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Will Digital VCRs Change TV?
schnucki writes "A new, innocuous-looking consumer electronic device known as a
personal video recorder is not much different in nature from the
video cassette recorder, and very few of them have been sold to date.
And yet, an increasing number
of executives at television
networks and advertising
agencies have their ears
nervously on alert, ...
" Its the NYT so you need a free account, but its decent
piece talking about the impact of ReplayTV and Tivo on TV industry.
Personally I think this is an intermediate step before we get to
full, on-demand broadcasting over the net, but its a great step.
RIP Network TV.
"Identify your visitor"
Username:cypherpunk
Password:cypherpunk
You've got to wonder, though, what kind of magic device they have that is the "equivalent of a computer hard disk" while still being "able to store between 14 and 30 hours of television programs". The dumbing down just goes on an on, I guess... :(
The networks would have you believe that ghosted images with tons of static and fuzz is acceptable in this day and age. If you get one of these boxes with a satellite control capacity, use it to AVOID the cesspool that is NBC/CBS/ABC/FOX...
- More than slightly annoyed dish owning AC
You know that the advertising isn't going to go away when you can skip commercials,
or on-demand net broadcasting becomes the norm. Is the top two inches of my T.V.
screen going to be flashing images about how great Pepsi One is? That could
get annoying really quick. A plus though is that hopefully the banner ads would
be like banner ads are now, and companies could spend less
money on ads and more on improving the product.
The stuff has to be out there to build one of these boxes from commodity PC hardware and open source software...
:)
My ideal ReplayTV clone would have:
- Add n cheap large hard drives any time
- Capture closed caption text, full-text index and search video content
- Backup shows to video tape
- commercial skip
- picture-in-picture XTERM for hacking during the slow spots in movies
Any idea how to build or buy one of these?
3l337 m34n5 'l33t, d00dz! 4s 1n H4x0r W4r3z phR34kz.
;-)
OK, sorry.
3l337 ==> 'elite': meaning --
juvenile, idiot, software pirate, rip-off
artist, hacker wannabe, lamer, etc. Well,
that's *my* take on it.
It is cracker-speak where some of the letters are replaced with numbers on similar form. For example E -> 3 and O -> 0.
You're missing the point. You don't activate the skip commercial feature when the device is recording. You activate it during playback.
Your show fades to black, and an ad for Crest toothpaste comes on. Press the button, and voila, your show starts again. I believe some VCRs also do this but there's a little delay when automatically forwarding past the commercial.
The networks shouldn't delay the inevetable... they should add add some sort of sideband signal to signify a commercial is playing so it can automagically be filtered out!
The only things I watch are The History Channel, TLC, Discovery, and HBO. I don't need to record 30 hours of it either.
I was wondering what other /.ers had to say. I pay 35 bucks a month for "extended" cable and about the same for a dedicated 56K connection to the net. I have at least 3 other companies I could connect to the net with at different prices with different options, and 0 different options for cable.
Now when I watch one of these television programs, I am bombarded with advertisements, either informertials or regular ads that account for about 30% of the airtime that I pay for (including a number of adds by the cable company for their long distance and internet access, as well as local ads that are paid directly to the cable company). About the same if I only had broadcast TV for free using an antenna.
What am I paying for with cable?
I already paid for the installation when I subscribed, and broadcast TV is supported by commercials, why isn't cable?
My isp must pay for the backbone connection each month and leases the lines that come to my house as well as their domain names, routers, 24 hour customer support, etc. AFAIK my cable company has to pay for the people to count my money and an occasional downed line.
What do you guys think?
So folks what would it take to build your own digital recorder?
The biggest problem I see is being able to compress the TV signal to store on a HDD.
What cards can serve this purpose?
It would then be a simple thing to build a Gtk/Qt front end to drive everything!
How about it?
I think the TIVO PVR *does* run Linux internally!
>Recording PPV movies ... shouldn't be an issue >either ... you already payed for it
Look at it this way. When you go to a movie theater, the payment lets you see the movie just once. Buying a ticket to Titanic didn't give you unlimited viewing opportunities, did it?
Why would it be different for home viewing?
The TiVo unit is based on the Linux kernel. They did have to do some kernel hacking...but would not release the code to me unless I purchaces one of their units. They intend to send the code out on CD to those who ask and have purchaced a unit.
If this is true, then the TiVo is in violation of the license on the Linux kernel. I refer to clause 3 of the GPL; commercial distribution of modified binaries is permitted only if the product is accompanied by the complete machine-readable source code, or if it is accompanied by a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code. (Emphasis added).
They are apparently not distributing the source code to their modified Linux kernel with the TiVo product. Are they providing the written offer in accordance with the GPL? What is this about only providing source code to those who have purchased the product?
It should be brought to the attention of the linux-kernel list that the license on their work (and that of many others) is being violated.
I hope this oversight is accidental rather than deliberate, and that this situation can be rectified soon.
I guess Anonymous Cowards don't get their postings moderated up anymore, even when they say the same thing
* earlier
* better
* with a subject change to indicate topic drift
I want a box that can capture any icecast and slice and dice the stream, saving all my favorite tunes and videos along the way!
The whole idea of the cypherpunk thing is to free information -- especially information that has no reason to be kept under lock and key, since people knowing it doesn't hurt anyone. It's not to be 3L337, or 3L17, or leet, or what have you.
There's nothing decent on to watch anyway. I'd much rather just sit outside on the damned grass and look at the clouds than watch the "newest" piece of s**t television series Hollywood dared grace us with. ;-)
From the description of the product, it seems like you can already copy VCR tapes. Just play it, grab the image off the TV into the PVR via input and output cables, and then use the VCR out of the PVR to copy onto VCR tape. Simple.
I do the same thing with my VCR. Many of the shows I want to watch come on late at night, and taping them allows me to watch them the next day. Or I can watch a week's worth of episodes, at the week end.
One way that the new devices may be better, is that they can have a longer lifespan. I tend to wear out VCRs. All that recording and playback eventually wears them down.
The big advantage I see, is if people all put op web pages with commercial breaks mapped out.
In other words, if the recorders all keep accurate time info, along with the video, it would only take one person to map out the commercials in a show. Once thats done, anyone could fetch that info from the web. (Grin)
The networks would be really pissed though.
As anyone whos been on the net for any real length of time probably knows, the wacked out NuMb3rd Sp3Ak only existed to create hard to search filenames, such that ARCHIE ftp crawlers wouldn't blatantly list out easily searchable warez programs. i.e. 'Wing Commander 2' would be easily found and removed from a site etc unless it uploaded to a dir named 'W1nGC0mMand3R'.
Everyone using this style today is a moron.
Wanna bet?
1. ReplayTV
2. TiVo
3. DishPlayer
Hmmm... all have hard drives, all timeshift programs, all handle satellite connections.
Oh, and the TiVo runs Linux. Search back a month or so on here for more.
So, you were saying?
TiVo has already stated their willingness to comply with section 3a) -- they will distribute the source code with their product if anyone asks for it.
"Willingness to comply with section 3a" is meaningless. Either they're shipping source with the product or they're not. If they are, then they are complying with section 3a. If they're not, then they must comply with section 3b instead. (As you noted, since they are engaged in commercial distribution, section 3c does not apply to them). They have two options. Ship the source to their customers with the product, or ship the source to anyone upon request.
You're missing the point completely. The GPL says, for this scenario, if they don't ship the source code with the product, they must accompany it with a written offer to provide it to any third party -- not just those who purchased the product. That's what "any third party" means.
It doesn't matter if TiVo merely "meant well" or was trying to economize. A violation of the GPL is a violation of the GPL, and TiVo should be called on it.
Hmm. That's a really good idea.
Good points, moderate this up please...
Just think the next time they try to cancel a show (Buffy or whatever) it may be _much_ easier for someone to spread it around.
You just have to love technology. :)
Think this is a hoax?
If the box can get general info from the outside world and then learn what I like through experience, great, more power to it. I don't want to watch irrelevant ads any more than sponsors want to pay to send them to me.
But if the box tells anyone outside my home anything about my interests, thanks, but I'll pass. No Little Brother for me.
A non-realtime decoder is an interesting notion. Are there any significant corners cut by realtime ones? Could you get better quality by decompressiong in advance onto a few spare gigs?
Depends entirely on the rating of the program, and thus the size of the audience. The ISP my girlfriend works for spent a few grand on a package of several late-evening ads (they even ran one during Babylon 5! win, win!), while Superbowl halftime is supposed to be tens (hundreds) of millions.
When I see this Tivo/Replay thing it seems too redundant. It's yet another PC running a dedicated process with it's own processor, OS, hard drive, and daemon process to control recording and user interaction.
We should be able to move that process to the PC and save the redundancy. I can see that a real time kernel would be beneficial to make this operate smoothly, which would look good for BeOS and under some conditions Solaris.
But otherwise, I think the speed of PC's, 10000 RPM hard drives, and a good algorithm for buffering reads and writes should more than compensate for the special hard drives that they are using in TiVo/Replay.
Any thoughts?
go to www.johny.sk/cdrinfo/
and get powerrip , you can now copy dvds
digitaly, and make full non encrypted copies
big deal, boot to windows, install WinVCR
and use your current $80 TV capture caard, and you can do the same on your P400 CPU, record/encode mpeg1 video in realtime. Then burn to CD your fav shows
Actually, since you bring up the Nielsen
;^>
ratings, if you think about it, it doesn't matter
what you watch, whether you tape or watch live,
or if you keep the tv on for background noise for
your goldfish.
If you're not a Nielsen family, you don't matter.
They are the ones by whom the whole nation's
viewing is judged, and the legitimacy, IMHO,is dubious: given the Hawthorne effect, doing a behavioral experiment on humans when they are aware of it changes the nature of their behavior.
For all we know, the entire nation is addicted to
Moesha, but the Nielsen families try to "watch
responsibly" to uphold their duty to report their
viewing habits, thus skewing the results.
key: IMHO = in my humble opion
Figuring out how to digitally cut out ads is a
great idea.
your idea about cutting out replays has to be
tweaked some:
cutting out replayed imiges would have to be
done selectively: think about those shows that
replay the same footage, for example, Star Trek,
when the ship goes into warp. Also, the opener
could get cut out. Some people like that others
don't.
> Are purchasers of the product notified of this in writing, as section 3b of the GPL requires?
Absolutely, in the manual.
Excellent. It's much better to have only to argue you with you about your means of satisfying the GPL than to argue about whether you are or not.
We are distributing our source changes, as required, but every moment that Dave is burning a CD is a moment that he ought to be compiling new enhancements.
Belive it or not, I sympathize. Every moment I spend compelled by my conscience to be a GPL watchdog is time I could be spending hacking code on my own free software projects. But this is exactly why I think making your changes web-accessible is the best way to go. Very few people will pester you for a CD, and wait days for it to be burned and shipped, when they can just pull it down off the web.
Perhaps you could try and recruit a volunteer from slashdot or the linux-kernel list to do this for you? There might be a reputable, experienced Linux consultant who'd be willing to set up automatic mirroring of your in-progress kernel sources (remember, the GPL's lack of warranty means the code doesn't have to work perfectly, it just has to be what you're actually using to build your product), and work for a reduced fee in light of the ultimate benefits to the kernel, and thus the whole Linux community. There are many possibilities here. If you show a little goodwill to the community, you will be repaid tenfold -- especially when it comes to things like streaming multimedia, which is supposed to be a strength of BeOS, not Linux. Changes like yours may be in much demand, and people may be willing to "donate" a lot of labor in such a way as to bring you into the kernel-hacking family -- and with very little trouble to you (or Dave).
It's something to think about. And if nothing else, it will be time you don't have to spend defending your company from gadflies like me. Sure, I'd like a nifty gadget like the one you sell, but a Linux kernel that isn't hijacked by proprietary interests is far more important to me. And such hijacking need not be perpetrated by one company in a fell swoop; it can happen gradually and piecemeal...and that is the biggest danger to free software, and human liberty in general. We seldom give ourselves over to tyrants. Instead we fritter away our freedom piecemeal in exchange for transient luxuries. So toss your hat unreservedly in the ring with the geeky, software-sharing, ponytail crowd. Not only will you sleep better at night, but you'll be building a better world for your children.
(Hey, I already did the bitchy post -- it was time to shift gears to rhapsodic.)
Richard! I was wondering when you were going to jump in on this. (Disclaimer: I work for Replay Networks.) /.'ers, I think the fact that the TiVo webmaster is posting here is a pretty good indication that they understand GPL/linux/open-source and are interested in, at the very minimum, doing what they're legally required to do. Hey, I may work for the competition, but I don't think yelling at Richard Bullwinkle is going to get you anywhere, get you the source faster, or make you any friends. Which is not to say that I'm not eagerly awaiting my copy of the TiVo source code :) Should be a fun read!
Guys, friends,
Where are the posts from JonKatz? I miss him.
MGI Software corp is producing a similar product for the pc titled Digital Diva. However, their product is not available yet. It seems interesting.. check out www.mgisoft.com
Despite what we all love to think about the national TV networks, NBC is, in actuality, very forward-thinking(for a TV network, anyway). They've been investing in lots of different internet, interactiveTV, and other assorted "high-tech" ventures. Their long-term plans call for NBC to become much more than just one of the "Big 3" (or 4, if you count FOX) national networks. They're definitely staking their future in the next generation of TV, and they know that the old Prime time/advertising/Nielsens model of network TV isn't going to live forever. Therefore, NBC invests accordingly, and their investement in TiVo makes sense within that framework. So NBC doesn't see it as an investment in their downfall, they see the network changing as technology changes. It's a pretty smart course when you think about it.
I also think that there is no more clear-cut a case of blurring between computers and TV than PTV devices. These devices, in actuality, ARE computers. Certainly they are the most powerful computers ever to sit in an A/V rack. As for "increasing bandwidth" in the home, most places in America, let alone the rest of the world, haven't seen any of this yet. DSL is still very rare in the non-rich-geek population. However, a big chunk of America has either a cable connection, or a Digital Sattellite dish - a pipeline specifically designed for transmitting video to houses! If you pit efficient use of an existing pipeline (say like ReplayTV or TiVo) with massive industry/political support against a hugely expensive server-side architecture using a pipeline(DSL) that is very not very common, then the former will win. It's a matter of economics, and it's a matter of a slow-changing industry. Think about it: How many major innovations have there been in Television in the last 20 years? Well, there was color. Then there were VCRs. Then cable. Then digital satellite. DitigalTV hasn't caught on yet (gak! no standards!)
My point is this: The TV industry isn't a place where massive paradigm-shifts occur very often. It's much more likely that the existing TV architecture (Cable tv, digital satellite) will be augmented rather than replacing it with an entirely new infrastructure. In this case, the most likely case, the PTV device has a long life ahead of it.
Interesting to see a comment from a Replay guy (who's eagerly awaiting receipt of the TiVo sources :-)...
What does Replay use in their box for processor and operating system? PPC? Intel? Arm? Linux? Home-grown? Something else?
What's the point of being 3L337 when people like you just GIVE it away?
Oh that'd be so easy to take care of -- just use masking tape (or something cleaner) to block off the offending advertisments.
Grrr. Did it always require cookies even to get to the login page? Without them it just seems to be redirecting to the same place over and over again.
Oh well, won't be bothering with that article I suppose.
I don't see this as having the enormous beneficial impact some people expect. Mostly it's the issue of ads and revenue streams. If the commercial blocker works, there goes the network's money. They'll either find some way to insert ads into the actual content (probably overdosing on product placement, like the Truman Show) or just switch revenue streams completely and *all* shows become pay-per-view. I fail to see the advantage over today's system: Free TV with occasional application of mute button.
Give it some thought - what does the TV industry produce? Not programs. No, the fundamental product of Television is eyeballs, to be exposed to advertisers. Anything that upsets that balance will be visciously attacked as a disruption of the money flow. In order to get out of it, the TV industry will have to come up with a new paragidm.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Posted by MC BoB:
Well, it's is easy enough to circumvent the commercials. What is a shame are the "fast forwad" buttons on the TIVO. I played with an early unit and there was about a 5 sec. lag between hitting FF and it really moving forward. When I pressed an engineer he admitted it was to please the advertisers.
How commercial skip works:
The networks send an "insert" signal right before they send the commercial in order to allow the local stations to preempt with a local spot. The commercial skip on most RCA vcr's works by reading the "insert" marker on the transmission (It's inband signaling contained in the vertical pulse, if I recall correctly) and marking that point on the tape. When the commercial is over, the networks broadcast a "return to downlink" signal to force the local station back to the network. The VCR then marks the "return" signal on the tape as well. Upon playback of the tape in an enabled VCR the system fast forwards through the marked sections. IT's a VERY important process becuase that's why the RCA was able to bring the technology to market. They are not eliminating the commerical, simply marking the in and out points. Not eliminating the commercial.
I had a long talk with on the engineers on the project back in the early 90's. He said they spent, on average, 5$ per VCR for the technology and 15 million on the legal battles with the major programmers (I'm talking ABC,CBS etc, not C++)
This feature would be realitivly easy to implement in the ReplayTV or TIVO, if you had the source code.
BTW, I spoke with Replay a while back, (Right before Marc A. joined them) and they said they will have a PCI card based system at some point, they just didn't want to 'Confuse' the market too early.
Posted by Vik Olliver (at home):
:v)
Once you have computer control of your VCR, it's simple to cut out the adds: Hash the images and just don't play anything that has been shown before.
I guess it would work with a soundtrack too.
Vik
Posted by MC BoB:
v iew.htm
Visit:
http://online1.quantum.com/src/tt/storage_quick
For details.
Pretty cool stuff, can perform Reads and Writes at the same time via, dual heads. The article mentions something about AVHDD, which I assumed was Audio Visual Hard Disk Drive. Anybody ever heard of this? Is it a superset of IDE, SCSI etc?
Interesting.
MC BoB
Hmmm. I would have said that ReplayTV et al will have an impact similar to that of the video recorder. Significant but not as catastrophic as people forecast at the time they were launched...
I want one. When can I have a PAL/230V version please?
The fact that it hasn't taken off yet should be telling. Ask the average American what shows he or she watches and they'll generally list 3 or 4. Does that same person watch only 3 or 4 hours of television a week?
Television is a very passive medium-- people generally are happy to watch whatever happens to be on at that moment. It's entertainment filler. If people had to plan out their future viewing, they'd never do it. One of the quickest ways to reduce the amount of TV you watch is to take the TV Guide and decide which shows you *want* to watch-- those 3 or 4 hours a week.
The only way to make this work is to make the boxes "smart", so that they observe what you generally watch and do the planning for you. Capitalism will, of course, take one look at this device and quickly figure out that the fine-grain consumer data it provides is worth a hunk of money. It can be used to decide which commercials to show you, what offers to mail you, etc. If you're using your cable company to access the Internet, so much the better to target you.
As you say, "capitalism will find a new way to make money through this". The question is what the trade-off for the consumer is.
Anyone remember the book "Contact"? Isn't this similiar to what Hadden did? And it destroyed all the networks. There was only one left, I don't remember which one though.
The case was made that you need special disk drives that can read and write simultaneously. How hard will this be to emulate, by just using enough RAM as an intermediate buffer between the receiver and a disk drive (or RAID array)? It's getting to the point that 256M desktops aren't that rare or that expensive. (I'm writing this from a 512M machine. A consumer PC will probably need at least that much to run M$ Win2K comfortably, anyway! :-)
And if I can make my linux desktop act like a personal VCR, I'll have a lot more customizability for the interface, and a lot more programmable operation. Does anyone want to start work on a Linux PVCR project?
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
begin quote:
NBC initially passed on ReplayTV because its 30-second skip button seemed much less industry-friendly. Tom Rogers, the president of NBC Cable, said, "The Tivo model did not seem antithetical to advertiser-supported networks."
end quote
ANTIETHICAL!! Thank you Tom Rogers for making my day! I guess toilets are antiethical to advertiser-supported networks too!
J.
What else can I say... :)
The only VCR I use is Linux/Broadcast 2000 (commercial). It records, loops, scrubs, composites, edits, all in realtime. The looped recording lets you record infinitely and keep the scenes you like. The realtime JPEG capture can record as much as you want on a hard drive, in twice the resolution of VHS. The scrubbing feature lets you fast forward scenes while still comprehending what's being said. You can write out clips to RealProducer and email them to your friends in the background. You can fix the audio tracks or simulate stereo in realtime. The possibilities of a Linux VCR are worlds ahead of VHS, even if it is commercial today.
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
By my reading of section 3 of the GPL, TiVo has already stated their willingness to comply with section 3a) -- they will distribute the source code with their product if anyone asks for it. This might be a violation of the letter of the GPL -- my reading of the above says that to fully comply with 3a) they must distribute a copy of the source code with each and every product sold -- but it certainly seems in keeping with the spirit. After all, most home users of this product won't care about the source code, and the CD they got would be used as a coaster or something (what do you do with all your AOL "100 Free Hours!" CD's? New poll question!). So TiVo doesn't want to ship thousands of CD's that nobody will ever use, so they just ship them to the people that would use them. Seems fair to me.
Disclaimer: I am not involved with TiVo in any way; I don't even own one of their units. So my information may be inaccurate, but it's unbiased.
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
"The Source will be with you... Always."
... it meant that the drive had the capability for the sustained throughput that was required for video recording and playback. I have one, an 8G SCSI that was made by Micropolis, that has this AVHDD 'label'. I never have used it for that purpose so I can't vouch for it.
It's been too long, but IIRC but the SCSI interface is pretty simple. That is, the read and write heads are simply addressed as separate LUNs on the drive.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
There's absolutely no point in trying to be 3L337, and giving away information is a Good Thing. Full disclosure, you know.
| Macrovision on DSS dishes? I'll
| have a macrovision killer permanently
| installed. I refuse to have my right to record
| infringed upon.
Macrovision - at least the ability to use Macrovision - has been on DSS units (and Dish Network units) since day 1. I've never seen it used on any programming I've watched, though. (I don't do PPV wrestling, etc - I'd expect it to be used there first)
-- Rick
Nonsense. I've seen this used many times in Amiga `scene' intro/demo scroll-texts.
I have one of these, and it's a great device.
I see why some people are worried, in that I
essentially never watch commercials anymore.
However, on rare occasion, I will go back to view
a commercial (movie ad, usually) that looked
interesting while fastforwarding.
It's really not an understatement to say that
this thing "totally changes the way you watch
TV". Being able to watch one recorded program
while another is recorded has a greater impact
than you would guess. Being able to pause anything, anytime is also amazingly useful.
Just to nit-pick a couple points:
- The ads that are there get watched again - but there's no way for the networks to track this, so they can't charge the advertiser more for it. And if they can't charge the advertiser more, then it's not doing the network any direct benefit.
- Recording PPV movies
... shouldn't be an issue either ... you already payed for it - I have to disagree with you here, this is just wrong. You pay to rent videos, but you don't have the right to make a copy of them, even for personal use - why should PPV be any different? It's just like software - the distribution medium doesn't mean a thing, it's the intellectual property that you are licensing.
When it comes down to it, we are implicitly agreeing to the license agreement of the broadcasters whenever we turn on the TV - and you thought Micro$oft was bad about not letting you see the license until it's too late?. I want my GNU-TV!________________________
Corporate Jenga: You take a blockhead from the bottom and you put him on top...
It's Monday, obviously - I stand corrected. (Memo to self - research first, then open mouth - insertion of foot is optional).
I think my basic point still stands, however - we are implicitly agreeing to the networks' licensing agreements when we turn on our TVs, and we don't have any rights to the content except those that the networks and/or content producers decide to give us. If, in the future, they decide to outlaw private recording of broadcasts, that's their right - no matter how many millions of people it pisses off.
In a final, grasping-at-straws effort to vindicate myself against you somehow, I have found a nit to pick with your post - the 42% that you refer to are North Americans. I enjoyed a wonderful Canada Day (July 1) last week, eh!
________________________
Corporate Jenga: You take a blockhead from the bottom and you put him on top...
I think you've nailed it - this explains infomercials and shopping channels especially. Network TV depends on people who don't care enough to use the remote control - I mean, really, who tunes in specifically to watch infomercials?
The only infomercial I actually watched on purpose was one that was on WUHF every single night for months - essentially 30 minutes of bad cover tunes, over-endowed women in bikinis, and a 1-900 "chat line" number flashing at the bottom of the screen... how exactly would you program that preference into ReplayTV or TiVo? :=]
________________________
Corporate Jenga: You take a blockhead from the bottom and you put him on top...
I believe from previous reports that both these units use Linux as their core. I expect they have some custom kernel modules, and their remote control response and TV-menu software is certainly proprietary, but all of that can be easily duplicated by us mere mortals. No doubt early open source versions won't be as smooth; in particular, the buffering will be tricky, favoring machines with lots of memory, and you won't want crontab firing off periodically, and you won't want large compiles in the foreground.
Their real added value is the phone connection. But this only obviates the need to scan the schedule ahead of time, and most people are used to doing that now with VCRs. So for the initial open source versions and early adaptors at least, this is not an obstacle.
Seems to me that there will be open source TV recorders within a year or two at most.
--
Infuriate left and right
Good points, but you have to remember that it is an issue of attention span. When you read a magazine, you are at a more leisurely pace, and the ads "count" more. When you watch a sitcom, 30 seconds is pushing it! (If you watch a soap opera, 10 minutes and you don't blink!)
The issue is making the exposure count-- look at AdFu! A timed delay where you are intent on what is happening, and the only thing you see is a banner ad! Smart!
Somebody has to create a sufficiently non-obtrusive way to gain advertisement revenue with the "new media." If it is TOO obtrusive, people will find a way to block it.
In all seriousness, as cool as the Replay and Tivo are, I already use my VCR the way they would. Any of my regular shows, I tape. This way, 1) I can't be interrupted by a phone call (I can always pause it), and 2) I can watch an hour of TV in 45 minutes. I recycle the same few tapes for my regular weekly episodes. How would my life be changed by digital VCRs?
The fact is that broadcast TV is already dead. The future is narrowcasting. Cute toys like these aren't going to save it.
- Richie
What I want is for my VCR to figure out when shows are delayed, and delay taping until the program starts.
Lately, TNT has delayed the Crusade episodes because of drafts and other programming. So I missed the last 10/15minutes of the show. Same goes with any other network where news/games pre-empt regular programming.
So if the machine would keep a realtime schedule and record only when the show is acutally on, this would be cool.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
This is stored on a hard drive, not a magnetic tape, so you can skip the commercials with the click of a button: just hit the "30-second skip" button and it skips it. Now the networks can start shuffling the *lengths* of commercials, but that messes up their neat little scheduling system, as they have to start keeping track of how long each commercial is and make sure that everything fits in ok. And even if they do that, I can skip ahead 2 minutes, and if my show has started skip back one minute, then go forward 30 second, then back 15 seconds. So even if I don't know how long the commercial is going to be I can still skip the commercials pretty quickly.
The real question is whether people will adopt this technology. Frankly, $500 is a bit much to charge for the ability to avoid watching commercials. And it sounds like this is not yet as simple as a VCR, so many people may still find it confusing. I predict that most people will be too lazy to use this thing to its full advantage, and so it will bruise the networks but not destroy them.
Digital VCR is just the next logical step now that Digital TV is taking off... You'd need heaps of memory (flashram?) though which would make it very expensive.
I saw a bit about these on 'Tomorrows World' a couple of months back (they had a huge hotwired version the size of a filing cabinet). It was the same device (I recognise the screenshot) so I guess they've managed to shrink it a bit.
It's just one more opportunity for companies to monitor you, and sell this information to anyone interested in buying it. The concept isn't bad, but I'm not willing to sacrifice my autonomy/privacy for a small increase in convenience.
It's not QUITE the same as DVD-quality, but, heck. There are amazingly complicated conventional-VCR-tape-trees for everything from Black Harbour to Red Dwarf in place, so...
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The Internet is the Suppository of All Knowledge. You get it in the end.
I see a dramitc increase in "product placement." this would mean increasingly blurred lines between program and advertising, merchandising etc...
All the talk of how the networks will have to change revenue models in response to this got me thinking about a similar market, where advertising is also very important to revenue and are easily skipped.
Magazines. I don't actually subscribe to any anymore (thank you, internet), but I used to. It's really, really, really easy to skip past/ignore ads in a magazine. Yet I and many other readers paid attention to them enough to feed the magazine's employers. Why? Because the ads were interesting! I would read ads because they were cool, or because they had a product that was neat, or because I liked the company, or because I wanted to buy something.
Maybe networks/advertisers should take a clue from this. There are the occasional ads on TV that I find interesting and actually watch, but by and large the majority are complete and utter trash, treating me like my attention span is measured in seconds, my IQ measured in singles, and my sole decision in whether to buy something is whether or not it's "cool".
To the advertisers: If you don't want people fast-forwarding past your ever-so-expensive commercials, make the commercials something people want to watch. The reason they aren't effective is because people would rather do something else; change this. It's possible. How many people watch the Super Bowl as much for the kick-ass ads as for the sport? I know I do, and I know a lot of people that talk more about how funny the latest Budweiser/whatever ad was than how awesome that last-second touchdown/whatever was. C'mon, you ad agencies, surely your people are creative more than once a year!
To networks: you kill shows that have bad ratings, maybe you should start killing sucky ads too. If you show better ads, more people will watch them, and you can get away with charging more. You are in control of your content. Exercise that control, make it clear that you won't accept just any trashy ad, and you won't have to worry about devices like this because people won't want to skip the ads. You can't force people to do anything, remove the need.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
This is such an amazing concept that I'm surprised it hasn't taken off yet. The ability to record all your favorite shows "whenever" and then play them back at your leisure is something that almost everyone on this planet could want.
It's probably going to change the landscape of TV and advertising dramatically. I mean, if I don't have to watch some lame puppet sell used cars or furniture, am I really going to play it? I may as well set this thing up to record Stargate SG-1 every friday and just catch it Saturday morning or something. This won't kill TV. All the doomsayers in the market will talk and talk, but capitalism will find a new way to make money through this.
æeee!
If Tivo and such become more popular or their upgraded unproduced cousins become popular, production companies will have to find other ways for their shows to make money. The easiest way to do this? Let sponsors put their products in the TV show. There is technology available now to go back and add labels and such in post production, even after the final cuts to video have been made. Ever watch a sport on TV and see an add seemingly painted in the grass, but it changes every so often? This is one example of how to get the money to pay for sports and TV shows when people are fast forwarding through your normal commercials. Movies do this alot, a Pepsi can here, a store's logo there. They get paid for that.
I think on demand broadcasting is nice but I hate when people want to use regular internet backbones for it. Backbones are already taxed with RealVideo and other streaming media, how do you think they would hold up to every yahoo with a TV getting a 1.5mb video stream? TCP/IP just isn't what they should use. Local providers should transmit the data to you by way of satillite (expensive) or by coax (cheap). It's not terribly difficult to fit a 2mb/s into a coax, and then give each household their own frequency. Thats what's being done with cable modems, there's lots of frequencies and channels available, and if you need more just put people on a different wire, so you can use the same frequencies and channels on each wire. The digital format should probably be the MPEG-2 digital standard, but the actual transmission protocols should be similar to direct cable transfers. The modem in the box upstreams and tells the provider what to send, and it sends it. The main server wouldnt need to be terribly complex or expensive, and the video could be stored on large RAIDs which would lower the cost. You could even have different content providers, Blockbuster ad Warehouse could open up digital video rental and provide their own equipment to the local providers.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Actually you do NOT have to purchase one of their units to get the CD. I have an email at home from their webmaster asking me if I'm still interested in the source actually. It does appear, though, that you have to purchase the CD (to cover the cost of the CD, etc). I haven't bothered asking them if they are planning on making the source available on the Web. Maybe I'll just buy the CD and make it available myself.
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The comment CmdrTaco made got me thinking... (uh oh... :-)
Once video-on-demand is a reality, video becomes a packet-based media, not streamed like it is now. Packets are not-realtime, so they take time to download; that's where/when the advertising can be streamed. I may be able to skip commercials once I've downloaded the latest episode of B5; The Crusade, but while I'm waiting, my eyes and/or ears are captive.
--The more you know, the less you know.
A great idea, but the thrust of the NYT article seems to indicate that the "interests" of the producers are recieving more attention than those of the consumers.
The discussions between the components of the broadcast side, and the insidious notion of the PVR interpolating it's own suite of commercials suggests to me this is not the death of network television, instead it is the beginning of a fat client on that network.
Interestingly, we the consumer, are being asked to pay for this new an improved facility in exchange for some modest improvement in convenience.
The idea is marvelous, and if there were an open consumer-focussed implementation I'd applaud it even more, but it seems that we are only being granted these improvements in exchange for ceding greater advertising content control to the networks.
Try #warez and #dreamwarez on RelicNET.
:)
I would guesstimate about half of the transfers I see from logging onto FServes (or whatever they're called... I'm not too familiar with IRC lingo) are music videos, REAL movies (Austin Powers 2 and The Matrix seem pretty popular right now), and shows like Futurama.
Not to mention South Park episodes, but you can get those off of web sites
Personally I would prefer a 28-second skip to account for my (lack of) reflexes.. :)
Re: Macrovision on DSS dishes: Isn't that impossible unless it's actually installed in the satellite receiver its self? Macrovision messes with the video signal directly and so probably can't be done before the MPEG 2 decode.
"...Is this world not a call I can screen out" --
Is there any potential in hacking these boxes, say by purchasing the cheapest possible hard drive and swapping it yourself for a larger unit? How about other neat things? I mean, there is a PC in there.
"...Is this world not a call I can screen out" --
Just wait... My VCR comes with a little infrared gizmo that controls my cable box and can control satellite boxes..
"...Is this world not a call I can screen out" --
Also remember that MP3 has it's roots in VCD technology. MP3 is a quasi-proprietary variant of MP2, which at 224Kb/s is the VCD audio format.
So, it makes sense that ISO VCD's are the next logical step. The quality is decent with a good encoder (320x240 w/NTSC though, NOT DVD-quality 640/720x480), the format is a heckuva lot more open than Real or MS video (the latter being encapsulated MPEG4), and encoders and players are available for Linux. (Some, in low-resolution and low-quality modes, can be run in real time.)
And of course the audio is good, too. :)
- Chad,
(who dosen't trade ISO VCD's though... it just makes sense that ppl _do_)
oops. I meant some _encoders_ can run in real-time. Any decent decoder will work in real time on a (P/K)6-level machine.
Firstly, you probably don't record the news or live sport and then play them later. And if you aren't recording it, then you've got to watch the ads. I don't know a real sports fan who would prefer to watch a delayed telecast than watch the thing live.
Secondly, you probably use the fact that ads are catered for in the scripting of shows, where ads are inserted in an appropriate place (well.. most of the time). This means that you can dash to the kitchen for a drink, do some study, or dash to the toilet. Instead of guessing when the best time to pause would be, I've seen people (and do it myself) play a recorded movie and use the ad breaks rather than skipping them.
Advertisements won't go away. Free to air TV won't die. Certain advertisement slots may get more expensive though.
Although.. infomercials may die - fingers crossed!
windows media player works fine on my p200mmx.
and that's full screen 1024x768(with hardware scaling probably, though)
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
heh, well those fancy shmancy hard drives won't work with your dish, you know... :)
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
PPV may actualy be a good thing. think about it, i f you're *paying* for television, then youre going to be getting good stuf (I mean if you pay per show) beacuse its not going to be some comercalistic, mass apeal crap. well that's what I hope anyway.
btw, does anyone know what the CPM of tv adds are?
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
If you have a DSS unit, take a look inside. You'll find an ASIC in there with the Macrovision logo on it.
Yes, one day I may actually learn to spell...
I'm not certain what the big deal is about the price of retrieving a copy of TiVo's source modifications. All it takes is a single person to pay Tivo for its expenses in shipping out those changes. Then that single person is more than welcome to post those changes to the Web for all of us to examine. In fact, that person is more than welcome to an account on my machine, which has plenty of bandwidth for the downloading.
Endgame: TiVo regains its time, and we get the code. Everyone happy? Good.
To Pick Deeper:
... shouldn't be an issue either ... you already payed for it - I have to disagree with you here, this is just wrong. You pay to rent videos, but you don't have the right to make a copy of them, even for personal use - why should PPV be any different? It's just like software - the distribution medium doesn't mean a thing, it's the intellectual property that you are licensing.
The ads that are there get watched again - but there's no way for the networks to track this, so they can't charge the advertiser more for it. And if they can't charge the advertiser more, then it's not doing the network any direct benefit.
The ratings companies, err, Neilson(a monopoly) can account for this through thier diary system. If you watch a show, even away from it's normally scheduled air time, you write it down and it's added to the shows rating. The problem (and this is a Big Problem now) is the low sample rate that Neilson uses (1/3 of the country lives in NY and LA, um, no) and it's geographic bias make for a ratings system that is already very flawed. The Networks don't want it to change, b/c the system benefits their percieved ratings. And the Networks pay Neilson's salaries, and have the quick access to the ear's of ratings executives.
What the TVreplay will do is fragment the whole thing even more. But I have to agree with the NYTimes article, "Network TV is dead."
Recording PPV movies
Actually you do have the explicite right to record these movies. It is the distribution for profit that is illegal. They don't advertise the service as such (notice the parallel in the NY Times article) to keep on the good side of the studios. The loss of quality is one reason they don't worry about this, and totally freak about digital copying (1,000,000 perfect copies, everytime)
Happy Fourth of July weekend to you other 42% Americans out there.
+&x
Networks sell adds based on ratings. Ratings are based on how many people are watching the program at the time it airs. People who record it and watch at a later time aren't counted. ]
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^.
( @ )
I feel that recording off TV should never be impeded, and that networks should have nothing to worry about.
Recording gives programs more exposure. It used to be that you couldn't watch more than one program at a time. Now that you have a recording device, you can record what's on ABC while watching something on CBS, then watch what you recorded off ABC later. Both networks benefit.
Fast forwarding over the commercials? Yes, some people do that, but you can still see the ads as you fast forward. At least I can. Also, a lot of times I don't bother, and can still hear the ads while I'm working on something else (just like I would if I were watching live)
People trading tapes and recordings of programs someone missed? This shouldn't be a problem either. The program gets more exposure. The ads that are there get watched again.
Recording PPV movies? this shouldn't be an issue either. You already payed for it, you should be able to record it. Of course, distributing the recording could be considered illegal, but then so is making a copy of a commercial videotape and distributing that. Nothing changes here.
The day they start finding ways to prevent recording off TV, I will start finding ways to circumvent it. Macrovision on DSS dishes? I'll have a macrovision killer permanently installed. I refuse to have my right to record infringed upon.
- =^o.o^=
Nyah nyah.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
Not so -- the production units have no such delay (I've got one). I was told a much more believable reason for why the early units had this glitch: they didn't have enough memory (probably too much code swapping going on). The problem was apparently fixed before they started shipping.
..wayne..
NOT! This will not change anything as far as commercials are concerned. All that advertiers and network executives have to do is randomly shuffle the time for commercial breaks. They do at during sports anyway. Most poeple are going to be too lazy to sit and watch this machine record so that they can cut out the commercials. It is just like a VCR except there is no "pirate" distribution of recorded content. You still need a VCR to make permanent copies.
S.S.D.D.
Romanes eunt domus? People called Romanes, they go the 'ouse? It says Romans go home. No it doesn't. What's Latin fo
I've heard about these devices and it sounds like it could really change the way tv is viewed. No more prime time. To hell with programming execs. You wouldn't have to choose between two shows, you could watch either whenever you wanted. Forget about commercials, you could quickly scan past them. Or perhaps even have the ability not to record them at all. Of course, giving the average American so many choices could confuse the hell out of them. Zeke may say, 'to hell with it,' and read a book....well, we can dream.
Comments Below:
>As you say, the offer is open to anyone, which is good. Are purchasers of the product notified of this in writing, as section 3b of the GPL requires?
Absolutely, in the manual.
>Of course, in due course someone will pay the $24.95 and put your changes up on the web themselves, as they have every right to do under the GPL. But it's a little exasperating that you can't be bothered to even make a token gesture of goodwill towards the people who wrote the kernel that gave you such a tremendous head start on your product.
Please, by all means, post away. As for the gestures of good will, and your feelings about the time and costs of the CDs, I only offer that we are a start-up company with fierce competitors, including WebTV, and we want to get a firm grip on our market before we tell everyone how we did it. We aren't quite ready to stop improving our system to take time to contribute to the betterment of our competitors. We are distributing our source changes, as required, but every moment that Dave is burning a CD is a moment that he ought to be compiling new enhancements.
I don't mean that we don't want to be active participants in the true community efforts surrounding Linux, but right now we're still trying to keep the lights lit.
As for your suggestions about the web distribution of the source, thanks for the input -- you have been heard. We are trying to solve several problems in this area right now, and we will probably release our source there in the future. For our first distributions, this method works just fine.
Cheers, and thanks for fighting the good fight,
Richard Bullwinkle
TiVo Webmaster
webmaster@tivo.com
Hmm, enough mis-information from you!
Try this:
We are distributing all our modifications to the Linux Kernel as part of the GPL on CD for $24.95. That covers the cost of the CD, shipping, and the time it takes my dear friend Dave to dupe the CDs.
We have no immediate plans to distrubute the code over the web, but will reconsider once we move our website to a more robust server in the near future.
On the CD you will find minor modifications to the Power PC kernel, v.2.24.
This is available to anyone, not just people who purchase the TiVo service.
Please email me if you have any questions.
Regards,
Richard Bullwinkle
TiVo Webmaster
webmaster@tivo.com
Anyone else remember the episode of ER that had about 15 minutes devoted to Tae Bo? product placement is here now, expect it to get much, much worse once the networks can say that we just skip the commercials entirely, not even having to fast forward...I can see it now...
"our studies show that 80% of Americans own PVR's and 98% of those owners skip through the commercials. But for just 500,000 dollars more you can get your product INTO THE SHOW!!!!!"
PVR won't change much itself, but just the fact that networks can use the tech buzz that will surround PVR's to scare people into paying more for product placement...
Username: cypherpunk
Password: cypherpunk
-- Paperwork is the embalming fluid of bureaucracy, maintaining an appearance of life where none exists.
I saw an article about these things in Consumerreports magazine. I'm sure you can find the article at http://www.consumerreports.org/
Watch many of the predictions currently about MP3. As your average user's bandwidth increases the "digital video images" will start to be traded around much like MP3s are now. Probably starting off with music videos (since they average about 4-5 minutes) and then gradually expanding to include any type of video.
This also includes "shoutcast" type systems where anyone with cheap video camera and fast net connection can broadcast their own TV show over the internet. It will be beautiful...
Also, the convergence of "Tivo" and writtable DVDs will really bring about major changes. Writtable DVDs will eventually be as cheap as CDs are now, probably within 2 or 3 years. These digital VCRs will be able to output four 1/2 hour shows or a full length movie once writtable DVD comes standard on them.
The big networks probably have more to fear than they think....
When I was younger, I had no money and tons of time. I could sit in front of a TV for hours because there was nothing to do. I never needed the VCR because I could be ready when the show came on.
It drove me crazy.
Now I almost never watch TV. I have money. I can work on building a new bookshelf for my books. Upgrade my system, work on my plan for the 'Ultimate Game'.
Replay and TIVO are interesting. I think they will be hacked after they come out to the marketplace. (Note: they ARE available. Aparently you can buy one though 'Specialized sales on the internet.') The machines currently do not allow users to build librarys of shows. I'd love to have a complete set of 'Max Headroom'
I can also see another hack to allow the replication of VCR tapes.
>Still, Ancier conceded that many of the machine's implications "scare the heck out of me." Tom Freston, the chairman of Viacom's MTV Networks, said: "I hate to think about Replay and Tivo. We kind of like the world the way it is now."
Heh. Spoken like a true dinosaur.
Hmm, the place I work for has full cable. If I get this I can get a copy of al the shows I miss on the weekend!
Later
Erik Z
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
i think that we could have a truce with the advertisers: only block out car commercials and disgusting products. wouldn't that be enough? especially the disgusting products they used to be only girl stuff but now we've got bob dole telling me to be brave and try some viagra.... oh god the world is going to hell in a handbasket!!!
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Pay per view programming seems like the obvious answer, but that's pretty unattractive to a lot of people, particularly ones who want to spend hours and hours watching television. A relatively simple compromise for this would be to grant users viewing credit for watching commercials; it could be set up on such a scale that the current setup -- 43 minute show/17 minutes of commercials -- would result in no fee. Credit could be saved up by watching more commercials and used to watch movies uninterrupted.
Better still, you could choose your commercials the same way you chose your shows. You'd submit a list of the products you were interested in seeing advertised, thus making the commercials more likely to be appealing to you. Don't want a new car? No commercials for car dealerships. Advertisers would be happy to reach one tenth the audience they are now if they were sure those people were interested.
Here's the system I want. A large (52"?) plasma or LCD HDTV display. The display would be attached (but removable, if you wanted to wall-mount it) to a base. Thev base contains a RePlay/TiVo-type recorder and a DCD-RAM/RW drive. You feel you need to make a more permanent copy of your favorite ER? No problem. Select the show from the PVR device's menu and send it to the DVD drive. Just plug in your speakers of choice to enjoy the Dolby Digital, sit back, and enjoy.
Maybe Nielson will need to modify its rating system to consider programs that are watched when air versus shows that are recorded for watching later?
According to this article, Josh Bernoff predicts the end of network television in the next 10 years because of these devices. I don't know about this guy's credentials, but he seems a little technically short-sighted.
Sure these devices might cause some change in viewing habits in the next few years, but that's it. If anything is going to significantly impact network television in the next 10 years, it is going to have something more to do with the constant blurring of TVs and computers, the ever increasing amount of bandwidth into the home (DSL, cable modems, etc.), and something closer to on-demand broadcast (and even interactive) television.
And I kind of doubt that NBC is investing significant amounts of money into something that will be its own downfall.