of television could be a producer-delivery-storage system. Television studios produce shows, a delivery network delivers those shows to a PVR and the user gets them in their INBOX every week like a magazine. Essentially like a magazine. The money could be made by subscription, and a subscription ensures access to back issues, special commentary, a nice fanzine, no commercials, guarantee of quality and on-time delivery, special subscriber only shows. You know, perks for being a subscriber.
I see the major stumbling blocks, other than adoption, as the corporate need to not standardize the format and make stupid alliances with one company and not the other. It should be possible for any PVR to play in this arena. Also a central location to manage your accounts and collection would be cool to. Then they could move to making sure their shows would play on 3G devices.
People will no longer beholden to the dross that any single station presents. Content will solely be profitable if it is worthwhile content.
Ideas contained herein are released under a GPL license.
How soon can we expect signing EULAs for cable service that commits us to watching the commercials in return for the 'agreed upon entertainment'?
I don't watch sitcoms, so I won't argue there. I do watch the latest Trek, though it's by no means my favorite show; same with X-files.
What I do find to be well-written and worth watching include: Farscape (probably the most original and best written Sci Fi in a long time), CSI (remember when CBS used to be a network?), Futurama (like the Simpsons, only fresher), BBC World News (on BBC America), The Avengers (from the 60's; it's on the Mystery Channel), and Dark Angel. Everyone tells me I should be watching Buffy; I should start picking it up the next time they start it over on syndication.
If you ever find yourself sitting down to watch TV and channel surfing, then that's when, if you had a PVR, you would be watching something you were interested in watching, instead.
We have been trying to kill it, but we shouldn't.
Sure, there is better stuff on Betamax, rentals, the 'net and Cable. But we shouldn't be working at trying to destroy the three big networks. They are a first line of defense or offense if needed. It's free and most of the population can get close to a TV.
We should however try to disrupt their cash flow! Think about it, GE, Westinghouse and now Disney are the owners of the three networks. Two are defense contractors... and one has their founder frozen!
People are worried about CNN and FOX News.... they don't even know what is up
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Get your Unix fortune now!
The law around these cases mostly derives from the famous Sony vs. Universal supreme court case, known as the "Betamax decision." It declared time-shifting a fair use, and that recorders which had a substantial non-infringing use (such as so noted time shifting) were legal.
But that is all it said. Most notably, the court ruled that based on the time of the suit, studies showed that few people were fast forwarding over commercials when they time-shifted, because it was a pain to do. (Back then all you could do was go into FF with big mechanical buttons) and try to aim for the end of commercial. There was no on-screen scan, no commercial skip, no 30 second advance button.
The court used this to conclude that the time-shifters weren't taking money from the studios pockets, in fact they were giving them more because more people could watch a show thanks to their betamax.
Unfortunately, this logic is all but gone. Everbody commercial skips now because it's easy, and on a PVR it's really, really easy, and so you always do it. I see 1 commercial out of 100, if that, thanks to my Tivo. The court, looking at that, could rule quite differently.
This wasn't all the ruling, however. One other important part was that because there were free programs on TV like PBS shows (today they would also talk about C-SPAN) that clearly vcrs should be legal for people who want to tape those and do whatever they want (including make libraries.)
But that doesn't bear on commercial elimination, just on the recoder's right to exist as a linear recorder.
The studios will argue that the 1982 Betamax court did not know about 2002 technology, and would not have come to the same conclusion about how today's recorders are not hurting the commercial prospects of studios.
It was a 5-4 decision, and the chief justice was on the minority side, by the way.
It's important as well to understand what the time-shifting ruling meant.
Copying a tv show off the air is copying in the sense that copyright law defines it. It is an infringement under normal analysis of the studio's exclusive right to make such copies.
What the court did was say that "If the reason you're making the copy is just to watch it later -- including probably watching the commercials too -- then this copy is a fair use, not an infringement.
If, for example, you were taping off the air to sell the copies, that would not be a fair use, it would be a very clear infringement.
And if you tape off the air to build a library -- well, the court never said that was OK. People just took the time-shifting logic to imply this. We don't really know what the court felt about that.
So this is a complex issue with much left to resolve.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Sony Betamax case established the standard for testing the propriety of these types of devices. If the device is capable of a substantial non-infringing use, such as time-shifting a broadcast movie for later viewing at one's convenience, such as, a VCR and a PTR, there is no contributory liability for copyright infringement.
A no-brainer case. It would be amusing to see Sony again as the defendant in a Supreme Court appeal, since the 9th Circuit seems hell-bent on reversing the basic rules in this arena.
The wierd part is that today is Feb 11th - the day that FOX converted SpeedVision into a 24 hour NASCAR commercial.
.com domain name.
Go ahead...
Turn it on if you have it... watch in astonishment. In a nutshell, Speedvision was a central repository of all forms of motorsport. People were learning that there were *alternative* forms of racing such as rally and formula1. Most of the shows in question were rebroadcast with permission from foreign affiliates - none of which had anything to do with FOX and their ASSCAR programming.
So what is the solution for FOX? Take over the channel and run it into the ground. In a year, you'll never remember that SpeedVision ever existed. Why did they have to change the name? Because it was so integral part of the scene (even a racing series was named SpeedVision Cup). Plus someone else already owns the speedchannel (FOX's new name)
In the end, the big guys one. Fuck FOX and ASSCAR. I'm going to start an anti-NASCAR mailing list and hopefully do the best to keep companies from advertising on the network. Actually, if you'd been watching speedvision recently, you would have noticed that they had already lost most of their advertising which caused them to resort to broadcasting old "vintage" commercials from the 50s, 60s and 70s.
Check out petitiononline.com/svsn - over 60k signatures and not a word from FOX.
Sigh...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Every network's "branding" has increased in size each year- at first, a few years ago, it was a small, transparent logo that was mostly there to watermark the source of the show, appearing occasionally. Then, it became a persistent, color image. Now, many networks (TNN is the best example) put a big old splash graphic along the lower part of the screen, which is simply inches away from being a banner.
Question: Would you accept the banner ad as a replacement for commercials, e.g. the show runs uninterrupted? It seems a tempting replacement.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
SONNY: How do you turn on this here teevee?
RIKER: Teevee?
SONNY: Yeah, boob-tube...
DATA(to Riker)Oh -- I think he means television, sir.
DATA(to Sonny)That particular form of entertainment did not last much beyond the year Two Thousand Forty.
Star Trek: The Next Generation - "The Neutral Zone"
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
this is without a doubt an improvement but why record the commercials at all and use up the extra tape if it's technically possible to not record (or pause recording) during the commercials.
'cuz that way it isn't fail-safe. According to people with CA gadgets (VCRs and ReplayTVs) it gets it right about 19/20 times. Keeping all the data means you can go manual if you need to. It isn't a perfect system so that makes sense to me.
not sure if it's possible (and completely unsure on the use of teletext in the US), but here in europe most TV channels have teletext pages with the TV guide for that channel. This conveniently couples channel and guide (although you may need to program in the pagenum for each channel). Unfortunately, different teletext services will have a different layout, but you can cut down on the hardware (OCR and all that..)
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Because the alternative is a lot worse. As long as there is a perception that you should be using a PVR to record movies there is less of a perception that you should be using a general purpose device. It so happens that general purpose device may also let you burn IP onto removable media while the PVR gives producers a certain level of control over what consumers can do with that IP.
Major League Baseball is already doing this: They've had advertisements super-imposed on the wall beside the batter on national broadcasts for the last two seasons.
When I first heard about it, it sounded pretty irritating. But then I was watching a Fox Saturday game of the week first season they had it, and didn't even notice it was there until the fourth inning. If it's done tastefully, and you're totally immersed in the content, it won't be so bad.
The key that keeps it from being distracting to the game is that the ads don't change when they're on the screen. So if you're watching a guy bat, you'll never be waiting for the pitch, then suddenly get distracted by the super-imposed ad changing from Schick to Pepsi, for example.
Who did what now?
I completely agree that the current business model for broadcasters is in danger of obsolescence from PVRs, but what your original article stated, and the the point I contended, was the right to free television. Still, there is a point in your latest response that I'd like to address.
> 3. Also, because the airwaves are public property, the networks can't just start encrypting those publicly owned airwaves. It's like a private company fencing off a public park and charging admission to get in.
Not exactly. It's perfectly legal to encrypt the data stream and then send it over a public frequency (HBO and cell networks do this all the time) as long as your FCC license allows it. At this point, regular television channels can't get such permission, but if a majority of them can begin to demonstrate significant financial hardship from their business model dying, they'll start getting permission to encrypt (or something else). Before you complain about this, you did say that the onus is on them to revise their business model, and switching network TV to pay-per-view certainly is a revision of the model, although not one I'd really like to see.
Virg
I thoroughly agree with you. That said, and switching on func(devil's_advocate), the networks are concerned for these reasons:
1.) PVRs make functionally perfect copies for cheap (I know they don't perfectly copy the incoming signal, but once captured subsequent copies can be replicated identically).
2.) It's much easier to edit out the commercials from a digital file than an analog recording (remember, (devil's_advocate) mode...).
3.) Sending said now-edited files around the world via the Internet will demolish the aftermarket for reselling TV shows/movies thus recorded.
Again, I stress that I disagree on the fundamentals of this, but I did want to point out that their argument isn't deontological. That is, they're not trying to argue that it's a duty to watch the ads. I'm sure they'd love to make everyone feel it's their duty to watch the commercials like good little consumers, but even they know that it would be unsupportable to say that.
Virg
> No, actually at least half of the stations you get on cable are subscription based.
I'm not signed up for any premium channels. Some of the channels I get are cable-only (the Comedy Channel or Sci-Fi are good examples), but even those are not subscription based. Keeping in mind that I was only using the $50.00 example because the parent did, I am literally only paying my $15.00 a month for delivery, not premium programming. I know I'm a little unusual in this, but since the original poster didn't allow exceptions I felt comfortable shooting back.
Virg
> Wrong. Where do you think that $50.00 goes? Your local cable company has to pay cable channels for the use of their programming.
Actually, I only pay $15.00 a month, and I don't get any premium channels, and most importantly, we were discussing commercial TV, not pay-for-access channels. Lastly, although it's a minor point of semantics, the local cable company pays for the right to broadcast, not for use of the programming. The end user pays for the use.
Virg
SOMEBODY has to pay for your content... if it's not the advertisers, it's gonna be you, directly out of your pocket. What's the worst of these two evils?
... which is why, in the UK, we have TV licensing.
For about £100 per year you get 10 digital channels and 5 radio stations *with no adverts*.
How much do you pay for your TV programs with adverts every 2 minutes?
I'm not saying they will manage to ban it.
The thing to learn is that the decision was narrower than we might like. The court really sat down and asked "does the vcr hurt the market for TV studios?"
It decided that time-shifting did not hurt the market. It could easily have decided that library building does hurt the market for tapes. I've seen friends with a wall with every Star Trek, taped off the air, and they sell the same thing at the store.
Based on the read of this close 5 to 4 decision, I think they might well have ruled that building a library of off-air tapes is an infringement.
However, fortunately they would not have thus made the VCR illegal. That's because the time-shifting is still legal, so the device that does it is legal. In addition, the ruled that since taping certain PBS shows for a library is legal, the VCR is also legal.
However, it seems implied from their decision that if they were to decide that a device or feature had no fair use, that it could be illegal (ie. the maker held liable for contributory infringement)
As I read it, automatic commercial elimination might be held not a fair use, but program sharing actually should be (because of the C-SPAN and PBS shows.)
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation