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Live Streaming Network TV Online - in Canada
ecampbel writes "News.com is running a story about a company called iCraveTV.com offering live streaming network TV feeds for Canadian Internet users (an area code is required to view the streams). Most of the stations offered are Canadian, but a few Buffalo, NY stations are offered as well. This is obviously the logical conclusion of streaming media, and is scaring the pants off the local network affiliates."
The site requires area codes to watch from east to west candaian area codes are:
506 418 819 450 514 705 807 204 306 403 780 250 604 403
Someone should invent something that would transform these signals to analouge and then transmit them using a wireless mechanism and RF Modulation.
Then cheap, monitor like boxes could be built with the wireless networking gear built into them, and the cost of the service to consumers could be paid for by advertising.
Of course, we might have a problem with competing standards - maybe the W3C could come up with something..
Hmmm... I might just seek some VC finance..
Hmmmm... now wait a moment.. I remember something like that from back when I was young..
;-)
Is that all you yanks can now see how awesome Hockey Night in Canada (on CBC) really is.
Tune in at 7:00 eastern on Saturday night for the Toronto Maple Leafs vs. Pittsburgh Penguins from Toronto, and at 10:00 eastern for the Vancouver Canucks at the Edmonton Oilers.
Like the t-shirt says: Hockey is Life.
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If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
Here are some links for those of you who don't like area codes and don't like license agreements. Obviously, people from countries other than Canada are going to view these streams, regardless of anything anyone posts, so you might as well be able to do it easily:
NBC
NewVR
CBC
Global
ABC
CTV
OnTV
PBS
TVO
SRC
CTS
CFMT
WB
CITY
I must say that watching people argue on some crazy talk show in French is rather humorous.
Hmm, now we'll have the TV industry wake up to the same threat the music industry is facing now. Not that the concept is not obvious (after all, at a low level everything is just a stream of 0s and 1s), but this must be a red flag in their face.
... if nothing else, this means that as an independant producer you will be able to distribute your films to anyone who's on the internet. Wether anyone will care to watch your stuff is of course an entirely different matter.
Much as we needed the recording industry over the past 50 years to press those damn CDs/Records and distribute them, we're currently relying on the TV studios and networks to make/distribute their products. Also witness the current TV climate: much as the recording industry creates their own hypes and ignores non-conventional artists, the TV (and movie) industry is falling victim of their own success. Their desire to standardize everything and make it 'safe' for (their) ideal targe audience (families with kids, etc) results in a product which excells in conformity and blandness.
Given this, advances in technology which make it possible to distribute (and eventually produce) decent quality TV programs at low costs, will lead to the proliferation of 'independant' studios. With their monopoly on creation/distribution of movies vanishing in internet time, the TV studios will eventually face the same tide the music industry is facing now: We don't really like them, we don't really need them anymore; let's move to a medium we can control and just ignore the studios. Looking at the sad state of the (currently +- 30) TV stations I get via cable, this may just be good