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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?
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?
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."
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
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
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.
" The most disturbing part of the story is that they claim deleting commercials is violating the copyright."
Well, doesn't the fact that they cut portions of the show to add room for new commercials mean they have already violated the copyright of the original show producers/owners, then...
A.
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
That's not what I was saying. Here it is in short:
1. The airwaves are (should be) free. That means (theoretically) anyone can fire signals through the air. However, since that would make things really messy really fast, there's a licensing scheme to make the airwaves useable. Basically, if someone puts out a signal on the public spectrum, I can watch it (but not resell it or violate any copyrights on the material that the broadcaster might have).
2. Because of (1), I can BUILD my own TV (or in your example, my own car for a highway) to view the signals whipping through the air. And I can view it however I like, any color scheme, any time of the day, etc.
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.
4. Because TV is a linear stream and there was no way to circumvent that linearity, commercials made sense. Interpose ads in the stream.
5. Because of the advent of TiVo, &c., the broadcast stream becomes non-linear, rendering the commercial model obsolete.
The correct response to this is NOT to sue the manufacturers of TiVO, &c., it's to change the business model of television. This is expensive, so they decide to sue these replayer manufacturers instead -- a stopgap solution at best. Broadcasters chose to get into this business and to use the commercial model for generating revenue. That's their problem. The onus is on them to revise their business models, not to sue those who found a way to legally circumvent their revenue stream.
She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue.
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