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It's Not TV, It's MythTV
ChipGuy writes "The New York Times looks at MythTV (an open source PVR technology), Bit Torrent and Videora and how they are disrupting the television business, especially the lucrative business of selling TV DVDs. Unlike the music industry, television folks are trying to get ahead of the curve and offer TV downloads in a legal and easy to use manner."
An entertainment industry which realizes that if it treats it own customers like criminals, they won't exactly be creating good will...
The reason TV ratings are plummetting is because TV is full of idiotic shows that make women look perfect and men look like a bunch of retards. If TV people want their ratings to improve maybe they should consider making some shows that dont suck ass.
There are differences between Music and Telivision industry. You watch a TV show only once (or a few times), while you listen to a song many times.
Videora, like TiVo for Torrents
:-)
A few days ago, I wrote about Videora, a BitTorrent+RSS client which makes it easy for folks to find and download torrent files from the web. The post, picked up by others generated mostly positive responses to the software. Think of Videora as TiVo-for-torrent, using RSS feeds. In an effort to shed more light to the product, I did an e-interview (via email) with Sajeeth Cherian, a Canadian student, who has hacked together this wonderful product. Here are excerpts from an e-interview.
OM: Tell me a little bit about yourself?
SC: I am a student attending Carleton University, which is located Ottawa, Canada's Capital. I am in my final year, perusing a degree in Communication Engineering and let me tell you, engineering is as hard as everyone says it is. Lately I've been interning at a couple high tech firms around the Ottawa region to get some real world experience and finish up the work experience requirement for my degree.
OM: What prompted you to write Videora?
SC: My roommate likes to watch anime and constantly scours the web looking for his favorite anime to download. (Anime is the Japanese term for Japanese animation, cartoons that are broadcast in Japan and which are then subtitled into English by groups of volunteers or commercial companies). About once a week he would complain to me how he was wasting all this time searching for these shows. I think he was wishing that these shows would just somehow download themselves. Well after a few weeks I got sick of hearing his complaints so I decide to look for a solution to his problem.
OM: Now aren't you a good roommate? mine just finished my cup-a-noodles and never replenished the pantry. Still, RSS? SC: After searching some of his favorite anime BitTorrent sites, I came across one site which offered an RSS feed. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a simple format that is used by web sites to send article headlines, summaries and links back to full-text articles on the web. Anyways, this RSS feed was special, instead of linking to articles on the internet, it linked directly to the very BitTorrent files that these sites linked to on their web pages. By simply scanning the RSS feed and downloading the desired BitTorrent files it linked to, I concluded that he could download his anime automatically without ever having to surf to an anime BitTorrent website again.
After discovering this RSS feed I began to envision a product. Some thing simple, which allows users to find shows easily and a couple clicks later (after the shows are added to their 'season tickets') would automatically download these shows to their hard drives in the background. With this, users wouldn't have to look for certain video to download, because the video they want would already be on their hard drive. Thus giving them free time to do more interesting things, rather than scour the same old websites. This seemed like a killer idea with more potential than just quieting my roommate so I began to develop this idea into computer software. Along the way, I added a few other features including the ability to aggregate video files into 'want lists' which allows users to easily manually download videos of interest. Needless to say, my roommate doesn't complain to me anymore.
OM: I have seen that most of the cutting edge work on peer-to-peer and torrent type programs is happening outside of the US? Does being in Canada make it easier to work on such P2P products? SC: I don't think being in Canada makes it any easier than being in the United States to work on peer to peer products. Anyone, from any country can work on a peer to peer program without any trouble, all you need is a little computer programming know how. I read recently about a professor at Princeton who wrote a P2P product in 15 lines of code. I don't think he had any trouble producing it.
OM: What do you think is the impact of BitTorrent, RSS and other such technologies is going to be on the media - both d
This is not the greatest
A MythTV PVR isnt so hard to make for the slightly above average user and is a great excuse to try linux.
Bottles.
TV Downloads official=Not free.
BitTorrent>Official downloads. We live in a very capitalistic society, or at least most of us do. It makes sense that if you can get something for free, why would you pay for it? Even if that means not getting a third season of that great tv show...
Even so, shutting down the BitTorrent sites, as sad as it is, well placed advertising, and a few gestapo style raids will make a difference. Until a new technology for sharing even more crap comes along, and makes the Torrent look like Napster.
It's just the way things go.
"We have to try as an industry to get ahead of this and give the audience an attractive model before the illegal file-sharer providers meet their needs," said David F. Poltrack, CBS Television's executive vice president for research and planning.
Unfortunately, the "illegal file-sharer providers" kind of already meet my needs. I've no need for 90% of the TV channels currently available, or the commercials that are on nearly all of them. All I need are the few shows that I follow. Click, click, BitTorrent away!
Of course, none of these files give me super-high-quality video and audio. For that, I will buy the DVDs.
The coolest voice ever.
I'd like to use a PVR system, but there are no cards (that I've been able to find) that can decode the european sky channels.
There are pleanty of cards that can receive digital satellite broadcasts, but there are none for the sky system.
Being in an area that isn't served by a cable company satellite is the only option.
Anyone know any better?
Not surprisingly, the repercussions - particularly the rapidly growing number of shows available for the plucking online - terrify industry executives, who remember only too well what Napster and other file-sharing programs did to the music industry. They fret that if unchecked, rampant trading of files will threaten the riches of the relatively new and surprisingly lucrative television DVD business. It could endanger sales of television shows to international markets and into syndication.
Then why don't they fucking sell their shit online in a convenient, reliable format? Or don't they want to learn from the music industry, instead ignoring the solutions and only imagining the problems?
And it could further endanger what for the past 50 years has been television's economic linchpin: the 30-second commercial.
That *particular* business model is dying, and legislation should not protect it, just as "horseless carriages" shouldn't be required to carry horse whips to keep horse whip manufacturers in business. Note I didn't say *advertizing* or commercialism is dying, because it isn't. Merchants have managed to get information about their products to people, and subsequently have them purchased, over the years and through changing technology. Tomorrow will be no different. It's just that the volume of revenue from "forced" advertising, supporting $1M/show paychecks for actors, might not still be there.
And what a tragedy that would be...
The New York Times looks at MythTV (an open source PVR technology)
Hey, how are those of us who already know what MythTV supposed to maintain a smug superiority over those who have to ask? Explaining terms is not the Slashdot way. Please delete story and try again. Thanks.
Unlike the music industry, television folks are trying to get ahead of the curve and offer TV downloads in a legal and easy to use manner.
really? so i guess iTunes is considered not allowed by the RIAA?
ANT is a video aggregator for video blogs. Check it out!
.torrent of whatever.
Also, WritTorrent has a plugin that lets you post to your blog a
I honestly think that BitTorrent + RSS is a perfect software model of a worldwide broadcast. Despite your available bandwidth, you can host a show with a global audience.
From TFA:
Mr. Poltrack of CBS said that according to his network's research, a large number of viewers would welcome the chance to pay $1 to watch each television show, if they could do it on their own schedule and with the ability to skip commercials. With commercials, they'd be willing to pay 50 cents. And because the average viewer sees only half of a show's episodes, he said, this on-demand viewing won't hurt the regular showing.
Hey, somebody's on the right track! I pay $1 for a commercial/DRM/BS-free copy of insert-name-of-TV-show-here and I can do what I want with it. $0.50 wouldn't be bad at all with commercials, either. If the quality didn't suck, and I could watch it an unlimited number of times, that'd be perfect. The only thing I wouldn't ask to be able to do would be to share it with the world, but I should be able to at least burn it to a CD/DVD and whatever else I should normally be able to do within fair use.
But will it ever happen?
Its encouraging to see at least one US 'industry' actually take note of what does and does not work when trying to deal with the internet.
If this is done right, and priced right then i can see it becoming a success - especially if you arent forced to wait a week for each episode to come out just so TV networks can show it first. ( laiden with ads ).
Of course since you are getting it direct from the supplier, theres no need for adverts in it either - so if they`re gone, then yes i can see this becoming successful.
Ofc they`re going to have to DRM , or otherwise watermark it in some way to slow down the spread of the files to p2p networks ( its impossible to stop it really ) but as long as its all done in a nice way - i cant imagine there being much of a problem in it being adopted readily
"It could endanger sales of television shows to international markets and into syndication."
Region encoding sucks. Downloaded shows don't suffer from stupid region encoding. I see syndicated shows that also have DVD box sets, so where's the issue there? The DVDs still sell.
"from video-on-demand offerings that could let viewers order up an episode of "CSI" any time they like to a device that allows viewers who tune into the middle of a live TV broadcast to restart the program instantly"
Comcast has ads for that all over this area but I don't know of one single person that actually has the VOD feature available to them, and isn't it more costly as well? You have to have digital cable (iirc) which can run your cable bill well over $100/mo (more if you have a cable modem too) - that's a lot of dough.
Are the VOD shows commercial free, too? That would be nice to know..
Of course they're going to blame the PVR as well. There are a few things that media execs seem to overlook:
* People are SICK AND TIRED of advertising.
* People have busy schedules and would LIKE to watch TV shows, but cannot always watch them right when they're aired. Hence, the popularity of DVR units.
(I'm not even going to get into the "but you don't have a right to steal the content" crap, because I sure as hell don't think that downloading a TV show is "stealing content" when my Tivo does the exact same thing.)
And last but not least, the "Broadcast Flag" is going to be a total and complete failure.. just like the "V-Chip."
Unlike the music industry, television folks are trying to get ahead of the curve and offer TV downloads in a legal and easy to use manner.
If the television networks or maybe the producers want to allow me to download their shows w/out ads, the same day they're aired at a fast download speed for a reasonable rate, then I'd probably bite. I sure as hell won't buy a DVD set of a single season of any TV show for fifty bucks. Maybe a subscription service for 20-30 bucks a month that lets me download the shows I want might be worth it to me.
Of course what I just described is a pipe dream, so for the moment I'll remain content with the hdtv rips available.
The poster linked to an interview of the Videora Author. The actual website is here:
Videora
Thinkingest is also a commercial entity providing BT+RSS solutions. Since the greater thing we're talking about here is the combination of W3C's vision of the semantic web along with a peer-to-peer protocol that is abstracted in such a way that it can be dedicated to just one specific file, separate from any central index of all kinds of other stuff you may or may not want. There is lot of research around this, and whether it's BT or RSS, versus OpenNap and RDF... it doesn't matter... Using existing standards to do Semantics+P2P allows for dedicated, large-bandwidth transfers of anything, despite how much bandwidth the individual has. For instance, if everyone knows to watch a feed for new content, then the peers all join the swarm automatically when new content becomes available. If you can coordinate a p2p system like that, even a group of 5 people will see increased bandwidth and availability of the media.
I would pay for individual shows. At the moment I watch about a hour a week of television - most programs insult the intelligence of the average viewer, the adverts that fill 15 minutes of the hour are crass and bombastic. If there is a good quality show then I watch it through NetFlix. On my schedule, and without the adverts (although the "previews" on DVDs that you cannot skip are starting to annoy the hell out of me).
However, what would make my life more convenient is if there was something like iTunes (iTV?) where for a small fee (50 cents a show, possibly a dollar) I could download and burn the show of my choice.
Admittedly I could use P2P to find the show for free, but I would rather have the convenience of a sophisticated search interface and quick downloads.
I wonder how the US networks will react when the BBC finally posts it's huge archive of shows on the web.
Has anyone tried Media Portal? It's an open source Windows MCE look-alike/replacement. Written completely in C#, no less (I believe). I'm thinking about replacing my TiVo with an open-source PVR, and I'm not sure which one to go with, MythTV or MediaPortal. Has anyone tried both? If so, any recommendations? (And please, no "Linux vs Microsoft" as for the operating system -- it's just the user-land software that I care about.)
I think more because of a natural human tendency to polaraize, exaggerate and simplify than because this is the true situation, the worlds of "pro-" and "anti-" when it comes to this sort of thing are often drawn as two completely incompatible world views, no overlap, nothin'. Either you're an Evil Pirate (arr!) in the eyes of the benevolent and morally impregnable Copyright Holders, or a regressive Copyright Tyrant in the eyes of the Splendid Kids.
Instead, there's a much finer gradation in the real world. I have some music that I've found on the net (most of it in almost certain violation of copyright, but most of it music either not widely available, such as small-run remixes or out-of-print recordings), and I've watched some episodes of TV shows like the Simpsons that my dad's taped over the years. (Before I bought him a boxed set of a couple of seasons, that is.) Some of it's pretty ambiguous -- some laws are a hindrance to perfectly reasonable day-to-day actions, and the law is of necessity always playing catch-up. (And I wouldn't want it *not* to be playing catch-up; the alternative is far scarier.) For instance, I like to listen to old radio shows; many of them are now in the public domain, some of them are of ambiguous copyright, and usually listed (I think quite sincerely) on the websites of collectors with earnest invitations to report if a particular episode thought free and clear is not. I've never been able to work up much moral indignation with myself for listening to widely available audio material that I'd never otherwise encounter.
(And moderate, curious downloading, no matter what the copyright issues, seems qualitatively different to me than proudly downloading current popular music by the bucketload just to fill up Ye Olde iPodde, to "stick it to the Man" or whatever. High-end grocery stores I've been in don't mind customers sampling a grape or two; they know it increases sales either directly or through generated goodwill. That doesn't mean that carting out a case of oranges is the same thing. There are slipper slopes going both ways, I realize, but there are some slippery slopes worth venturing around the upper stretches of, or something.)
Appropriate moderation also applies to the whole concept of copyright. I'm not opposed to copyright (in fact, as societal constructs go, I think it's high on the Good list), but [even / especially] as a rabid free marketeer, I know that copyright is an extended rather than a natural right; the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, by contrast, are inalienable. Copyright is different -- it's a societal convention codified in law, to grant certain privileges (temporary monopoly) in exchange for certain later transfers (into the public domain). It shouldn't mean people can't remember and repeat lyrics, and (let me whack an obvious mole), it shouldn't mean that superficial cultural aspects like the words to Happy Birthday are forever off limits to TV characters. Copyright law is perhaps not as broken as patent law, but it needs some overhauling. Specifically, I'd like to see the temporary monopoly bit be clarified as applying specifically to wide-scale copying likely to affect commerical endeavors of the copyright holder. This still leaves messy edges, but ones I think easier to deal with the current system's mess.
With TV, back to the Simpsons box set: I'd not see much moral problem with anything I do (record, re-watch, commerical skip, dub with voices of my relatives, use as the inspiration for a novel) with television shows unless I've explicitly and with full knowledge promised not to do those things. But for certain shows (glad to see Northern Exposure's box sets, and Monk's) I'd *like* to get liner notes, extra features, snippets, outtakes, etc, and paying for them seems fair. [On the other hand, when DVDs are available from the library, is there moral harm in recording them for later watching, before handing them back to the library? For private, non-commerical use, is the maker actually likely to lose revenue fr
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
"Mr. Poltrack of CBS said that according to his network's research, a large number of viewers would welcome the chance to pay $1 to watch each television show, if they could do it on their own schedule and with the ability to skip commercials. With commercials, they'd be willing to pay 50 cents. And because the average viewer sees only half of a show's episodes, he said, this on-demand viewing won't hurt the regular showing."
Pretty much sums it up right there. Viewers want to watch it when THEY have time, and WITHOUT advertising.
People are SICK TO DEATH of advertising. Anyone seen the Caltrain cars on the SF peninsula that are "wrapped" with a Target Stores advertisement? They make Caltrain $25,000/month. Riders *HATE* them. The recent Caltrain newsletter actually has comments from riders saying that they hate them, but Caltrain goes with them because of the cash flow.
Corporations love ads. People hate them. Corporations have more money than people. People want less ads on TV, corporations want more. People try to skip ads with ReplayTV, corporations bitch to the courts. I hate how it all works.
Well, I think TV downloads would work, because, unlike movies and music, TV is offered free of charge to start with (with the exception of commericial-free stations). Also, TV is a one-shot deal (except for PVRs), so I, for one, wouldn't be as opposed to DRM. Also, I could stand a "free" download of a show, where you get it with commericals, and a "premium" commerical-free option. It's not like I can't stand any commericals; it's just stupid ones, or when they get shown twice in a row. Perhaps you could block certain commericals, and the commericals would be custom-added to each show (or several different commerical themes, so men don't have to watch Tampax commericals and the like).
The reason I still have to rent a cable box is because my incoming signal comes in scrambled.
NOW - if I buy a cable descrambler, that would be illegal, right?
But surely you can set up MythTV or the like to do the same thing in software (I assume the cable box does it in firmware but I don't actually know.)
So - would software that does the same thing be illegal, or not?
And can MythTV do this?
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
...and still nothing on.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
I find the whole idea that we should pay people ungodly sums of money for pretending to be other people laughable. Why should an actor get 1 million plus an episode is beyond me. They have a job just like me, now I'm not an actor but quite frankly which is harder, reading lines from a page that someone else wrote, or using your hands and your mind to create something? Let the flaming begin...
Ubiquitously - A Ubiquity Developer Community
If you are not a Neilson (sp?) viewer it doesn't matter whether or not you watch a show. Therefore, since you don't have the possiblity of giving them revenue by watching, you can't deny then revenue by downloading (assuming the show isn't out on DVD).
If you download, they are no worse off than if you did or did not watch the show (once again assuming the show isn't on DVD).
So, unless you are a Neilson veiwer (or your land's equivalent) you cannot "steal" from them.
Unlike the music industry, television folks are trying to get ahead of the curve and offer TV downloads in a legal and easy to use manner."
Unfortunately probably not an affordable one. Have you priced TV DVDs lately? Something like Law and Order is like... 40 bucks a season or something. And there's like nine seasons. That's insane, and I don't think it's the cost of the media that's setting this price. I think it's that they're setting that price because they're expecting you'll pay it, and I think they can just as reasonably expect they can set comparable prices on internet media and you'll still pay it. Well, I for one won't pay it. And I don't think we're going to see TV downloads reasonably priced enough that the cost is less of an imposition than the bother of me paying money to see Aqua Teen Hunger Force on my computer instead of waiting until Adult Swim time, going downstairs to my neighbor's apartment who has cable, and saying "hey can I watch your tv for a little bit?"
Look-- there's this place in New York. It's called the Museum of Television History or something and it's just this little nondescript place on the bottom couple floors of some skyscraper. They've got the entire last 60 years of television on tape. Not quite all of it, but all of it that's been preserved by anyone. That's what they do. They preserve television history. And if you go in and pay them... I don't know, It was like $8 or $12 or something rediculously cheap, they'll let you cram in as many people as you can fit into these little nicely furnished viewing booths and watch in comfort three television programs of your choice out of everything ever recorded. Now that's a nice offer.
That's not what we're going to get. By the time the dust settles and these services are up, we're going to get like.. select from this wide variety of random television programs, some of which are the ones you might actually want to watch, and we'll let you watch them once with periodic graphical glitches, hunched over in your cramped little computer chair with the tinny sound, after a 10-minute buffering session. You can watch that TV show you've forgotten from the 80s with the kid who can stop time because her dad is an alien for just a dollar an episode! Oh, what, you'd rather watch Law and Order? Well, that costs a lot more. You'd rather watch Sliders? Well, we have about six unlabeled episodes from different seasons, so good luck following the plot. But, hey, you like Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You can watch the show's entire run for just the equivalent price of a new XBox and two RPGs which cumulatively take 120 hours to finish! You like Sifl and Olly? Oh, sorry. Go watch the show from the 80s with the alien kid instead. But isn't our service great? Aren't you grateful that we're offering you on aribtrary terms and at relatively steep prices the same uneven entertainment that we offered at one time for free, and that you could continue legally to watch for free indefinitely if you or someone you know had just been forward-thinking enough to turn on their VCRs the first time they were broadcast? Man, those people who still download tv shows over bittorrent must just be so greedy.
It's bullshit. Much as it pains me to say Russia got something right, we really need to copy their compulsory copyright licensing program.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Bit torrent poses no threat to anyone.
On average, I get a 1-6kbyte download speed and my upload is over 50kbyte. It sucks having to upload 8 gigs just to get 1 gig back. I am capable of downloading at over 600kbytes per second, yet it takes me three days to download a 1+ gig files using bit torrent. I don't know why anyone thinks this is a threat to their business model.
If you're looking for a Windows solution, take a look at GBPVR. Free (donations accepted) and excellent. I know the author personally, a good friend of mine.
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
The women look like a bunch of retards too.
Interestig how they mix MythTV in with commentary about people sharing TV shows on the internet. I have a MythTV box, which occasionally actually works (gentoo emerge updates often mangle something in there and breaks the machine, I'm currently trying to recover from such a mangling now), but I have no filesharing programs for Linux. I haven't got Samba worknig right to my Windows box either, but I can't remember the last time I used one there.
Turned out a waste of time, I tried downloading episodes of shows I missed that week, such as the first episode of Alias this season when I did not know they moved to Wed. night instead of their old Sunday timeslot. I never get a complete file, so I quit trying...
But really, how is downloading the episode of a show I missed last night stealing? It ain't for sale on DVD yet, or I'd buy it like I already got the first three seasons of Alias. As for commercial DVDs vs MythTV recordings, I'd rather have the DVDs. I've got a PVR-250 TV card, but the quality isn't nearly as good as DVDs. The quality often is rather disappointing on my recordings.
I had for a while kept recordings of Futurama reruns, but ended up getting DVDs because they look so much better on my TV, and that's a freakin' cartoon that shouldn't be affected by quality as bad as live actors and stuff should.
I dont' often even bother to skip commercials. It still gives me a place to visit the kitchen or restroom. And while I have seen the quote from some TV executive that those things qualify as stealing TV, sorry dude, but when nature calls, that's more important than watching another instance of some ad I've already seen way too many times.
If there was a way to legally download all the fresh shows that I want to see, I'd pay a few bucks per episode. But that isn't going to happen because of market segmentation politics. See, I live in Germany, where shows only come up on TV a few years after they aired in the States, which really sucks.
By downloading them off the net, I can get them now, without the sucky translation - but it's also illegal. It's lose-lose all the way. I have given up hope of enjoying the shows just like a normal viewer in the USA can, long ago. DRM is going to make us pay very thoroughly. And by paying I don't only mean money but also the freedom to choose content you want in a format you want.
Despite all this stuff like MythTV, thinks aren't exactly looking so bright on the consumer front.
1. I'm not advocating stealing the content, copyright infringement, or anything along those lines, so your entire post and the locking doors analogy is invalid.
2. Well, why *don't* they move into a new medium? Or are you saying they should have just stuck with OTA delivery, instead of cable and satellite? Or maybe VHS? Or perhaps film? Or maybe hand-drawn flipbooks? The internet and various media formats are just another delivery mechanism which they should be JUMPING at, AND making a lot of money doing, to boot! This isn't about anyone stealing, this is about content providers responding to the marketplace.
This could be a win for everybody. The best part of tvtorrents isn't so much that they're free but they're amazingly convienient. No adverts, watch them when you want, hdtv quality -- they're just fantastic value, even at $1.
And if a portion of the money goes directly back to the show's production instead of subsidizing some reality tv crap, then all the better.
Although, I'll hold judgement until we actually see an iShows.com that offers all that they promise.
"The number of Unix installations has grown to ten, with more expected." (Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd ed.; june 1972)
People use iTunes becuase the software is good and the system has the right amount of DRM. -> I can do everything I could with a CD. It has high enough quality and it is very easy to use. Now if some company got it's head out of it's ass and did the same thing for tv I would buy them in a heartbeat for a resonable price. I think $1 for without commercials with = quality to the HDTV torrents (which are great better quality and smaller file size than my freevo box does) would be fine. I wouldn't want to pay for tv with commericals, I don't know why should I if I want to download it.
The meaning of "stealing" is determined not by any kind of sane ethical or moral considerations, but by PR companies. And the PR companies decide that "stealing" means whatever is most convenient for their clients (not you).
Don't even bother trying to rationalize these things anymore, or convince other people you're not a bad person just because you weaseled out of paying taxes to the corporate lords. People won't listen. The media tells them how and what to think, and the media is owned by a very small group of people which is getting smaller all the time-- all of whom get money if they can convince people that any act which does not involve causing money to flow into the pockets of the entertainment companies they own is "stealing", whatever that means.
And it doesn't matter what it means. All that matters is that it's bad. The television said so.
The number of people giving up TV altogether because of insane advert times. Inane advert content. Repetitive inane advert content is going up. The reason TV DVD's are so suprisingly popular is that people can watch them on their terms. Their are no adverts. There are no inane repetitive adverts. Right now it is a geek thing. Tommorrow it will be like the iPod.
The 30 second spot is dieing. Studies already show that people are so immune to commercials it takes an insane number of repetitions in order to have any kind of chance to be rememebered. Instead the Web is leading the way with largely opt-in advertisement with paid for placement.
If Google can make money providing free search and massive bandwidth, a great deal of R&D for new content all through on demand ads autogenerated based on peoples request. I have a sneaking suspiscion that a network that offered its content for free and had targeted paid for advertising around the process could do the same.
Imagine a FOX websight that works like Google. Go search for a show, or go to the shows site. Paid for adverts are to the side like every freaking web page in existence now. Some click through some don't. Download the show with a streaming advert delivering method aimed at the users login which lasts ONLY while the content selected is loading.
Of course to do this you have to completely revamp Nielson or out right replace it. Turn the marketing industry upside down. And set up massive delivery infrastructure and reorganzie the way your basic TV station works.
no biggie.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
1. The shows must not have DRM limitations, and must be of decent quality.
2. They must be available for download before they are shown on television anywhere.
3. They must be reasonably priced.
If these three rules are followed, I look forward to kissing bittorrent goodbye for my weekly 24 episode download, and paying a bit of money for them. I'd prefer to transfer a chunk of money to the service and then have credit stored on there for a few weeks worth of television shows.
That is "woefully inadequate to describe why millions of people steal," said Mr. Garland of Big Champagne, the online media measurement company.
Copyright infringement is not theft, but we see the industry repeat this lie repeatedly. Why, oh why, do people fall for this crap?
As well, please keep in mind that originally, copyright protected only the author and only for a limited time. In fact, most of the so called "copyrighted" material no longer even belongs to the original creator. Indeed, most of copyrighted material would now be in the public domain.
Jeez people, face facts, the overly affluent have corrupted the law and are using it to exploit you.
It simply amazes me just how many Americans love to talk about freedom and responsibility but then are silent in the obvious presence of tyranny and exploitation.
Words to men, as air to birds.
Last year, when the new season of Stargate began, I would have a bunch of friends over to drink beers and watch new Stargate episodes. The 2nd half of the Stargate season just started airing on SciFi fridays a couple weeks ago...yet neither I nor my usually 'gate buddies have been watching it.
Why? It's simple. They've been airing overseas, and my friends d/l them and we watch the new episodes. We finished most of the current season before the 2nd half even started airing.
...Are we wrong to do so?
For a month or two now, every week we've seen a new episode of Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, and the (fantastic!) new series Battlestar Galactica. All of them are commercial free and very high quality rips. I can see this becoming a serious problem for the SciFi channel, and I would be willing to bet there has been a friday-night ratings drop for the 2nd-half or the season.
Also, on a similar note, watch Battlestar Galatica! It is absolutely amazing...the season finale (which won't air in the US for a month or two) is possibly the best 45 minutes of television ever created.
@ASP.NET's parent-teacher meeting: "Little Johnny.NET is very bright, but he doesn't play well with others."
what's missing is sports. a lot of us would actually prefer to watch sports as a *live* event.
my blog
I wonder if renting/owning a VCR in the USA and sending yourself the material for your own personal user would count as fair use.
Forgot to include sources. HowStuffWorks' blurb on ratings is here and Nielsen's site is here.
You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.
However, I would gladly pay UPN up to 10 bucks to see the episode. That's the cost of a movie, mucking around with p2p apps, or renting a video (with convenience costs built in). I hate p2p networks. You never know if the file is what you want or some kind of Mongolian goat bondage porn. Sometimes the files don't play. Other times they might be full of viruses. It is worth the money to me to get a quick, quality download from a trusted source. Being busy, I just don't have the bandwidth to deal with different p2p apps, etc. For something like TV, let me just put my cash down and get what I want.
As for ads, they can leave them in. With my Tivo, I forward past the stupid ones and actually watch the ones that catch my eye. I'd do the same with a downloaded file. They could also run ads as "strips" below the show. Both methods are annoying, but these methods would satisfy the marketing neanderthals at the big networks. Even if they stuck some annoying DRM on the file, I'd go for it (figuring that slashdot would have an article about a workaround to it in about a milisecond anyway.)
The same type of RSS plugin for his product can be added to Azureus and many other BT clients. I've been using Azureus with a RSS plugin to capture several shows that I normally watch. Works really well. Add this to XBMC or other non-capture playback only media players and your really do have a PVR. The RSS plugin can also allow you to save any type of BT file, movie, series, music that you care to configure. Your not limited to just TV.
Due to a scheduling glitch, my TiVo did not record the last new episode of Lost that aired. I got home with about 15 minutes in the show, which airs at 8PM Eastern time.
By 10:30PM Eastern time that same night (and probably sooner, because 10:30 was when I started looking for it), that episode was available for download in HD format, with the commercials edited out. Because so many people were using that particular torrent, it only took maybe 1.5 or 2 hours to download. I threw it on my iBook before I left for work the next morning and watched it during lunch.
Unless the megacorps provide that same level of convenience or better without charging people out the ass for it as they are wont to do, their initiatives will be ignored and fail.
Not surprisingly, the repercussions - particularly the rapidly growing number of shows available for the plucking online - terrify industry executives, who remember only too well what Napster and other file-sharing programs did to the music industry.
So they are terrified that their sales will continue to increase during a recession?
This guy sums it up for me. I've been running Bit Torrent to get the only 3 TV shows (Simpsons, Daily Show, Chappelle Show) I every watch. I would pay $1 for pulling a hi-res, color and sound corrected copy in a heart beat.
I am billdar, and I approve this message.
The FCC limits, to some extent, what you can view in the U.S. I have DirecTV with the local channels. Would I pay extra to get the raw East and West coast network feeds? You bet. I live on the East coast and sometimes a heavy rainstorm will prevent reception. If I could get the West Coast feed, some things could be picked up when they're broadcast a few hours later on that stream. Same with local channels. The coverage which gives me Charlotte, NC locals also broadcasts DC. Would I pay extra for those? You bet.
The FCC won't allow it. How stupid is that? If I'm already paying for the local stations, I should be able to buy other feeds. It boils down to perceived advertising exposure.
It's not JUST the content providers, the FCC has something to do with it as well.
Now, if Discovery and the BBC would broadcast the same shows on both sides of the pond and if Canada wasn't excluded, boy, that would be nice.
I like mythtv. I have a computer in the loungeroom, attached to the TV - it runs 24x7. Our TV is not even tuned to any stations in our region, it has one mode of operation - svideo in.
The PC has an AthlonXP 2000+, 512MB ram, onboard nforce video/TVout/audio,a 802.11b pci card, and a crappy 79AUD PCTV video capture card that came with a remote that works very nicely with MythTV. I have a cvs version of mythtv that I update and build every month or so.
So , how do I use it?
- With the 4 FTA channels that are available to me, I've got it set to record about five regular shows for me and my wife, plus a few movies on occasion. I watch the recorded shows when I come home from work, and possibly browse about 15-20 minutes of "real" tv. I will never go back to "real" tv, more importantly, neither will my wife.
- I use the MythDVD portion of MythTV for ripping rental DVD's. Wait, hold the flames! I use it in this fashion as I work shiftwork, my wife rents DVD's and I normally see them on the table about 1/2 hour before they're due back... rip them to Mythtv, watch them later at my convenience with the MythVideo portion.
*Side note: If anyone's looking for convenience in ripping DVD's , this is it. Insert DVD, pick which title to rip, select bitrate ("Good" on my system equals 750kbps xvid,2 pass,720x576 - works nicely for me) , press go. The DVD is ripped to a file in 15 minutes, and a Xvid encoded version appears in the MythVideo section in about 3 hours (on my Athlon XP2000+).
- I also have about 20 DVD's at home for the kids ripped and watchable in MythVideo. Oh, *cough* and a few movies I got from teh intarweb. First release movies arrive in my small town about 6 months after a good DVD rip comes out, so occasionally I use a fair sized chunk of my 16GB ADSL download allowance to get a few movies. I've also been busy lately downloading Enterprise episodes (have all of them S1-S4 now). Enterprise got canned on Australian TV at the end of series 2, I think.
- I listen to about 5 GB of mp3's/ogg's with the MythMusic portion and my wife is slowly ripping her giant CD collection to it.
- I plug in the USB gamepad and kill time by playing about 500 MAME and Super Nintendo (yay mario!) games with the MythGame plugin.
- I listen to a number of internet radio stations with the Radio plugin. Gotta love "the 80's channel".
- I have just about every digital photo I've ever taken in the Mythgallery area, which allows me to browse through and start a slideshow of images.
- I get a weather feed with MythWeather, with a 4 day forecast, current conditions and animated satellite imagery.
- I also have MythNews, a RSS browser... but I don't really use it often, as I have one in Thunderbird on my PC.
All up, it cost about 1000AUD to put together+ a few days of cursing to set up initially. It's been running now for about 18 months. The rest of the family's addicted to it now, so I don't think it'll ever be leaving.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Interesting article sure. Not very well written or researched, but then again they never are.
Take this quote for example:
"Not surprisingly, the repercussions - particularly the rapidly growing number of shows available for the plucking online - terrify industry executives, who remember only too well what Napster and other file-sharing programs did to the music industry
"
Yeah, you wouldnt want to suddenly have RECORD PROFITS!
Now the show is getting totally stupid.
In a very recent (this week's?) episode, McGyver had to convince another guy to fix something that they needed.
He's friggin' McGyver! Why the hell doesn't HE fix it!?
...when people are paying $30, $40 or more per month for satellite or cable.
I mean really, how many shows do you really watch per month? 10? 20? If you could pay per tv episode, consumers would save money.
Also, it would give the networks a much more accurate way to gauge viewing audiences than the flawed nielsen stuff.
Two points, here
(1) Occasiionally I see an ad for something I need or want, making them useful.
(2) The plot qualities of television ads, and the literary qualities of print ads, generally surpass those of the television show or magazine in which they are embedded. Example: Any Geico commercial airing during an episode of "Friends": the commercial is approximately 40X as entertaining, and has a plot of approximately 100X better quality.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Ugh. I hate it when industry propaganda gets reprinted by reporters without comment or common sense. OK, let's talk about this sentence. What exactly did happen to the music industry? During the rise of P2P, their business improved. Then a recession hit, and their business slowed. They then attacked their customers, which is bad for business too. Then iTunes and the like came out, and the recession eased, and business went up.
So what exactly went wrong for the music industry?! They certainly moaned about losing business, but check out those bottom lines and you'll see they are still in business and raking in the billions, thank you very much. Bah! Bad, John Markoff! Repeating industry propaganda is not good for a reporter to be taken seriously.
I love downloaded shows. I can watch when I want (I work nights). Friends can turn me onto a show, and I can watch from the beginning of a season. Plus it takes less time to watch without commercials. The problem is that commercials work. When I worked retail, you could tell what was being advertised without having seen the ad. I'm not talking about instantly hypnotized zombies, but it helps. A new product whether is a chicken sandwich or a car uses advertising to get people to try the product. Store ads generate traffic. People think about buying electronics but don't do anything about it. A commercial will either get them interested, make them realize they can afford it (Geez the prices have come down on that), or make them realize they can't afford it, but want it and the credit card has some room.
A $1 a show is too much. Take 5 shows a week X 4 weeks a month. $20 for what a PVR will do???
I'd lean more towards the video rental model that Netflix/Blockbuster/etc use. $15-$20 and you get everything we have including back shows.
$80 for a TV season on DVD, no thanks.
$1 an episode is stupidly expensive. I watch anywhere from 2-4 hours worth of TV a day with my Myth box, admittely hardly any of it is network (Discovery, TLC, Space, etc). I pay about $40 a month for my programming. If I was paying $1 an hour averaging 3.5 hours a day (to simplify the math, cutting out the issue of 30 minute eps), my TV "habit" would suddenly cost me $105. And that assumes it's in CAD. If I had to pay $1 USD instead, that's like $130. That's a threefold increase. No thanks. Make them .25 per, no commercials, and perhaps we'll talk. But really, I like what I have with the Myth just fine right now.
I recently attempted to build a myth box, after banging my head against the 2.6 kernel's compile errors, I got the thing working under 2.4. I learned to my dismay that the video card I'm using (a radeon 7000('s video out isn't supported in *nix.
I installed Win2k, Media Player Classic and myHTPC as a frontend.
I don't use a tuner for capture as the cable signal here sucks, so it's trictly a playback machine for torrents.
I've d/l'ed all of Battlestar Galactica, Stargate [SG-1|Atlantis], Enterprise and Lost and have enjoyed them immensly.
I recently watched BSG on sci-fi and was appaled at the crappy sound, picture quality and the 'mercials. With the amount of TV I watch, the torrent system works out perfectly.
Logistical Chaos Officer http://www.slagg.org - LAN Gaming in Sarasota FL,USA
Bit Torrent and Videora and how they are disrupting the television business, especially the lucrative business of selling TV DVDs
Somehow I doubt it. I'm pretty technically saavy, and I'd love to get my hands on Sopranos Season 5 in a format which I can view with others (i.e. we're not huddling around the laptop). I'll see if I can find it, and if so I'll get my friend to burn a DVD for me, but somehow I suspect I'll be waiting for the season to be released on DVD so I can get it through Netflix.
Incidently, maybe Netflix is part of the reason TV DVD sales are down. I'd imagine Netflix needs to order many fewer copies of the DVD than a brick and mortar rental store, and TV shows are probably very popular at Netflix. I know I went through the first 3 seasons of the Sopranos in my first month with the service.
Having tried both, from my experience, MythTv offered far more plugins, far better configurability, and far better performance. It can be harder to set up for the novice. I suggest reading up at the wiki at http://mythtv.info before attempting an install, Or follow Jared's Fedora guide.
MediaPortal, last I tried it, was crashy and very slow (took 30+ seconds to even start up on my XP 2800!), and I couldn't get it wo work at all with software encoding.
One positive of illegal file sharing is that it is finally getting the big tv execs off their asses and innovating tv. Hopefully the threat of wide spread sharing will force them to make tv more user friendly and customizable. Look at the music industry, they are, however slowly, making progress in bringing new ways to buy music to the market. For example, Musicmatch has music on demand for a monthly fee. Im not saying all the solutions for tv or music are good, but at least it has made people think and innovate. Got to love the free market economy.
Since this demographic cannot afford the legal option, they never were a possible customer.
Obviously, you can't claim a loss to someone who can't afford your product*, but I'm betting the distributors will anyway.
I'm sorry, but I have to cry BS on that statement of yours. Just because a consumer does not find it worth any value does NOT mean they cannot afford it. Case in point; I want to buy a new 2005 Mustang GT. Obviously I cannot afford it yet, but I am in the process of saving some money in the bank so I can make the purchase at a later time.
Life is not for the lazy.
There are maybe 3 or 4 shows that I could care less about. However, even though I like those shows, I'm simply unwilling to sit through 15 minutes of advertising for the privilege of seeing a 45 minute show. (That's also why I show up 10 minutes late for a movie in the theatre)
So I don't bother watching. The next morning, I fire up bitorrent and snag the show in HDTV format sans commercials/hassles.
I pay a LOT of money for cable TV. I should be able to watch content without being bombarded by additional ads. It's incredibly annoying.
If it wasn't for my cablemodem/VOIP usage, I'd punt cable TV entirely for that very reason.
There is a viable business model here for the networks.
Release the shows as they come out, via torrent. Make them as available as possible, perhaps even with *special content* like scenes that got cut to suit the slot, etc. Once this is the norm, the production teams will have lots of stuff to toss in for the web releases.
Include advertisements in the files (sorry guys, they need to pay for it somehow...) While the ads will not be as effective as broadcast because perhaps 80% of viewers will fast-forward, some of the ads will be viewed and that is better than a kick in the nuts any day of the week. This way, the market for independant digitization and broadcast of tv shows online will dry up. Why bother? The files are available on time, in high quality. Problem solved.
This couldn't work the same for the RIAA and MPAA people. But TV has always been an advertisement friendly format. It's ready to go!
There are other marketing advantages to this approach, without making it annoying either. Use your imagination...
It's funny because it's true.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Two shows are doing the same thing but one of them is a satire and one isn't?
Because one is a cartoon and one has real people? (hint, the people on those shows are "actors")
Or simply because you, for some reason, find satire acceptible in one form and not in another?
I'm fairly sure that most people watching a sitcom are aware that it is not "realistic" but simply touching lightly upon "reality" and exaggerating for effect.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
For example, why don't I watch video from my DVD collections of things like Futurama more often? I certainly enjoy them, and I watch Futurama on the Cartoon Network many nights.
The first thing that came to mind is that I like to click my IPod onto "shuffle" rather than play specific music from my collection. I like the surprise. But to an extent, sometimes I prefer to watch TV than watching a DVD simply because I don't have to specifically decide what to watch (i.e. watching Futurama from Cartoon Network instead of my DVDs). This makes me think that a really interesting future "killer app" for a set-top box would be a "suffle" feature for TV shows (and movies).
So, for example, I could come home from work and hit "shuffle" and get a randomized evening lineup from my collection, without deciding specifically what to watch. I get a combination of the benefits of a DVD collection and no-thought programming.
Of course, this requires either a very big harddrive or a DVD jukebox, but of course that sort of thing will become more common in the future.
I realize that video shuffle already exists for some PC media players, but ideally it would be in a set-top box like TiVo or MythTV, so it would be brain-dead simple to use. And perhaps you could set up genre nights (i.e. Thursday nights I want to see a few hours shuffled from my comedy collection of TV episodes and movies, but on Monday night I want to see dramas, etc)...
Anyway, just some random ramblings.
People who copy and distribute TV shows are criminals. That's because entertainment industry has paid off the whores in Congress to make it a crime.
It is perfectly feasible to have a totally differeent business model. The industry could have adopted the model when cassette tapes came out, i.e., part of the price you pay in the tape is to reimburse the copyright holder who material you are copying. But the kicker in this article was when they mentioned that they are making a 40-50% profit margin on DVDs of TV shows. Did you miss that part?
It's like Congress keeping drug patents in place so the drug industry can make a 30% profit margin.
Or the Justice Department doing nothing about Microsofts monopolies in operating systems, so they can make a 400% profit margin in that area.
They like to say that capitalism is based on free enterprise and competition, but now days its about buying Congressmen (and women) to give you a monopoly.
Legit TV series DVD's would sell a lot better if they'd get real about how they put them together, and what they charge. If you've got 24 half-hour shows, packing only 3 per disc is dumb.
>>TV is full of idiotic shows that make women look perfect
Damn!! There's a channel with nothing but perfect women? Where do I sign up?
>>...and men look like a bunch of retards
Funny. All this time I thought us men made men look like retards. You mean I can blame it on the TV studios? That's awesome.
Does MythTV work with the DishNetwork? From what I've seen it is mostly designed for over the air tuner or cable.
I don't see where there's a huge issue with DVD sales, at least from my perspective, because as long as the series I like (such as Stargate SG-1 and Futurama) continue to be released on DVD in high quality and with good special features (Matt Groening and David Cohen participating in the commentary for every single Futurama episode is an example) I will be more than willing to pay their exorbitant per-season prices for DVDs.
Hell, I have all of Futurama on DVD already, and I still record it to my Myth box off of CN Adult Swim for some strange reason. And yes, I watch every episode, too.
It wasn't until I got a MythTV box up and running in my living room and began watching recordings instead of live TV that I realized that commercial breaks are FOUR MINUTES LONG. I mean it was in the back of my mind for a long time that some shows, and in particular, some channels will bleed your attention span dry with lengthy and or frequent commercial breaks.
Exhibit 1: The Comedy Channel. I recorded Office Space a year ago, and after about a half hour and seemingly a thousand commercial breaks, I deleted it and moved on. The time it took me to skip the commercials was too long!
Exhibit 2: TBS and TNT. There's a good assortment of movies on these channels and the breaks are less frequent than other channels, but the breaks are loooonnnng. Not sure if they surpass four minutes in length (they vary), because I haven't tuned in to these channels in a long, long time. I think it's the combination of legitimately compelling movies which peak my interest and the long breaks. I've sat down to a movie on TBS many times and after what seemed like a fifteen minute commercial break (exaggeration but...), I forgot what I was watching or realized I could be doing something else.
The content on TV in general blows rancid buttermilk, but the funeral procession of commercial breaks is what is really lowering TV into the ground.
My wife hooked me on 24 a few weeks ago. I found prior years worth of 24 and proceeded to spend WEEKS downloading it. Tied up the computer, other people grouchy because they couldn't log on.
Bittorrent isn't that fast, people grab and run, leaving latecomers with partial downloads.
I don't watch much tv at all, and after downloading all the (to-date) 24 episodes and the entire Battlestar Galactica series, I don't have a desire to download anymore. (those are great shows, btw)
Why? The content sucks. Why bother watching TV? I used to watch home improvement shows, WHEN YOU COULD *ACTUALLY* LEARN SOMETHING and not be subjected to effeminate/drama queen/exploratory artist/fashion flunkee shows.
History Channel is getting stale with the same re-runs. I'm tired of gross-out crap.
I want GOOD QUALITY programming! I feel like so much tv is trash, and would LOVE to have an on-demand selection of good shows with FAST downloads.
Would I pay for it? Probably so. Without DRM, so I can watch it later, if I'm interrupted and want to see it later, or save it for a family gathering later in the week or month.
I also wouldn't mind being able to get episodes of older tv shows that aren't likely to be on bittorrent, like old Carson re-runs, Gilligan's island, Knight Rider (just kidding!), Home Improvement, This Old House, real home improvement shows, etc.
Get it?
Fast downloads.
On demand downloads.
Good content.
Old Content (because it's been downhill for a looong time)
Good quality.
Good price, not the exhorbitant DVD prices being pushed.
(My kids ruin my DVD's, they take up space, they make a mess, I'd like to have a more simple looking home, without tons of storage for all the DVD's, Hell, I'd like to be able to *FIND* my DVD's! With a search engine! Not by tearing through a closet! Not worrying about bit rot affecting the cost I paid for the disks without any return from stores once opened.)
- Metaphore mode on:
A defensive war will not win any new territory, at best it will keep you from losing your old, at worst it will ruin you.Offensive actions will force others to react.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
"The members of the MythTV community, who now do not have to pay monthly fees to rent set-top boxes or digital video recorders, have plenty of more mischievous company in trying to outwit the television industry. Millions of viewers are now watching illegal copies of television programs"
I pay the local cable company for access to the programs I want to record with Mythtv.
All of my songs are purchased via iTunes
The simple fact is that I use mythtv as a recorder just like I would use a vcr. I do not steal any content even though the article suggests that I do.
I have 2 cable boxes (which I pay for) connected to my mythtv system. I pay the local cable company for the content I may want to record.
Why should i pay for this shareware when i can use this plugin for good & famous Azureus Bittorrent Client without paying a cent ?!?
...that people aren't willing to pay the equivalent sum the company would otherwise get from advertising. Eyeball time is a very precious resource. People just want to skip the ads for free.
How many ad-free TV channels do you subscribe to? How many ad-free radio channels do you subscribe to? How many ad-free web sites do you subscribe to? My distinct impression is that people aren't fed up with ads, they're desentivized to them.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I had some disagreements with the article as well...
... terrify industry executives, who remember only too well what Napster and other file-sharing programs did to the music industry.
... are the scourge of the music industry" doesn't make it true.
... give the audience an attractive model before the illegal file-sharer providers meet their needs ...
... the industry and the government have to move - fast - to establish rules ... Otherwise, television executives say, the very creation of television programming is placed in jeopardy.
... was dangerously excessive.
Not surprisingly, the repercussions
Yeah, the RIAA kept making record profits each year, despite the recession. Why should the MPAA be afraid after such a "terrifying" example?
Saying that "the file-sharing networks
It's a bit late for that. Look at the download numbers given at the top of the article.
Television isn't in danger. The MPAA's business model is in danger. The government should not pass laws to protect an obsolete business model. If the current television mafia goes away, perhaps more shows will be created for love instead of greed. Wouldn't that be better for everyone?
Playing the same show on different screens around the house seems reasonable, said Mr. Cotton of NBC Universal. But he added that expanding the circle much beyond that
I think Mr. Cotton is missing something important here. Customers have no obligation to him, or to any television company. The issue isn't what he will allow the customers to do, but what the customers will let him get away with.
"You'll make more money and suffer far less from the black market if you simply create the opportunity to access content freely," said Mr. Garland of Big Champagne.
Tell that to the RIAA.
I noticed a lot of people talk about how TV isn't very good. I'm just curious, what is the definition of good TV? I always thought that this was a subjective thing. If a couple million people watch a television show, doesn't that mean it must be pretty good. After all, if it was horrible, so many people wouldn't watch it, right?
"the commercial free BBC"
Well, they do still cover up some cartons, like on the makes on Blue Peter (a kids program where they often make things out of junk).
However, they advertise their own programs (eg on other channels) incessantly. It's almost like watching commercial telly. They also have a strange idea that the [BB] Corporation is a business. Thus they do things like spend half the license fee [a tax on TV owners in favour of the BBC] on Premiership football [ie Soccer] which is a huge advert in itself. When commercial businesses are prepared to be extorted out of customers money more fool them. When a publicly funded body goes round supporting multimillion £ wage cheques I get angry.
Rant over!
"Thus they do things like spend half the license fee [a tax on TV owners in favour of the BBC] on Premiership football [ie Soccer] which is a huge advert in itself."
Bear in mind that the reason why Soccer became so expensive was because of Sky outbidding everyone else in an effort to corner the market; just after the dotcom bubble burst, the prices started to fall, but not within the reach of ITV, so the BBC is essentially the only real bidding entity in what would otherwise be a fairly nasty little monoculture. Sky family pack subscribers subsidise the sports channels to the tune of 50-60%, and while I'm with you on supporting the multimillion wage cheques, it's just how things have played out. Sooner or later a change will come.
"However, they advertise their own programs"
Yeah, that's 'branding'. It's one of the things that they do to increase their viewership figures to stop the government talking about more reforms, because the government hates having an independent body that might be critical of it and they're just looking for an excuse. That was the terrible thing about the Hutton report and it's effect on Greg Dyke.
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
MythTV wasn't hard to get running for you due to design deficiencies in MythTV - It was hard for you to get running due to bad hardware. Every problem you describe with MythTV other than the IR blaster issue looked like non-Myth-specific hardware problems to me.
With good hardware, MythTV is easy to get running. The hardest part on my Gentoo box was getting ivtv (drivers for Hauppauge PVR-x50 cards, etc) running on 2.6.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Oh, if only I had mod points for that!
I'm fairly sure that MythTV boxes don't have digital cable decoders, since they aren't produced for computers. So they are going to be restricted to non-encrypted analog cable channels, or NTSC over the air broadcasts.
Except for those people who buy HDTV tuners for their MythTV box, in which case they are going to be restricted to unencrypted over the air ATSC digital broadcasts. In other words channels that you didn't need a cable box or set-top box for anyway. Your HBO or Showtime channels will still need to be recorded by manipulating a cable or satellite set-top box, which you would have to pay monthly fees to your service provider for.
Coincided with good sales volume and increased profits? The TV industry should be so lucky.
No, two out of the three technologies (BitTorrent and Videora) they discussed were based on BitTorrent downloads - which have the commercials stripped out.
Do try to keep up.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
.... are of no statistical importance.
I very much doubt there are many people out there that obsessed with a show, but again, this is an observation based in no statistical data, but I am quite perceptive!
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
At least they sell you the PVR functionality.
....
NTL in the other hand
IANAL but write like a drunk one.