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New HDTV Encryption Obsoletes Sets
Brian Weatherhead writes "I wrote an article, detailing the MPAA's control over your HDTV. Their new standards will make any HDTV bought before 2002 obsolete!
Consumers will be upset to say the least." Talks
about the different formats for video signals, and
copy protection methods for those signals. And yes,
if this goes down, anyone with an HDTV without DVI input
could very well be watching 480p signals when HDTV
standardizes. Fortunately at the rate this stuff has
been happening, those TVs will long since have died.
But one thing is for sure- with the DMCA, and these
new video formats, PVRs could become a thing of the
past.
This is EXACTLY why I've avoided buying an HDTV. They are expensive, nobody is broadcasting in HDTV yet, and political stuggles over format were bound to happen. I wouldn't go so far as proclaiming the death of DVRs. People like them. And, as long as there is a a demand some one will come up with a supply. I'm just sick of hearing about groups like the RIAA and MPAA using our Constitution like a roll of toilet paper. When is someone going to stand up for the individual?
I believe mostly because its anoying. /satterth
Being called a dork on Slashdot must be like being called the retard in special ed.
if I can derive a video signal via hw or sw my 2000 set will play
Message to HDTV equipment owners:
Let's all get together and rent a cargo plane, load up all our newly obsolete HDTV equipment, and drop it on the MPAA's headquarters. It's pretty heavy stuff; should make a lot of nice holes in the roof, and will hopefully squash some of those responsible.
Who *still* watches TV? That's soo 1990's.
;o)
('cept for Invader Zim of course
I repeat, do not buy this stuff if it won't let you do what you want to do. This should serve as a good reminder that the corportations are not in the game to make you happy.
My car is now obsolete...
My existing collection of Blade Runner is now obsolete...
My copy of Photoshop is now obsolete...
Sun is obsolete...
My jacket is obsolete...
My understanding of copyright laws are obsolete...
And my abandonware games are obsolete...but they were to begin with...
: (
Romana: "How did you know?" Doctor Who: "Ah, well, knowing is easy. Everyone does THAT ad nauseum. I just sort of hope"
I'll just buy up everyone's "obsolete" TVs for pennies on the dollar and then fix and sell them as new. Even a twenty year old 8051 can do bitwise xor in real time. So this is a "good thing". Good for those of us who aren't morons anyway.
But one thing is for sure- with the DMCA, and these new video formats, PVRs could become a thing of the past.
;)
If it's viewable, it's recordable. If there's money to be made modding TVs and PVRs to be recordable, someone will be selling mod-chips.
"But that's illegal!"
That's for the courts to decide. Perhaps the primary purpose of mod-chips will be allowing viewers to exercise so-called 'fair use' rights of a personal copy for private viewing, and piracy is only an unintentional side-effect.
You know, like Napster.
Better invest in a good camcorder and tripod, as it looks like thats the only way you'll be able to record any sort of digital TV program in the future.
I'm glad I didn't buy an HDTV, unlike my neighbor who wasted $5000 on one last fall.
"We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it" -- Winston Churchill
I know who's doing it. Or if its not him, he uses almost the exact same phrase on my site.
I'm almost tempted to give out contact info on him.
Almost.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
They're putting the encryption on the DIGITAL connection. Analog connections will NOT be deliberately obsoleted. My HDTV is connected via analog; is yours?
The article predicts that hardware with analog outputs will become harder to find in the future, but that doesn't mean they'll disappear completely, and by the time they've nearly gone, I'll bet I'll have reason to upgrade anyway.
all 15 of them.
seriously, it's hard to be so indignant about it when nobody has a HDTV and most people have no plans to buy them.
Maybe if your browser didn't suck so much ass, you wouldn't look like such a complete fucking retard right now.
I mean, 99% of the time my TV is off. Why do I need HDTV to watch it collect dust.
I'll never pay for an HDTV and I can't afford one. So why do I need to pay out my wahzoo for one of eighteen methods of viewing HDTV?
I'd rather go to Europe and watch my stuff on PAL. At least PAL is affordable and widely available and also has a much better picture than NTSC.
HDTV will just suck too much to gain any viewing pleasure from it.
Go for it. I think that one of the things that brings out the assholes on the Net is that they think there'll be no consequences for their actions. They think they'll never get caught. A rude awakening every now and then is a good thing.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
Unfortunately the signal from my geforce to toshiba cinema series hdtv is s-video so it's not as purty as it could be. DVD's look fantastic with the colorstream connection. I've found vga to colorstream cables for as little as $100, but haven't been able to afford it recently (the hdtv's a long story). I'd attempt this if it would give me 1080i
As for my set's obsolesence? I get my tv shows off the net anyway- the set is for games and dvd's
This is not a bug in slashcode, it'd a bug in how internet explorer handles wraping. It only seems to bother internet explorer. (konqueror and netscape still wrap it)
Looks like I'll be watching VHS on my 19" Sony well into the 20-teens.
:)
I'm not touching DVD's until the decss and region encoding issues are resolved (putting my money where my mouth is and voting with my wallett), and the way they have screwed up HDTV since it's original version 10 - 12 years ago is disgusting. This is absolute proof of entropy.
Someday I may replace my cassettes with CD's, but I'm waiting for the technology to prove itself...
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
They're putting the encryption on the DIGITAL connection. Analog connections will NOT be deliberately obsoleted. My HDTV is connected via analog; is yours?
But what are you going to do in a few years (2006-2007 IIRC) when TV stations will be forced to go all-digital?
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
If they do this encryption will surely be useless. The link says the encryption has already been broken but you probably need unusual hardware. I see a possible future where some non-crippled open source tivo / moxy device is at least in the hands of the more technical minded. With full commercial removal, high compression options (Divx?) and rampant unblockable trading, its attractiveness to the less technical minded will be high. At the same time I hope not too many people do this because I want someone to pay for the next $100+ million starwars movie budget.
Exactly. Mozilla handles it fine as well.
No kidding? Anyone with any technical savy knows that there is virtually nothing that the MPAA nor any other entity can do that can effectively control the dissemination of information at this point in history. Seems this guy is just parroting what is taken to be obvious around here - the traditional content provider business model is dead, or at least mortally wounded. Must be a Katz deciple.
On the plus side, this article may actually inform more people besides the
Geez - I'm sounding like Katz too. Maybe he's right? Naaaa....
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
I just called my dad, told him to sell his $6,500 65" HDTV... that is, if he wants to protect his investment.
Either have a 65" tv for a couple years or have a 65" tv for many years, but you have to wait a little while first..
either way, I don't think he is giving it up quite yet.
We need someone to organize a consumer education campaign and get millions of Americans up in arms and angry as hell at them trying to take away our right to fair use and the ability to time shift. If there's enough negative publicity, especially if people write their representatives in Congress, the MPAA will back down for sure.
People knew what they were buying in to.
The problem with things like this is the fact that people don't know they're being cheated. If everybody knew that recording your favorite episode of while you're out for dinner is illegal under the DMCA due to the (Begin Rant) legal crap the sleazebag lawyers who work for the MPAA think up (End Rant), then people would not buy it.
So if people knew what the MPAA, etc... is doing behind our backs, they wouldn't buy it - instituting a sort of boycott. Then, maybe the MPAA would realize that we are the source of their money and better suck it up and make us happy.
We're always complaining about how deep corporate pockets can be, but if we have a probem with it - then don't buy it - we're the ones giving them that money.
The future of these technologies is controlled right here in my hands (and your's). Where we spend out money will determine what succeeds and what fails. Without a market for digitally restricted media, the MPAA will cease to be. The fundemental demand for new technologies is founded in our own desire to be entertained. If we want to be able to save shows on our PVRs then we will be able to. The illution of control can be blinding, but just because the industry wants the control doesn't mean they will get it. Watch closely, this will all come to a head in the next 5 years.
Actually, No..
Take a look at the box your HDTV Set Top Box came in, or look at the manual. It includes the capability to "down-res" the analog output, if copyright holders so choose.
That is what is obsoleting your old set. When the industry decides that DVI is the only acceptable interface, they flip the switch, and the 1080i signal is now down-res'd to 480p.
What a luxury, to be an industry that can spit on consumers & still flourish. In fact, HDTV owners are often some of the biggest movie fans, trying to get the best quality possible for their movie viewing. And the movie industry says "screw you"!
A point everyone seems to be overlooking is that this article is referring to next generation DVDs, not broadcast HDTV. The latter must be broadcast "in the clear," but the MPAA has been only been willing to release relatively low-resolution formats.
At the current rate of HDTV adoption, there is no chance of the FCC agreeing to allow encrypted broadcasts - one of the FCCs rules is to promote the use of the airwaves, and nothing stops that quicker than calling the early adopters who invested thousands of dollars "suckers."
Being unable to view high-res DVD-NGs on older HDTVs sucks, but it's not as bad as the broadcast getting encrypted.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
well the day i am forced to give in to a digital HDTV signal because no more broadcasts are made on analog, or no more analog tvs are to be found, is the day I throw out my old tv and build my library of classical liturature.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Also, I find Slashdot to be a good place to talk about things. Sometimes there is great discussion, and there is always a chance to hear every side of the story.
Ceci n'est pas un post
Even still, a filter that reasons along the line of "if words start with a dot, add a space" or perhaps "if words start with a dot, politely inform the user that they are being lameness filtered"
But what are you going to do in a few years (2006-2007 IIRC) when TV stations will be forced to go all-digital? As far as I'm aware (and correct me if I'm wrong) but all HDTV broadcasts are digital. What *is* analogue would be the connection between the external decoder box and the HDTV-ready TV set. If Digital TV is available in you're area it's the same idea, but instead of an MPEG2 720x480i image being digitally routed over the cable line and decoded by an external box, it would be a 1920x1040i digital signal. That just means you need to spend a few hundred on the new decoder box, the money grubbers, grrr....
read more books
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I agree 100% TV is lame. You should be able to project whatever image you want on what ever display device you have available. My personal hope had been that computer companies would infiltrate the TV market and start producing more display devices for projecting computer/tv images onto walls...etc..
The way to break the MPAA is for a different industry to come and provide the public with something better/more versatile than TV.
I am willing to subscribe to cable and pay for a box that I never use for the precise reason that I never use it. The signal is also playable (and recordable if I so desired) on all the PCs and Macs TVs and VCRs in my house. Take that away from me, and I have a problem paying for the service since I never watch TV sitting in front of the large screen in the living room. Its always at the kitchen table or down in the exercise room or on this machine when I am doing something else. I suspect that I am hardly alone here.
Bottom line, encrypted HDTV is not something I would buy even if there was no other alternative available.
If they would just sell DVDs for $11.99 and and provide movie downloads for $5.99, only a very few would bother pirating their stuff. Forget the encryption mumbo-jumbo. Make it easy for your customers to have a good experience.
Every time somebody sneaks snacks into a movie in their purse, the movie industry loses a few dollars of revenue that should have been spent on outrageously priced candy. However, if people were strip-searched entering the theaters so that the few 'snack-pirates' would be caught, there would be a huge backlash, so they live with the illicit food munchers. As it happens, 99% of the people buy the food in the theaters anyway. No need for high-tech countermeasures or a Concessional Millenium Snackfood Act to protect the theater owners..
It's too bad that the media corporations can't seem to apply real-world customer relations common sense to the digital realm.
...a car accident in progress. (thanks to "everybody loves raymond" for that...) Oh well, I'm just glad I never bought a HDTV.
If people buying HDTV's already have PVR's then I'm sure they would'nt settle on an HDTV that couldn't talk to their PVR. The market for HDTV's is small because of their price, with digital controls in place the market would shrink further.
Almost all HDTV's sold today still have analog component video inputs. The only ones (maybe) not susceptible to this are the sets with internal HDTV tuners. Since the link between the HDTV decoder and the display is not accessible, it doesn't need to be encrypted. (at least that's the logical conclusion.. Noone would claim that logic governs the existing requirements).
Contradicting this stance on encryption, JVC and a few of the studios just announced last week that they will be selling HDTV movies on D-VHS tapes this year. The content on the tape is copy protected, but the link to the display is plain old unencrypted component video.
Also, the argument they make to justify this requirement is that they don't want people to be able to make "perfect digital copies" of their movies. That's very reasonable, I am fine with that. But, component outputs are ANALOG. To record a movie via the analog outputs does not create a perfect copy. And the equipment to do so is not cheap or accessible. How many of you have seen a VCR capable of recording a VGA output? That's what would be needed (in fact, the output of my RCA HDTV decoder is VGA).
DVI is solving a problem that does not exist. They try to put spin on it & represent it as a benefit to the consumer. But, that is the opposite of the truth. On my tube based HDTV, component or VGA inputs are capable of sending an image better than the set can display. There is no quality advantage. It only adds cost / complexity / and obsoletes a lot of hardware.
The DMCA effectively outlaws higher math. Think about it - data encryption is just complex higher math. Reversing it requires some skill with a data logger / oscilloscope, etc., and quite a bit of work, these days, shuttling mathematics around on paper. At least as far as I've seen.... maybe I'm wrong.
All somebody has to do to ban Calculus class forever from all highschools in the US is make some encryption based on integration or differentiation. I'm sure that's already happened.... I can see it now: "Calculus, the study of Differential Equations, and all of number theory have been declared unlawful because their primary purpose has become the circumvention of encryption."
[Moderators - it's supposed to be a joke. Mod appropriately]
_Knots
Anarchy$ dd if=/dev/random of=~/.signature bs=120 count=1
So if it's a company violating your privacy in the interest of profit, you get all pissy about it. If it's a lynch mob violating your privacy in the interest of lynching, it's fine and dandy?
I don't think you're being very sensitive to the wide-impaired, either.
In summary: you, sir or madam, are an ass. I thank you for your time and bandwidth.
Your pal, Jesus.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
How does this affect PCI or AGP HDTV tuners, such as this one. I already have a UHF antenna on my roof, which picks up the major networks very well, so I was considering buying one. $350 for free NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, and FOX until they change the standards again. Not a bad deal unless they change the standards in 6 months.
who really gives a rats ass?
And what if the court you are tried in is Judge Kaplan's court?
Where the only parts of the law that matter are those that can be used to find you liable, and not those that can be used to exonerate you.
And what will people do when the DMCA is tightened so that even owning a mod chip becomes an automatic felony with a 10 year prison sentence?
It is no longer just a game of tecnological cat and mouse. We are the mouse, and the gov't will stomp us to death if we try to run away from the cat - it is a no win situation - UNLESS WE GET THE LAWS CHANGED OR OVERTURNED.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Paul,
Give me a fucking break. Do you think I actually figured out some random IE HTML rendering bug that forces a page to be widened like that? I merely was browsing at -1 on a lab computer using IE and saw it. Then, I made sure it didn't happen to you on your site.
- Eric
Well, most people don't actually buy HDTVs with internal decoders, they buy HD-capable monitors with the understanding that an external decoder is required for decoding HDTV signals and displaying them on the TV. That, at least, was my understanding and I didn't get the impression that it was being presented in any kind of ambigious way.
As such, I purchased my TV with the understanding that extra money would be required for an HD decoder box, and thus I wasn't upset about it. I will be very upset if, once HD is actually broadcast (assuming that I've not died of old age before that happens) I cannot view the signal at anything better than 480p because of unneeded DVI "standards", and I'll happily look into any illegal mods that would allow a set-top decoder to output the analogue signal in a 1080i format.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
All DVD players will now be equiped with shotguns. If it is believed that you're pirating discs, BLAM! And you can't remove the gun or unload it, because that would be a violation of the DMCA!
Either the courts are going to keep passing dehabilitating laws such as the DMCA and allow the RIAA and Movie industry to keep screwing its customers or its going to realize "Oh gee... I didn't realize that all this piracy was a result of the entertainment industry fattening its wallets with the money of joe consumer, who doesn't really have the money to buy a hdtv but is told by the guy at "Tv world" that he needs it to watch tv and movies". I think that at some time, like with the recent napster thing, that maybe the courts will realize that they are here to defend the best interest of its citizens... not its corporations. Everyone bitchs about this... but i don't see anyone standing outside of radioshack, best buy, audio visual or circuit city with little flyers and such. I mean the hippies do it for starbucks, etc... why don't the nerds unite. We should use our knowledge of technology for good purposes and spread the info that joe consumer doesn't have. I'm sure this could lead to laws like the dmca, etc being looked at more seriously by the courts and maybe even some hilarious hyjinx along the way.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
Brian Weatherhead writes "I wrote an article, detailing the MPAA's control over your HDTV. Their new standards will make any HDTV bought before 2002 obsolete!
Consumers will be upset to say the least." Talks
about the different formats for video signals, and
copy protection methods for those signals. And yes, if this goes down, anyone with an HDTV without DVI input could very well be watching 480p signals when HDTV standardizes. Fortunately at the rate this stuff has been happening, those TVs will long since have died. But one thing is for sure- with the DMCA, and these new video formats, PVRs could become a thing of the past.
I second all the above. I bought an HDTV monitor and it kicks ass. It has only analog connections as do most HDTV monitors. I will be fucking pissed if everything get down converted to 480p. I will do anything possible to see the full quality.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
Taco should not do *any* extra effort due to IE not being standards compliant.
Newbieism, peer pressure and karma distribution being what it is I can only strive to emulate the *On High* Ubergeeks that oversee /. But, uhm really, does this mean it is absolutely a sure thing something could conditionally happen... or, uh does it mean a conditional thing is absolutely going to happen... or what? Will it become apparent the more karma I have?
heuristic algorithm seeks stochastic relationship
In fact, HDTV owners are often some of the biggest movie fans, trying to get the best quality possible for their movie viewing. And the movie industry says "screw you"! The movie industry is screwing their biggest supporters because supporters are demanding more than ever before. I was perfectly content watching commercials before I got my Tivo. I only bought it so I could watch tv shows at my leisure. I had no idea I would become addicted to the control I now have over my tv. If DIVX (Circut's City's format) was introduced before videotape... it might have take off. We would have never known the power of ownership. Once you've left the matrix, there's no going back. The movie, tv and music industries are all fighting loosing battles. I don't think anyone knows for sure how this will end, but one thing's for sure... most of us are not going back.
Why *won't* HDTV w/ encryption sell?
DVD's seem awfully popular -- and they're encrypted. That's why Jon Johansen has been in hot water.
Joe Consumer doesn't even realize that these connections *ARE* encrypted. All they see is a pretty, clear picture on the TeeVee and neato effects from their 20000 speaker surround-sound setup.
*YOU* might not buy it, but the rest of the idiot masses that shop at Best Buy and Walmart and Frys *WILL* buy them, because they're the latest, coolest K-RAD toy.
If HDTV will be encrypted in europe too i just wont buy that crap. FUCK THE DMCA.
"If there's enough negative publicity, especially if people write their representatives in Congress, the MPAA will back down for sure."
Starfish are not strong enough to force open the shell of a clam, their prey, through brute force.
However, the starfish always gets its meal because it applies a steady and unrelenting pressure. The MPAA is both able and willing to apply the same kind of pressure to wear down the resolve of citizens and consumers to fight for their inalienable rights; no matter how long it takes.
Obviously this sucks but these types of things are precisely why people need to research expensive investments. Spending thousands of dollars on a piece of equipment and not knowing about the format wars and issues is asinine. Home theater enthusiast are used to this type of thing. You spend $3000 on a tuner and processor and two years later 5.1 outputs can be 9.1. thats why they have upgradeable components now.
:)
Honestly I don't think this will stick but if it does, the average consumer will have learned a valuable lesson. This really sucks, I def. agree but I also think it could be avoided if buyers were more intelligent.
On a side note, any of you thinking of spending $1500 on certain SACD and/or DVD-Audio players right now, might wanna do some reading too
These days, law abiding citizens are being treated like criminals in so many parts of their lives, with the increasing use of not only copy protection technology, but security screenings, identifications, background and credit checks, etc. I really wonder if someday someone is going to do a study and find that the psychological effects of going through most of life not being trusted is causing all sorts of issues, like incrased stress, depression, family problems, etc... At the very least, one has to wonder if being treated like a criminal would start to make someone act like a criminial.
---
Please give me the strength to turn off my TV!
_______
2B1ASK1
that by that time, someone will have come up with a converter that makes those previously purchased HDTV sets compatible?
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
But it'd be a good idea. The fact is, we make up a small part of the voting population (And a lot of us don't even vote..).
The average person still doesn't know how vile the DMCA is, the average person still doesn't quite get the idea that the RIAA is evil.
We need to explain to them why. Flyers might not work too well (Do *you* read flyers that people proffer at you?), but we need to sit down with people and explain why certain things aren't a good idea(tm).
I can agree with that. I haven't bought any new consumer electronics in many years - at least three if I remember correctly. I bought a little, very old TV for $15, and my landlady gave me another one, and they suit my purpose just fine.
I'm waiting for the technology to shake out. And how this fight goes determines what I am going to purchase and how much I am going to spend. At this point I'm happy with my computer running linux, my laptop running Win98 (the thought of upgrading hasn't even occured to me, especially for what they're asking!) and that's pretty much it.
Strangely enough, I find myself very happy with the network pablum and the internet content that's there right now. I really don't have time for much more than that.
I think the best control the consumer (I HATE THAT WORD) has is just to ignore them. Then they *will* go away. The trick is convincing the 16 year old Britney Spears loving teenage girl...
Hmmm, there's an interesting thought - the demographic that spends the most money on videos and stuff is also the demographic that's least accustomed to paying for it. No wonder they're losing sales.
--Russell
Courts don't pass laws. At best, they set precedent.
-Scott Hutton
Why is HDTV even a hardware standard? It not like we haven't been building cheap displays capable of multiple resolutions for years. And its not like tv manufacturers (sony, phillips etc.) will be losing out, because they make these displays... Why is the MPAA not flogging a sofTV standard where such image decryption and display is handled by software. good updatable software. Need HDTV? Then your tv will download HDTVapp when you sign up to your cable providers premium service. Using your sofTV somewhere that they have different broadcast standards (France) then your tv gets le HDTV app. Manufacturers dont have to retool for different markets, consumers don't get ripped off. Manufacturers can generate sales by selling us bigger, wider, better TVs rather than "the same old set, but now F.U.TV capable". Best of all, we get all that neat "enriched content" that was promised to us for the past 12 years as TV approaches true convergance. Anybody for TVML?
One note we can take from the history of a commercially unsuccessful product is DAT copy protection. DAT had the potential to become a consumer audio format, but the industry was really worried about copy protection since with DAT you can make perfect digital copies. They put in a copy protection "feature" called SCMS Serial copy management system. After a few years deck manufactures started producing decks that defeat SCMS. Maybe this will happen with HDTV media protection. If not, I'm sure somebody will figure out a way to bypass it or reverse engineer it.
The courts don't make the laws.
The politicians make the laws.
(in your country - in ours we have no pesky separation of powers, we even have someone called the Lord Privy Seal (who is neither a Lord, a Privy or a Seal (!)) who is part of the executive, the judiciary and the legislature). But even here the courts don't make the laws.
Something about this post makes me think that I am not the only one who thinks penis is a very amusing word.
ahhhhh
penis
[[Ay fukkand lyke ane furious Fornicatour]]
Look, who really, who cares about overturning the DMCA? We'll just get hit immediately with the DMCB. While waiting for /that/ latest abortion to be declared unconstitutional, we'll all have to follow whatever /it/ says. There are only two solutions:
1) Make voting for patently unconstitutional laws an impeachable offense. After all, the first thing a politician elected to office is required to do is to swear to defend the constitution.
2) Get private money out of electoral politics. Period. The system is so dirty right now it is positively gruesome. There is _no_ issue other than real campaign finance reform. Until that occurs, our govenment -- and hence our laws -- will remain totally insane.
Proteus7
. . . probably TiVo like with a HD. Be prepared, however, for the networks to have much more control. That means limited time use of content, no second generation copies, and no fast forward during ads. Think they can't do it? Wait until they go digital and encrypt their signal. This has already happened with DVD. Many DVD's have ads at the begining that can't be skipped. The only way this will not happen is if the FCC were to ban such practices, but I would not count on that.
This should not come as a surprise to anyone. There has never been an HDTV standard. Anyone who bought an HDTV-ready television with the HDTV tuner built in or without connectivity options for at least both of the major HDTV standard contenders is a sucker who didn't do their research.
sorry if this isn't very organized... but here's how i feel...
the movie industry is actually worth my money.
maybe the actors are overpaid, and there are scores of shitty movies...
...but...
i'd drop $15 for a good DVD over a good CD any day.
why? hundreds of people put their effort into making one movie, while only a hand-full put their efforts into making a cd. not only that... but a movie is more engrosing than a cd will ever be because you're using both visuals and sound.
what about fair use, you cry? give me one good example where you *need* to copy a movie that you own. i can think of a few for music, namely transfering music to another format to be portable, such as an mp3 device. but what about movies?
finally... be realistic here... you can bet your sweet ass that someone will make a box which strips out whatever encryption they throw into this new movie medium --> tv format.
(side note) it's funny how the networks are so against PVRs, yet you see their commercials ON TELEVISION. funny to see that networks will help pimp the product, but hate the errosion of their business model as well. that's hypocracy at its finest.
What standard dictates how wordwrap should be handled?
-Yottabyte84, posting AC to protect his karma
- Stop buying DVDs.
- Cancel your cable subscriptions and don't buy tvs. (Yes, this is the hardest, but if we all get together and set a month or two and all do it at once - without people watching and paying for TV, they lose money.)
- Don't buy music discs.
Now, if we all work together and get organized, they can never win. They only win if we don't do anything and keep throwing our money in their bank accounts.- Lawsuits for fraud and conduct in restraint
of trade
- Previously law-abiding citizens starting to
buy pirated copies of movies with the encryption
and zoning removed
- Boycotts
As for me, I won't give the studios any money for DVD movies until the DMCA is repealed. Until then, they and the RIAA can FOAD.BTW, they keep telling the Congress that these dreklicht schemes are needed to protect the artists. Well, IMHO, the way to protect the artists is to have surprise audits of the studio books, with treble damages for any shortfall in the royalties paid to the artist, plus jail sentences for those responsible. Any studio capos will to tell Congress that they have no problem with my proposal? No, I thought not.
Now, if there was a VALID reason to change the format, people wouldn't be particularly angry. They would understand that becuase of technical restrictions A, B and C, the format needs to change. But when they are adding crap for the SOLE purpose of getting more money with NO benifit to the consumer, well, that's going to raise some eyebrows. Imagine if they sold cars that required payments to be made directly to car manufacturers X per mile driven. Imagine the outrage! Imagine if the electricity in your apartment, besides paying a monthly bill, could ONLY be used for "officialy approved" PG&E appliances...
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
well the day i am forced to give in to a digital HDTV signal because no more broadcasts are made on analog, or no more analog tvs are to be found, is the day I throw out my old tv and build my library of classical liturature.
Purcahse the $200 HDTV -> Analog converter. A bit pricey, but cheap compared to an HDTV set.
np
This really just sucks. Alot of the early adopters, who are also the best customers of this sort of technology, are likely to be screwed over.
However, there is a good chance for those manufaturers to promote some really strong customer loyalty from those same customers. The manufaturers had best oppose this, loudly and they had best put their money behind it. The next bit, is that they will want to provide to all the customers who own an earlier model HDTV with a converter box to convert the signal to something their TV can handle.
As long as we are at it, why dont the DVD and TV manufaturers take a lesson from the PC industry, and create some removable hardware cards that can be used to adapt their hardware in the event of a standards shift? This feature alone could put a TV manufaturer ahead of the game since it appears obvious that encryption standards will be a moving target.
I dont exactly like the current Copyright situations, but at least the hardware manufaturers can make things easier for the consumers.
END COMMUNICATION
Your arguement was silly to the extreme. Why it got modded to insightful is beyond me.
Like my previous posts, the big question I am asking myself since 2 years about USA: WTF?
:).
They are doing EVERYTHING to kill their own buisness. They put crazy protection schemes that screws up joe nobody's CD in his old CD player, they do everything to kill online music sharing instead of building a successful buisness model on top of it, they put up stuff like DMCA that upsets just about everyone exept large corporation that don't even think before publicly using hot terms like "terrorist" to describe some developpers, and now, with such an announcement, they simply WACK in the face the people WITH MONEY (because, you NEED money to buy a half decent TV with hdtv support, and you need LOADS of it to buy a decent screen size with HDTV support). What message are all these moves sending to the consumers?
"We can't decide on a standard, but be an early adopter with only 1% support of channels for the technology you payed good money for, and we'll make it obsolete even before getting to 2%"
"We want your money, once we have it, we don't give a rats ass about you anymore, get on with it"
And the most lame but starting to become excusable: "Well I've got ripped once, twice, now I'll support the piracy system because I have to buy one hacked hardware and I don't have to deal with this shit no more!"
Protecting content is one thing, I had nothing against DVD being encrypted BEFORE becoming public and mainstream, at least then, NOBODY was had, everything was "standard" and you knew that it would probably take something like a new format before everything you bought got obsolete, and that new format would be backward compatible like dvds are to CDs.
TVs aren't cheap like DVD players, and especially HDTV units with decent size and features. If this passes, you just gave a go to pirates to make devices to "clean the signal off that dirt and make it work on older sets" (or circomvention device under the DMCA I guess), for a totally legit use. You'll have fun in court because IANAL but I'm sure there's going to be a big grey zone if such an issue arises.
God I'm glad I'm living in Canada sometimes, we have a clown as a prime minister, but at least they aren't pulling that kind of pathetic moves on us, yet
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
The DVB Common Scrambling Algorithm is a "deCSS" waiting to happen, mark my words.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Most HDTV sets that I've seen have analog component inputs that allow folks to upgrade the tuners for their displays. Even my RCA F38310 allows you to bypass it's built-in tuner and use an external model. Most monitors don't have a tuner because the standards aren't set yet. True though, I will be very pissed to have to buy another tuner.
We recently (01.02) puchased a 53" tv (Tobishiba), and now I sitting here wondering was it HDTV in the first place. What is DVI input? Cause all I got is color stream...
To quote from the late, great Calvin & Hobbes: "Verbing weirds language." Posts like this pose the danger of illiterating Slashdot readers if they are allowed to continue.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
...unite. I may not be a hacker myself, but this stuff doesn't concern me anymore. We've managed to hack virtually every other shameful attempt at copy protection keeping us from what is rightfully ours; and we'll do it for this. DeCSS, DirecTV decoders, gnutella (a solution to the napster 'problem')and Playstation mod chips are just a few of the creative solutions that have surfaced over the years, and soon there will be a HDTV ripper too.
The sillies who think they can tell the consumer what to do with their media may never learn, but there will always be a solution.
they still have control over what you see and what you record, no?
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Basicly, it's the digital interface standard, and is used for graphics cards -> LCD screens mainly, but now apparently also for HDTV. It supports HDCP, (CP = copy protection), but is in general a very good standard besides that. The standard itself has support for all HDTV variants, of course it all depends on what you hook up to it.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
DIVX was cleanly destroyed by a concerted early-adopter-consumer effort which led to a total lack of support for the format. I remember the rather quick decline amongst million dollar ads that was due to nothing more than those "in the know" informing Joe Q Public; "DIVX? Don't buy that, it's worhtless." I don't see why that couldn't happen here. Make a big stink beforehand; you'll never buy a set that supports this. It's worthless and forces the user to follow corporate mandates. Then make sure you tell anyone who'll listen. No money-hungry corporation will be able to resist for long; one or more will break ranks and offer non-DVI devices that (hopefully) will sell like hotcakes while the DVI boxes rot on the shelves.
In a battle between PVRs and HDTV, PVRs will win. Much as I want the quality of HDTV, if I can't watch it when I want to, or even when I can, then it doesn't exist. And my family is much less techo/videophile than I am --- quality really doesn't matter that much to them.
And I mean a nice Sony 36" Color NTSC set. I bought it about 3 years ago.
The thing will probably last me another 20 years.
In fact, I have no intention of replacing it until it dies, during which I can only hope this content control bullshit is sorted out.
If I'm going to so much as subscribe to anything on HDTV, there had damn well better be some way for me to record the shows I want to see. I don't really watch TV now, but I did when I had a satellite feed. I'd do it all over again, but I'd have a satellite TIVO this time.
I'm bitching because I would love to eventually set up my home theater with a widescreen HDTV setup, but I will seriously think twice about it with content controls...even if they don't affect my viewing habits.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
when enough people got screw, they'll call in class action suits...
This is so screwy it's not funny...
:
:-(
Problem is this
Companies do whatever they can get away with.
Consumers (mostly ignorant and/or lazy) allow companies to get away with anything.
Government lets "market forces" (read : companies screwing consumers) sort things out.
And so the cycle continues...and most consumers are either too ignorant or lazy to do anything about it
Until consumers start growing some teeth, things will not change.
...this is getting out of hand
It does not matter how much encryption is used on a sugnal, it always has to be decrypted, in order to be put on the screen.
So you can always get your signal from there. Sure some more hacking will be required, but that doesnt stop people from putting chips in their consoles.
Arent they tired of being played around by the "culture industry"? This trick will certainly cost the hardware manufacturers, fewer people will buy the new hdtvs, now that they can never be sure for how long they can be useful. The home electronic appliance industry dwarfs both the TV and movie industries and in my opinion its about time they started trowing their weight around.
Article: http://www.digi.no/dtno.nsf/pub/dd20020221155040_
Law:
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/e
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I don't buy cable -- its full of ads I don't want
I don't buy CDs -- its money in the pockets of people that don't deserve it
I don't pay for movies --ibid.
and its not doing any good.
I think the people who say 'you have the power' to stop this, 'just don't buy it!' are missing the point that if you read this message you are in the 1/10th of 1 percent informed elite in this country. The rest are blind, branwashed, masses working hard to buy stuff they don't need from companies who use thier own efforts to market them the things they don't need.
I'm not saying its a conspiracy -- its not. Really look at the way our world works, if its working right, and you'll inevitably conclude its wayyy fscked up.
Things will change when things get bad enough that YOU who understand what is going on get involved and start dropping your TV from the airplane. (see above)
They'll get sick when people stop buying the hardware. Tons of people bought HD sets and add-ons for thousands of dollars. If this sticks there will be a new format making SOME of that older equipment obsolete.... then tons of other people will spend thousands more on the new hardware that isn't.
You don't have to worry about them, they won't let too much happen that keeps them from turning a profit. The big companies with all of the patents won't help us out, but us becoming wiser consumers will.
If they wanted to get picky they could broadcast it with timestamps and bits that tell the TVs not to play it back at any other time than live. While the supreme court ruled that timeshifting is legal, it's uncertain if that means they are required to make it easy or possible.
That leaves you with opening up your sealed decrypting TV and decoding the analog signals going into the CRT, or putting a camera at the screen. Not going to be very common.
There is another solution, however, which is to change the nature of how advertising integrates into TV. Make TV pay TV but give people a discount, all the way to free, every time they really watch a commercial. Then you don't need to put the decryption in the monitor, which is good, but you still need DRM to make the pay TV work.
Details on my page on the future of tv
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
"The electronics industry kept this secret under wraps as long as they could. "
If this is the case, wouldn't consumers be able to file a class action lawsuit? They should, and it should cost all involved dearly. Possibly, it should even be severe enough that the government should dissallow the use of encryption by the broadcasters.
At the rate this is going, I think people may need to consider government oversight of the mpaa, and to a limited extent, the studios. Although that goes against many capitolistic ideals, these groups seem to embrace every thing bad about capitolism. It sure wouldn't hurt the quality of media -- tv sucks so bad, I'm surprise people aren't embarrased to be in the industry, The stupidity most programs amazing. Very few movies are worth the price of gas to get to a theater, and most musicians are less creative than a person making $10 an hour on an assembly line.
Another option would be to do it the right way -- independant artists selling their wares via the net. Remove the current media houses from the process entirely. This will allow the true artists to not get lost in the shadows of mass marketted corporate garbage we are currently exposed to.
... is the word you require
2. HDTV Programming while becoming a bit more common, is still few and far between by comparison.
3. Who actually watches that much TV anyway? (Sorry, but really) The only things I watch on TV anymore are low-res, low-quality by nature. (Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park, and I only watch them when i happen to be bored and they are on)
As I remember it, there's some kind of loopwhole where providers can use the HDTV space to provide more low res channels and thats about all I see happening in the forseeable future. I regard HD as dead in the water.
While we're at it, any paragraph containing the world "linux" should be displayed with non-breaking spaces. After all, what standard dictates how wordwrap should be handled?
You mean more than one person actually owns an HDTV set?
sulli
RTFJ.
The MPAA is not supposed to be watching out for the public, they're supposed to be watching out for their shareholders. Of course, they're rather thickheaded to think they can scr3w their customers and not suffer. But stupidity is not usually a crime.
would be to have the media makers who are pushing for these new standards to obsolete current generation HDTVs purchase new HDTVs of the same quality for those affected by the switch. I would hope that that would make these media companies think twice about doing these things in the future.
If not now, when?
The input of my RCA TV is VGA. IIRC RCA has
decided to use the vga connectors for ther HDTV
connections.
Personally I could care less what they do with
the signal, outside of TechTV and CNBC I rarely
watch TV anyway. Well there is that Buffy obsession,
but I wont talk about that.
IBrowse with an Amiga handles it fine. ;)
Hey! How else would I know there are two caps in the name? Check it out if
you care to.
ac
That circut looks interesting but there is still one huge problem. Your video card generates its signal in progressive format. 1080i - i means interlaced signal. to my knowledge there is no consumer based video card on the market that outputs interlaced outputs. There are some hdtv monitors that do accept 1080p but the only one I know of is a samsung flat panel display. If you or anyone can find a vga progressive to component interlaced converter that does 1920x1080 please email me for that is the only reason I want an hdtv!
As someone that works in the HDTV industry, broadcasters use the ATSC standard for HDTV broadcasts. Where does MPAA come in to this equation?
TV watchers are a tolerant and passive bunch. TV fans will have the boots of the industry grinding in their faces forever.
I can't imagine that the industry would screw over the millions of people that will have bought HDTV sets by the end of this year. More likely, is that they might start offering different levels of service - at the standard rate, you get 480p analog, but at a higher rate, you can continue to get 1080i. If there's money to be made from selling to the capabilities of the existing sets, they'll do it.
All of these ignorant little schemes whereby the movie/music/content industry slowly work towards implosion will most likely be killed within the next couple of years. Look at the Charly Pride fiasco - they seemed to get enough people together to get a class action lawsuit and force a settlement out of the industry. What happens when 24-49 year old people begin to feel the effects of the RIAA/MPAA's poor business decisions and governmental influencing?
More and more people are getting connected, want to take advantage of all that "new" technology. What will happen when millions of those people are forced into adopting that technology and find that it does little that they want it to and far less than what they've been able to do in the past. Lawyers are probably chomping at the bit waiting for this day to come so that they can chew into the cash cow that is the RIAA/MPAA.
Most of us here are of a small vocal minority. In the "grand scheme" of things it's seen that we have little power over the outcome of these decisions. But is that in fact true. Everyday I come in close contact with at least 20 people, 10 of which I have regular conversations with. Almost every person within my sphere of influence knows about these issues because I've taken the time to communicate them and worked it into conversations about things that are already happening in their lives. How many people within your sphere know about these issues? What will you do to change that?
This issue stirs up so many past issues not just in the music industry but also in how the government is run (US and Global), how laws are passed/enforced/judged, Intellectual Property, "freedom" of information, telling the truth - ethics in company and government communication, etc. It's crazy that there's a connection between wanting to tape Dawson's Creek and the need for US government political finance reform. That connection shouldn't even be there, companies should not be able to shape the policies of a government, only individuals should have that power. No corporate junkets, hosting, food, clothing, ad time, benefit dinners, fund raisers, trips, private meetings. These are PUBLIC officials, everything that they do outside of their personal life should be OPEN AND AVAILABLE TO PUBLIC SCRUTINY. If individuals mass and make requests that are beneficial to the corporations then GREAT that means it's probably beneficial to the public/consumer also. I don't want to hear that Merk/Medco, Phillip/Morris, SONY, AOL/TW endorse candidate X or that GM's local union whatever endorses candidate Y. I don't want to hear about how many lobbyists that MS has hired out from under AOL. I definitely do not want to hear about how some company or corporate rights group is influencing the EU or China or India or other foreign government. That's just crap and more and more they are the reason that the US gets shat upon by other countries. India and Pakistan population were mad because several companies pulled out after 9/11 and that meant jobs and livelihood lost to those people, people already underpaid for their quality work.
We should limit companies ability to influence any government. Companies should not be allowed to voice their issues through the same means meant for individuals. Does that mean that I think government should ignore the needs of business - No - I just think that it should be through a seperate channel that takes the issues and stores them like data and all of that government/corporate/public communication would be free and viewable to the people (public would be anonymous by request... comments would be posted without ID). The government should take the data and be proactive in it's use, not reactive to the corporate needs but forecast those needs based on what the public is telling them is the real need. I know that's all idealistic, but why can't idealism create realism? Why can't what we dream and think be manifested into something tangeable?
The average Joe does not yet see these issues as a problem and won't until they effect him or someone he knows. Therefore it's our task to communicate how it is or will be soon effecting us (and them) and make it very REAL for average Joe. The other issue is that the people we really need on our side couldn't care less about this issue because they are struggling on issues of food or daycare or healthcare and not "can I watch my otaku goodies". Until we show them that, eirily enough, this does/can/will effect them then we won't have the votes necessary to really do some damage
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
Heh, well, my point was, while there is no official stadard for wordwrap, browsers should handle it sanely. IE's handling is not sane.
But then again, I am not a douchebag.
"My HDTV is connected via analog; is yours?"
Oh good. Then you have a TV set that is mostly a novelty now, and obsolete in another 2 years.
Hope you didn't pay more than about $300 to watch "The Tonight Show" in HDTV. What a fine use of HDTV.
Aren't [hardware manufacturers] tired of being played around by the "culture industry"?
The problem is, quite often the hardware makers are also the culture industry. Take Sony, for example.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Seems like an excellent opportunity for a class-action suit.
the onyl way to fix this is to complain to the advertisers who really pay for all of this crap to begin with. If you can't see their ads they will be pissed.
Lawmakers only care if they can line their own pockets while, ostensibly, doing something for the good of the people, regardless of political party. (Although liberals tend to be mroe hazy on this than "conservatives.")
This is detrimental to the standardization of HDTV and to the consumer. Changing standards and compatibility problems will pretty much preclude popular adoption. Contact the FCC to complain. www.fcc.gov
...the only way to watch movies is going to be through a neural connection to your visual cortex.
Not to mention that under the U.S. Constitution, copyrights may only be given for "limited Times".
The interest of the United States in giving out copyright monopolies lies in the benefit that the public derives from the labor of authors. This has been stated by no less an authority than the Supreme Court.
When films eventually fall into the public domain, it would be highly appropriate if people could make perfect digital copies of them -- and highly inappropriate for there to be any "technological protection" that would interfere with the public's use and enjoyment of the public domain works.
Come on!!!! PVR's a thing of the past!!! you must not have one ;) My TIVO is GREAT and I'll tell you if this does happen I will hack my TIVO to decode the stream. I'm sure others will also....
Those who wish for everything end up with nothing.
I work in one of the companies that owns a TV network.
Yes, the new standards are intended to be used by OTA local TV stations. They plan to instruct decoders to down-res any non-secure compliant setups.
So, people that watch over the air HDTV now and enjoy 1080i & 720p broadcasts, will eventually be watching 480i/p versions unless they upgrade to the new compliant hardware.
Insane? Yes.
Foolhardy? Yes.
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
Remember how good satellite used to look? Now look how crappy it is now as they overcompress the channels to squeeze more and more in the same bandwidth! I make SVCD off DVD-rips that look better than most content I see on the dish!
:)
HDTV looks fine now, but I bet it will start to suck as the same overloading happens.
How many of you have seen a DVD played back on a good progressive DVD player that does 3:2 pulldown at 480p ??? It is not much worse than 1080i for watching movies! I have seen same movie on my HD receiver and then watched it on my DVD player and there is not much difference.
Until movies start being shot on something other than film, HDTV is overkill for most.
But I am sure someone will come out with a box that converts this encrypted interface and outputs it to component video as 1080i/720p
BTW, I have disconnected my Model 6000 BEV receiver for a model 5100 with PVR since last September - that is how much I care about HDTV!
Throw away MK1 and Mk2, and the TV studios who are crying poor - will have to re-equip. I can see goverment sponsored advertising imploring us to buy this junk was not only a waste of money, but worse.
Unlike the US, some fool decreed it would be nice if we all got digital TV. A change like this - obsoleting units that we can't even buy, assuming the distrubutors could be convinceed to stock ithem(expensive, low margin slow/non movers).
Not to worry - there is no hiding from a focussed ion beam (FIB) - no harware can hide data over the bus, and this is not likely to change in the next 20 years, analog output socket or not.
What a timely story. Earlier today, I was just going out to purchase an HDTV monitor (Toshiba 36HFX71) because my old 20" Sony died. I figure I might as well get an HD model, since they are only like $800 more than a similar flat-screen standard-definition set.
/. and saw the initial story shortly after it was posted. I read the article and decided I don't want to get one now. I was going to get a dandy new DVD player to go with it, but I guess Hollywood will have to get by without me purchasing movies, now.
However, before leaving I just happened to check
It seems I keep watching less and less TV, and fewer and fewer movies. I'm sure these new "standards" will only help me reclaim more time.
It's amazing that in their greedy quest for money, they actually deter me from giving them more!
I don't know, but it works for me.
So they want to send an encrypted signal to the TV to avoid copying. Are they crazy? Once they choose their standard and are locked in to it, it's only a matter of time before there's either a set top box or computer PCI card + software that mimics the display device. Look how long we've been using the current TV standards... it will take a fraction of that time to circum-navigate the protection scheme. The DMCA is an American thing, and doesn't effect people developing devices abroad. Perhaps the DMCA will already have been thrown out when such a "TV proxy" comes along, or perhaps this will be the device that consumers stand behind to get the law changed.
The Format is already pooched, the FCC has not the BALLS to force cable MONS to must carry HDTV. What do you think they will do with the SPEC. Surly not the right thing. And if the cable MONS have their way we will all watch DTV crap that is worse that ANALOG but more of it. NOW THIS, if the MP assclowns get their way, we will never see any HDTV in our life times.
DON'T FSCKING BUY IT. If they can't market it, then it won't become standard no matter how bad they want it to. Remember the DIVX thing? (not the codec) No? I rest my case.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
I like to watch TV, but frankly it's not worth jumping through lots of hoops to do. Television content doesn't have enough brains put into it to really be worth all this encryption bs. If a show I want to watch is on a crummy timeslot, and I'm not allowed to record it, that's the Telelvision Industry shooting themselves in the foot. They are better off making it easier and easier for people to watch when they can, instead of trying to limit it. It's bad enough I have to be at my job by a certain time, it's bad enough I have to be at the doctor's by a certain time, being in front of my television at a certain time is not the type of shackles I want to place on myself.
Sorry TV Industry, you need better content before you can convince me I need to be punctual.
"Derp de derp."
That was really funny. Just so you know. It's also very sad. At any rate, I have no mod points...
Karma: Chameleon (Mostly affected by the 1980s)
Of course I have and love one. You need to re-read this topic to be clear on what the studios propose. Encryption all the way to the display device. Short of breaking the encryption, you can't alter an encrypted stream. If you record it, you have to play it exactly as is, no pausing, no skipping commercials, no rewind or FF of any kind, or the decryptor can be set to not decrypt it.
(In fact other than pausing you must be able to fully decrypt it to do any of these things.)
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
what does fair use mean to me?
i have many cds. around 300 of them. i own a cd burner.
some of my cds and copies, some are original.
i would have to say 'fair use' is about deciding WHO your money goes to. for example, i have 6 REM cd's that are copied, and no originals. my girlfriend has the originals for 3 of them, and since we're going to be living together soon, i'd consider those paid for. however, i only listen to REM -occasionally- and believe that they are big enought to support themselves. if i could not have copied those cds, i would not have bought them.
on the other hand, i've borrowed CDs from friends, and decided that i liked the CD, and went out and bought it. this was because they were smaller, lesser-known artists. i could have copied the CD, but chose not to because i knew the money, as well as the ratings, would help. the labels the cds were on were small as well; i have no clue if they're part of the riaa cartel.
i'd liken this copying to some negative feedback in the 'band popularity loop'. when bands get very famous, they need less money, yet they can reach a wider audience. so really, less and less people should be buying their cd's. especially if those people don't care too much.
you'd have a hard time winning any court case with this argument, but anyone on slashdot who doesn't believe in 'fair use' rights should think about this argument.
(this argument might be adaptable to movies. i don't know. i'm more of a music person. meaning i listen to music all the time. i can't really do that with movies without taking up all of my productivity)
Assuming it's your set that's reducing the quality of what you see, and not the transmitter that's transmitting reduced quality, you can quite legally build a circumvention device, since reducing the quality is not a right enjoyed by copyright holders under current legislation.
That's not to say that the current totalitarian regime in the US (and by extension the rest of the world) won't make it illegal at the drop of a "campaign contribution".
Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
Go read a good book instead subjecting yourself to the idiot box.
Peace.
This needs to stop. Why isn't congress defending us against this? There are forces working here that seek to strip us of fair use rights and our elected representatives are giving them all the ammunition to do it. It's time they started turning the tide on this stuff.
in Kansas, in favour of religious studies?
I foresee HDTV with DVI cacking it just like Circuit City's DIVX crapola.
In general, modern problems have medieval solutions...
Forget about improving the system. Forget about fighting the system. Take the money. Run.
Pushin' 'n dealin', shovin' 'n stealin'
These are the same people that will buy a widescreen LCD or plasma display HDTV for home that downconverts resolution because it doesn't have enough columns/rows and then complain about the lack of quality. Should have spent the extra $5K for one that could display full resolution up to 720p.
Caveat emptor.
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
I've always been confused by these so-called 'Page Widening Posts.' My pager has never been widened
I find that using 'Opera' to view these posts, doesn't widen my pages. Then I viewed one with I.E. Now I know what page widening is all about!
Even the FCC chairman admits that the "transition is failing". Further more he says:"The timelines we set out for success are unrealistic," he said. "When we go back and look at the deployment of other killer consumer products and services, nothing moves on a transitional timeframe like this one is expected to.".
I'd like to introduce my new PVR. It connects to the electron guns and deflection coils to read the electronic signals which paint the image on the screen. Using the cheap memory and processing power which is now available, it draws the image on a virtual screen and records from that.
It also detects subtle distortions in the circuitry of your individual TV set and corrects for them on playback, so when you view something which was recorded on my PVR it actually is better than the original.
(If you want features such as pause-live-TV, you also should get one of my prewired TVs as a second set which can be used to record under PVR control)
The article clearly states that you'll have to buy new equipment, *even if they don't use the encryption*.
1) HD-DVD
HDTV needs about 20 Mb/s compressed (broadcast quality) to 24 Mb/s depending on quality , so a two hour video needs over 20 GB of disc space. Besides capacity, the DVD format only supports a 9 Mb/s transfer rate, making even short portions of HD content unavailable on DVD.
You'll have to buy a new DVD player in order to play HD-DVDs.
2) HD-TVs currently get their signal via component cables. Those are ANALOG. Everybody knows that you need DIGITAL connections for the best quality.
DVI was developed by the Digital Display Working Group (DDWG) and has been chosen by the industry as the digital video connectivity solution. With a maximum capacity of 1.65 Gb/s per TMDS link (3 data channels per link, 2 links possible per connector), DVI is just right for high resolution video. The new(er) standard affords digital audio as well.
You'll need a HDTV with DVI connections to receive a digital signal.
Now, the MPAA wants to add copy protection to the digital signal. That sucks big donkey, but that's totally besides the point. You'll need to buy new sets anyway.
I did and I have no worries...
:)
Mitsubishi developed the 'Promise Module' to ease customers minds about this issue. The Promise Module basically is Mitsubishi's promise that they will retrofit any of their HDTV's to work the final HD signal. It's the best of both world, 65inches of widescreen now, HiRes Simpson's in five years
Nuff sed
The DCMA must be the most f***ed up law ever to take residence in a civilized country.
As a non-US resident (Im from Norway) just reading about the DCMA is more than I need to feel disgusted.
I really ain't my problem, but I can NOT see how you guys who live there, actually accepts the legal limitations which comes as a result of this law.
And I think it's your freaking responsibility to take it out before some world leaders starts going "Thats a good idea". You wouldn't wan't to be blamed for another major legal decease infecting our planet?
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
What the fuck is the DCMA?
Digital Millenium Copyright Act
The fucking M comes before the fucking C, you morons!
Sorry boy! Even morons should be appologized for typos.
And beeing a moron and a foreigner not memorizing every single shortened law-name in the o-holy US of A is quite a difference.
DMCA. Digital Millenium Copyright Act
I'll try to memorize it properly this time :)
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Let me introduce myself: I am Joe Average Technogeek. I've got lots of audio and video toys in my living room, and now also in my car. I've got 5 PCs, of which 2 have video in/out capabilities. I have a boatload of DVD's, as well as every non-bleeding edge console ever made (all but the Gamecube and XBox). I watch about 2 hours of TV per month, and that's only when I catch the Family Guy or some french comedy show. I just don't see the point in spending a month's salary or more on a stupid TV that is full of advertising. There is hardly anything worth watching despite the hundreds of channels. Same thing goes for radio (indy stations excluded).
We spend all our time complaning against MPAA/RIAA and its incestful offspring. Why do we keep buying TV sets and giving in to fads like 500-channel satellite services and this so-called HDTV when the only entity really benefitting from it is the aforementioned cartel ? Crap is crap, it doesn't matter how many channels of it you can choose.
What we need is an alternative; an organized and regulated yet simple network of independent quality broadcasters. Collaborative pirate radio and television. We already have a somewhat free internet we've somehow learned to master, let's spread the concept to traditional media outlets. You want original content ? You create it yourself, then share it with the world. Multiply this times hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of collaborators, and you have what might be the most fascinating window into human intellect and artistry that could ever be conceived. An escape from the monotony of corporate brainwashing and eyeball-raping. Something where anyone and everyone can and does contribute.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I don't know exactly when that standard was created, 1947 or 1949? I'm a bit young to remember it (it was near 40 years before my birth). But french TV set had a resolution of 819p (better than your poor 720...) Sadly they went back to 625p (theoretical value. it seems to be 576p otherwise) in 1962 for european compatibility (and for color there would have been bandwith problems) but I don't care about HDTV: my 576p has better quality than DVD, with a classic reception (normal antenna, no cable or satellit). NTSC stinks. SECAM (séquentiel à mémoire) is way better. It's funny to see high quality images live from Palestine or Pakistan and blurry bullshit from Washington DC. NTSC looks worse than european VHS.
My favorite example for disputing Slashdot's law of universal crack-ability is digital cable in the USA: PowerKEY (Scientific-Atlanta) and DigiCipher (General Instruments/Motorola) have not been cracked.
Cryptography actually does work if implemented correctly. It's true brute force can be applied to most methods, but it's impractical if the message is long enough (e.g. a movie) and the key is changed often enough. How long would it take to decrypt a movie encrypted with GPG if each 1 megabyte chunk were encrypted seperately?
As far as attacking the keystream, remember, you need a crib (see Cryptonomicon) to attempt a brute force attack. If they keys are truly random (see early Netscape for a counter-example), you don't have a crib. You don't know when your brute force attack has found the right key.
There are pseudorandom number generators that have exceptionally long periods, but if they wanted, cable companies can afford to install 1U hardware truly-random number generators in every headend.
Also, I know it's obsolete, but Circuit City's Divx was never cracked. They expected they only had a few years
SD (secure digital) cards haven't been cracked either. There's probably not enough good stuff on 'em to bother yet, but when Music Net & Pressplay start offering downloads to "secure" portable players, I expect it will take more than a year to crack it. I'd put money on it.
-M
I was originally going to post to correct you on your spelling of the word "capitolism", thinking you instead meant "capitalism". The word "capitalism" derives from the word "capital", meaning money, as in "raising capital". "Capitol", on the other hand, is the seat of government for a geographic area. But the more I thought about what you posted, even if it was a misspelling, your use of "capitolism" was more correct. This legal stupidity has everything to do with government control, and damned little to do with earning an honest buck.
FYI:
After reading this post I became very depressed. I recently (3 months ago) purchased a 50" Toshiba HDTV set from Best Buy which I was quite happy with until I read the article.
Even though I knew that Best Buy's return policy was limited to 30 days, I decided to print the article and show it to one of the managers at Best Buy in hopes of convincing him to let me return it. Sure enough, after reading the article he allowed me to get a FULL refund.
Yeah, the people running the country back when the President's daddy was just a lieutenant didn't screw around with PC horseshit. They new evil had slanty eyes ^H^H^H^H^H^H wore a towel on its head.
"Built in America, Tested in Japan"
That's funny, computer technology seems to be moving along at a good pace.
When the minions of the MPAA finally flee the potato famine and reach the promised land of digital technology, they'll find the geeks already there.
(oh, wait, bad anaolgy, that leaves the door open to making the geeks==aborignals comparison. And we all know how that turned out.)
Actually the law re DAT decks only requires SCMS on "consumer" decks, while "professional" decks have always been exempt. (not to mention the most obnoxious part, that there is a tax on each blank DAT cassette, regardless of what it is to be used for, which goes to fatten the RIAA labels!)
So, if you buy a deck that is considered "professional" by its manufacturer, it will either have no SCMS on it, or else a configurable/defeatable switch.
So in the small and shrinking world of DAT decks for audio (not to mention 4mm DDS for data storage which with original DDS1 started out identical to DAT, but now has different headers on it), your first question is "Is it a 'Pro' deck or a 'Consumer' deck?" Some manufacturers (e.g. Sony) have completely different divisions and operations for "Pro" equipment, separate from "Consumer" equipment, you can't get the parts or service for a "Pro" deck if you accidentally call the usual "Consumer" hotline, etc.
My old Sony PCM2000 (where I discovered the problems with trying to get service from Sony, being a mere mortal, back at the dawn of the Web before companies went online, only having their "consumer" service numbers), and my less old Panasonic SV3700, are "pro" DAT decks.
From the front panel config menus of the Panasonic 3700, I can turn off SCMS recognition entirely, or turn it back on. It can tell me what SCMS bits are set on a DAT cassette, but it doesn't have to honor them. (SCMS comes with two bits -- the first bit, if set, indicates original copyrighted source but allows a single digital copy at a time. The copy then is supposed to have the second bit set, disabling any further digital copying)
Actually I've never ever seen a DAT cassette with any SCMS on it anyway, I've never seen a pre-recorded DAT, all I've ever used were recorded by me or people I knew anyway.
"Consumer" grade DAT decks all have the "S/PDIF" digital I/O RCA jacks (that's "Sony Philips Digital Interface Format", what a great standard).
"Professional" DAT decks may have S/PDIF but they also should (if they're any good) also have AES/EBU, which has the same "cannon jacks" as microphone cables, and is the real "standard" for digital audio I/O.
SCMS, if there is any on a DAT, is stored in, I forget, either the timecode data or the index data (indices don't get transmitted to copies with digital I/O, but timecode does).
The SCMS can be transmitted over the SPDIF interface, but there is no provision for it in the AES/EBU interface.
Oh right, so on the Panasonic 3700, the control for whether or not to transmit SCMS (if found on the DAT cassette) only applies to the SPDIF output, not to the AES/EBU output, under the assumption that those "consumer" decks, for which SCMS is designed, won't have AES/EBU on them anyway.
And yes you can buy converter boxes to and from AES/EBU and S/PDIF (sans SCMS).
Note that some manufacturers in their excessive paranoia went so far as to disable recording from digital input (S/PDIF) at 44.1KHz, altogether, regardless of whether there were actually SCMS bits set in it or not (even regardless of whether the SCMS, if there was any, had only bit one set, allowing a copy). So even if you had recorded your own stuff, if it was at 44.1KHz, this broken kind of deck would not make a copy of it, over the S/PDIF digital input.
We had a TEAC DAT deck like this once, what a pain. Also when I first bought a SoundBlaster Live! PCI card it had the same problem (would not record at all, from digital input, at 44.1KHz), until I downloaded a patch from Creative Labs.
What do the 'p' and 'i' stand for in 480p and 1080i? Interlaced? Pixels?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.