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News on TiVo, "God's Machine"
Brace for incoming TiVo news!
rtphokie pointed out that FCC chair Michael Powell got a TiVo for Christmas and calls it
"God's machine."
Powell also said he wanted to share TV shows with his sister -- but he might have to violate the DMCA to do it: TiVo wants to
join the home network
(thanks Insomniac), but parr pointed us to
TiVo's Thursday press release
in which they assure us that "every TiVo Series2 DVR contains a unique public/private key pair," so only "designated" units within your home can share programs, you "cannot send content outside the home," and transfers over your home network will be encrypted (no sniffing!). Meanwhile, on the WB (part of AOL-TW), everything old is new again, as producers and advertisers work to create a live variety show with
built-in commercials (free reg. req.) (thanks eternal_software).
And if you missed our earlier TiVoesque stories, check 'em out:
TiVo-radio wanted,
HDTV TiVo,
and
TiVo Rendezvous. Whew!
Um...which article in here, exactly, says that Powell wants to share programs with his sister but that he is aware he would need to break the DMCA to do it?
The sentence construction in the original posting suggests that Powell is actually aware of the law and its problems, and neither the article nor anything he as ever said proves any such thing.
Yes, it's semantics, but it's damn important semantics. One is playing what-if games where we say 'Gee, wouldn't it be k-rad cool if Michael Powell was breakin' the law, huhhuhuhuh?', the other makes a _clear-cut statement_ that an appointed government official is aware of the problems of a copyright law his department nor administration never gave a nod to.
Ha.
The post should read, 'Powell also said that he wanted to share shows with his sister. What Powell may not be aware of is that in saying so, he may ultimately have to break the DMCA to do it.'
...transfers over your home network will be encrypted (no sniffing!)
Um, just because it's encrypted doesn't mean I can't sniff the encrypted data to try to work out the keys. How do you think you crack WEP?
Personally, I feel that the ability to share files is one of the least useful features of a PVR. If there is something I really want to see, its trivial to just record it myself. Plus with the way cable TV works, the same shows will often get repeated multiple times on the same day or the coming weeks, so if my friend comes to me and says "did you see this show, you gotta see it" I would just find it on the schedule and record it myself. Plus there is a going trend of network shows to appear on basic cable during the next two weeks. Not to mention that it will be repeated at least two or three times later in the TV season.
I do think that a major victim of file sharing TiVos will be HBO, as I can see "The Sopranos" and other non-basic cable shows to be most shared files out there, and I don't think that's right. I'd say a feature that isn't really necessary, is highly controversial, and in IMO most likely to be used illegally should be removed right now, especially if it threatens the overall survival of the excellent service.
"So TiVo is going out of it's way to assure it's customers that the device has been purposely and explicitely designed so as to be less useful to them. What the fuck is going on here?????"
I'd say they're covering their asses to make sure they can stay in business. They know that the hackers can figure out ways to extract video from it and send it wherever they please. As long as they stay on the good side of the DMCA/copyright law/whatever they won't have to deal with 500lb media gorillas flinging feces at them. Can you blame them? I'd much rather find a hack on the internet to extract/share video than risk having my Tivo go lifeless because of lawsuits.
(Although I've heard there's a 'plan B' if Tivo does go under...)
For example, when I went home at Christmas, I told my parents to watch The Shield on FX because I figured they would like it. They got hooked and watched the first season marathon FX showed. Now, if FX hadn't been showing it as a marathon, my parents may have never caught up on the series enough to want to watch more. With file sharing, I or someone else who had the first season, could've send them the episodes to watch. You don't always want to know what you want to watch the first time it airs, and not everything gets a second airing.
The media industry is already making the move into product placement as the means to make money. We've seen it in movies for years, but most TV shows and music have avoided it due to commercial sponsorship. The industrty realizes we can make digital recordings and edit out the commercials, so why not embed the commercials in the shows themselves. It's only a matter of time before Pepsi's new ad campaign involves their name being mentioned in 8 of the Top Ten songs on the radio....plus your still stuck with the advertizing if you buy the CD, or just "steal" it off the internet. Could be a good thing for the file swappers if they can now argue that the artist was paid by the advertizers
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
This week I brought up Tivo twice in conversation. Once was to a mom who loves Oprah and watches it every day but is really mad when she misses it for whatever reason or someone calls in the middle of Oprah. I said "Well, you just need Tivo." She looked at me like I said "Oh, just re-route your flux capacitor.'
The other night I asked a business man who is one of those gadget freaks if he had tivo and he had the similar response!
How is it that people dont know what Tivo is? Why the hell does anyone who watch TV NOT have a Tivo? Listen to people like Adam Carolla on Loveline. He is just blown away by Tivo's powers. Don, Mike, Buzz, Rob of the Don and Mike show all have it and its just like going to the bathroom on how often they use it. It was a plot topic on King of Queens even! So, why the hell have people not jumped all over this thing?!
Now, I cant afford Tivo so what shows I really DO wanna watch (Sopranos) I record using my GF's All-in-wonder. If I didnt have an all-in-wonder, Id be saving up for a Tivo.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
NetFlix has more or less proven that the easiest way to transfer 3 hours of TV-quality video content is to put a DVD into a lightweight mailer and then put a 37 cent postage stamp on it. Using the mail is cheaper and faster than any internet-based solution to transfer that much data.
I really don't see net-based transfer of Tivo-recorded content to be a workable solution.
While most of what you say is very true, this is only a problem if viewed with eyes that are unready to change the business model from the ground up (which admittely includes just about the entire media industry).
If shows could be entirely paid for by embedded advertisements, then the business model the distribution of the shows would have to be different. Firstly, the producers would want to have as many viewers as possible, spreading over the Internet would be greatly encouraged. Secondly , while it is true that there would be no reason for syndicated channels to pay for the material if they cannot tack on their own advertisements, the original sponsors and producers, again looking for as many viewers as possible, would want the shows syndicated. So the business relationship would be inverse: producers would pay channels to show there shows.
The question that remains, of course, is that of the efficiency of the adveritising. It is obvious that if an advertisement in embedded in the program instead of tacked on, it will be less flexible both geographically and temporally (difficult to change for different markets, as well as for different times), meaning that advertisers are less likely to pay as much as they do today per viewer of the add. But there are several things that help moderate this. Firstly, brands and products are much more global today then when television started - there is probably no shortage of companies that are willing to market there product at every viewer of Friends (or whatever mind numbing sitcom we are being spoon fed this week). Secondly, a loss in advertising revenue does not necessarily mean the end of TV - there are what, five?, different Discovery channels in cable packages these days, will it really be the end of the world if they were forced to scale that back to one or two? Television has become much more efficient in just the last ten years or so - it is now possible to produce material for much less per possible viewer then it was previously.
Writing off the concept of embedded advertisements is premature. The nature of the information age (barring the bonds that MS and co. want to place on it) is that people are in control, down to the micro level, of what content they consume. In the long term, it is not possible in such a society to try to make people pay attention to things they do not desire - making it seem to them that they do desire it is advertisements only hope.
30 second skip really isn't a hack, it's closer to a video game cheat code. You enter the right sequence into your remote, and that rather useless "foward to end" button now means "forward 30 seconds".
This a case of Tivo going as close as they can to the line without being sued by Hollywood. If 30 second skip buttons are determined to be illegal, Tivo can drop the unsupported feature and nobody can say Tivo every promised it to anybody. On the other hand, it's there and you can use it for now.
Some shows just won't work with embedded advertising. Some cartoons take a year to make, so unless it's a generic "Eat at McDonald's" ad, you can't put it in. Also, if you have something that's for a limited time (like a special type of pizza) you don't want that ad shown again in the future. Plus you'll want that add shown often during the limited time, so you'll have to find many different shows that will put it in.
Documentary type shows, like the Crocodile Hunter, would also have problems placing products.
Two things. First of all no one is forcing you. Second of all 600$ is dirt cheap. There are som 178 episodes (not counting all the extra stuff, like behind the scenes) of TNG. That is about 3 bucks per episode. If you can't afford that, you either live in Afghanistan or you are simply to cheap to buy, no matter what they were charged.
I sincerely doubt it. At
Some people will not be satisfied before you can get it for free. And then they will probably bitch because the download is too slow.
For
Rumagent
>>FCC chair Michael Powell got a TiVo for Christmas and calls it "God's machine."
Um OK. So we now equate God with an fancy, glorified VCR. Terrific.
I'm not religious or anything, but the only tech that I'd even come close to calling God's Machines are those that save or improve the quality of lives. Like artifical organs, medical equipment. For me, even the simple concept of an ambulance is about 10,000 orders of magnitude above a Tivo.
Not just human life. Any life.
Huh?
I think that Slashdot has gone long enough without TiVO having it's own topic. Here's a few good reasons:
/. reader has one, and watching the future of TiVo will be one of the mosting interesting battlegrounds in the coming DMCA/MPAA/etc. conversations.
1) Very little besides TiVo is interesting on this "television" that provides so-called "entertainment."
2) It'd be relatively easy to seperate the TiVo topics from under the "Television" heading, as they all have the uniquely-capped word in them.
3) Apparently every
Just my $.02
Does your TiVo act as a jukebox as well?
Uh. My TiVo is connected to my TV. When I'm at home, my iPod is connected to my stereo.
And it's quite easy to use.
Yes, I'm sure it passes the mom test quite handily. "Okay, Mom, all you have to do is log in, then go to 'Start,' 'Cyberlink,' 'PowerVCR II.' Okay? Then click this button here that looks like... well, okay, it kinda looks like the Devil's ATM machine. All right, click that and then select the file you want to watch. Like if I wanted to watch an 'Oprah' episode from two weeks ago, I'd just pick '4_CH4_11_16_10_7.0000.' Got it? Mom? Mom? Where ya goin', Mom? Mommy? Don't you love me any more, Mommy? Oh, Mommy, no!"
I write in my journal
We have all seen how product placement works. You see it in movies almost all the time (Thank God there were NO Nike's in LOTR). What I want to know is why haven't they taken Digital TV to a new level for advertisement. Imagine if at the end of the credits of a show you could receive a virtual presentation of the set, and the objects of the set are manufatured and retailled on the web. Think about that one for a second, you got your celeberity endorsement from the get-go, you got your customer base as well, and you have their attention, all they need is a way to buy it( ie "Man I like Sienfeld's couch. Who makes that anyway? Oh it's by berkline and I can buy it now for $450."And with Tivo you could save those with a minimum of fuss, much less a DVD compilation of a season. If interactive menus can be created, why can't we have interactive credits to indulge our crass consumerism?
TANSTAAFL
No... What you have to wonder is ``How can any of this be illegial?" This is all simple stuff that any idiot with a PC can do... and can extend that PC to do MUCH more.
I can't see any fair reason this could be considered unlawful... There is no law (yet) that requires digital manufacturers to play babysitter and include DRM, so they could make their "system" be nothing more than a GUI on top of a Linux box, and just let the users close the GUI, and do whatever they want to do with the files. Same thing.
If ReplayTV looses, get ready for THE BIG CHILL FACTOR... That would instantly make it illegial to make it possible to pirate... Instant defacto DRM requirement.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
He said advertisers had to respond to the ways technology had changed viewing habits, beginning with the remote control...
Right. It started with the channel changer. Advertisers have survived a few decades of remotes, first with the ability to change channels during an ad, later with the VCR-granted ability to fly through them. Not to mention the old standbys--going to the bathroom or getting a snack. Yet we still get breaks filled with 30-second commercials, 6 times an hour. I don't think tivos will change the face of TV that much, even when cable & sat providers start making them standard. I still know a whole lot more people with regular cable than digital cable.
But he noted that advertisers were also responding by trying to make their commercials more entertaining. "Advertising is becoming art," he said. "You don't need it, but it's fun to look at."
Eactly. Advertisers just need to use their brains and make good stuff. I'd rather watch the $CAR ad with the guy licking the door handle, or the one where the guy unplugs to fridge so the food will spoil and they have to go to $RESTAURANT, than half the shows on TV. Note to Madison Avenue: You need to go beyond "Sunday, Sunday, SUNDAY!"
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
What you have to wonder is ``How can any of this be illegial?"
A agree with you 100%.
The thing is that COURTS HAVE RULED VCR'S ILLEGAL. It took a supreme court ruling to overturn that decision, and it was a one vote margin, 5 to 4. Had one person voted differently VCR's would be prohibited in the US.
The situation is perilous. We have the MPAA and RIAA and others constantly fighting HARD for expanded copyright restrictions. They have been lying and deceptive and people are falling for it. Judges and legislators have been catering to corporate interests and neglecting the public interests. Perfectly legal activies are being outlawed in the name of copyright.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Several people have already mentioned the major problem with embedding commercials in TV shows: Does the advertiser pay again for reruns and syndication?
But nobody's mentioned another very big reason why this will never happen -- local advertising. How can you do ANY local advertising if the ad is embedded in the show?