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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."
"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 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.
"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).
Unfortunately good will really doesn't mean much, a fact which companies learned long ago. And let's be honest, if your consuming one unit of their products, and preventing them for making sales of a thousand units of their product, they don't care if they lose you as a customer.
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.
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.
And if TV isn't going to entertain me, then I'm going to watch Family Guy and Futurama reruns until the cows come home. Or I'm just going to throw the damn TV out the window and go find entertainment on the Internet. Because playing Enemy Territory is a heluvalot more entertaining than watching a frigin busload of women redecorate their houses and elimidate each other.
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.
That *particular* business model is dying, and legislation should not protect it
I was thinking about this just a few weeks ago, and I think that the current cable companies have the technology to overcome a bunch of problems here, without obsoleting this business model (which makes it more likely to happen).
Most people who have TV have probably said/thought at some point "wow, 200 channels, and nothing to watch". Me and my roommate have a fairly large collection of shows we watch, which is pretty nice because it makes it a lot easier to follow a series, as well as you can watch whenever you want. I got thinking how the cable companies could do something similar using their video-on-demand systems they currently use for movies.
Say you have a system where you go to the channel, and you get a list of shows to pick from. When you pick one, it instantly starts playing that. What does this do? It allows the viewer to watch what they want, when they want, yet still leaves a fairly large amount of control with the station, and also importantly, leaves the concept of a "tv station" in place.
Obviously if you try to start a system where the cable providers do everything, and TV stations themselves are obsoleted, it's not likely to get very far - there would just be too much opposition. Each "channel" would provide their own limited list of shows, and there are lots of ways of providing them. For example, you could allow the user to select "The Simpsons" and see one simpsons episode that day (each day you'd air a new one). You could also provide a list of a few, or even all, episodes to watch. This could in fact start a new breed of specialty stations that provide ie, every simpsons, family guy, and futurama episode (and hell, I'd subscribe to that).
Another power it leaves in control of the station is the ability to air commercials. This is a huge power - you could presumably get info on what the person watchs and tailor ads to each viewer (of course this is fraught with privacy issues, and being slashdot, I'm sure I'll get jumped on for suggesting that). You would also be able to air current ads, even if they're watching a show that originally aired a long time ago (basically, syndication).
The station would also be able to overlay text in real-time, much like they do now. Down at the bottom: "New epsiode available next Sunday at 8pm!". They could still air live events (sporting, etc), and basically if you want to watch it, you have to tune in at the time it's on, or wait until it's over and gets archived for on-demand viewing.
In the end, you get a system that would benefit both sides: the viewer gets to watch what they want, when they want. The station still gets to get revenue from commercials, still acts like a "tv station" (with promos for their shows), and hopefully gets to curb some downloading, since why download when you can just watch it without having to get out of your couch?
Yes, it means that the viewer still has to watch commercials. The trade off, I'd hope, is that there is no extra fee for this service, it would just be a standard offering. Cable boxes could be set to accept either these enhanced stations, or the normal broadcasts.. if you tune to a station with enhanced features, then you get those extras. Satellite providers of course could do the same, but it would require either a two-way satellite (upstream is going to be low-bandwidth anyways) or a broadband or other constant internet connection (the current method of dialing up, picking a show, and disconnecting would be too slow).
I'm guessing that the majority of this could be done with current technology. Video on demand movies already work this way from the viewer's end. The stations or cable companies would just have to write the head-end software to insert commercials and promos.
Speak before you think