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ABC, CBS, and NBC Block Google TV
markjhood2003 writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that 'ABC, CBS and NBC are blocking TV programming on their websites from being viewable on Google Inc.'s new Web-TV service. ... Spokespeople for the three networks confirmed that they are blocking the episodes on their websites from playing on Google TV, although both ABC and NBC allow promotional clips to work using the service.' Google has responded, 'Google TV enables access to all the Web content you already get today on your phone and PC, but it is ultimately the content owners' choice to restrict their fans from accessing their content on the platform.'"
google tv is a solution in search of a problem. A half-assed solution at that.
Sickbeard makes one hell of a DVR program. (When paired with sabnzbd or a torrent program).
$25 for a 180GB block from Astraweb has lasted me since August and I haven't even burned through 1/2 of it yet. (I used to have the $10/month unlimited until I realized how much I really didn't use it). Programs available within a few minutes of the show ending. 30 minute TV shows take 2-3 minutes. Hour long never take longer than 10. (Heck when I saturate my cable I can have a movie in 8 minutes).
XBMC makes one hell of a nice front end. I come home from school or work and just browse to the 'latest episodes' and watch something.
That is a lot of crappy television shows I have to boycott now.
I was just thinking that all the t.v. shows on right now suck because of the writers strike a while back.
It turns out the executives are just insane.
I believe Steve Jobs eluded to these issues that would inevitably pop up as a precaution to Google before it entered the same market Apple coincidentally now dominates (digital television show distribution).
The next big tech debate?
Seems like this would be easily worked around by changing some useragent strings. Not sure why Google wouldn't do that themselves, but I guess they probably care more about their relationship with media companies than I do.
It baffles me that the networks' left and right hands don't know what the other are doing. With one hand they gleefully provide online versions of the shows and with the other, they smack down anyone (Boxee, Google) that tries to make the consumption of those products easier.
People that choose to watch the shows over the internet are actively choosing to not make regular network TV a part of their day. They aren't willing to sit down at 8 pm, 7 central to watch Chuck; they want to watch it at 6:00 am before work. 10 years ago, they would have been lost viewers. All that advertising revenue would have vanished with their choice. Today, the networks have an option to recapture some of that lost revenue via internet viewers. Granted, they don't show as many adverts, and that ad space (for the moment) is worth less than TV ad time, but they still get money.
Why are they getting upset when google/boxee/whoever drives MORE users to their product? Or are they just afraid that people will choose to eschew network TV in favor of internet TV? If that's the case, they've already lost the battle by offering shows on the internet. Some networks have come up with reasonable solutions though: Fox shows House a week late on the internet for example. Why not offer extra content on TV to encourage TV watching over internet watching. Or, resolve cliff-hangers on the air and make internet viewers sweat it out for an extra two weeks.
What other reasons can /. think of for the networks behavior? Why are they so afraid of internet content aggregators?
This one's tricky. You have to use imaginary numbers, like eleventeen... --Hobbes
"Some TV executives said they were worried their shows would be lost in the larger Internet."
As if the Internet is going to go away.
There's a turn of phrase my dad calls something like that.
"Shoveling shit against the tide"
--
BMO
The traditional TV networks, recording companies, movie producers, etc. are *never* going to give up their business model. EVER. They are dinosaurs and simply will not change. It's futile to think that they will. The only option is for them to go out of business. They will, of course, but it's going to be a long wait, unfortunately. They will continue to fight us at every turn, but eventually, they will be gone. Until then, our job is to hang in there, continue to support independent projects, use torrents so that they lose advertising revenue, and teach as many people as we know to do the same.
Once there is a simple, uncontrollable way to distribute video with those boxes, the industry will have to react. After all, it's trivially simple today to just record a whole television station.
Fear of obsolescence and timeshifting are powerful motivations to block other methods of doing things.
By blocking Google TV or similar services which allow end users (IE us) to access the higher quality versions of their shows, Online, and with whatever directed advertising they see fit to embed. They get higher viewership by those who "want" to watch the show, and with Google services they already use track viewers to other shows. They could gain viewership on shows that people otherwise might not watch because its on at bad time, or whatever.
Not only that, but the whole thing about piracy is just stupid, Pirates will pirate, and nothing anyone tries will succeed in stopping it short 2 options. 1) stop producing content. 2) totalitarian crackdown (which worked so well for before. oh yeh, its not.)
Those who fail to adapt to the world shall be crushed by it.
these huge giant company's shall fall if they do not learn to embrace the new technology that gives people a "gee whiz that sure is handy" feeling.
They tried to stop netflix, tried to stop online video, tried to stop MP3, every thing they try and stop fails in the long run. so why not just embrace change? stop being old and unmoving jackasses.
Looks like enable is one of those words that is its own antonym. The first definition from m-w.com is actual empowerment and the second potential empowerment. The Google statement uses the second definition. But the two definitions are as opposite as actual is from potential.
Oh wait, I'll just get modded -1 Troll by those who think I'm arrogant. Let me try this again in Slashdotese:
Uh, no it doesn't...
Everyone seems to think that the networks don't know what they're doing. They're banning Google TV, when anyone with half a brain knows this sort of thing is the wave of the future. I'm willing to bet that the network execs do, in fact, have at least one half of a brain between them.
It makes perfect sense if you think, well, maybe they don't really want to ban Google TV. More likely, they want to make a deal with Google, whereby Google pays them for the privilege of using their content.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
I'm going out on limb here and assuming ABC, CBS and NBC have created a business model where by they "make" money, presumably by ads, every time a show is streamed.
The more views the more money, correct?
So why do they care if I use IE, Firefox, Orb, GoogleTV, etc.? Are they suggesting the more people watch the less they make? If so then why do they have this online business model at all?
From the article Hulu is blocking viewing from Google TV as well. Again, what do they care if I use Opera, IE, Google Chrome, Google TV, as long as I am "watching" at all?
Or is Google TV stripping away the ads that generate money?
large entertainment 'containers' (abc, cbs, nbc, fox) don't contain anything useful these days, anyway.
google is less and less useful as time goes on; and their 'no evil' is more and more suspect.
meh - I don't care who 'wins' this pissing contest. both sides have interests at stake and none of those align with those of the consumer (bet on it).
this is another kang vs kodos. we don't really win from this. its a big guys ego pissing contest. who the hell cares (yawn).
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Then there's the "root your Google TV box and change the user agent" option. *Maybe* a legal gray area at worst. Regardless, will probably be feasible for n00bs in 3... 2... 1... [blink]
Pi Ran Out
Round 2. The NYTimes paywall already lost round 1. Will the broadcast tv corps follow suit? Stay tuned.
I saw a review linked from daring fireball and one of the things they noted was that various ad solutions didn't work right. I suspect this isn't the nature ofthe problem though.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
It's that simple. Apparently they'd rather people torrent.
ok this is what happening,
my parents are out with family friends, and theyll be back any minute so i need your help
see, i volunteer on my sister's softball team (im 22 the girls are 15)
and whatever, i met this girl, her name is Alison, and were going out for a while. We have a lot in common, and sometimes i help her with homework. i helped her with her english essay and she still got a D... this is because her teacher is a prick... anywayz
so she came over like an hour ago, and i really want to lose my virginity, so i ask her to have sex
"no no i cant, its not right" she said, but i told her "dont worry, i know what im doing, ill be done in like 10 seconds, plus ill give you 2 n64 games if you say yes."
So then I gave her Diddy Kong Racing and Ken Griffy Jr. Baseball and we went up to my room. she is a bit confused and scared.
then i think to myself- yo i need lube, right? cuz i heard other people saying you need to lube up her clit otherwise it wont fit in properly.
ok so i have no lube, but i really want to lose my virginity, so i grab some butter from the fridge, but its cold and it wont melt, so i microwaved it for 8 minutes and i put it in a glass and poured it on her cooter, and now shes saying i burned it.
i dont know what to do, my parents are going to be back any minute and shes crying in the bathroom plz help you guys are really smart please help me.
any idea how to shut her up? should i give her another n64 game?
On the contrary, I think just the opposite. Those TV networks can do whatever they like, but if nobody watch their shows, then it won't matter. Like music and movies, most TV shows are pure entertainment that most people can easily find substitute for. Except for news, I haven't watched any TV shows "over the air" (i.e. at the time designated by the TV network) for years already. If I cannot download or buy DVD for it, I don't watch it. It actually saves a lot of my time, and I don't have to watch any ads at all.
As more people buy IP enabled boxes like Google TV and Apple TV, the networks either have to make their shows viewable over the net for them, or watch as people ignore their shows. People are getting used to watching shows on the phones, on iPads, on whatever they like, whenever they like. There is just no way that the TV networks can tie people to the old model for long.
Oliver.
We have passed the Iron Age, the electronic Age, and entered the information Age. We will look back upon this time as the turning point of entertainment distribution. Will Cable companies become Internet on-ramp companies or will they wither and die. I use UseNet for all my needs. A GBPVR system gives me all that, free radio, and a bag of chips. Will new networks arise? American Internet Corporation? National Broadcast Internet? What will it take to change the cash flow from broadcast advertising to the Internet Google HD Streaming Network? What if Conan left TBS and did an Internet only show? Oprah? Will infomercials and house flipping shows become relics? Will adverts cease if we pay (Netflix)? How will the cable companies keep ripping off consumers when more and more of their programming becomes available online?
But they have already modified their business model. They provide free streamed versions of many of their high-rating shows. It's perfect for those who want to "try before they buy". Oh wait, you weren't wanting a change in business model, you just wanted them to change to the business model you wanted. Doing anything else makes them a dinosaur.
I'm sorry, resisting what hackel wants is not what makes them dinosaurs. Resisting what the market wants is what makes them dinosaurs. The market is waning for broadcast, timeslotted, shut-up-and-eat-your-spam programming now that new technology allows time shifting and format shifting. That's what people want, what they'll spend their time on and what they'll pay to have. Why do we need a "try before you buy" of something we don't want to buy? Oh wait, it's not about what we want. It's about what you want. You still want us (eg, everyone else) to bleed in order to finance your pork barrel programming. I remember this conversation! We're still weeping for the impending demise of the $300 million blockbuster. :D
They lose just as much advertising revenue if you don't watch the shows. Using torrents is about the worst thing you could do (yes, much worse than paying the cable companies). It allows them to erode our liberties, and it makes the process of change immeasurably longer and more painful. The government is never going to allow them to fail while we keep showing significant demand for their products.
Wasn't the point recently discussed that the shows are not products, our eyeballs are? We don't show demand, the advertisers do? We're not being sold cheese it's just baiting the mousetrap. How is sneaking the cheese off the mousetrap the "worst thing that we can do, yes worse than walking into the trap" when most every natural food source was paved over long ago by the powers that be?
When you find independant programming that you like, rejoice! Involve yourself in the communities. Buy the merchandise. Support the cause! But to this date, there's not a lot of independant material to choose from. In any event, "not watching" material just because it's commercial and someone is hoping to extort you is precisely as disingenuous as deciding you must plug your ears when walking past a street musician you have no intention of tipping. You'd better close your eyes too, or you might see an expensively produced billboard advertisement for a product you don't intend to purchase. You can't keep "showing demand" for things you don't like, or you'll be waist deep in street musicians! Except .. oh yeah. You can't quantify non-transactional demand for creative work. The Media industry completely fabricates their piracy loss figures already (amount of $ we wish we made minus amount we made = ....), those numbers won't go down if you cross your heart and close your eyes to their content. So if we're already freely painted as pirates, even if you have payed for christ sakes, then why urge us to decline the spoils?
Except, sorry, I keep forgetting that VFB isn't here to negotiate an intellectual accord. His very nickname belies his preoccupation with discord, and his sig clarifies his belief that any argument can be won with persistence and repetitive use of a "NO, U!" image macro. ;3
People willing to trade their freedom of expression for temporary entertainment deserve neither and will lose both.
If I understand correctly then these companies are simply blocking the user agent string that the google tv browser uses. I have read that there is an advanced settings option that allows you to change the string, which should allow you to bypass their "block".
Suppose you were a company that had a set-top box that can access local media, pay-per-view, and free stuff, like youtube.com. Further suppose you had customers that wanted to PAY to subscribe to content, such as Major League Baseball. To anyone with enough functional brain cells to form a synapse it would seem logical that the content provider would make it easy for the company's set-top box to offer the subscription option to the PAYING customers.
Not so, of course. For example, the execs at MLB want the company to PAY THEM to add the feature of allowing PAYING customers to subscribe. The company declined, of course, since adding the burdened cost of paying MLB to the box makes it too expensive to sell.
"...it is ultimately the content owners' choice to restrict their fans from accessing their content on the platform."
Now that's what I call a back-handed comment.
I don't think that I'm the only one, in this day and age, that would rather spend my time reading on slashdot and other sites about what is happening to the tv networks than actually watching the shows. I'm geeky like that.
If Google wants to make money off of them, than perhaps they should pay the networks a cut of the take?
Then why don't the manufacturers of small form factor PCs pay the major networks a cut of the take? And why haven't the manufacturers of TV sets been paying the networks a cut of their take since the black-and-white days?
Ordinary viewers do not have a computer hooked up the TV
From 1987 (VGA introduction) to 2006 (when HDTVs became affordable), PCs didn't have television output as a standard feature. SDTVs needed an obscure adapter to turn the EDTV output from a PC's VGA port into a 480i signal that they can handle. But by fall of 2010, two-thirds of U.S. households have an HDTV, and HDTVs accept the VGA and DVI signals from common PCs. Why hasn't a PC in the living room taken off, and what can geeks to help make them more common among non-geeks?
so the networks' move doesn't matter at all. Linky.
Google is just going to end up buying them.
Just waiting for the right time to strike
No need tp pay more than you have too there is time.
What is the source of this myth that "computer screens" and "televisions" are different things, having different sizes and used in different rooms?
Until 2006 or so, high definition was for text.
In the mid-1980s, home computers lost the ability to output standard-definition television as a standard feature. One needed a special monitor to display the EDTV signals (480p RGB component) from the new "VGA" video cards; TVs could handle only 480i or 576i depending on the local AC power frequency. PCs of the time were designed to show text, not video, and they added high-definition "XGA" modes to display more text on the screen. There were adapters called "scan converters" to turn 480p, 600p, and eventually 768p into 480i, but few people knew about them, and for this reason, even fewer applications were specifically designed for them. Instead, computer monitors surged toward higher resolutions to show even more text: 864p, 1024p, and 1200p.
The fundamental incompatibility between standard-definition TVs and high-definition computer monitors didn't change until the late 2000s when HDTV took off. By then, there had been two decades of tradition of separation of TVs from computer monitors. Only geeks have both the knowledge of how HDTV actually works and a culture of experimentation (as opposed to a presupposition that if one plugs two things together that aren't traditionally plugged together, it could fry one or both) to break this tradition.
Where did people start to get the idea that turning on a "computer" is different than turning on an enclosure with a CPU and RAM and HDMI-out which just happens to be labeled "cable box" or "DVD player" or "Wii" or "Roku"?
That's because nobody has come up with a national (in the United States) ad campaign for a nettop HTPC.
Broadcasters in Europe basically do the same thing for internet tv: 'if you want to get our shows, live by our rules' ('or we wont support your device anymore...').
The rules include: get out of my lane - ie. don't put your content over my content. In the end, the consumer suffers, as things like 'twitter over your favorite broadcast channel' are impossible without the broadcaster making this available themselves.
That the same game starts in the US now surprises, as they apparently were playing by different (read: more free) rules up til now, but I guess Google just found out they (the broadcasters) did not abide...
This is quite a big issue, as Google TV is very much based on 'overlays' and the search engine in itself just invites the people to search for new content based on the show they are just watching (which is most likely NOT content controlled by the broadcaster publishing said show).
Oops....
The browser on these set-top-boxes are generally close to a desktop browser anyway so just pretend to be a desktop browser and the sites cant block you.
Although in the Google case, I think Google does NOT want to piss off the media companies by attempting to lie to web sites just so their Google TV boxes can download content the media companies dont want them downloading.
...and you wonder why your shows ends up on piratebay!
Tomorrow is another day...
pretty much owns NBC right now.
Comcast: "Let's buy NBC and make it more worthwhile for our television/internet customers to watch their programming over good old fashioned cable. That way, we can avoid updating our infrastructure and remain as anti-competitive as ever! MWAHAHA"
No, really, that's how it happened.
It makes perfect sense if you think, well, maybe they don't really want to ban Google TV. More likely, they want to make a deal with Google, whereby Google pays them for the privilege of using their content.
And google's action makes perfect sense, too. If "everyone knows it's the wave of the future" then they can just wait for the networks to come around.. and pay Google for the privilege....
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I didn't see this posted but the reason content providers are afraid of the move to Internet TV is mostly about the content you don't watch. If everyone has control over what they watch and when they watch it, how will they make money from the junk you don't watch?
The average cable user only watches about 9 channels from the hundreds of channels being delivered to their home. If people only watch on a per episode basis, they lose all the advertising dollars and subscription fees from the crap channels. This scares the hell out of them as it means they lose money. They also know people either won't pay or they will only pay a very small amount for this content. You have to admit that doesn't Apple TV seem a little high priced?
The internet TV space should get very interesting as they learn how to monetize this new area. I just hope they realize that if the users don't agree with the price, they will get the content for free one way or another.
The future of TV is invariably going to be basically everything on demand. It really does not matter if this is done over the Internet, or some system like Cable, but it will happen.
But let me clarify. By everything on demand, I mean that all standard shows can be watched on demand including their back catalog, and this for a flat rate fee, not an iTunes-like puchasing of each episode. This will also include shows no longer on the air. This does not mean that there will not be live feeds, although I would expect that a significant portion of TV watching will be non-live, except for live events like sports or American Idol. New episodes of TV shows may well also be watched lived, but only if the timing is convenient.
There will be some exceptions. For example, back episodes of the evening news will likely be kept available for only a few days, perhaps a week. The Weather Channel's weather reporting will likely not be available on demand at all, since it is only really worthwhile live. Headline News may well also be Live only.
The role of networks will be largely diminished. They will likely still be around, but people will not notice which network each show is from very much. They will still help finance production of new shows, and decide which ones are worth keeping, but this will seem like less of a big deal to them, since for regular shows, most people will watch them on demand, and see no advertising, and the network sees only a portion of the flat rate subscription. The real money for networks will be in the live events, where most people will be watching live, and thus will be seeing the advertisements.
Broadcast network affiliates will still be around, but their main role will be providing the local news, and operating the Emergency Alert System. The set-top boxes of the future will receive the emergency Alerts and pause the content being watched to deliver the alert, so that people watching on demand programming will not miss it, and people watching live programming do not need to miss a portion of the programming to hear the Alert, and can skip a few commercials to catch back up with live TV if desired.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
1. User agent is just a few menus deep, no need to root
2. Hulu and the networks closed that loophole already
mod me funny
Acquisition isn't part of my scope, but for playback, check out a WD TV HD with an external 500GB USB disk drive. It will connect to pretty much any TV (HDMI, Component, Composite) and plays pretty much any unencrypted content from DVD/VOB, MPEG2, MPG4, XVID, AVI, MKV, and some QT, MOV, and WMV content. So, you place the content on any USB drive and take this $40 video playback device with you. 500GB is about 450 average quality x.264 encodes - plenty for when you should be spending time with the family outdoors.
I assume you have a TV already there?
Plus, this leaves the laptop available for other uses and lets the kids watch all those Disney videos without demanding the laptop AND it keeps the source DVDs back at home, inside the protective cases.
If you have a network, you may want the $60 WD TV Live HD or the $120 WD TV Live HD Plus for netflix.
I owned and used a MediaGate for the last 8 years. I prefer the MG interface over the WD-TV-Live interface, but it doesn't do HD content like the WD models do. The newer MediaGate with HD simply costs $100 too much (about $250 total) for what it is, IMHO.
Just as Google won't allow devices like my WD TV Live to show Youtube videoes in HD. But with the special WDLXTV firmware, I can see the clips just fine in HD. (I think it redirects requsts through Apache to rewrite the requests)
Not that I really watch much on Youtube but I find it annoying that i couldn't watch the few videoes I wanted to see, in HD, when I knew they were available.
Where you can pay for and receive payments for things online, replacing Paypal (presumably without Paypal's crappiness), as well as having advanced searching and descriptions of all of your current and past bank transactions. And, of course, Google would data mine everything that goes in and out of that bank account, giving you advertisements of maybe a rival sandwich shop to the one that you paid for with your debit card yesterday, or products that you might like.
Privacy issues aside (and there's a lot of them), that actually sounds pretty innovative and useful.
There's something sinister about blocking display of content on a platform that otherwise supports the tech needed for viewing. It certainly looks to be anti-competitive behavior worthy of examination by the F.C.C. or whoever.
I wonder what else they're doing.
Its illegal and the powers that be could sue you into a bottomless pit.
(Though more than one problem really; normal people don't know how to do this, they don't want to spend time on figuring this out, and they don't want a big ugly computer in their living room)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
"Seems like this would be easily worked around by changing some useragent strings."
Since it's easy they don't do that.
Doesn't matter what you set the user-agent to (you can change user agent from inside the Google TV browser) - serious sites don't use the user-agent.
Flash has functions which will report on the hardware and OS being used. So the Flash sites can essentially ask "What OS are you running" and when they get the reply "GoogleTV" they are going to say: Go away.
"Not sure why Google wouldn't do that themselves, but I guess they probably care more about their relationship with media companies than I do"
It is not their job. Unlike you they can't just ignore possible legal questions.
With their statement that it is up to providers to decide what to show, they are picking a neutral position. Of course this will play the other way as well when people start writing Android apps which bypass this and the studios ask Google to remove them from the android market - they can see "we are sorry, we don't interfere with what programs people write"
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
It certainly looks to be anti-competitive behavior worthy of examination by the F.C.C. or whoever.
I wonder what else they're doing.
No you don't. You know.
Hulu blocks Google TV, too, just like the mainstream media companies. And, Hulu has already worked around the user agent string issue, and blocks Google TV configured as "Generic" or natively -- and it took them all of 1 day to do it. While they were working on this patch to "improve" their service, people were able to watch Hulu perfectly fine. So, there's no technical rationale, it's pure business.
I, for one, completely don't understand the reluctance. Google TV doesn't stop ads from showing up, or go around paywalls, its just a browser like any other. There's no difference in how much money a site can make through Google TV or a traditional desktop PC.
It sounds like pure envy, to me. Google's got the drop on the rest of the industry, and they don't want it to get any bigger. So, throw the customer under the bus. Why not? They're just customers, who cares about 'em anyway?
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
I think "boycott" is the wrong word. I think you really mean "not watch".
I mean, why watch TV that sucks? Why even watch mediocre TV? I find that with no constraints on when I watch or even when a show is produced, there is enough good tv I haven't seen yet in the past 30 years that I have no need to even glance at anything current that isn't absolutely exceptional. Which is a very short list.
In fact, life is too short even for good tv. I find myself concentrating on maybe five or six programs, watching one or at most two episodes a night, and when I run out of episodes I look at my list and decide what else I want to watch, if anything. Sometimes I go for days without watching anything. It's just TV, fer chrissake. It's not like you need it to breathe.
Concentrating on a show and watching one a night is also helpful in seeing the flow of the story arc. I find watching once a week I forget nuances of the previous show and miss out on some of the aspects of a story.
The biggest difference between our generation and our parent's and grandparent's generation is entertainment habits. Used to be, it was normal to come home from work, change into comfortable clothes, and settle on the couch for a night of tv. You'd watch whatever was on, (including commercials) changing between 3 or at most 4 channels every half hour (for sitcoms) or hour (for dramas) depending on taste, finish with the news, and then go to bed. Night after night after night. I know, it seems bizarre now.
Increasingly, the current generation won't sit still for that. There are more demands on our time, and TV is just one of many different things we regularly do for entertainment. We want to watch what we want to watch, when we want to watch it, for as long as we want.
The networks don't know what to do with that paradigm. They still think they can sandwich a crap show between two hits and make some money off it. They still don't realize that increasingly, the only folks who fall for that are old. And getting older. Somewhat disguising this epic fail is that they're only getting poll data from the people who are watching TV in real time, completely missing out on the fact that this is a smaller and smaller group of people.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
They still believe that, somehow, piracy will stop some day.
TV outputs are rediculously common on modern PCs
That's not what I saw when I last looked at PCs in a Best Buy store. Virtually all had VGA; many also had DVI or HDMI. An HDTV can take all of those, but SDTVs can take only composite and S-Video. Most people who aren't geeks don't know a $40 cable to convert PC VGA video to SDTV exists.
DVI is just a standard TV output without the sound or DRM.
DVI is not a standard-definition TV output. It is a high-definition TV output, and a Consumer Electronics Association report states that one-third of U.S. households still have SDTV in the living room.
Google COULD have a field day with the networks if they wanted to... it would be really funny! They could make a switch to flip a different user agent every day of the week. (bonus points if they started using old Internet Explorer or Safari tags!!) Google could keep this up for ages if they wanted, it would be kind of fun.
1. User agent is just a few menus deep, no need to root 2. Hulu and the networks closed that loophole already
1. Informative, thanks. 2. I get how they could do this with e.g. android devices, since there are more ways to recognize their signature (screen resolution, other browser headers, perhaps a permacookie of some sort). But on Google TV, wouldn't it theoretically be possible to mimic the complete HTTP request signature of, e.g., a PC running Chrome?
Pi Ran Out
I made this Web TV software that essentially indexes shows from all over the world, including CBS, NBC, ABC and much more.
http://www.rebrandsoftware.com/showsoftware2.asp?soft_id=26
It works on Win/Mac (sorry, I have a Linux version in the works but right now there are playback problems). Most of the content is US/UK but much of it can be accessed from any location.
Anyway, the point is that it can't be blocked because it uses your system's default browser for playback. I don't agree with Google that it's the content provider's right to prevent playback on certain platforms: if it's free to watch online I should be able to watch it using any method I choose. But, knowing that networks can be jerks, I programmed our software to tap into the system's browsers and circumvent any potential problems.
It's no good for sitting on your couch in front of the TV but it's great for watching content on your computer. My wife and I cut our cable and disabled our two Tivos in favor of web in early 2010 after the initial release of this software and now we have $70/month to do whatever we want with. That's nearing $700 now that's in my hands, and I can't think of a single show I miss between my web TV and a netflix subscription.
Who the hell watches that crap anyway?
With blocking Google TV, the advertisers lose out. Hey Google, tackle the advertisers (cars, liquor, tourism) and see how long the boycott will last.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
That's not what happened up here. In fact the copyright cartels are still lobbying hard against the levy. They hate it, because they feel it legitimises piracy. (It does.)
There's also some way around it, because the market price for CD-Rs is lower than the levy is supposed to be.
You sure about 2?
I know they closed that loophole on the PS3 by requiring Flash 10 (the PS3 is still stuck at 9), but once the UA is switched there aren't many other ways to block a device.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?