Television Reloaded

theodp writes "The TV times, they are a-changing. Over at Newsweek, Steven Levy offers a serious tome on the future of television, including time-shifting ("people will follow schedules only for real-time events like sports and election night"), space-shifting ("Now that you've stored your show on a TiVo, it's only logical to take it with you on your laptop, hand-held viewer or PSP game player") and the move from broadcast TV to broadband TV. Meanwhile, Conan O'Brien lightens things up with his own vision of the TV future ("Toddlers' bowls will have a television at the bottom, and children will be encouraged to eat all of their mush so they can see Morley Safer.")."

Comments

I'm already doing it

[skinfitz]

In the UK where we actually need a license to watch TV (no, seriously I'm not joking) I refuse to pay for it so I don't watch TV in the home. (However I do get hassled to DEATH by the TV Licensing Nazis)

For the odd thing that I do occasionally want to watch (Dr Who for example) I have a Mac G5 installed at work with EyeTV (a PVR) set to record the things I want from the digital broadcast (MPEG2). From there I export it as MPEG4 to get the size down, then scp it to a share on the Linux server at home from where I watch it on my PowerBook.

Perfectly legal (as I'm not 'receiving broadcast services') and much more convenient for me - I'll watch things when *I* want to watch them thankyouverymuch.

Re:I'm already doing it

[thempstead]

How are you not receiving broadcast services when you are getting when you say your are getting your episode of Dr Who via digital broadcast, (DVB-T I assume)?

Looking at the EyeTV product page it has got a tuner for broadcast reception, whether that is analogue or digital doesnt matter, and hence it's quite possible that the TV licensing people are right and you are still liable to pay.

Re:I'm already doing it

[isorox]

Yes, you don't need a license for what you are doing (althoguh your work does). No, not legal - in the UK it's a breach of copyright (section 54D of the copyright designs and patent act IIRC).

And I'm not 100% sure about the first part as there is a new act out this year that changes definitions to include PC's, I've not taken much time to look at it.

(Disclaimer: I get paid by the license fee)

Re:License

[antiaktiv]

PBS buys a lot of programming from BBC. The Swedish public service is quite different in structure and definitely doesn't have pledge-a-thons.

Re:Wake me when they have language-shifting

[meringuoid]

There is a lot of anime I'd like to see properly dubbed (or even subbed, for some of the older stuff). On-the-fly translation with a similar-sounding voice would be a killer app.

Jayziz. You don't ask much, do you?

Subtitles might just be doable, if we can get a computer to watch a minute or so ahead with a decent voice recognition software, and then piped the output through babelfish. But dubbing? Even The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer used human voice actors. Realistic human voices are an absolute bugger to synthesise.

Re:On-demand is the future, today.

[Riskable]

I have Comcast digital cable and I use on-demand fairly regularly. However, I have a number of big issues with it. For me (and I'm sure many others), it is nothing more than a neat trick than a useful feature...

1) The interface sucks. You can't search for shows. You can't customize it. There's no easy way to see what is new and what is old.

2) You need a Comcast-provided box to use it. With an ATSC CableCard tuner, there's no way to watch on-demand. As more and more of these TVs become available with their special features (true PiP, PVR-like functions, etc), no one is going to want to bother with Comcast's boxes. This will probably change in 2007 when all cable companies are required to use CableCards along with the rest of the industry.

3) The shows are almost *ALWAYS* old. I don't want to see 3-weeks-ago's Alias. I want to see TONIGHTS episode... I don't care if it takes a couple hours to transcode or whatever, but often times shows are literally MONTHS old and they'll stay in On-Demand for weeks at a time.

4) Shows are shown out-of-order. I want to know what genius thought it was a good idea to put up episode 7-9, 15-18, then the season finale.

5) You have to watch Comcast advertisements when you're browsing for shows. SUPREMELY annoying. "This week in On-Demand! Four-months old episodes of 24 shown out of order! Brought to you by Coca Cola."