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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.