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Classic TV for Free Download
way2trivial writes to tell us the New York Times is reporting that Warner Brothers will have over 100 classic TV shows available for free download with a 1-2 minutes of commercials per episode. From the article: "There is a catch. To use the technology, viewers will have to agree to participate in a special file-sharing network. This approach helps AOL reduce the cost of distributing-high quality video files by passing portions of the video files from one user's computer to another. AOL says that since it will control the network, it can protect users from the sorts of viruses and spyware that infect other peer-to-peer systems."
The media are slowly awakening to the possibilities offered by p2p technologies. Finally. ...it's a start.
When I saw the word classic, I assumed the black-and-white hits of yesteryear, but this is going to include things that I would still consider somewhat recent like Babylon 5 and Growing Pains.
Then again, maybe that just means I'm getting old.
Sounds pretty decent so far. I just hope I don't have to install some P.O.S. viewer to see this stuff.
I agree with everything you said, but one of the best aspects of this from a slashdotter's POV is that it whittles away at the filesharing == evil stigma. I think this is a big plus for business, for users, and for the future of the internet. Hopefully it will accelerate broadband penetration as well.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
It's just so nice to see a media corporation recognize that legit uses of peer-to-peer exist. The fact that they're actually using it is even better.
Bad statistics always irk me. Yet a recent survey by the Points North Group of 1,098 Internet users found that 28 percent said they wanted to watch regular television shows on their PC's or laptops, Mr. Storck said. Yea, and in a recent phone interview, 100% of the participants have a phone line. I'd be much more interested in the number of television viewers who'd prefer to switch to watching shows on their computers if they could.
The service, called In2TV, will be free, supported by advertising, and will start early next year. More than 4,800 episodes will be made available online in the first year.
Programs on In2TV will have one to two minutes of commercials for each half-hour episode, compared with eight minutes in a standard broadcast. The Internet commercials cannot be skipped.
The article is extremely light on technical details, saying only that it "will use peer-to-peer file-sharing technology to get the video data to viewers." This, along with the commercials which cannot be skipped, suggests a custom client will be required to view the content, which probably means alternative OS users will not be supported. Regardless of how tentative it is, I Personally think it's a great first move at bringing old content online. Considering this is a free service, I guess we can't really complain, and it will be exciting to see what happens when their protocol is decrypted so we can stream the content to our player (or file) of choice.
In related news, Firefox 1.07 would crash on loading TFA, but 1.5RC2 doesn't seem to have a problem with it.
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
Yes, finally! My only concern now is that they will destroy this by putting DRM, etc. They're going to want to prevent people from skipping the commercials. Lets hope they trust the honor system (and the viewers follow said system) instead of making the downloads useless by
Personally, I would gladly pay to download the few shows I like to watch. We only get ultrabasic cable, so I can't watch channels like Comedy Central anyways. A reasonable ($1-$5) per-download fee or a season subscription fee would be a great model for those who prefer to watch TV when they want to. For prices at the low end of the spectrum I would even be willing to tolerate ads.
isomerica.net | Foonetic IRC
i'm guessing ur ISP isnt AOL then...
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
People can complain all they want, but this is a bold step for the networks. Obviously, there needs to be improvements, but this shows that p2p is not evil like its being portrayed. Networks are finally getting the message! In time, this will improve :)
gasmonso http://religiousfreaks.com/Seriously, I trust AOL to "protect" a system around as much as I trust Microsoft to "protect" consumers from endless upgrade cycles. AOL's own software has some vaguely spyware-like characteristics; for example, it hooks itself deeply into your system (from what I've heard; obviously, I don't use AOL) in all sorts of places, and if you cancel, and accidentally double-click on any of the various icons (or do any of several other things), it will assume you want to re-activate your service. I've heard that AOL's software basically associates itself with various file types, puts itself into various context-sensitive menus, etc....
I do not trust this company to "protect" computers from spyware. In fact, I would not be at all surprised if their application took, say, a detailed audit of all software installed on one's computer.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
And don't forget, how can I put this in my iPod.
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
AOL says that since it will control the network, it can protect users from the sorts of viruses and spyware that infect other peer-to-peer systems.
Sounds like a challenge to me.
AOL is using file-sharing technology from Kontiki, a Silicon Valley company providing a similar system to the ambitious Internet video program of the BBC.
That's odd, I remember Kontiki working off of caching, which means that part of the copyrighted video would be actually stored on client's computers.
From:
http://www.kontiki.com/technology/index.html
The Kontiki Delivery Grid dynamically optimizes delivery from many PCs and media servers by caching content at the very edge of the network. This creates network efficiency gains of 10 to 25 times over traditional approaches.
It also brings legality into question for other distribution mechanisms, I would think. If Kontiki is legal, how would caching a bittorrent for an episode of "Lost" be any different?
IANAL, but I'm very interested in this, because while I understand that the producers of Lost grant only ABC distribution rights, then obviously it's not the mechanism, but the individual violation that is at fault. In other words, the success of Kontiki would basically ensure that Bittorrent would continue to be a legal distribution method, even if the content being distributed itself was not. Right?
While I'm not aware of any specific attacks on Bittorrent's legality, I know that it has been questioned before. We just had some legal cases with Grokster and others that even now have on their webpages that there is such a thing as "unauthorized peer-to-peer services". If Bittorrent is one of these, then why is Kontiki be considered not one?
Why is this a deterrent? You're not buying content, so why should you keep it forever? If you like it and want it forever, buy the DVD sets.
:)
Possibly, in the future, they'll have a link at the end of a certain episode saying "To see the rest of this season, click here to order the full season." This isn't a bad idea actually. Get someone hooked on the first half of the season, and charge them for the latter half. It's something the drug dealers have done for eternity
Proprietary file format? (can't edit out commercials in Virtualdub)
And slashdot types wonder why media companies aren't falling all over themselves to cater to them. A company offers you FREE content in exchange for including ads in it. The FIRST thing you want to do is edit out the ads.
Want it without ads? Buy it.
Content costs money to create, particularly movies/TV. If you've never been involved in TV (let alone Movie) quality production, you might be surprise at how hard it can be. Despite the hype, you can't make a decent show with a DV Cam and a Powerbook.
If you want the content you like to be delivered to you in the format you want, you have to provide some kind of economic benefit back to those that produce it.
Nonsense. There is nothing being created here. This is just a repackaging of very old TV programs that have long since been paid for...repeatedly.
FROM THE ARTICLE: "The company will offer a changing selection of several hundred episodes each month, rather than providing continuous access to all the episodes in a series, Mr. Frankel said, so as not to cannibalize potential DVD sales of old TV shows." Better download as much as you can as fast as you can; it seemed to good to be true.
Proprietary file format? (can't edit out commercials in Virtualdub)
Probably so, but I think AOL realizes that it will be impossible to completely prevent some determined pirate from editing out the commercials. Rather, they are relying on a principle that Apple uncovered -- that if you make things simple and reliable, most people would rather get a quick legitimate copy from a reliable source than an iffy bootleg which may be bad quality and may not even be what it purports to be. The average person will reason, why risk stiff criminal penalties for an illegal download when you can get it for free, or rather, just for watching a few commercials? (Surely we don't think it's coincidental that the carrot and the stick are being shown to us at the same time, do we?)
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
But I DO have a problem with having to use their client to view it. I watch video in basically 2 places. On my linux computer. And on my TV by way of a computer hooked to it. Now, the problem is that it is very hard to display video to a tv. Really only programs that are full screen and have taken this into account are capable of navigating and displaying video in such a way. I want 1 program to do this. Be it sageTV, a Windows Media Center Edition, MythTV, etc. The LAST thing I want to do is open up iTunes for my iTunes protected media, (and unless something has changed I don't know about, it doesn't display on a TV worth squat), or this Time Warner client to watch their media.
Granted, I have a very poor quality TV. But even if I update to a nice, fresh one, I should only have to have 1 program running to access my media. Each protection scheme should supply some pre-compiled library that each media player can then integrate to decode the data or to do whatever is required.
I honestly think that distribution of video media over computers will be hamstrung until providers consider how the way they make their media available will work with a Home Entertainment Center PC.
I do security
AOL says that since it will control the network, it can protect users from the sorts of viruses and spyware that infect other peer-to-peer systems.
Please note that AOL never claims that they will not have their own spyware installed, merely that their version is not one that "infects" other computers. And since everyone must be part of their network, everyone will have it installed.
Granted, I'm siding with the highly likely probability that AOL will have an uber-spyware program to go long with this network. I fully expect the license agreement to have a clause like "By installing this program you agree that we can monitor and regulate any and all electronic transfers of media you may have to help ensure that you are protected from digital pirates. Y'arr!"
People who trust AOL tend to believe that they are the internet, so this should be no biggie for them. I'm sure that there will be a follow up article a year or so from now, "AOL users shocked that personal information was collected."
When TV began, distribution channels were very limited. New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, our biggest markets, had 7 channels. Most other places got a lot less.
Cable TV started in the sixties. In 1970, when I signed up for cable TV service (TelePrompTer) in West Palm Beach, we got 12 stations - one of which was a rotating camera showing ads and a thermometer. I don't think I got anything that couldn't be plucked off the air.
Living in the Philadelphia suburbs in the mid-70s, cable TV began to bring additional channels like HBO (it was only programmed in the evenings) and CNN. For programmers, and advertisers, there were additional venues.
Try to get a new cable channel on now. Even with a hundred or more slots, there isn't room for anything new. Or, if a channel does somehow get on, it is relegated to such bad 'real estate' that no one sees it.
If AOL is successful, it will open up new channels and, more importantly, change the economics of distribution.
In the old days, the broadcast networks paid to have local stations carry them. That era is ending (and has already ended for most stations). In addition, the networks allowed local affiliates to sell a few commercials within the local shows.
If the AOL experiment works, and distribution costs are reasonable, AOL can sell the local and national ads itself, in any way it wishes, and eliminate the middleman.
Most local stations understand this... well, I hope they understand this. They will have to adapt their business model when they are no longer used by others as distributors, getting free or discounted shows to fill their broadcast day.
Over the past decade, local news programming has increased. Under this scenario there will probably be even more local programming.
I don't know what this means for those channels that don't do anything but play shows from syndicators or networks. This such a radical switch. Can they change? Many are physically incapable of even producing programs in-house.
Don't dwell on the specific programs AOL is rolling out on the Internet. The titles are unimportant, because if this move is at all successful, more valuable programming will follow. It's much easier to experiment with Welcome Back Kotter, which has little value at the moment.
Unfortunately, there are corollaries to Gresham's Law that come into play here. Will the addition of all these new distribution channels drive down the quality of TV? Stay tuned.
Why is Apple the only one to understand that people want to own what they pay for? If I download a show from iTunes, I can do whatever I want to it (well, almost, you have to go through hoops to save it to CD). Watch it on my computer? Fine. On my iPod? Sure. On a TV? No problem. How much does it cost me to view it on all three devices? The same initial price. This lame WB/AOL plan would have me pay three times to watch it three times.
Because even bullshit costs a hellava lot more money when produced by professionals. Consider, say, Mission to Mars, which is my standard example of Worst Movie Ever. However, lets ignore the wooden acting, bland direction and painful script for now. All the actors are in focus. They all have competently applied make up. The picture isn't grainy. You can't see any plywood poking out from behind the fairely extensive sets. The costumes look realistic. The audio is fine: you can hear the actors' lines without the music, sound effects, or ambiant noise drowning them out. There's a score. The custom 3-d modelling is competent. You can't see bits of camera equipment or sound booms in the frame, and so on. Sadly the same can't be said for many things put together with a DV and a bootleg copy of Final Cut. Just to to reach a minimal production threshhold costs money: professionals aren't cheap.
Anyhoo, I suspect that your idea of what's crap may not exactly match up with what's mine, or others', raising the question of which 60% gets cut. I suspect that a lot of crap is actually responsible for some of the highest profits in the industry, so the exec's wouldn't exactly be saving billions in any case.
"Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who
I'd love to watch the ones that originally aired on these shows.
the content broadcaster gets paid for the ads by the advertisers when I download them, whether I watch them or not, as long as nobody but me knows that I didn't actually watch them. I could make a sandwich or use the restroom during the commercial and it would have the same effect as transcoding the media file without the commercial, just like with real TV.
True, and a certain amount of that is expected, although I'm sure they're considering something like the semi-interactive ads at Salon.com. (If I were in charge of the program, I'd also offer a low cost payment to get rid of the ads entirely, but that's just me.) There's a certain amount of ignoring expected. I imagine that part of what they're going to try to do is use targeted ads ala Google Ads to deliver ads that you might actually be interested.
But back to my original point - it's mostly about the perception of the geek audience. If I were an executive deciding what shows to offer and saw the original poster's immediate desire to remove the ads, and then looked at usage statistics and saw that geeks watched a lot of B5 and very little Wonder Years, I'd stop making things like B5 available. The very vocal part of Slashdot wants their media for free. No matter how the industry tries to accomidate them (iTunes, legal Napster, this), they will never be happy because they "deserve" media without any restriction or payment. This is a completely unworkable business model that will only lead less media that appeals to their segment (which, sadly, tends to overlap with mine) because companies simply can't make money doing it. Of course, most of these techno-utopians tend to not actually give anything back to society while demanding that others provide things to them for free..
Does DRM matter? If it is free, I can access it whenever I want to redownload it. It'd be a pain to have to re-download it every time I want to watch it (or every few weeks or whatever). It shouldn't be hard to move it from a laptop to a TV with the right cables. I have a friend who uses a TV as a monitor in his dorm room (perversely, he uses a big CRT monitor as a TV as well). I suppose desktop to TV without a wireless network is a loss. I'd complain about DRM if I was paying for it, but if it is free, than whatever I can get.
They are fucking greedy pieces of shit. End of story.
Most likely, yes. Conventional sat or cable television is going to go by the wayside.
I first realized this a few weeks ago, after I took an S-video cable and ran it from my video card to my widescreen television. Combine that with an audio cable from the sound card to the home theatre audio system, and you get a television viewing experience virtually indistinguishable from traditional cable or satellite.
I always felt the biggest hurdle the Internet faced in terms of being a viable method for media distribution was found in the relative isolation of the desktop PC to the rest of the home theatre setup; sure it's neat that you can watch a TV show on your computer, but people aren't going to want to sit in their desk chairs watching movies and TV shows on their computer's monitor.
Thankfully, the home PC is a pretty versatile tool, and methods already exist to integrate the PC with the more traditional TV/Home theatre setup. I knew the hardware and software existed already to play media obtained from the Internet on one's TV setup nearly as easily as it is to turn on a cable box or put in a DVD, but it wasn't until I saw it for myself that the potential became obivious.
http://www.adultswim.com/">Adult Swim's Friday Night Fix, which provides streaming videos of programs which will be played on broadcast the following Sunday was quite telling for me: I couldn't tell the difference between the streaming video off the Internet and the normal satellite broadcast in terms of picture and sound quality.
So as long as content providers don't muck it up with difficult to operate clients (hey, how hard is it to just run stuff through a standard media player?) or convoluted downloading schemes (AOL can just as easily use the standard and accepted Bittorrent if they want safe downloading), the days of the traditional TV network are numbered.
The Internet is generally stupid
Well, let me see. There was a) the complete and utter disregard for the basic laws of physics and large chunks of biology (see Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy site for more), b) the retread of plot elements from 2001:A Space Odyssey and many other places, c) the plot holes (Why would the aliens go to another Galaxy when Mars was threatened? Why not go live on Earth, instead of just stopping by to drop spores all over it? Also, why have an astronaut killing defense system at all?) d) the aforementioned poor acting (with the honorable exception of Don Cheadle who gave it the old college try) -- it's not that the cast are bad actors per se, but these weren't great performances -- and e) stodgy dialogue.
:)
So, there you go, just those five things.
"Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who
The success of In2TV is going to have nothing to do with the merits of the project.
It's going to hinge on whether or not In2TV is supported under Linux.
Shocking, huh? "Why?" I hear you ask.
Simple. Linux users are the most persistant type of computer user. If something doesn't work in Linux, it will be hacked at until it does. Conversely, if something already works, and works well, there's less incentive to hack at it. The "good" programmers will concentrate on other projects, and a couple of the newbs will beat impotently at the In2TV protocol until their hammers bleed.
"But what's that got to do with the success of In2TV?"
Once a Linux user or LUG has built a working In2TV player for Linux, its popularity will spread like wildfire. Within a week of release, it will be ported to Windows. Within the same week, someone will have determined how to remove the ads and save the stream to disk. A month after a Linux-unsupported In2TV release, there will be hundereds of Linux users archiving all 300 episodes per month. Two months after, there will be _thousands_ of Windows users doing the same.
And AOL, as they have been in the case of "free riders" using GAIM, will be impotent to stop it.
And example from the other direction. Ever notice how there's no production quality open source marcromedia flash display software? Yeah. It's because "good" programmers aren't going to waste their time on rebuilding something that already works and works well for their platform of choice - the Flash plugin for firefox. All in nice closed source proprietary form.
So, a message to AOL: Make In2TV support Linux, ensuring at least a few years of sustainability for your product, or have In2TV fail within months from the abuse of over zealous users.
P.S.: I actually hope you DON'T take my advice. The faster your company goes down, the faster the rest of the media industry will go with it.
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I don't agree that this is "no cost". I value my time (yeah, yeah, I'm using it to post here), and I don't want to spend it watching or editing out lame commercials. Considering the track record of the giant media companies (hi, Sony!), this is one "gift" horse whose mouth should be thoroughly checked. I don't want to spend time doing that either. "Offering a product at no cost" assumes a lot. Some company offers sunshine (filtered for your safety!) for "free" and, boy, you sure bought into the notion that someone has to own the sunshine and gosh aren't they nice for "giving" it away. You write as if our "first response" is ingratitude for hacking this "deal", and cynicism for being suspicious. You surely don't agree to every deal anyone shoves your way. You don't always use every product in its intended way only, do you? We geeks are not mindless consumers. If they aren't offering much value most of us will notice that pretty quick. If they regard geeks as "bad" customers because we're too smart to buy garbage or pay for the same thing multiple times, that's just fine. I don't want to be targeted by such businesses, and find it tiresome being repeatedly treated like I'm desperate, stupid, or vulnerable to pressure. I sure am NOT whining that they don't pay attention to geeks. Let them cancel Firefly (whatever that was), Farscape, and whatever else. Hate to tell you that your dreams of geek market power by means of geeks engaging in profligate mindless consumerism aren't realistic. You sound like a corporate shill when you say stuff like that.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I think it would be AOLs interest to actually come up with clients for alternative OSs (MacOS X and Linux being the main two), since it would reduce the need for a third party to hack the system. Then again, there shouldn't be anything stopping AOL from using a Bit Torrent based solution, and then simply requiring that you visit their site to view the catalogue - ok I haven't thought about all the practical issues yet. If the ads are in the "master" copy as opposed to being tagged on prior to download, then this shouldn't cause too many problems.
Given the past history AOL has had with Apple (from Quantum Computer Services to eWorld to iChat) it would make sense for them to maintain this relationship and produce something in a format suitable for the iPod. MPEG4 and H.264 are both becoming more common and are considered industry standards, so in using this format the shows should potentially play on the iPod, most computers and then eventually any other portable video players. Sure the quality is not the best, but if you want good quality with no adverts, then you always have the option of buying the season DVDs.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Humans really need to hit the next level of evolution, where we evolve into decent fair people so we can continue to progress. Jesus is going to be really pissed off when he comes back, he'll probably say something like: "Quit being dicks to each other, quit killing mother fuckers in my name and for god's sake quit smoking crack!
Hey, I think I figured out what Martin Luther King Jr. meant by I have a dream... he was dreaming about a day when we would all set down our crack pipes and make out with each other.
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05