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The Challenges and Rewards of 'Place-Shifting'

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the nobody-home dept.

Grooves writes "Ars Technica has an insightful look at the challenges facing place-shifting. The article talks about new European legislation that could require broadcast licensing for all place-shifting devices, and they review some of the fair use problems in the US and how they could hurt innovation." From the article: "A few cables here, a few networking adjustments there, and you can use a product like the Slingbox or the software-based Orb to watch your TV (or TiVo, or DVD player) from just about anywhere you can get a network connection, be it your office, your hotel room, or the other side of the planet. Yet what makes place-shifting devices so powerful also makes them appear very dangerous to established entertainment and media companies."

3 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Problem Solved by rickett81 · · Score: 4, Informative
    Make the slingbox only allow 1 connection at a time. Then, only one person can view the content at a time. You would have to assume that the one person is the owner.

    Under fair use, you cannot tell me that I can not view something that I have paid for. In the same way it is not illegal to back up your CDs and store them on your computer in MP3 format. (Even if sony tries to make it difficult) The problem is the sharing.

    Only one connection allowed solves this problem.

  2. SPACE shifting is correct by Aqualung812 · · Score: 5, Informative
    Time Shifting is changing the viewing time compared to the broadcast time. For example, watching a show at 8:00pm when you recorded it at 10:00am.

    Space or Place Shifting is chaning the viewing location compared to the location that it is being received. Slingbox and others allow you to watch content over IP, regardless if your source is downstairs on your main TV or if it is a pal overseas who gets BBC.

    --
    Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
  3. vlc does it cheaper by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Time for some fun kids....

    use vlc (www.videolan.org) to watch AND at the same time stream a TV channel from your TV card equipped computer (winderz or linux) to your IP address. Then tell your best friends to also download vlc and have them "Open Network Stream" pointing to your IP address where they can then watch the TV channel stream AND at the same time stream it out to their IP address where THEIR best friends download vlc to watch the stream and forward....

    keep going until everyone in the world downloads vlc, watches and "forwards" the TV stream.

    vlc kicks ass!!!

    slingbox sucks cuz you need a special proprietary program/codecs to view the stream. vlc uses industry standards. And it's Open Source. Runs on a lot of platforms.