Digital TV Still Indecisive

/dev/trash writes "The logjam between Hollywood and Silicon Valley seems to be over. According to this article on cnn.com. It looks like they want to just add a flag that says "this is a broadcast, do not allow more than one copy"" If it was only that simple- the article makes it sound like there isn't a lot of progress being made.

Comments

Over or just starting..for us atleast

[cOdEgUru]

Kraus said it right :

"The only consensus this group seems to be arriving at is that there is no consensus," Kraus said.

One thing I dont understand is these groups fanatically oppose any consumer intervention, meaning you and I, though we are ultimately affected by these decisions, have no way of participating. I rate these money mongers at the same level as Mafiosi thugs.

Also once this bill is passed, we would have no way of sending copyrighted material to our office computers or any other ones.

Re:Over or just starting..for us atleast

[morgajel]

at least the mafia say they're "protecting you".

these jerks won't even give you that!:)
they just protect big business.

Re:Over or just starting..for us atleast

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you have a way to participate. If you're a United States citizen you can participate in an election of your legislative and executive branch every so often. The trouble is, how do you fight groups with widespread media exposure that you don't have? In fact, how do you fight the media itself when they control what people have easy access to? Sure, people can go on the Internet and look around, but how long before even that is controlled by only a handful of media giants? It's already well underway with big cable companies controlling such a huge portion of the Internet access layer.

double?

[sPaKr]

Am I seeing double.. ugh.. how many times do we need to see the same story? I guess CmdTaco has better things todo then read /.

Re:double?

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent troll.

Re:double?

[Lonath]

I guess CmdTaco has better things todo then read /.

My opinion of him just went up.

But seriously, this just means that they will go to Sen. Hollings (D-Disney) for more controls like the SSCCPBDTABA or whatever it's being called this week to hide from the public outcry.

And, in case you were still buying or renting content, plz stop so these people can't do this stuff. Don't steal the stuff, just don't buy it either.

Re:double?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lonath! I've been looking forever for you -- it's Mog. Do you still have the LoC1 areas or code? Please contact me at AIM: moogleone or moogleone at h0tm4i1.

Yeah right

[delphi125]

or whether recordable DVDs would have to be encrypted to prevent further duplication

Since when does encryption prevent duplication? Do these people never learn?

Re:!!!GO USA!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

political: we manage to get every country ticked at us.
social: we are self absorbed, unthinking, and cannot function socially without coffee and television
education: our system is a mess. there's not enough money to pay teachers. the ciriculum is dumbed down. half the students can't pass basic minimum requirement tests.

ah, but we have Patriotism(TM) and that makes us right!

Still Can Be Distributed

[jwilhelm]

What they don't seem to understand is that as long is it can be viewed it can be copied into a format that can be distributed online. Maybe the copy won't be as clean, but if it can be viewed it can be copied, and if it can be copied, it can be distributed.

Re:Still Can Be Distributed

[gwernol]

What they don't seem to understand is that as long is it can be viewed it can be copied into a format that can be distributed online. Maybe the copy won't be as clean, but if it can be viewed it can be copied, and if it can be copied, it can be distributed.

Of course the critical bit is "the copy won't be as clean". What the studios are really afraid of is precise digital copying. If the copies degrade with each duplication, as analog video does, then a peer-to-peer network isn't nearly as useful: you can only copy the show out to limited number of people before it degrades to grey noise. So a lot of folks still have to buy the product.

If you have pristine digital copying then everyone can (in theory) have easy access to that show after just one person has bought it.

That's what the studio (IMHO) are trying to block. They accept that copying and limited distribution already takes place through VHS tapes. They don't really care about that as its a marginal losss. They fear digital copying because it could put a huge hole in their business model.

Re:Still Can Be Distributed

[Carbonite]

If the copies degrade with each duplication, as analog video does, then a peer-to-peer network isn't nearly as useful: you can only copy the show out to limited number of people before it degrades to grey noise.

If an analog copy is made from the original, the quality only degrades once. After that one-time hit, the data can be stored and distributed in digital format. It's the same with the copy protected CDs. In the absolute worst case, the sound from the speaker is recorded with a microphone and then stored as a regular MP3.

Any public display,

[Limburgher]

recording, rent, sale or rebroadcast of this game without the express written consent of Major League Baseball is prohibited. . .

. . .unless all chnages made to the source are submitted back to the authors and the original and modified sources are distributed with any complied binaries.

Re:Any public display,

[Anonymous Coward]

just go out to international waters where MLB is rebroadcast with implied oral consent :)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Probably...until the hack the hack comes out

[Roached]

Consumers could save digital broadcasts on DVDs, and transfer broadcasts for playback on different devices in the same house, they said. But they probably would not be able to e-mail an episode of "The Simpsons" to a friend, or make it available on a file-sharing network like KaZaA.

At least until debroadcastcss is developed. Gee, they don't even seem confident that it will work...

Re:Probably...until the hack the hack comes out

[sffubs]

Actually afaik they've managed to keep the encryption standard for DVB under wraps in Europe - I don't think anyone has broken it yet. Of course, people have reverse-engineered the authentication modules, and the encryption keys are freely available over the net... -s

Where's the Value?

[Lysander Luddite]

I don't understand why BigCos don't want broadcast (as opposed to pay TV like HBO) to be shared or spread. The only value for the broadcaster is in the initial broadcast. As the shows are rerun their audience diminishes and the perceived value from the customer drops.

Once the broadcasting machine realizes that people don't watch commercials as much as they want to believe they'll likely realize increased exposure to their product would guarantee after broadcast revenues such as DVD and VHS sales, and secondary merchandising opportunities.

It's just going to take them a while to figure this out. By the time they do everything will be locked up anyway.

Re:Where's the Value?

[grungeKid]

They still broadcast ads before/after/during reruns, and advertisers still pay. Maybe less than what they would pay for appearing next to the initial broadcast of a show, but probably enough to cover the costs and more. Why else would 30+ year old shows still be rerun?

Ever notice how many ads there are in recorded shows being spread around file sharing networks?

Re:Where's the Value?

[Lysander Luddite]

Ahh yes, but its a game of diminishing returns. Like I said, one people realize that TV ads are little more effective than web ads then the whole system will need to be reengineered. I believe that the broadcasters will realize that their are more opportunities outside the broadcast for money making. They don't show ads on DVD collections during the shows do they?

No I don't know how many shared files have commercials. I don't download them.

Re:Where's the Value?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see:
1) other networks pay for rights to rebroadcast (see Fox, WB, etc)

2) sales of DVD/VHS copies of episodes are becoming more common. Check around online or at local stores for seasons of X-Files, Friends, The Simpsons, etc. on DVD. Of course, HBO's series are probably doing better than the rest of these, but there's little doubt that there's value in these for those companies.

As far as diminishing returns goes, there's probably a bigger audience for shows like 'I Love Lucy' today than there was when it originally aired. The problem for studios is figuring out which ones are worth the money, which is why they usually hang on to everything as tightly as possible (after all, they cancelled Star Trek).

Re:Where's the Value?

[WebMasterJoe]

I don't understand why BigCos don't want broadcast (as opposed to pay TV like HBO) to be shared or spread. The only value for the broadcaster is in the initial broadcast. As the shows are rerun their audience diminishes and the perceived value from the customer drops.

I agree. The whole idea of over-the-air broadcasts is that anybody with the proper receiver can pick up the signal. So, if we can all receive the programming for free, why can't we make a near-perfect copy of it for our friends?

The "content owners" say that we don't have the right to re-broadcast, basically because if everybody could re-broadcast then their syndicated shows would be less desirable and they couldn't keep making money selling the same product. Also, we could remove the advertising if we wanted to, or theoretically replace it with our own to subsidize our costs.

But let's focus on that last part - if we take out the advertising, then the audience that we re-distribute to won't go out and buy a new Jeep after watching our copy of the show. So the companies that advertise through the "content owners" don't get that additional exposure. But guess what? If we don't re-distribute, then our second-generation audience won't see it anyway. They also won't see the program, or the network's watermark in the bottom corner, so they may be less interested in getting the broadcast feed next time it's on. And that means nobody is going to tell them to drink Sprite ("Don't listen to celebrity testimonials, drink Sprite and be like me, the Famous Athlete").

The "content owners" are confusing "free advertising" with "loss of control" - yes, they aren't the only providers of the Andy Richter show now, but they have a distinct edge over the P2P network - they have the newest episodes, best quality, and are most convenient (most of us don't run the ATI All-in-Wonder out to the TV), and it's the same price to consumers. All that the P2P networks have is time- and space-shifting.

Re:Where's the Value?

[milo_Gwalthny]

This is a good point. In the magazine world, publishers assume a "pass-around" rate: for every copy sold, several people read it. This rate is different for each type of magazine (ie. computer mags have a higher pass-around rate than business mags.)

The magazines use this number to get higher ad revenue ("well, sure we only sell 100,000 copies, but 500,000 people read it.")

You would think TV would do the same thing. Passing around TV shows would be an entirely new distribution network, increasing ad revenues.

Unless you use those damn Tivos to skip the ads.

Re:Where's the Value?

[plague3106]

(after all, they cancelled Star Trek).

The majority of my tv time is actually spent watching star trek.

Re:Where's the Value?

[roybadami]

Ahh yes, but its a game of diminishing returns. Like I said, one people realize that TV ads are little more effective than web ads then the whole system will need to be reengineered. I believe that the broadcasters will realize that their are more opportunities outside the broadcast for money making. They don't show ads on DVD collections during the shows do they?

I've read that typically the first run rights to a major US show will only net the production company about 80% of the production costs.

So they rely on rerun rights, syndication rights, international rights and VHS/DVD sales to actually take them into profit on the show.

Widespread availability of the show on the Internet after its US first run could erode the value of all of the above, and threaten the economic viability of TV production.

I'm not necessarily saying that I agree with the stance that the media industry is taking, but it isn't hard to see why they're scared. Unless they can stop the unstoppable, they will have to come up with an as yet unknown and untried business model. Would you want to be in their shoes?

Re:Where's the Value?

[roybadami]

You would think TV would do the same thing. Passing around TV shows would be an entirely new distribution network, increasing ad revenues.

Unfortunately, this won't work, for two reasons.

Firstly, I get the impression that most people who share shows over the net edit out the ads.

Seconds, you lose the geographical focus. Local advertisers aren't going to be interested in having their ad seen outside their catchement area. And even national advertisers in many cases won't be interested in having their ad viewed outside their country.

And yet it devalues the international sales of the show, because people can watch it on the net before it's been shown in their own country.

This is a lose lose situation for the TV companies...

DAT died...

[geoff lane]

...because it had such a copy prevention flag.

While you can go to the store and choose between two boxes, one that can record/replay anything and one that can't (and assuming all else being equal) the box with the copy prevention will stay on the shelf.

You can already see this with DVD players. Nobody need buy a region restricted player any more. Almost all DVD players can either be configured by the supplier or the owner to play any region disk and the makers are unlikely to end this any time soon (nobody wants to end up with warehouses full of DVD players with the wrong region set...)

Re:DAT died...

[Microlith]

Apple had a copy prevention flag too.

Set one bit and supposedly the Apple OS would not copy a file. This was, inevitably, ignored by everything including apple's own software shortly after it was implemented.

Of course, it wasn't *legally* mandated, but you never know what might happen.

Re:DAT died...

[Dimensio]

I wasn't aware of this. While I did consider hackability when choosing a new player, I was far more interested in a model that could output a good progressive scan image (and play SVCDs) and I was willing to sacrifice region selection for that.

Re:DAT died...

[name_already_taken]

Nobody need buy a region restricted player any more.

In the UK I understand this is commonplace, but I don't think that's the case in the USA.

I seem to remember also that software DVD players were supposed to only allow the region code to be changed five times before locking it down.

Re:DAT died...

[tshoppa]

..because it had such a copy prevention flag.

Two points:

1. DAT isn't dead. It's not being used for consumer audio, but is still somewhat common in pro studios as an interchange format. It's in decline in pro use as other technologies displace it, but five years or so ago all pro audio techs used it and even many amateurs with a few hundred extra $.
2. It was doomed for mass consumer use anyway. Yes it was vastly better than regular audio cassettes - but it was also much much more expensive (both for the recorder and for the media.) For the last several years, of course, CD-R is the vastly more affordable and usually more convenient consumer equivalent.

Re:DAT died...

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, isn't there some sort of damn "artists" tax tacked onto DAT hardware and media because the RIAA was so diligent in protecting the artists?

AHRA mandated SCMS copy protection, and recorder tax, and media tax, on all consumer digital audio recorders. That affects not just consumer DAT, but other technologies that came after it, such as DCC (deceased), MiniDisc, and standalone CD-RW.

On the basis of the Betamax decision, the Congress should have told the record companies to take a flying leap with respect both to copy protection and to taxes. Instead they gave the record industry both to make them go away and leave home recording alone. (You can see how successful the appeasement was by looking at the lawsuit against the Rio, or the formation of the SDMI group, or the extra layers of copy protection on DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD.)

Re:DAT died...

[roybadami]

DAT isn't dead. It's not being used for consumer audio

FWIW, I believe it is popular for consumer audio in Japan.

Re:DAT died...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple at least had the decency to call their bit the "Bozo" bit. (tick, tick, tick... waiting for the 12 second timeout)

Re:DAT died...

[ncc74656]

Nobody need buy a region restricted player any more.

In the UK I understand this is commonplace, but I don't think that's the case in the USA.

They're not as easy to find ("region-free" isn't something you'll see on the shelf tag), but you can find DVD players that are either (1) region-free out of the box or (2) can be upgraded by various means to be region-free (some are as simple as burning a CD-R with updated firmware). Your grandma probably won't know where to look for region-free DVD players, but she probably doesn't have non-R1 DVDs anyway. (I don't either, but I reserve the right to get my DVDs wherever I want. Jack Valenti can go fsck himself in the neck, and his minions can do the same.)

Re:DAT died...

[Cid Highwind]

FWIW, I believe it is popular for consumer audio in Japan.

I think you might be confusing DAT with MiniDisc. They both have serial copy prevention bits, but MD is WAY more popular with consumers, especially in Japan.

Re:DAT died...

[spitzak]

The professional equipment does not have SCMS. So it is quite possible that copy protection is the explanation for the consumer equipment failure, while the machines that lacked it succeeded.

Re:DAT died...

[roybadami]

I think you might be confusing DAT with MiniDisc. They both have serial copy prevention bits, but MD is WAY more popular with consumers, especially in Japan.

No, I'm not confusing the two, though minidisc may have taken over from DAT in the consumer market. I vaguely recall that (many years ago) Sony were planning some way cool low-cost play-only DAT walkmen...

Re:DAT died...

[jedrek]

I paid a 25% premium on my DVD-ROM to get it RF right out of the box. In fact, living in Europe, I will *not* buy a DVD player that doesn't allow me to switch regions. No way in hell!

Re:DAT died...

[tshoppa]

So it is quite possible that copy protection is the explanation for the consumer equipment failure, while the machines that lacked it succeeded.

That's possible. It's also possible that we'd all be flying around in private helicopters instead of driving cars if only the FAA would open up helo pilot licensing to the public.

I personally believe that consumer DAT was a flop for the same reason that Elcassetes and quadrophonic vinyl (remember those? all the rave for a couple months each in the 1970's as the "new consumer audio standard") didn't succeed, and that was because none of them offered sufficient perceived value to the average consumer to justify their costs.

What's the difference between...

[rob-fu]

doing what was done in article and having a TV card in your computer and capturing the video, as an mpeg, and then putting it on a DVD? Maybe I missed something in the article.

I like to think of it as a poor man's PVR.

Re:What's the difference between...

[Technician]

Digital TV is an interactive (handshake required) transmission between components. (tuner-monitor/display) A perfect copy of the data stream will be refused by the digital monitor due to the lack of a handshake when the encrypted stream is fed back to a digital display from a non-lisenced playback device. This is not the analog NTSC or SVGA stuff you are used to. Any recorders will be required (by DMCA etc) to take the Copyrighted copy bit and change it to I am a copy bit when recorded. That copy will not be able to be recorded (2nd generation) to a device (DMCA playback hardware) that will handshake with the monitor. Your encrypted (received by e-mail) film will not play from your hard drive. A burner (DMCA hardware) will not burn it on a DVD for playback.
That's the way they have been trying to set up Serial Content Copy Control specification for digital TV. It's to be encrypted with challenge/response communications all the way to the monitor with protection against making a playable copy of a copy. (protected by the DMCA and prevented by the hardware) It will be the same as the SONY Music Minidisk with it's serial copy protection. It's nice, has nice quality, but limited in usefullness and wide spread adoption. MP3's and WAV's on CDR's open format has vastly overtaken SONY's portable music market.
Hardware manufactures know the power of the votes of the public dollars and don't want to make hardware that is voted down by the consumers.

A perfect digital copy of crappy content...

[jbarr]

...is still crappy content. When will the networks learn?

Re:A perfect digital copy of crappy content...

[Anonymous Coward]

So true, but there has never been a way of fixing it. Until now, that is. I think we finally have the means of providing a solution. Forget about a "copy protect" flag, or whatever those hamfisted crap purveyors are screwing around with. What we really need is a "this sucks, don't bother watching" flag. You could tag every single episode of "Roseanne" right now.

Now all we need...

[NetRanger]

Is a flag for "Don't Allow Broadcast Company to be a Rights-Trampling Monopolist".

I suspect they aren't going to hold up the rollout to include this one though.

Digital TV has copy protection?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, sorry, for a moment there I forgot I was in the UK, where we've had Digital TV on Satalite, Cable and Terrestrial for over three years. What copy protection?

Next you'll tell me that the US doesn't have a single agreed standard for their mobile telephone networks!

Re:Digital TV has copy protection?

[Alan Partridge]

don't pick on the technologically bckward Americans. It's just not fair. Did anyone else notice the Winter Olympics fiasco? They had HD in France, Norway, Japan and... ermm... sort of HD in America too. It wasn't even widescreen for fuck's sake! The BBC had to put blue panels down each side of the picture. Oh, the shame of it!

Re:Digital TV has copy protection?

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, so have we over on this side... Digital TV is NOT digital sat/cable. Digital TV is putting a digital signal directly into your TV, no coax/svideo involved.

Re:Digital TV has copy protection?

[Alan Partridge]

ermm... we don't use coax or s-video to go from our Sky and DTT boxes into our TVs in Europe, we use RGB thanks to little-credited Dutch company Philips innovating a connector standard called SCART / Peritel about a zillion fucking years ago. Am I to understand that ANOTHER TV technology innovation has passed the Americans by?

Re:Digital TV has copy protection?

[Anonymous Coward]

Next you'll tell me that the US doesn't have a single agreed standard for their mobile telephone networks!

Sometimes I wish there was an easy way to make people realize that they live in a country the physical size of a medium-large state in the US. Maybe, just maybe, they'd then realize how much of a difference there is between standardizing on something here vs. where they live. Let's face it, the logistics of setting up a nation-wide digital network in the UK is far less than setting up a state-wide digital network in the state of Texas or California, never mind nation-wide in the US. The only real problem is that the UK is trying to cram a population almost twice that of California into an area slightly smaller than the state of Oregon, much like many other European countries.

Re:Digital TV has copy protection?

[Alan Partridge]

you don't seem to realise that MPEG2 over OMDF is a EUROPEAN standard too. Europe is both physically and economically larger than the USA and we have a larger population, too. What's the USA's excuse for not implementing GSM? Europe didn't semm to have too many problems...

Re:Digital TV has copy protection?

[e.a.kendrick]

A slight over-reaction methinks.

1. GSM is used throughout Europe (That is: different countries). I have happily used my UK GSM phone in Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Holland, and South Africa. It is vastly more complex to standardise across different countries than just within the US. I would have thought that Consumer demand would naturally give rise to a single standard within the country! Maybe people in the US don't travel enough to think of it as a problem!

2. On the subject of population. I don't see how this is relevant, but: Just give America a few thousand years for it to get as populated as everywhere else, ok? They say there's more Irish people in New York than in the whole of Ireland, so you are already making up for lost time 8)

Re:Digital TV has copy protection?

[Alan Partridge]

How can there POSSIBLY be more Irish people in NYC than in Ireland? What's the population of Ireland, 3ish million? Another 1ish miliuon if you want to include NI? So the implication is that ONE THIRD TO ONE HALF of the population of NYC is Irish, by which I can only assume you mean BORN IN IRELAND. Rubbish, of course. Once an Irish person has travelled to the USA and bred (as many were forced to - approx 2 million AFAIK - by the famine) then their children are either AMERICAN by birth or fairly likely of mixed (European probably) descent. People often say that there are more Irish in the UK than Ireland too, an easier claim to believe but still flawed for the same reasons.

Re:Digital TV has copy protection?

[MrMickS]

Digital TV is digital all the way down to the set top box. It's only from the STB that the conversion is made to S-Video, coax etc (TV's don't generally have DVI connectors :))

Of course some people still use film or analog tape to make their programs so there is a conversion somewhere along the line. The broadcast is digital though right down to your home.

Re:Digital TV has copy protection?

[roybadami]

Oh, sorry, for a moment there I forgot I was in the UK, where we've had Digital TV on Satalite, Cable and Terrestrial for over three years.

All just standard definition PAL quality. Not even as good as some of the so called standard definition digital TV that some American networks broadcast (ie the 480p stuff that I gather some networks are broadcasting, which is considerably better than anything we have here in the UK). And we have no high definition in the UK, nor even any plans for it.

What copy protection?

The fact that no cable, satellite or terrestrial set-top box you've ever seen has a digital output, precisely because the industry hasn't been able to agree how to protect it from copying.

Re:Digital TV has copy protection?

[roybadami]

we don't use coax or s-video to go from our Sky and DTT boxes into our TVs in Europe, we use RGB thanks to little-credited Dutch company Philips innovating a connector standard called SCART / Peritel about a zillion fucking years ago. Am I to understand that ANOTHER TV technology innovation has passed the Americans by?

The Americans use component video to achieve the same thing. It's equivalent quality to RGB, though technically it's a different implementation.

Re:Digital TV has copy protection?

[ncc74656]

you don't seem to realise that MPEG2 over OMDF is a EUROPEAN standard too. Europe is both physically and economically larger than the USA and we have a larger population, too. What's the USA's excuse for not implementing GSM? Europe didn't semm to have too many problems...

When your phone networks are government-owned monopolies, it's much easier to impose a single standard than when you have three or four companies competing for market share. FWIW, the cellular industry managed to settle on AMPS as the analog standard sometime in the early-to-mid-'80s. By the time digital technologies came along, the carriers decided to adopt competing technologies (GSM is one of them) to attempt to stake out competitive advantages. The fact that most of the United States isn't anywhere near as densely populated as Europe also doesn't help things here (BTW, if you added up the EU countries, they don't cover anywhere near the land area covered by the US. You can easily drive from England to Germany in a day, going through France, Belgium, and Luxembourg to get there (been there, done that). It'd take me a day just to get from Las Vegas to Reno...and that's just one state out of 50.)

Re:Digital TV has copy protection?

[Anonymous Coward]

All just standard definition PAL quality.

So? Digital TV is not HDTV. HDTV is usually Digital TV, however.

The fact that no cable, satellite or terrestrial set-top box you've ever seen has a digital output

No, but as another poster has pointed out, almost all modern European-bound TV sets, VCR's, DVD players (and possibly PVR's, I don't have a TiVo so I don't know) have SCART sockets. SCART breaks the video and audio components down into descrete RGB & Stereo signal lines. The picture quality (With decent fully-wired cables) is great. I bet you couldn't tell the difference between an RGB signal over SCART from a DVI signal.

Sorry, you have to face it I'm afraid. While the US has been dragging its feet and waiting for the corporations to try and cover their asses over some perceieved threat (The sky is falling, the sky is falling!), the Rest of The World has just been getting on with it.

Re:Digital TV has copy protection?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the population of Ireland, 3ish million? Another 1ish miliuon if you want to include NI?

Here is a fun experiment. Go find yourself a Northern Irish Catholic. Repeat the above statement to them. Better yet, tell them they are English. Good times.

Re:Digital TV has copy protection?

[edwazere]

Erm... which countries in Europe have Government owned monopolies for their mobile phone networks then?
The UK certainly doesn't, and AFAIK never had.

PS. maybe some of the reason it takes so long to get anywhere in the US is that everyone drives so slow!
Disclaimer: This information comes completely from "Americas Fastest Car Chases" or some other such guff, where the presenter gets all excited about the speed the cars are travelling, and they haven't even reached average motorway speed here.

Re:Digital TV has copy protection?

[ncc74656]

maybe some of the reason it takes so long to get anywhere in the US is that everyone drives so slow!

Point taken, especially when you get anywhere near a concentration of old farts (basically, anyplace with "Sun City" in the name). It wasn't like this in most places before 1974, though.

Whether at 75 or 95+, though, it's still a long haul from point A to point B most of the time (4.5 hours to LA, 6 hours to Phoenix, etc.). (That one-day drive from England to Germany in my original post was in a Chevette that didn't want to be pushed much past 65, BTW.)

Re:Digital TV has copy protection?

[Alan Partridge]

nominally, Europe includes a great fat slice of Russia as well as Scandinavia. Europe is bigger, more diverse and far more developed than the USA. I'm sure that the USA will surpass Europe one day - there's an awful lot of space left to play with - but it hasn't done so yet.

Re:Digital TV has copy protection?

[edwazere]

Heh, there's me talking and I used to drive a 1973 Landrover Series 3.
Would actually reach 80 if you don't mind not hearing anything for the next few days...
and of course would take about a mile to stop ;-)

Re:Digital TV has copy protection?

[Alan Partridge]

fuck off. No-one born in Northern Ireland thinks of themselves as English, whether they're unionist, republican, catholic or protestant. Unionists think of themselves as Ulstermen or British, republicans as Northern Irish or just plain Irish. Just as no-one born in Wales or Scotland thinks of themselves as English, because they aren't. If you don't understand what Britain IS, please refrain from talking out of your arse about it.

My Christmas wish

[GMontag]

It looks like they want to just add a flag that says "this is a broadcast, do not allow more than one copy

Oh please let this be true! Pretty please?

Everybody keep quiet until these goofballs come up with something totally ineffective. They have not failed us yet!

Looks like DMCA is the real weapon

[line-bundle]

The article is unfortunately skimpy. But it still seems like a flag can be bypassed. My guess is that the real protection would probably come from a combination of DMCA and spy chips in the TVs, recorders and whatnot. I would guess you would not be able to watch TV without having it hooked up the internet reporting all you are doing. Big-brotherish future.

No, its just misinformed and Downright Wrong!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you live in some backward country like the US, doesn't mean you live in the Real World. Digital TV is quickly becoming the norm in most of Europe and parts of Asia. Get with the times, kid.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:!!!GO USA!!!

[RebelWithoutAClue]

Youre forgetting 'Total Military Superiority'(TM) !!!

Digital TV could bring so many advances to homes

[forged]

To me, Digital TV means so much more than a new class of devices with just more copyrights protection built-in. I don't think that we can escape this entirely, and perhaps there is a compromise in the air. What I am looking for as a consumer, is the following:

For once, screw NTSC, PAL and SECAM. I still can't figure out why various countries chose to have different broadcast signals in the first place. Hopefully Digital TV will make this a moot point, once we all share the same "format" (and it better be good :)

Second, this can also be the occasion for designing a newer DVD format better suited than current DVDs for high-res TV.

Imagine for a moment what a good-looking picture on your big-screen TV might looks like. A picture with shard details and glorious colors. Not like anything you can get from NTSC equipment, and to a lesser degree on PAL/SECAM too.

As you can see, I'm really looking forward to Digital TV. I think these will be every happy times in 5-10 years once the technology will have matured a bit. I just hope that the same mistakes (the ones we did in the past with analog broadcast) will not be repeated..

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell 'm Bowie!
Dude, You ROCK!

indecisive televisions

[tps12]

My old analog TV can never make up its mind, but it does have a whole continuum to choose from. At least digital TVs only have to choose from a finite set.

(please do not mod down if you don't get this joke)

Maybe I am just misunderstanding this

[way_out_on_the_dark_]

Is it really possible to make it so I cannot copy something which is playing on my TV?

I have a VCR, I have a video capture card, if I take a signal out of my VCR in the living room and plug it into the video capture card in the office, what is to stop me from making a digital copy available online. I may not get the true digital quality but who cares?

Maybe if the media companies don't want "piracy" of thier media, they should just go out of business and stop worrying about the whole thing. It's not like they're going broke, they still make millions.

Let them make....

[Orangedog_on_crack]

....all of the lame attempts at DRM etc. With the continued increase in computing power to the hardware that the consumer can buy, IMHO any "copy protection" or encription scheme the powers that be come up with will be broken within a year of it's introduction. It happened with DSS and Dish Network, it's only a matter of time ( and probably not much time) before it's cracked.

Also, if they are taking this long to come up with the initial standard, it will take another decade before they would be able to deploy an new standard to replace the one that will be cracked.

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[OklaKid]

i agree, i don't watch that much TV anyway, maybe some History channel, discovery channel, old movies on TCM & AMC, FOX news cause CNNsucks... and i do it all from a old 90 dollar 19 inch RCA even in color...

not flamebait, but there is no -1, wrong.

[iainl]

Sorry Bowie, you make nice art but you don't seem to be remembering how the rest of the world does have digital TV; its just the US that hasn't caught up.

Your example certainly isn't something that really warrants real clarity, but here in the UK my widescreen, 16x9 digital reception of films is almost as good as DVD; in some cases better even. Its certainly the best current way to see Glengarry Glen Ross, as the DVD isn't even widescreen.

Flag Flapping...

[AtomicSnarl]

So, is the flag part of the program bitstream, or just in a header somewhere? If I set my TIVO to skip the first 2 seconds (or 2 milliseconds) of the program intro, and so skip the header, will I have an "unlocked" recording?

Or how about playing one TIVO to a second TIVO through an XOR filter to turn off the bitstream flag?

Etc, etc... ad nauseum

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[Dimensio]

Well, I don't have a digital television, but I do have an HD monitor (unfortunately it uses the analogue component inputs which means that it might not be compatable by the time the entertainment industry has utterly destroyed the existing competing HD formats through their paranoia over me sending the most recent Buffy episode to a friend of mine). I wanted something big and wide for DVDs so I saved up...for about five years.

Some of us like these luxuries and enjoy being able to take advantage of them.

UK & Europe already has digital TV.

[Amrik]

The UK & Europe already have digital TV. There's no extra restrictions on copying other than the usual encrypted premium channels. It hasn't caused the destruction of the TV networks. Infact it's strengthened them because they now have more channels to play with.

This is just an obvious ploy by hollywood to control the technology standard settings process. They'll keep doing this one small (reasonable sounding) step at a time, until we're all fucked.

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[night_flyer]

In 2006 when everyone broadcasts digital you'll have to get one

with the cancellation of the shows I found even remotly entertaining, the rest will be gone by 2006. I wont have to get anything, I wont be watching TV anymore...

Re:Digital TV could bring so many advances to home

[Tribbles]

The main differences between PAL/SECAM and NTSC are due to the country's mains electrical supply frequency. By having a vertical sync that is synchronised with the mains supply reduces EMF induced interference on the display.

Quite why there's different standards for the same frequency, I don't know (or why there's PAL-I and PAL-II for that matter).

Re:Digital TV could bring so many advances to home

[lunenburg]

I pay much more attention to the vivid, full-color picture outside in my garden than I do to anything on TV.

In fact, the longer this rights-trampling crap from Hollywood goes on, the more I realize what a waste of time television is, and find that I can get much more rewarding stuff accomplished when it's off.

I need a more rewarding TV experience like a need a more rewarding hole in my head.

Over My Litigious Lawyer's Dead Body!

[FreeUser]

I would guess you would not be able to watch TV without having it hooked up the internet reporting all you are doing. Big-brotherish future.

Until and unless Big Brother Hollywood is going to pay for my internet connection, they'd better not even think about imposing that kind of draconian supervision over my viewing habits. If they should try to do so I will either organize a class action suit against them, or sue them on my own. Whether it is 2 bytes or 2 gigabytes, I'm the one paying for the bandwidth and their use of my resources against my will constitutes tresspess of chattles and arguably theft in precisely the same way junk faxes and SPAM do.

Now, if Hollywood is going to offer me free 100Mbit bandwidth to the internet, I might briefly consider making a Faustian bargain with them, exchanging my privacy for faster pr0n downloads, but I suspect even then I would consider it only briefly before rejecting it. Some things, like individual privacy and freedom, aren't for sale at any price (at least by me, though it seems the masses of mindless drones that populate our western democracies, indeed perhaps the entire planet, aren't as discriminating as one might wish).

Re:Over My Litigious Lawyer's Dead Body!

[Anonymous Coward]

You could always just stop watching TV, going to see their movies, buying their DVDs, listening to their CDs and radio stations, and reading their papers, books and magazines. Hmm, boycotting the media monopolies isn't that easy now is it? Unless you stay in your house doing nothing you can't get past them. Maybe you could play computer games and board games all day though. Seems pretty boring to me to live in a media-less world.

Re:Digital TV could bring so many advances to home

[Zathrus]

For once, screw NTSC, PAL and SECAM. I still can't figure out why various countries chose to have different broadcast signals in the first place. Hopefully Digital TV will make this a moot point, once we all share the same "format" (and it better be good :)

Uh... riiight. Whatever.

HDTV is a North American only standard. Japan has it's own analog high definition standard. Various countries in Europe have their own standards (e.g. - the UK. Not sure what the status is of other countries at the moment).

Second, this can also be the occasion for designing a newer DVD format [slashdot.org] better suited than current DVDs for high-res TV.

There are already ongoing efforts for an HD DVD standard. Blu-ray is one of them. The name of the other (which is a single company, not a consortium) escapes me at the moment. If there's any relation to the HDTV broadcast standards then it'll be more because the hardware is already setup to deal with specific resolutions than for any other reason.

I think these will be every happy times in 5-10 years once the technology will have matured a bit.

Some of the issues are not solvable. The 8VSB broadcast standard sucks wind. It doesn't fulfill it's goal properly - multipath transmissions kill it dead, and its current operational range is pathetic. If you live within 25 miles of a HD tower you'll probably get reception. If under 50, you may. If 75, you'll be lucky. Over 75? Forget it, the signal won't be strong enough to get a picture.

just hope that the same mistakes (the ones we did in the past with analog broadcast) will not be repeated..

No, they're making all new and improved mistakes. The FCC apparantly got neutered in the past couple decades and they haven't done anything that is in the consumer's interest regarding HD. Removing the "must carry" clause for cable when it comes to HD was the nail in the coffin. At this point they're just throwing dirt on top (no recording standards, no cable box standards, no encryption standards, etc.).

I love the idea of digital. I've seen HD and it's absolutely stunning. But the rollout has been so mismanaged that I'm increasingly of the opinion that HD is doomed to become the next DAT.

There's a lot of "value"

[Ted_Green]

The value is in a few things. But the most obvious (at face) is syndication and reruns. If such "popular" episodes are freely available elsewhere then they stand to lose revenue when they air that old episode of CSI because less people are likely to watch it (as they can get it else where) and advertisers aren't going to pay top dollar for a spot they know few are going to see.
Effectively this kills the whole method of TV production as it stands now. (Consider how much out there *is* reruns).
No one wants to (or even can I believe) come out with hit show after hit show, which is what would effectively have to happen for people to keep up with TV.

Of course, all this is bullshit at the moment. Few have the bandwidth (and far fewer the inclination) to digitize the shows they watch and make them available to the general public. But then, the network execs aren't planning for now, they're planning for days ahead. They see what things like Napster have done to the music industry and don't want it happening to them. (Let's leave out the side comments about how Napster and other programs "help" the music industry.. I don't think anyone has the honest facts on that, and besides this is all about perception.)

Eventually, if one takes the slippery slope down the road of enlightenment, what we'll all end up with is extremely watered down TV.

Re:Digital TV could bring so many advances to home

[stubear]

And what do you call the flagrant copying and distribution of copyrighted material by internet users? I'd call that "rights-trampling". People have taken fair use and abused it beyond belief and expect numerous industries to just change their business models so people can have copyrighted material for free. Sorry, but illegal business models should be shut down, not dealt with.

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[Loraque]

Hmm, I have one (65" 16x9 Mitsubishi). My parents have one (56" 16x9 Mits). A friend of mine has one (65" 16x9 Pioneer). A co-worker has one (56" 16x9 Mits).

And if you think the only benefit to DIGITAL TV (This is not the same thing as HD BTW) is being able to see what breand of cereal Raymond eats... well, I'm not sure how to respond to that actually.

Digital TV can allow for easier upscaling of the picture. When viewing a digital broadcast pulled in via antennae into my HTPC's Digital TV card (Hipix), the picture is vastly superior to my digital cable (digital cable sucks in my area). Part of the reason is, the Hipix card upscales normal digital broadcasts, and does so quite well.

In my experience, and all those mentioned above got their TV's AFTER seeing mine, those who deride the benfot of Digital TV (real digital) and/or HD... either have not actually watched it, or simply don't watch enough TV to make it worth while.

If you don't watch much TV... more power to you. If you haven't actually watched it (seeing it at the store doesn't count), them quit pontificating qbout what you know NOTHING about.

Jeff

Re:Digital TV could bring so many advances to home

[Windcatcher]

IMHO the ONLY reason to have a digital TV is for watching movies, or maybe sports. Who needs a super-duper-ultra-high-resolution-so-you-can-see-t he-pockmarks-on-their-faces television to watch a crappy sitcom??? This, of course, assumes that the movies are actually worth watching. I dunno, maybe now that I'm past 30 I'm officially old, but, all of the movies I like, I've already bought. Anyone who thinks I'd repurchase my entire library for higher resolution needs to buy some perspective. Doesn't Hollywood have a clue? When even AOTC is so crappy that I'd skip seeing it, maybe they need to seriously take a look at the steaming piles of you-know-what they're putting out. Add to that that they actually want to restrict digital TV; they should be bending over and kissing our a$$es to buy their movies. That's how much the quality has suffered.

The whole issue has started making me wonder what the value in TV is anymore. I once saw a bumper sticker at a local bookstore near me. It said: "Fight prime time. Read a book." I always like to read, and I've started writing again. The behemoth tube that I paid $2300 for and weighs 234 lbs. has been off far more than on since then, and I don't miss it.

Everything can be redistributed

[Ti_Uhl]

Look when are people going to understand that the proces of redistribution isn't going to stop!

Whenever a new technology comes out to prevent copying a new crack or hack comes out to override this, so stop nagging about illegal copys and let everything go as it goes

:) warez will always be around.

Duplicate Port?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't this topic already discussed in the previous post on the home page?

Incentive to Copy is the Issue

[salamander49]

Right now, I have the incentive to download music from the net and burn my own CD's. That incentive is that I normally only like 1-2 songs per CD and I'm not going to pay $18 for two songs. Movies are different, it's worth it for me to pay $20 (ish) for a DVD because it will take a couple of hours to download and put the whole thing together (today). The trick for the recording/movie/tv studios is to set a price point for their media and create a distribution channel where its not worth it for me to download from the internet. Why should I pay for rock/movie stars to go to the space station when the answer to all their problems are just lower prices and common sense distribution?

Re:Digital TV could bring so many advances to home

[Chris Carollo]

Imagine for a moment what a good-looking picture on your big-screen TV might looks like.

I don't have to imagine, I've seen it, and it's absolutely stunning! I've got a D-ILA projector that can do 1360x768 (which is less than the 1920x1080 or 1280x720 of the HD signal, but it's got some wacky temporal aliasing scheme that does wonders), and on my 120" screen it honestly looks better than my local cinemas. Whenever I demo any HD material for folks that haven't been previously exposed to HD, their response is -- without fail -- "Oh my God".

I think these will be every happy times in 5-10 years once the technology will have matured a bit.

These are happy times now if you're willing to do the research and deal with the typical hassles of the early adopter. ABC and CBS are doing most of their primetime lineup in HD, NBC has committed to all their new shows in the fall being in HD (and rumors of 11 total primtime hours), and the WB is even doing 3-4 hours of HD this fall. Add HDNet showing sports and the Olympics, Discovery HD Theater starting up on the 17th of this month, HD-HBO and HD-Showtime...

If your local affiliates are up to speed (this biggest question mark at the moment, IMO), or you've got Dish or DirecTV, there's quite a bit of astoundingly impressive HD content out there right now, and with HD sets in the sub-$2K range, it's more accessable than most people think.

those who don't read history are doomed to repeat

[Anonymous Coward]

It's unfortunate the media executives don't read history or ignore history. It will set the industry back a few years, until their profits take a big hit. Once that happens, everyone will see them change their story. Until then, media execs are lazy and don't want or care to understand this evolution in technology. It's only when they are at a point where they can't ignore the fundamental change in society that they will rush to change their business.

But then again, if people really read history and learned the valuable lessons hidden in those events, we would have a lot fewer wars. Especially ones of the fanatical kind like Closed vs Open source. Don't mind me immitating Katz.

2006... care to make a bet?

[endoboy]

I'll be willing to bet my first-born that digital TV won't be dominant mode of broadcast in 2006..

Re:2006... care to make a bet?

[endoboy]

yea, well--wasn't the deadline to be broadcasting HDTV about a month ago? what percentage of the nation is able to receive much of anything resembling HDTV? And has the FCC pulled anybody's liscense for failing to meet that deadline?

Re:!!!GO USA!!!

[elsegundo]

Not coffee, BEER!

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[Alan Partridge]

how can you take advantage of an HD monitor with DVD, genius? 720x480 is most likely what you're getting out of THAT - and overscanned to boot! In Europe we manage 720x576 at least, and that's nothing special on a big screen or even a 19inch Sony G400 computer monitor.

Re:Digital TV could bring so many advances to home

[forged]

That's a lot of US references in your post. Unfortunately I happen not to live on the continent, which was also one of the motivations for my post: streamline the standards, so that if/when you move, you don't end-up with equipment you have to leave behind.

again proof that upper management have no brains.

[Lumpy]

first off, there is no way in hell they are going to technically pull it off. all they are going to do it make it a pain in the ass for regular joe public for only a short time before the tools to undo their garbage happens...

And supposedly I'm the type of person they are after. YES, I have every Invader Zim episode on divx on Cd's. Why? I like the cartoon and it is going away. Nickelodeon has stated that they will NEVER release them on DVD, and I can go stuff it in my ass. well you know what? they cant tell me I'm stealing something that doesnt exist!! That' like saying that people who buy lemons are stealing from the lemonade bottling companies! It costs NOTHING to produce a show's archive for sale, and die-hard fans, the people that will buy the stuff, will buy it!

IP is stupid, anyone that is supportive of IP is stupid, and we all need to get beck to reality instead of acting like a bunch of greedy 5 year old babies screaming "MINE MINE MINE"
thinking they are going to become filthy,obsene rich.

I'm tired of it, the world is getting tired of it, and we need to call a dog a dog.

Until these "groups" are staffed with something other than yes-men that have absolutely no clue what they are talking about we will have extremely stupid and idiotic decisions and policies.

we are at a time in history that most of the human species does not understand, nor can understand, the technology that is in use every day... and it is only going to get worse.

NYTimes Article

[treads_water]

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/05/technology/05DIG I.html

Same story, different spin.

Re:Digital TV could bring so many advances to home

[NiceGeek]

What do I call it? I call it the media company's problem. If they want to copy-prevent their stuff...let them try, but it is not the responsibility of the goverment or the tech industry to do it for them.

Re:Digital TV could bring so many advances to home

[lunenburg]

If the media companies don't like the copyright violations, they're more than welcome to use current copyright law to prosecute violators. There is no justification or precident for Hollywood gaining control or veto power over new technologies simply because they don't like the way people use them.

Sounds like you're still mad that consumers have the ability to use a VCR, which made poor Hollywood "change their business model." After all, Jack Valenti said that the VCR would destroy Hollywood, so it must be true!

Spare me.

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[Anonymous Coward]

$4000?? for a dirt cheap one.

let's start looking at the $8000.00 to $13,000.00 for a decent digital HDTV..

oh and you get 2 channels to watch in that IF you are ucky and one of them is PBS.

it's dead because the consumer isnt stupid enough to buy it.

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[Dimensio]

I never said that I was taking full advantage of my set, just advantage. A 57" 16x9 screen capable of displaying a 480p image (note: it does support higher resolutions, I just don't have any video sources that come in better than that) is going to show DVD movies with far better image clarity than a 27" 4:3 monitor showing at 480i. True, that "image clarity" often means that I can actually notice the artifacting or pixelization, but it's the principle of the thing.

Also, all televisions have some level of overscan (at least NTSC ones, I don't know about PAL), but I was able to determine that the overscan on my model is minimal (comparing information on the sides of the image in 4:3 mode versus information on the sides when stretching to 16:9 revealed that very few pixels went missing -- not enough to be noticed when sitting six feet away)

I'm aware of the higher resolution afforded by PAL. I don't have any control over that.

I got the television because I wanted to watch DVD movies in higher quality than I'd been seeing before. When I refer to "taking advantage", I'm speaking of the potential to receive and view digital HD broadcasts on the set.

Re:Digital TV could bring so many advances to home

[Alan Partridge]

that 8VSB sucks was known LONG before it was adopted. An infinitely better standard had already been developed in the UK and pitched for use in the USA, but American NIH-syndrome put pay to that. You guys SHOULD be using OMDF like Europe is, just like you should be using GSM like the rest of the world, playing Football instead of American NFL Gladiators, racing Formula 1 instead of CART etc etc etc etc etc etc when WILL you rejoin the human race?

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[account_deleted]

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Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[Eccles]

Two questions:

1) Can I come over and watch Farscape?

2) What breakfast cereal does Raymond eat, anyway?

It's SCMS all over again...

[stereoroid]

SCMS is the Serial Copy Management System, which is what put consumers off from buying DAT drives, I agree. It's relevant to any digital audio stream, really, but you hardly ever hear of it any more. The other thing that killed DAT was pressure from the major labels that bumped prices up and restricted drive and media availability at the crucial time.

Now, of course, you can but SCMS strippers, or build your own. The people suggesting this as a serious security mechanism are "asleep at the switch", methinks...

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[Alan Partridge]

well, the sweet spot is the Sony 24inch widescreen computer monitor. Most non-SD material is created using SIMILAR (not the same at all, but the tubes are of similar sharpness and made in the same plant) monitors. If you want a bigger picture, get a projector. Large, consumer grade CRTs are bloody awful. Anyone who spends over £1000 on a consumer TV is just paying the R&D budget for their next set. Look at professional monitors and you'll see what I mean.

Re:!!!GO USA!!!

[thud2000]

They dumbed ciriculum? That's un-possible!

Re:again proof that upper management have no brain

[Adrenochrome]

"It costs NOTHING to produce a show's archive for sale"

Uh, bullshit.

Programmers might be smart, but they really ought to need to take a couple business/economics classes before getting their sheepskin.

1. Home video distribution rights. Who owns them? Can Nickelodeon acquire/license those rights?

2. Digital transfer. The masters for the show are probably in analog format. A DVD transfer must be made. Possibly new soundtracks must be created (5.1 surrond, etc.)

3. Additional content: Behind the scenes interviews, production stills, subtitles, etc. Authoring a DVD is a PITA, and the service doesn't come cheap.

4. Locomotion is an AWESOME cartoon channel. How come we can't get it in the states? (oops, way off topic, nevermind)

5. Packaging. Yeah, consumers still want packaging. Weird, I know.

6. Distribution.

7. Marketing.

8. ...

9. ...

So no, it doesn't cost "NOTHING".

Releasing on DVD has an "opportunity cost" as well. If it is available on DVD, then your cannibalizing your ad revenue for future showings/syndication.

But hey, if you really like the series, talk to the producers. I'm sure they'd love for someone to foot the bill for them continuing their work. Maybe you can even buy the home video rights from them...

Analog Hole

[DustMagnet]

There was a recent Slashdot article about this.

Re:!!!GO USA!!!

[elefantstn]

political: we manage to get every country ticked at us.

But yet, they keep coming back for more...

social: we are self absorbed, unthinking, and cannot function socially without coffee and television

If you think this makes the US different, you've clearly never been to Europe.

education: our system is a mess. there's not enough money to pay teachers. the ciriculum is dumbed down. half the students can't pass basic minimum requirement tests.

Oh the irony of misspelled words in "our edumecation is bad!" rants.

ah, but we have Patriotism(TM) and that makes us right!

Fuck patriotism, we have John O'Brien, Landon Donovan, and Brian McBride.

WE WON, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS! We will dispose of every pansy-assed Euro team that gets in our way.

This looks like the crux of it

[Observer]

Consumers could save digital broadcasts on DVDs, and transfer broadcasts for playback on different devices in the same house, they said. But they probably (my emphasis) would not be able to e-mail an episode of "The Simpsons" to a friend, or make it available on a file-sharing network like KaZaA.

So there's going to have to be some mechanism built into all the electronic information transport mechanisms commonly available to consumers that will look for and honour the "It's MINE, I tell you, all MINE!!!!" flag? Even when the content has been transformed into a format suitable for transport?

I wish them luck. Perhaps the broadcasters have finally found a form of sufficiently advanced technology that is indistinguishable from magic (nods to the shade of Arthur C Clarke); would they now mind turning their attention to producing something that's worth watching even once?

Somehow, I have a feeling that for this plan to fly they're going to have to get some more laws passed by their tame sock-puppets in the legislatures. If only because otherwise they'd have to fund the requisite extensive changes to the communications infrastructure themselves, which would doubtless bring about the end of civilisation as they know it....

Re:This looks like the crux of it

[Steve B]

nods to the shade of Arthur C Clarke

Huh? Last I heard he was still alive.

Hmm... a trojan compromise??

[BlueF]

Hmm, I wonder. How sneaky are those Hollywood big-wigs? What if they finally decided to offer/agree upon a method of copy protection that would _supposedly_ allow one copy only, but then later reneged and once a particular popular format (and hardware) supported that one-copy-only flag become mainstream, they then turned that off all together, allowing no copies?

Wouldn't that be funny.

The usual Slashdot I don't so no one does....

[NetJunkie]

I have one. The guy sitting next to me does. My parents do. Heck, even my grandparents have one now, though I doubt they watch digital signals on it.

Digital TVs are cheap enough that "normal" people buying TVs are getting them. Go to Best Buy on a weekend and watch them go out the door.

Your Telivision Will Not Be Revolutionized

[Hard_Code]

Your Television Will Not Be Revolutionized
by John Litzenberg
This piece is called "Your Television Will Not Be Revolutionized" because despite what our so-called leaders of technology and communications may tell you, the chances are slim that your quality of life will be enhanced by further dependence on a device which has throughout its history been referred to as the "idiot box" or "boob tube." After Gil Scott-Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised."

You will not be able to sit back in your recliner and experience
the sights and smells of an actual African safari with Marlon Perkins

because your television will not be revolutionized.

You will not have the option to view programming that reflects
actual facts, opinions and situations of real people in real jobs doing real work

because your television will not be revolutionized.

You will not have more information at your disposal,
but a great deal more disposable information;
you will not experience a reduction in the amount of subliminal messaging
or an increased exposure to the fully explored viewpoints
of persons with alternative outlooks on the world and ways of life;
nor will you have the ability to selectively choose shows and entertainment
that will best equip you to face other human beings
who may have differing and conflicting methods of dealing with everyday existence
because, despite your ability to earn a Ph.D.
by absorbing the litany of T
but you will continue to be able to anesthetize your sense of boredom
vicariously, whether through the war game simulation of professional sports,
or candid interviews with starvation victims
in a country of which you were not even aware "prior to this newscast,"
and may be convinced exists
only thanks to the believability score of the on-the-scene commentator,
or by gripping the edge of your seat while watching
carnage and bloodshed and laying on of hands
resulting in cures for leprosy, AIDS, infantile paralysis,
sickle cell anemia, and that awful bloated feeling,
all of which may or not be created using special effects.

Your television will not be revolutionized.

You will continue to trust in a world that has been edited for television,
in situations that will be re-enacted based on circumstantial evidence
and the imagination of financial advisors to the producers during "sweeps" week,
and in actors who are paid to tell you their headache disappeared in minutes
or that they actually spent time at their last dinner party discussing yeast infections
or wash-and-go shampoos.

You will be able to see inside the minds and hear the thoughts
of Richard Nixon, of Jeffrey Dahmer, of Charles Manson and Mother Theresa,
but you will see them being asked the same questions, things like,
"When did you first realize that you were different from other children?"
and you will see the same one-liners being used to promote their causes
in between paid advertisement programs
showcasing the efficiency and pleasure provided by shopping at home,
and they will be given equal air-time,
and each will be gently disclaimed:
"The opinions expressed by guests on this program
do not necessarily reflect the views of this network,
do not support the philosophy or political leanings of the majority of our viewers,
and are not intended to stimulate, educate or otherwise affect anyone at all."

You will continue to find yourself in a world
that has an increasing number of methods for communication,
and alarmingly less and less to say.

You will find it true, as Marshall McLuhan once said, that
"the medium is the message,"
and that its sweet velvet voice is crooning,
"Learn to consume as you have taught me to consume,"
and reminding us in the words of Jello Biafra
that the conveniences we have requested are now mandatory.

Your television will not be revolutionized.

Re:Your Telivision Will Not Be Revolutionized

[Hard_Code]

Oops..that got mangled, try again:
Your Television Will Not Be Revolutionized
by John Litzenberg
This piece is called "Your Television Will Not Be Revolutionized" because despite what our so-called leaders of technology and communications may tell you, the chances are slim that your quality of life will be enhanced by further dependence on a device which has throughout its history been referred to as the "idiot box" or "boob tube." After Gil Scott-Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised."

You will not be able to sit back in your recliner and experience
the sights and smells of an actual African safari with Marlon Perkins

because your television will not be revolutionized.

You will not have the option to view programming that reflects
actual facts, opinions and situations of real people in real jobs doing real work

because your television will not be revolutionized.

You will not have more information at your disposal,
but a great deal more disposable information;
you will not experience a reduction in the amount of subliminal messaging
or an increased exposure to the fully explored viewpoints
of persons with alternative outlooks on the world and ways of life;
nor will you have the ability to selectively choose shows and entertainment
that will best equip you to face other human beings
who may have differing and conflicting methods of dealing with everyday existence
because, despite your ability to earn a Ph.D.
by absorbing the litany of T & A, S & M, B & D and R & R
on CBS, NBC, ABC and CNN,
people who have important things to say
regarding the fragility of relying on modern convenience
will not be able to set up independent broadcast towers
because the FCC, FBI and CIA will make sure
that you do not find these programs included as part of "Must See TV,"
and they will certainly not be sponsored
by Mobil Oil Corporation and the Fortune 500.

You will not be able to immediately gain access
to the viewing public without waiting nine months
on a list for new programs, waiting only to be passed over
by a Committee for Fairness in Television
because your views are not deemed interesting enough
to command a favorable Nielson share.
Nor will you be able to select features for your viewing pleasure
that have not been hand-picked by the owners of the airwaves
and their supporting advertisers.

Your television will not be revolutionized.
Your television will not be revolutionized.

Your television will not be revolutionized.

You will continue to experience a decrease in rapid eye movement,
increasing cases of attention deficit disorder among your babies and children,
and on-going, invasive modifications to your DNA
caused by the barrage of an electron machine gun
you have invited into your home to expose "viewers like you"
to a thousand points of artificial light.

You will continue to form images subconsciously inside your physical brain
without the benefit of seeing them outside your head,
and without the ability to blink and shut them out or slow them down
so as to maintain the facility to selectively choose
the sound bytes and sound tracks and sound effects and
hypnotic waves of electricity that will influence
your spending patterns, your methods of recreation, your opinions on procreation,
your impression of reality and
your overall sense of physical health and well-being.

Your television will not be revolutionized.

Your retention of information will continue to decrease,
while the available percentage of brain cells at your disposal
will continued to be used up by phrases from sitcom theme songs,
by deductive meanderings on who shot J.R., and
by images of politicians wrapped in flags and kissing babies,
eating chitterlings, slicing pizza and
spreading lox on bagels.

You will not be able to take your message to the streets
or distribute pamphlets questioning the party line
at union meetings or city council sessions,
because your fellow citizens will be safe at home,
unified only in the respect that they are all watching re-runs
of the same shows so it can be assured there will be a topic of conversation
when we are all turned loose to exercise
our First Amendment rights
assisted by a new and improved level of communication
brought to you by the Association for the Preservation of Technological Megalomaniacs.

You will not be able to tell the difference between an embrace
offered by a virtual reality image of your dead father
and the gentle purring of a live kitten grasping your shoulder;
but you will continue to be able to anesthetize your sense of boredom
vicariously, whether through the war game simulation of professional sports,
or candid interviews with starvation victims
in a country of which you were not even aware "prior to this newscast,"
and may be convinced exists
only thanks to the believability score of the on-the-scene commentator,
or by gripping the edge of your seat while watching
carnage and bloodshed and laying on of hands
resulting in cures for leprosy, AIDS, infantile paralysis,
sickle cell anemia, and that awful bloated feeling,
all of which may or not be created using special effects.

Your television will not be revolutionized.

You will continue to trust in a world that has been edited for television,
in situations that will be re-enacted based on circumstantial evidence
and the imagination of financial advisors to the producers during "sweeps" week,
and in actors who are paid to tell you their headache disappeared in minutes
or that they actually spent time at their last dinner party discussing yeast infections
or wash-and-go shampoos.

You will be able to see inside the minds and hear the thoughts
of Richard Nixon, of Jeffrey Dahmer, of Charles Manson and Mother Theresa,
but you will see them being asked the same questions, things like,
"When did you first realize that you were different from other children?"
and you will see the same one-liners being used to promote their causes
in between paid advertisement programs
showcasing the efficiency and pleasure provided by shopping at home,
and they will be given equal air-time,
and each will be gently disclaimed:
"The opinions expressed by guests on this program
do not necessarily reflect the views of this network,
do not support the philosophy or political leanings of the majority of our viewers,
and are not intended to stimulate, educate or otherwise affect anyone at all."

You will continue to find yourself in a world
that has an increasing number of methods for communication,
and alarmingly less and less to say.

You will find it true, as Marshall McLuhan once said, that
"the medium is the message,"
and that its sweet velvet voice is crooning,
"Learn to consume as you have taught me to consume,"
and reminding us in the words of Jello Biafra
that the conveniences we have requested are now mandatory.

Your television will not be revolutionized.

Re:Digital TV could bring so many advances to home

[Zathrus]

OFDM (there is no such thing as OMDF for a broadcast standard) and COFDM (which has been widely suggested as a replacement for 8VSB) were both invented by Bell Labs. So "NIH" claims don't come into it.

As for the rest of your flamebait - get over yourself. I'll admit that GSM is better, but the telecomm industry here is radically different from Europe or Asia (and, in general, radically fucked up).

What about sneaker net?

[Rev Snow]

I know some school teachers who occasionally see a television program that is relevant to their class. They record the program on video tape, then carry the tape to school and play it for the class on the school's VCR.

Would this kind of use be permitted under the proposed DRM scheme?

Re:What about sneaker net?

[Adrenochrome]

This kind of use (generally) isn't allowed now. There just isn't a mechanism to enforce it.

Re:What about sneaker net?

[Alan Partridge]

of course there is. EVERYONE should be electronically tagged and watched 24/7 by teams of secret police via closed-circuit cameras. 1984 wasn't a nightmare, it was a coporate manifesto. If the fuckers step out of line, detonate their explosive collar. YOU WILL CONSUME!

Re:What about sneaker net?

[indiigo]

They would just mark the show, if educational, as "free to distribute."

Re:What about sneaker net?

[dmarx]

I know some school teachers who occasionally see a television program that is relevant to their class. They record the program on video tape, then carry the tape to school and play it for the class on the school's VCR.

Would this kind of use be permitted under the proposed DRM scheme?

Sure...for a fee. (Think Micro$oft education liscences.)

Re:What about sneaker net?

[isorox]

watched 24/7 by teams of secret police

who watches the mpaa^H^H^H^H secret police? They are people after all

Re:What about sneaker net?

[lucifuge31337]

While you've received replies to the contrary, they are WRONG. This is allowed in most cases, because educational institutions don't have to play by copyright laws like the rest of us do.

The "fair use" provisions that have been awarded to them blow giant holes the copyright protection of nearly all forms of media.

Take it from a photographer who's tried to prosecute for stock photos being blatanltly ripped off of a stock house's web site and used in classroom materials without payment or permission.

Re:What about sneaker net?

[Cid Highwind]

This is allowed in most cases, because educational institutions don't have to play by copyright laws like the rest of us do.

Maybe it's that the rest of us (legal system included) value quality education over the nickel you lost in royalties having your photo ripped off for a classroom display. There are more important things in the world than your own profits.

Re:What about sneaker net?

[lucifuge31337]

Education costs money.

I suppose you advocate simply stealing things if the costs get TOO high?
-Need more copies of a book? photocopy it
-Need specific recording for music class? Limewire
-Need some software for the computer lab? Buy one copy and put it on all the machines.

When you move out of your parent's basement you'll probably have a different view on things. Like holding educational institutions to higher moral standards than you hope the general population would have.

And don't think that just because it's been allowed as a loophole in the law that it's the "right" thing to do.

The most obsurd part was that the photos in question were for teaching a PHOTOGRAPHY class. What better way to introduce potential photographers to the business than to show them how to rip off right like a pro, right?

Re:What about sneaker net?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course educational institutions should be perfect consumers because of the massive amounts of funding they get.

this is so sad ;)

[cascadingstylesheet]

You poor man.

I'm so sorry you feel inadequate. I hope the fine wireless coverage of your shoebox sized country, and the ability to watch US-made entertainment in digital glory, makes you feel better ;)

Re:this is so sad ;)

[Alan Partridge]

fuck, you must have BIG feet

Re:this is so sad ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope the fine wireless coverage of your shoebox sized country

Why yes, thank you, 3G (Hey, yet another Digital Standard!) wireless network access across an area larger than the USA (Thats Europe kid) does make me feel much better about the fact that we also have digital television.

Thanks for asking though.

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Try more like $1500 for a "low-end" set that is still head and shoulders above any standard-definition set. And its getting cheaper every day, Apex king of low-priced DVD is moving into the market with plenty of cheap digital TVs too.

http://www.bestbuy.com/HomeAudioVideo/Television s/ DigitalTVs.asp?b=0&m=1&cat=24&scat=1470&sort=4

Re:again proof that upper management have no brain

[Anonymous Coward]

excuse me mr cynical...

production of a DVD - the pressing, boxing etc.. in 1000 piece quantity costs $4.95 each and this is from a web producer.
marketing... well if you own the show (as NIckelodeon does) it costs you NOTHING ZERO NO MOOLAA to authorize the use of something you own ("dave can I borrow your lawnmower? " well no steve, I have to hire a focus group and then pay my wife a consulting fee, and have apoll of my neighboras taken" bullshit and you know it.

distribution.. .ummm what the hell is S&H for? it dont cost $10.00 to ship a DVD it's costs 1.95 to... the other 8.05 is PROFIT TOO!
marketing... website duh.... they market alot of stuff... and adding a graphic and link costs nothing.

so you are really full of bullshit. and I knw they could sell 1000 dvd's with a paltry 2 episodes each on them (who give a rtats ass about the extra crap. it does not have to be there.)

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[foobar104]

I dont know of a single person, anywhere, that owns a digital television.

You do now. I bought one last month, and so did a friend of mine. Another friend bought his last year; he kind of opened the flood gates for us. I watched the SuperBowl in January, 2001, in HD at another friend's place. He's our early adopter.

I'm not sure where you live or what kind of friends you have, but HDTV is more common than you realize.

Re:Digital TV could bring so many advances to home

[foobar104]

I pay much more attention to the vivid, full-color picture outside in my garden than I do to anything on TV.

I wonder if I could convince you to try the same trick with your computer.

Every time there's a TV-related story on Slashdot, you get people crawling out of the woodwork to post mildly off-topic comments about how they don't watch TV. You know what? Nobody asked you. If you have something to contribute, that's fine. But if all you have to say is, "I only watch Masterpiece Theater and those delightful Taster's Choice commercials with the English chap," then please just move along.

Sheesh.

Re:Digital TV could bring so many advances to home

[Alan Partridge]

sorry about the OMDF thing - it was SO long ago that I fucked up Orthoganal Frequency Division Multiplex, yes? I live in a world of OMFI files these days and, quite frankly, there are so many acronyms and initialisms in my head that sometimes they get utterly mangled. But surely OFDM was invented by BBC Research? I'm sure that they were playing with it in outside broadcast work about fifteen years ago at LEAST. Don't have NAY illusions that the telecom industry in Europe isn't fucked up too, that it's actually more of a free market than the American one is a sad indictment of the decline of the American free market.

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[IronChef]

If digital TVs were $100 I still wouldn't buy one -- because there are no PVRs that can time shift HDTV content. I hate to sound like a commercial, but my ReplayTV has revolutionized how I watch TV, and I am not going back.

Re:Digital TV could bring so many advances to home

[foobar104]

IMHO the ONLY reason to have a digital TV is for watching movies, or maybe sports.

:cough:farscape:cough:

You'd be surprised how much regular old entertainment TV is being mastered in HD these days. Enterprise has been shot and finished in HD since the pilot episode-- although I know that that doesn't make the quality of the writing any better. My point is that there's a lot of fairly low-rent TV out there that's being produced in HD. They're just waiting for the broadcasters to catch up.

I have been told-- although I can't swear to it-- that Farscape is in production on the 2002-2003 season (season 4, is it?) in HD.

When we get Buffy in HD, I'm gonna be pretty much set for couchly entertainment.

Doesn't Hollywood have a clue? When even AOTC is so crappy that I'd skip seeing it, maybe they need to seriously take a look at the steaming piles of you-know-what they're putting out.

Hollywood didn't have anything to do with AOTC. LucasFilm is completely, 100% independent of the Hollywood studios. Fox distributed it, but that's it.

And your opinion on AOTC seems to be very much in the minority, friend.

Re:Digital TV could bring so many advances to home

[foobar104]

If your local affiliates are up to speed, or you've got Dish or DirecTV, there's quite a bit of astoundingly impressive HD content out there right now.

HD TiVo, dammit! HD TiVo!

Re:again proof that upper management have no brain

[IronChef]

IP is stupid, anyone that is supportive of IP is stupid...

That's quite a statement.

If there were Invader Zim DVDs to buy, wouldn't you be, uh, supportive of that?

And color me stupid, because I write and sell books. Guess I am part of the evil IP cartel! Now where's my Ferrari, dammit?

Re:Digital TV could bring so many advances to home

[IronChef]

The whole issue has started making me wonder what the value in TV is anymore.

Watch The Shield on FX and find out. ;)

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[Sabalon]

Didn't you see "The X-Men"???

The hot dog vendor on the beach had one, the crummy bar in the middle of nowhere Canada had one, everyone had one :)

Copy local or copy never, but not copy once

[Rogerborg]

I don't think that this article says or even implies that there's a "copy once" bit.

What it implies is a new standard for gateway digital devices that will pass content only to other devices of the same class, and (I suspect) over a proprietary, non-IP network. Then (whatever actual encoding is used) there's going to be an identifying watermark that the receiving device must look for. It will either be a simple identifier (so that you can copy from one PVR to another if you plug them together) or a "copy never" bit so that you can stream it to another PVR, but this second PVR will not make a copy, it will only stream on to a display. Technically, there might be a "copy once" bit, but only on the original broadcast, so once it hits your PVR, it's "copy never".

If it's the former case, and you can make copies by plugging two PVR's together, I think that's fair enough, because I can take my PVR round to my brother's house and make a copy of Buffy for him. That's raising the bar far enough, as it effectively restores the situation that case law has decided is fair use: making a few copies explicitely for known friends and family.

However, that theory is replete with flaws. For one, it doesn't match the way the industry has been going. It's far more likely (I suggest) that it will be a "copy never" bit, and only local streaming will be allowed. For another, there's still that bloody great gaping hole at the tail in either case: sending to a display. Because unless the display also has to be one of these new devices, you just stream to a video capture card, then it's straight onto the internet with the content, and people will download it and stream it to their own non-compliant display devices.

That's the sting. It has to cover display devices (TV's, monitors) and it has to be mandatory. Don't think this will stop with PVR's. For it to have even a hope in hell of making a difference, every display device sold will have to be compliant, and it will have to refuse to show content without the watermark. That means that PC video cards will also have to watermark their content. You see where this is going? It snowballs pretty rapidly. But unless they get everything, there's little point in them pushing ahead with it.

To support this rather alarmist attitude, ask yourself this: if this is truly an industry consensus, why does it need to be legislated?. I suggest that the answer is that for it to work, it has to be mandatory, and it has to be across the board: every channel, every cable decoder, every PVR, every TV, every monitor, every video card, every DVD player, every VCR. Everything.

Wake up, the coffee is brewing. This is Son of SSSCA, yet again. They're just hoping nobody notices this time until it's too late. Please, please, get out that pen and paper, and ask your elected representatives to have a good, long, hard look at this, because it has the potential to be as bad as you can possibly imagine, and then a whole lot worse.

Re:Copy local or copy never, but not copy once

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that there are millions of analog TV's, VCR's, DVD,s, Video capture cards, ect that will not be upgraded then it will be fair to say that digital tv broadcasts will be paired with analog for a long time to come.

What the studios are trying to protect is a market space that hasn't even been occupied yet in the U.S. This is reminisent of the DVD and Divix formats that were going to battle it out but never did because consumers are not as stupid as the studios think they are. Divix died because nobody wanted to own a dvd they could only view once (even if it was cheaper).

The studios don't intend to control every means of recording IP content just the content being broadcast over digital tv networks. They may have plans to apply the digital tv model to other media if the consumers accept it and that is a pretty big if. The studios are just poking a proding consumers to see which direction they can push the market. Lets face it they have been wanting to controll the market this way for a long time. They are trying to make it harder for larg piracy operations to operate without actually pointing the finger at China or Italy or all the other countrys that don't protect Hollywood like the US does. The problem has always been getting the consumer to buy in. Congress can make all the laws they want but if consumers don't buy in its pointless.

It is not quite _that_ simple

[phulshof]

Yes, all that is to be added to the video signal is an rc_descriptor stating that this is broadcasted content. In itself, that amounts to no protection at all. However....

The BPDG requirements state that electronics/software capable of receiving this video signal must check for this flag, and if found it must only allow the data to be sent to an output in a protected format, degraded format, or analog format (yes, the analog hole is still a problem they are not able/allowed to solve since it lies outside the scope of the BPDG).

Of course, these requirements would not be a problem by themselves. It is the intent of the MPAA to have these requirements be set into law, and make all other implementations (HW and SW) illegal. Yes, this is indeed as bad as you think it is. Check the EFF website to get a better vision of what this means (and read the requirements documents on there to fully understand the horror).

The biggest problem the MPAA has at this time is that many organisations (EFF, FSF, DigitalConsumer.org, VOSN, Philips, Thomson, Zenith, Sharp, Microsoft (yes, indeedio), etc.) have voiced disagreement with several provisions in the documents. Hence the only true agreement in the BPDG is that there's a lot of disagreement, and a lot of work to be done for a next discussion/concensus group.

Re:Digital TV could bring so many advances to home

[Zathrus]

OFDM was invented by Bell Labs in 1965... my reference for this is here and (better) here. According to the 2nd article, the C of COFDM was indeed done by a French lab, which would lead to the moronic NIH syndrome.

While we're at it, here's another article that talks about some of the differences between 8VSB and COFDM, and even points at some advantages to 8VSB.

To venture back off-topic - yes, the US telecomm market is rapidly headed back toward a monopoly. Except this time it won't be regulated like AT&T was. The rest of the US free market is doing pretty well though :)

Back ontopic - what's interesting is that Digital TV's are selling pretty well in the US. What isn't selling well are the set top decoders to receive digital broadcasts. People are buying the TVs and then hooking up DVD players to get a superior picture. And since most of the large screen TVs have built in de-interlacing, you even get an improved NTSC picture.

Why aren't the boxes selling? Partly the 8VSB issue and the cable issue (nobody is going to stick up a big ass antenna on their roof nowadays), partly the lack of broadcasting by the major networks, and partly (a very small part) due to some of the more informed people knowing that anything bought today may not be compatible in 2-3 years -- since the studios and the manufacturers are still hashing out connection standards it's possible that any DTV you buy today may wind up being reduced to NTSC-quality reception in the future because it doesn't have the right connectors on it. Fun fun fun.

For me, the last bit is the one and only reason I don't have a digital TV now. I have $5k earmarked toward one (and I'm hoping to spend much less than that). But I'm not going to buy one to have it rendered nearly useless by idiotic studio mavens.

Yet they think I'm going to buy a DTV?

[NanoGator]

Wow, these guys are working really hard to make sure that I don't buy a digital TV. I'm curious what economics class they took that said:

"Don't listen to your customer's needs. Instead, assume they are a thief, and prevent your product from being miused at all costs! Only that way will you be able to maintain an ancient business model."

It's real simple: I'm not buying a Digitial Video Recorder if it only lets me 'copy once'. They better hope that somebody hacks it if they want my money.

You know, a couple of years ago I used to really love TV and Movies. Now I feel like we're fighting a war. It's amazing how much less value TV has when you're stressed about stuff you can't do with it.

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry; by the time your average digital TV set drops below $1000, TiVo and ReplayTV will be able to record HDTV content. It's simply a matter of time; when enough people have it, TiVo and ReplayTV will have it.

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[KFury]

"Has it occured to Slashdot's staff that nobody in the real world owns a digital television?"

I'm not sure you understand the point. It's not about digital televisions; it's about digital recorders. A lot of people have ReplayTV, TiVo, or UltimateTV, and a lot more will soon.

The industry doesn't give a crap about whether people watch broadcasts in digital or analog form. They care about chains of perfect copies of content.

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[Anonymous Coward]

And in 1980 when everyone uses the metric system, you are going to need a new bathroom scale.

Hang on a second there

[jfengel]

When I read your comment, I envisioned a studio executive holding the freshly-completed final copy of, say, the next episode of Alias, and waiting for your demand that you hand it over immediately.

Before the thing is broadcast, at least, a TV show or album is a thing with a lot of value and you have zero rights to it whatsoever. The guy wants to find some way to sell it to you, to recoup his investment in making the thing. So he's suddenly trampling on your rights by trying to sell it to everybody rather than having you give it away for free, just because you have a way to do the cheap part (duplicating bits)?

There used to be a good way to do that distrubution: he'd put it on the air, and sell people rights to interrupt it with commercials. Obviously that's a deeply flawed system, but it's one way to do it, and it has the advantage to you that you get to watch it without laying out any cash.

Technology has exacerbated the flaws in that system to the point where it's totally dysfunctional, and a new technology must created to solve the problems. But the flaws are in the fact that the broadcaster can't control distribution any more, not that you suddenly don't have your "free" content anymore.

Maybe it is time to end over-the-air broadcasts entirely, since it only works by giving monopolies on a public resource to rich people, who are no longer able to get the value out of it that they need to produce their content. That would make a lot of people unhappy, since they don't get their TV, but we get our airwaves back.

I just implore you to think twice where rights come from before you call the broadcasters "rights-trampling monopolists". Yes, they are using public resources to enrich their pockets, but they are also creating content and employing a lot of people, from actors to writers, directors, and gaffers. They also profit from the system.

There is a serious debate here over the best way to control content, and how much copyright affords. But suggesting that all of the power is on your side, and that they owe you this content, is unhelpful and greedy.

Re:Hang on a second there

[arkanes]

Sorry. They are rights-trampling monoplists. I have a right to freely exchange and manipulate content that I've purchased or otherwise aquired - the infamous fair use. They want to remove this right from me. They are willing to flex unreasonable economic and political muscle to do so. Obviously, I'm not OWED content. But they aren't owed my money, either. But they get it - tax subsidies, the right to own my airwaves, control over content that violate all logical reasoning (I'm going to send you a signal, but you can't look at it. If you do, I'll have you thrown in jail), taxes on recording media.... I'd say they certainly owe me SOMETHING.

Re:Hang on a second there

[jfengel]

I have a right to freely exchange and manipulate content that I've purchased or otherwise aquired - the infamous fair use.

Fair use allows you to use it; it does not allow you to "exchange" it.

But they aren't owed my money, either.

They have a right to charge for their content, if you wish to watch it. Perhaps using the airwaves to distribute it is a bad idea. It was always kind of dubious as a model, since the "price" of content is exchanged through the weird medium of advertising money. Still, at one point it functioned according to an economic model that suited everybody reasonably well: they broadcast it, you saw it live, and it was over. You didn't get to rebroadcast it or watch it without the commercials.

Since then, technology has changed that. Maybe they need to stop broadcasting over the air. Certainly there are other people who would like to be using that spectrum. RF is hardly the only area where this occurs; the government sells land rights for mining and agriculture dirt cheap as long as you have enough money. So the technology has changed, and it seems like time to renegotiate the contract, not time to assert rights to a resource that has changed dramatically since the contract was create.

Re:Hang on a second there

[ascii27net]

The underlying issues aren't about content entitlement. The media industry is so panicked about illegal use, that they are determined to even eliminate fair use. Not the right time to assert rights? These are rights defined by law. When is the right time to assert rights? After they are gone? If that is how you feel, there are a number of socialist and totalitarian regimes in the world that would be more than happy to accept you.

The push of the media companies right now is to subordinate our legal rights (fiar use, and they are rights under the law) to thier commerical concern. That should NEVER happen - but it slowly is happening anyway. Thier inability to protect themselves from illegal use is creating an environment where they are trying to restrict legal rights. If you question this, look at the blatent conflict between previous law and case law regarding revese engineering and the stazi approcach in the DMCA.

This is a free market, and as soon as the media companies come up with a way to sell to consumers in that protects them and that consumers find acceptable, we'll be fine. They haven't found it, and aren't even looking. Rather than respond to the market which is not willing to be MASSIVLEY inconveienced becuase of thier commerical concerns, they are trying to legislate their problems away. They have tried selling stuff with adequate rptection technology nobody buys it. The market rejects it. They need to keep trying, not try to legislate away our rights.

200 channels on the Digital TV...

[night_flyer]

and there is STILL nothing on to watch...

Re:Digital TV could bring so many advances to home

[lunenburg]

And every time someone posts about how there's better things to do with your time than playing right into Hollywood's hands, you'll get a mewling, mealy-mouthed comment of "Nobody asked you for your opinion. Nanny nanny boo boo." And thus the great circle of life continues.

As far as contributing, I've been calling and meeting with my Congressional representatives, and attempting to drum up public awareness of this issue.

Digital TV...

[Tiado]

Higher technology, still the same old crap on.

Wait a minute, maybe that's how the industry is fighting piracy -- by producing stuff that no one would want to copy in the first place.

Digital TV? HD-TV? Fuggetaboudit.

[crovira]

Its not going to happen.

You don't need it for carrying commercials and reruns of "My Mother the Car."

That's the direction the industry's headed in since day one. There's no compelling reason for the advertisers to invest in new infrastructure until the old one has collapsed.

I hopy you LIKE the current resolution and aspect ratio because it ain't changing. Nobody wants to pay for it. Not the advertisers and certainly not YOU.

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[Yarn]

a) digital doesn't necessarily mean hdtv
b) it is actually easier to timeshift digital TV, the BSkyB Sky+ package does this, just capturing the transport stream, no messy analogue stage.
c) You can build your own digital tv shifter, google for 'VDR'

Don't buy a HDTV unless...

[Kernel Corndog]

I wouldn't buy a HDTV unless it had 1 or 2 computer montior inputs... maybe 2 analog and 2 DVI... With all this talk about "media hubs" they should be looking at the HDTV to spark some sort of delivery of service. It definitely would be incredibly cool to be playing games at that size...Surf the net... Do some really cool GUI network scan so you can feel like you're are at NASA montioring something important... you get the picture :)

I think it's about time for another "I watch TV for ... hours a day" Poll to see how many of us really watch TV. I have maybe one or two shows that I watch a week. (Samurai Jack rocks) other than that I can find all of it on the internet with out the wasted time with ads

Re:Don't buy a HDTV unless...

[DavittJPotter]

SharpVision's HDTV digital projector has 2 component video inputs, 2 composite inputs, 2 SVideo, and - 1 VGA input! $8500. An 8' wide image, as well!

Re:Don't buy a HDTV unless...

[jeffvr]

If I watch tv for an hour a week it's a lot, and then mostly to check the weather channel (MTV for seniors) when a thunderstorm go by, just to see how big it is, and what's coming behind it. My main source of news is NPR radio. I like the BBC broadcasts from 9 - 10 am. So who needs a HDTV?!

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[Anonymous Coward]

The superbowl wasnt broadcast in High-Definition. It was 480p. Fox sux when it comes to HD.

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[Zathrus]

You're deeply, deeply out of touch.

You can buy a 40"-ish DTV for $1500 now. 50" sets are $2500, and 62" sets are $3500. This is, of course, the low end on each. But you can buy one of those $2500 50" sets, have someone come and calibrate it properly for about $200 and end up with a set that's better than an uncalibrated $6000 50" set.

Digital TV's are selling, and they're selling very well indeed. If you look at the circulars in Sunday papers you'll see that the majority of large screen (>36") sets are digital ready, either in 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratios.

The thing that is not selling is the digital receivers - which are down to about $500 now (maybe less). And those aren't advertised in the circulars either. Because they're not selling. People are buying the DTV's to be "upgrade ready" and to get way, way better picture quality from DVDs and (usually) NTSC broadcasts. Even a crappy scalar built into the sets is better than watching interlaced.

Why aren't people buying the receivers though? Well, it's a few factors. First, 8VSB sucks and a lot of people simply can't get reception. Since the FCC declined to require cable must carry rules for digital broadcasts (despite the fact that 80% of the US gets all TV from cable, and it's been this way for 15 years) most people can't get a signal. Rabbit ears don't cut it for 8VSB, and people aren't going back to the 1960s and putting huge ass antennas on their roofs.

Second, there's no broadcasting. The networks have done a miserable job of holding up their end of the bargain. Fox is deliberately dragging its feet and broadcasting in only 480p where they're broadcasting digital at all.

Third, the connection standards are pretty non-existant. There's no recording standards, no encryption standards, and no definite cabling standards. All of these have been vaguely proposed, and vaguely accepted, but the studios and broadcasters keep whining that it's not sufficient and keep wanting to go back to the drawing board. The cable industry has only done preliminary steps on a cable box interface standard -- allegedly finished, but now we get to watch them fight over patent and royalty issues for a few years. And those of us in the know haven't bought digital yet because of this. It's entirely possible that any DTV without the proper DVI connector will wind up not being able to display anything better than NTSC quality in a couple years when all of the above issues DO get ironed out. I have a good bit of money earmarked toward a very large DTV, but I'm not spending it until some of this gets figured out.

Set top boxes have it covered

[heroine]

With the amount of copy protection you can build into dedicated appliances and the amount consumers are willing to pay for convenience, copyright violations are hardly a problem.

Classification of Irish.

[EnglishTim]

Unlike most countries, where one of your parents have to be a citizen for you to be able to claim citizenship, Ireland has a policy of allowing those with a Irish grandparent to claim citizenship. Mick McCarthy, the Irish football coach is Irish because of this, IIRC...

Anyway, I'd imagine this boosts the number of people in the world who are able to claim to be Irish quite considerably.

Re:Classification of Irish.

[Alan Partridge]

cool, so if I claim that being a human male makes you my brother, have I got the most brothers in the world? what errant bollocks - the irish do that for their own expedient reasons - doesn't make it any truer.

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[cruelworld]

>> most people can't get a signal. Rabbit ears don't cut it for 8VSB, and people aren't going >>back to the 1960s and putting huge ass antennas on their roofs.

Try a bow-tie antenna. It works quite well. A double-bow tie indoor antenna ($40 from radio shack) works even better when multipath is a problem.

Re:There's a lot of "value"

[innocent_white_lamb]

what we'll all end up with is extremely watered down TV.

And this differs from today's television fare in what way?

I have not watched television in years and truly don't believe that I'm missing anything worthwhile.

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[Loraque]

1. Any time. Starting this Friday of course, along with SG1.

2. Couldn't tell you. Contrary to popular anti-digital TV rhetoric, I don't watch everything in HD. However, there are some very nice clips of CSI I have recorded... (yes, you CAN record and timeshift HD, its just not as easy as my Tivo).

Remember the honey seen in CSI Miami? Mmm, honey.

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[Tumbleweed]

> And in 1980 when everyone uses the metric system, you are going to need a new bathroom scale.

Yeah, and we'll have to rearrange the keycaps on our keyboards for DVORAK while we all learn Esperanto. :)

Consensus via keeping everyone else out

[geekotourist]

Looks like the EFF fought hard to get in and stay in the meeting process. It really seems as if the industry group didn't think that anyone else should have a say in this issue, even though it significantly affects fair use (and not to mention the millions of current HDTV owners being sent up that stinky creek). From the EFF's abstract of their well-written comments on the final report:

We hope that readers of the Co-Chair's Report will find in this briefing, compelling evidence of the dangers presented by the BPDG recommendations and will recognize them as the self-interested aspirations of a small, partisan group seeking to write an anti-competitive law that protects its commercial interests at the public's expense.

The BPDG "process" has been rife with acrimony, arbitrariness and confusion, to an extent that cannot be fully ascribed to mere haste. EFF believes that the failings of the BPDG process stem directly from BPDG's efforts to cloak a inter-industry horse-trading exercise in the trappings of a public undertaking, with nominal participation from all "affected industries." In reality, the representatives were hand-picked by the conveners of the BPDG to minimize any dissent, as is evidenced by the high degree of similarity between the original proposal brought to the group by its conveners and the final report that the co-chairs unilaterally present herein as the group's findings.[bold added by gt]

Throughout the process, the absence of any formal charter or process afforded the co-chairs the opportunity to manipulate the rules of the group to suit their true purpose while maintaining its illusory openness, as when the scope of the group's discussions was summarily expanded to encompass all unauthorized redistribution of feature films, as opposed to unauthorized redistribution over the Internet.

Options for HDTV timeshifting

[bentradio]

Actually, if you are willing to build your own PVR (and I can understand that some aren't), there are quite a few options for timeshifting HDTV content. Namely;

AccessDTV: http://www.accessdtv.com/accessdtv/index.htm
Hauppauge WinTV-HD: http://www.hauppauge.com
Telemann HiPix: http://www.telemann.com/products/dtv200.html

There are quite a few opinions on these cards, and if you are really interested you should be sure to check a more recent one because as the software they use changes, so does the capabilities of the cards. As always, a great resource for all of this is the AVS Forum: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/ [avsforum.com]

Re:!!!GO USA!!!

[Alan Partridge]

"WE WON, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS! We will dispose of every pansy-assed Euro team that gets in our way"

fear that you'll soon be eating those ill-chosen words.

Re:!!!GO USA!!!

[elefantstn]

I doubt it -- Poland are fucking terrible, and we'll likely get Mexico in the second round.

Re:There's a lot of "value"

[sjgman9]

This is nuts. A lot of people are not motivated to download old episodes on a p2p program. Most people want to be entertained, not to think.

It is a major hassle to digitize something. I dont mind paying for the convenience of renting something physically (like a movie on dvd).

I tape some shows that I like. If i digitized every show I like, i would run out of hard drive space.

These bozos need to realize that not everyone has our inclinations. Just sell us the stuff to keep us entertained. There's a reason tv rots your brain: You dont think while watching it. You just watch

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[lucifuge31337]

I'm not sure where you live or what kind of friends you have

Poor ones, aparrantly.

Re:Digital TV could bring so many advances to home

[roybadami]

That's a lot of US references in your post. Unfortunately I happen not to live on the continent, which was also one of the motivations for my post: streamline the standards, so that if/when you move, you don't end-up with equipment you have to leave behind.

To a large extent digital TV has brough us a single world standard -- it's called MPEG-2.

The difference is that some countries (eg the US and Japan) are transmiting high resolution MPEGs, where as others (eg here in the UK) are content to stay with the lowest resolution they can get away with.

The devil is in the detail, and we're not there yet, but there's no reason to suppose that digital TV won't take us closer to your goal of equipement interchaneability.

Re:!!!GO USA!!!

[meringuoid]

Poland weren't terribly good, were they?

Just what's going on out there, anyway? South Korea beat Poland - OK, the Poles aren't _that_ big a name, and Korea have the home advantage. The US beat Portugal - bloody hell, indeed. Portugal are on a level with England and Holland at the very least.

But how in the name of sanity did _Senegal_ beat the _French_? It's just plain absurd...

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[foobar104]

The superbowl wasnt broadcast in High-Definition. It was 480p. Fox sux when it comes to HD.

I wasn't talking about the 2002 game. I was talking about the 2001 game, like I said, which was broadcast by CBS is glorious 1080i.

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[ncc74656]

I dont know of a single person, anywhere, that owns a digital television.

You do now. I bought one last month, and so did a friend of mine. Another friend bought his last year; he kind of opened the flood gates for us. I watched the SuperBowl in January, 2001, in HD at another friend's place. He's our early adopter.

I'm not sure where you live or what kind of friends you have, but HDTV is more common than you realize.

It all depends on where you are and what's available locally. I know someone with a HD-capable monitor (60" widescreen Toshiba), but he hasn't bothered getting a HD receiver to go with it. There's only one HD broadcaster in town ATM, and while I'm sure that JAG in HD is nice, it's not thousands-of-dollars nice. The widescreen capability ends up only getting used with DVDs. As for me, I have a 27" Akai (the one with a widescreen mode that squishes the vertical scan) that plays anamorphic DVDs at full resolution and cost less than $400. It works well enough for me.

Not quite accurate...

[OmniGeek]

Many computer monitors run at horizontal scan rates different from the mains frequency (I'm running 800x600 at 75 Hz right now), so it's NOT really primarily a matter of EMF induced interference. What is really going on is that cheap, poorly-filtered HV and deflection supplies (such as those built into consumer-level TV sets) that are synched to the mains frequency won't show visible effects on-screen from mains-frequency ripple on their DC outputs. (Actually, the artifacts WILL be there, but as they they aren't actually moving, they aren't noticable without a tape measure; they appear as degraded vertical linearity (scan line height). High-quality system such as VGA monitors and HDTV sets generally have better-regulated DC supplies and suppress the ripple better.

As for the difference between PAL and SECAM, I will cynically suggest that it is due to French orneriness and a nationalistic desire to go their own way. Alas, this attitude is very transnational; as a species, we just cannot seem to agree on ONE standard for anything. (Video coding, modem standards, tone-dialing frequencies, power-line voltage/frequency, power-line freakin' PLUGS, you name it...)

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[Anonymous Coward]

or you can get a 20" plain old tv for $250. hmmmm...

you, my friend, are out of touch. no one buys $3000 televisions!

Re:There's a lot of "value"

[Ted_Green]

Yes, but you read slashdot, and that more than makes up for your daily suply of degeneration.

Re:again proof that upper management have no brain

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok so do you force your readers to use special decoder rings? or do you only allow your books to be viewed at special locations and not allow people to purchase them?

you sell a product (book) it is a physical thing. If your book was about how do do something you only own the words in the order you wrote them you dont own the idea NO-ONE can own an idea.

you can own a product, you can own a proceedure, you can even own a dimensional coordinate on the earth's surface. you cant own an idea because as soon as you tell someone it is no longer your property.

Re:again proof that upper management have no brain

[Lumpy]

Yes, and if you wouldn't let me buy your book(s), I'd gladly take it(them) over to a photocopier and copy the sections I need/want. or (GASP) fint it at the library. (Funny, you publishers arent out hanging librarians and burning libraries.. they have photocopiers all ready and waiting for rampant copyright infringement! My God, Libraries are Cesspools of Wanton illegal activity! People are READING books they didnt pay for!!!!)

so yes... if you published your books on the same model as television shows, you are in the exact same category.

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[DavittJPotter]

Even here in remote western South Dakota, we sell quite a few (50%) HDTV or HDTV-ready sets. Mitsubishi and Sony are the two makers to watch; Mitsu actually quit making glass TVs about 4 years ago in order to focus on rear-projection digital sets.

HDTV is defined as a 16:9 broadcast with DTS sound. There are (IIRC) 3 different formats: 720p, 960p, and 1080i. DVD video is either 480i or 480p (interlaced or progressive scan) - for DVD, it depends on your DVD player.

Comparing even a good quality picture from Dish Network to a true HD broadcast is amazing. Everything looks better - it's like looking through a window. Movies, depending on how they're transferred to DVD, look proper in their widescreen format.

BUT. Please, please, please - if you buy a projection HD set, and plan to hook up your Playstation/XBox/Gamecube - *TURN DOWN YOUR CONTRAST*! These sets CAN and WILL burn in. Also, if you're watching a regular 4:3 broadcast, use your Full Zoom or Stretched Standard mode to fill your screen. Don't view static images for more than about 15% of your time, or you risk burn-in.

That said, there IS a difference between a $1500 51" Hitachi and a $2700 53" Sony. Color saturation, image sharpness, auto convergence - all very nice.

Also, for right now, unless you plan on using an antenna to receive HDTV signal, you don't need a TV with the tuner. Your cable box/Dish Network will be providing the HDTV signal, bypassing the HDTV tuner.

Comparison: a 57" Sony w/o the tuner is $3300. A 57" Sony w/ the tuner is $5000.

Save the bucks and buy a nice new DTS receiver! :)

"Robust" products

[morgue-ann]

You've read about them in the agreement I hope?

This won't be like region-locked DVD players that become region-free by cutting a jumper. Those can't be sold under the agreement. Waiting for the next Apex to make one without signing the agreement? Watch Congress put the force of law behind this agreement. After all, it isn't being rammed down our throat like the CPDTPA was, no, no, industries agreed (sarcasm) in private action to do this.

CSS wasn't actually that easy to crack. Robust products must be built to resist reverse-engineering so look out for tricks like the Xbox uses (you aren't running Linux on one, so don't tell me that bunnie's crack means much). Code obfuscation, secure busses, yep, it'll all be in your way.

Building your own HD receiver might end up easier. You'll have to get a tuner/QAM decoder that gives up the decoded signal in the clear, but at least open source MPEG-2 decoders are available.

Also, buy your (over-the-air) HD receivers now! They will never be encumbered by this bullshit. Satellite & cable boxes might be recalled, but they can't take away your Samsung SIR-T150 (~$600). Don't buy a combo box (they can update your firmware). Get an OTA-only one. Unencumbered HD tuner cards for PCs are another tech that will soon be out of production & $$$$ on ebay.

-M

Re:!!!GO USA!!!

[Alan Partridge]

Football? It's a funny old game.

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not many people in the U.S. have HDTV yet, but hang on. In two years more than 3% of U.S. households will!! (The source for the numbers cites a Pricewatershouse Cooper study, which is not available for free.)

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[Bowie J. Poag]

So, here's what i've learned in summary for this thread:


"If you go HDTV, you'll never go back because 1080i BSkyB Sky+ Enhanced DVD Digital 480 Mega Overscan HD Super Mario PVR is great for viewing 2006 DIgital NTSC 480i CSI!!!! If you haven't spent $3000 on a television, you arent as cool as me and the other 2% of the population stupid enough to pay $3000 for a television!!! You're poor, because me and this guy I've heard of a couple towns over have HDTV! You're poor!!"


And...

"I just want to watch TV, and watch movies occasionally. I could care less if its digital. If a movie sucks, watching it in high-definition digital quality isn't going to make it suck any less. Besides, half the time, all thats on TV are commercials and reruns, and I could care less if I can see every individual hair on Ted Koppel's toupee."

You don't have to be a brain surgeon to see which group I subscribe to. Then again, if you were one of the unfortunate morons who bought a $3000 idiot box, here's a hint: I belong to the -second- of the two groups mentioned. Get crackin'!

Cheers,

Re:And no, its not a a piece of flamebait.

[Eccles]

. Any time. Starting this Friday of course, along with SG1.

You're not anywhere near central Maryland, are you?

Mafiosi thugs

[Snover]

Naw, the Mafia'll just break your kneecaps. Those heal. These guys'll break fair-use. That'll be much harder to fix.