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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.
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!"
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!
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
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^=
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
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....
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!