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ABC Affiliates Grapple With TV-Show Downloads
Carl Bialik writes "By making an episode of 'Lost' available for download last week just half a day after it aired, for a $1.99 charge, 'Apple may have helped open a Pandora's box for the media business,' the Wall Street Journal reports. The president of the association representing ABC's affiliate stations sent a letter to the president of ABC, reading in part, 'It is both disappointing and unsettling that ABC would embark on a new -- and competitive -- network program distribution partnership without the fundamental courtesy of consultation' with its affiliates. While the extent of Apple's TV downloads is limited, the Journal parses the potential impact: 'if downloading episodes over the Internet proves popular, analysts believe Apple will get permission to offer shows with better-fidelity pictures. Any success Apple has won't go unnoticed by other online media powerhouses with expanding video initiatives like Yahoo Inc., Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., which could all help extend TV downloading to more viewers.'"
iPod video may still prove to be a gimmick. That's not for certian. However, iTMS videos/movies/TV is a dead-obvious kick-ass product, and I doubt anybody argued that point.
But yeah, you're kicking that strawman's ass. Give 'im hell!
"Lost?" Come on. I don't even watch that stuff on TV let alone waste bits from my broadband connection to download it...
Produce something worth watching and I'll go back to watching TV.
23 million people watched last week's episode of Lost. The networks could give a shit about you. They know that you'd complain about the quality of TV regardless of what was on.
I mean, it's so easy. All you have to do is go to your linux box, preferably with a custom Knoppix installation optimized for mythTV, but a red hat installation will do, just make sure you rebuild the kernel issuing all the right mantras.... then set up your partitions (be sure to choose the right filesystem), download and configure the appropriate mythTV packages that you wish to install (check your hardware of course and be sure you have the right video drivers and take a look at the docs for your sound card). Obviously check dependencies on all the components and also you might want to edit the usual files for something like this such as /etc/modprobe.conf. Make sure you get all the MythTV components, there should be 94 packages if you're installing on redhat, and check the dependencies for each one. You'll probably want an IR receiver so you can use remote too; find, download, configure, and install those packages too; you might want to fiddle with /etc/udev/rules.d/lirc.rules. Of course you'll have to set up MySQL to run at startup and issue the usual commands, things like mysql -u root -p documentation! Then just think of all the many things you can buy with the $2 that you just saved with these simple steps.
printf("Goodbye cruel world!\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b");