My reference to DMCA is in regaurds to 5C and HDCP. Not specifically the software encryption AccessDTV is doing. Although the signal would not be encrypted, there will be flags in the stream that indicate if you can even timeshift the show. To date I don't think any of the PC based HDTV solutions support the flags at this time, so it may be moot...for now.
This PC Card, like most PC HDTV solutions uses the Teralogic Janus chipset. It's pretty slick, and has actually been aorund for several years. Many major companies use Teralogic, including Tivo.
I've been trying to get information on the chipset from Teralogic for several months. On Dec 29, 1999, David Auld of Teralogic posted to the video-4-linux mailing list. "We at TeraLogic are interested in encouraging the development of Linux
drivers for the Janus DTV card." The company went so far as to offer reference cards and driver sets, and was in favor of having a total GPL driver set. You can do a google search to find the archive.
A couple months ago I e-mailed David on this subject and got a fairly kurt thanks but no thanks response.
The obvious reasons for pulling out support for the Linux driver are all MPAA based. The content controls comming down the pipe won't be in the Janus Chipset. It would have to be software based. With a linux driver could could patch an HD-Tivo, or your Windows based solution to ignore the content control flags. Most interesting would be trying to wield the DMCA against people on this. It's doubtful a linux driver would ever ack the content flags in the first place.
Wrong on all accounts. Not to say a sales person might take a short cut and tell you that's how things have to go. It's a change order. All they do is change where the ATM config to redirect your traffic. If an ISP change was a cancel and a new order then old DSL users would get switched from CAP to DMT. Meaning they would have to buy a new modem. (675 to 678). They don't.
As far as connections on the DSLAM there should be no preferential treatment to MSN/Qwest over a third party ISP. If you have evidence of that I'd love to see it since it violates at least one settlement agreement U S West signed with a State PUC/Attorny General.
You don't have to use Qwest or MSN as your ISP with DSL. I have Qwest DSL, I have an Indie ISP, most markets have at least 40 ISP to choice from. You can actually save money doing this. How?
Well, here's a dirty little secret that right on your DSL bill each month. When Qwest did it's semi-hostile take over of U S West everyone was looking to make sure the letter of the law was being followed. One of the things that came out is upstream traffic would have to be carried by an outside company. Now some would think the cost of this would be rolled into the $19 ISP fee on your bill. No. They threw a $5 charge into the tax and fee section where no one would be able to find it.
So, really you get to pay 24.99 for your ISP charges.
It should be noted that before Qwest took over U S West was one of the few National ISP's that uses tons of GNU and Opensource. In fact Qwest Internet is one of the largest FreeBSD installations in the US.
Re:I am a Qwest customer and have more info.
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MSN Forces Outlook POP
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· Score: 3, Informative
Although you have some interesting points you have factual errors on several.
First, the select plan is not an always on plan. Only Delux is. It's always been that way, even when DSL first came out. The differences between Select and Delux and clearly indicated on the web page. What the sales weasel might have told you on the other hand isn't as clear.
How the DSL circuit works has nothing to do with your ISP. The ISP has no contol over the DSLAM, which is what is disconnecting you. So if you don't like MSN, get a local ISP with DSL, most markets have AT LEAST 40+ choices for your ISP.
I have Qwest DSL, I don't use Qwest as my ISP. My connection has been flawless over the last year.
I don't know if it's just me, but I'm reading the forum and seeing people say they are using 80-250 Megs per album on high bitrate lousy formats. There are several lossless audio compression projects out there that are getting pretty decent compression rates.
Of course the result is never going to be near as small as MPG or OGG, but it does get rid of all the tweaking disscusions (i.e. Which VBR/CBR, CODECs, Bitrates, is best) that seem to be big time wasters.
I look at it like this. HD Space is cheap these days, 60 Gig drives are starting to dip below $100. A pair of 60 gig drives could store 300+ Lossless Albums.
It really depends on how you want to work it. Binary only releases are popular in certain Linux segments that don't want to hasle with compiling. The problem is of course you're only a kernal update away from having a program that doesn't work.
I think there are aspects that of the Linux Universe that would benifit from a well done multimedia compiler. DVD players, or general Home Theater Computer enviroments, Linux Set Top boxes. etc. Games of course would welcome this too.
But the real problem of course is how to you balance making a comcerial distro for Linux that is okay from the Opensource,and GNU communities perspective.
There are a couple ways to go. You can go the QT way, and have a free and comercial version. The hope being that the various projects will use your libs and compiler, and thus it would be popular for comercial aspects that would actually pay you.
Second would be binary only distro. Not as popular mind you because the person who puts together the Binary Distro (Which I assume would be a person who bought the package) may bit off more than they wanted to chew keeping things up to date. In order for this to work in opensource you'd need a lot of compiler directives. The idea being you could compile the project with GCC, it just wouldn't be as efficiant.
Third would be a hybrid method. Some sort pre-compile on the closed stuff, and an included client compiler that would bring everything system dependent together. Perhaps even making the compiler and libs free to distro, but the development enviroment closed.
My person preference would be number one. Anyone know how well QT does?
I did support for a major computer maker at that time. It was well known that Western Digital had a problem. Specifically, the lubracant used inside the housing would heat up real fast. Creating a gas. This would crystalize on the platter when the drive was off and would cool.
In other cases the drive wouldn't start at all. Our offical solution was to lift the computer about 4 inches off the desk and drop it.
Higher education doesn't run just off tuition. Most larger universities take in millions of dollars a year from the State and Federal Gov't. Some in the form of grants. Others straight up dollars into the budget.
As a tax payer I want to know how MY MONEY is being spent. If a tax payer funded organization is wasting thousands of dollars on leagal and domain fees, then I'm pissed. The tax payers of the state entrusted money to see that standard of education was met. And as it stands I can't even fathom a good reason to waste that much money.
Then again, I think the entire higher education system is worse at wasting money then the federal gov't.
Slashdot should include "IANAL" in the article. While there are several state and federal laws to "protect" workers from these types of situations there isn't much in the area of enforcement. In a perfect world the employer is required to tell the staff that they are going to file papers when they decided to draft them. Not after the file. In practice the employees usually find out when they go do work and find a notice pasted to a locked door.
Looking at the release doesn't click. What would the RIAA or MPAA have to do with Warrenty? I think Patent infringement and reverse engineering a product when it's shrink wrap lic. forbids it is far more likely.
Something smells. You have a developer who work for Pioneer on the project. Wierd statements that aren't logical. My guess is that someone shot a warning shot across the bow, and that someone seems to have learned something from the RIAA not to put it in writting.
All you have to do is look at HP's comitment to OpenMail and you have a pretty grim outlook. HP has not qualms about killing a project that could be a compeditor to a MS product. I've been to the UK debelopment centre, I've talked to Unix Developers, they all see the writing on the wall. HP does not want to do anything that could upset MS. The enconomics of scale make selling 100 NT/2000 servers to do the job of one V Class HP-9000 Unix box far more profitable.
Last year the same thing happened to a friend of mine owns an ISP. The key is to fight dirty tricks, with dirty tricks. Basically, you set up a sendmail rule to accept the spam message, then drop kick it to/dev/null. So, the Spammer sees in his logs that the message was accepted. But on the backend you're dumping his traffic. If they call just tell them it's SPAM filters upstream and you can't do anything about it. Perhaps you'd like to sue sprint or AOL about it.
The problem with this is that the software needs a source of poeple who shoplift. You could a) Digitize public record information. You could take all those arrested or convicted, etc. Generally speaking a merchant will ask a known shoplifter to leave. I had a friend of mine asks to leave a Barnes and Noble as he was walking up to the check out counter. Sure, they were merchant was right on, as a teen he'd ripped them off. He was asain. However, my other friend who was white and had been ripping them off on a weekly basis walked around the store without a word.
So, basically we are creating a system where the crimes of a youth could haunt those into adulthood. This isn't exactly a good thing for thge merchant. People grow up, and when they do they tent to buy things. Although I think in the long run the merchant loses out, the merchant is free to act however they please in this country. Just as I am free to not buy from them, or someone else is free to sue them for discrimination.
My biggest fear to using public records for face reconition is that you create a system where those who can afford good representation often won't be convicted when they should. Even with a Public Defender a white person is far more likely to be offered a special program that will not place the shoplifting conviction in the public record.
B) Would be to digitize ID from those caught shoplifting on tape. This has the same problem as normal CCTV. You have so much information you have to decide who you are going to concentrate on. There have been a number of shows on racial profiling in retail security over the years. Almost all have demonstrated that minorities are targeted. So when security adds faces to the database are they getting 80% of the minorities caught on tape shoplifting while at the same time getting only 30% of other groups.
While most companies have policies that are designed to avoid profiling and discrimination the fact is you cannot anticipte the how every employee is going to act.
The best idea is not to have a system that tracks peoples faces, but instead tracks the books and detects when people take them.
Old news, here's here's why you don't do this
on
Make Your Own DSL
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· Score: 3, Informative
The alarm line trick as been around for ages. Usually using the line to cross connect a CSU/DSU like it was a frame circuit. The problem isn't technology, it's quality. High speed datacomm expects certain line quality in order to do what it needs to do. Things like quality of the line, minium data throughput, etc are all defined in the tariff. Problem with these types of lines is that the tariff basically says the line should pass a simple continuity test and that's it. Afterall, that's all an alarm needs. So, if you get a real noisy line, you're sunk.
As an experiment that's fine, but don't let a business depend on this because you'll have no recourse with the Telco.
I don't want to come off as a prick, but you didn't burst my bubble. But you're wrong on both counts. One, the US was not the only country that didn't switch to Metric. For example, the UK still has good old MPH on the speed limit signs. And no, we do not use the Imperial system. For instance, an imperial gallon in the UK not the same size as an US gallon.
Although Cable in your part of Canada may be behind, the DBS system in Canada is actually ahead of the game. Even better than US DBS systems actually. You can get the big three US networks in HD, as well as showtime, HBO, etc.
This is the first year HDTV hit widespread comsumer electronic stores for a wide release (i.e. you could go into a top 20 market Best Buy or Circuit City store and walk out today with a DTV.) Sales of DTV's is similar to year 1 of DVD players. By your logic there is no reason DVD sales should have taken off. The only compelling reason for purchasing a DVD player was quality. You couldn't record with it. The media (although cheaper to make) is not actually cheaper than VHS. The is the only compelling reason for purchasing a DVD player or HDTV is quality.
Content Control is a problem. Two of the last three HDTV content control articles on slashdot were posted by me. So know this very very well. There are some brights spots to the Content Control problem. Mostly being that it's against the law to encrypt an Over the Air TV broadcast. Thus it comes down to the hardware vendors honoring the flags sent with the stream. Apex 8VSB tuner and VCR anyone?
Third, it's the FCC not the FTC. And no one is going to riot. Over 80% of the US gets it's Television via cable TV, another 7% get it via DBS. Cable companies are One) Trying to sell digital content. Why? More money because you can force people to lease boxes. Two) they are going to down convert the OTA channels for the customer anyway.
I used to work retail electronics. Although I'm out of the field I still know people who are selling electronics. And they don't agree with you about "no one is buying".
Not to burst your bubble, but the facts don't match up to anything you said.
First off, many cable carries in the top 15 markets are already catering to some form of HDTV. And not Just HBO-HD or Showtime-HD. For instance the Time Warner cable system in my area made a deal with the PBS station to carry 5 DTV feeds. I personally have DBS, which has a small, but expanding selection of premium content that compliments the Over The Air content I recieve.
Second, 0.01%... Man, you're on crack. First off most Front Projection televisions sold in the previous 5 years could be cheaply ungraded to DTV. Most medium to high end data grade projecots (LCD, DLP and the like) can handle DTV from low cost tuner box. Direct View DTV units are falling on a monthly basis, and the price gap in Rear projection DTV is becomming fairly slim.
Sales have been weak, but when you consider that many of the early adopters most likely already have an HDTV compatible display, then consider that major hardware makers have been having to go back to the drawing board to put in place MPAA mandated Content Controls. Yeah, sales could be better, but you're still looking at several hundred thousand units in the channel right just this year.
Point is this. HDTV is not like the Metric system. The only people with a vested interest in changing was sign painters. Every major consumer electronics maker is banking on DTV. The FCC is banking on selling off the old bandwidth.
HDTV is here, it's not going anywhere, and dispite your opinion, many of us are already enjoying HD content.
Problem is there isn't any 8vsb (Read HDTV) support in the platform yet. Which makes me question the long term vision of the project.
Right now most of the current crop of 8VSB computer hardware is based on the TeraLogic Janus platform. While the platform is certainly offers nice features and would be easy to integrate with any open source STB I doubt it will never see the light of day in Linux. Two years ago Teralogic was all over Linux. They sent mail to various lists, offered sample cards. Times have changed. Asking about linux drivers or even docs gets curt responces from the devel team. [Insert standard MPAA rant here].
So, while an actual opensource platform is a cool idea, certainly giving more features than Tivo or WebTV, long term, I just don't know if it's worth while.
It has to be a TRS-80, it took a full 5 seconds before it was slashdotted. Feel the power!
Re:Stop whining about HDTV
on
HDTV Over IP
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· Score: 2
Cost to the station is not relavent to the process since they can't opt out of upgrading. Although certainly some stations have dragged there feet, by the end of summer most of the major markets will be up.
So that leaves us with the cost for producing the actual content. That's usually up to the Major Studio's. (WB for example makes ER for NBC). If you looked at a program like X-files, you wonder, "How much would it cost to get HD-X-files?" The answer is not a whole lot. The show is filmed in 35mm, most likely digitized into a non-linear editing suit, then mastered to a D1 (or similar). There's a good chance the suit is already handling the editing in a Hi-Res format. So at the low end all they have to do is change the mastering process, high end a new editing suit. But one episode of Dave D. pay is prolly 20 times as much as that would cost.
And last, but not least, three people? You're smoking crack. First off the majority of front projection systems sold in the last 5 years have the ability to display HDTV material. All I had to do was add a $400 Dishnetwork 6000 box to the system. Getting Over The Air signal was a matter of adding a $99 module. The number of sports bars alone that had some sort of Front Projection CRT that would jump on a gimick like HDTV should be enough to get content producers going. Let alone Home Theater.
Stop whining about HDTV
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HDTV Over IP
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Everytime there is an HDTV story posted I read people WHINE about how bad HDTV is. Just stop it. The reason HD (or DTV for that matter) have not taken off is the MPAA (or rather who they rerosent.) HD content is sparse. Why? Studio's don't want to produce it. And it's not a matter of technology. It's not a matter of costing huge ammounts of money for the studio to make an HD copy. In fact many prime time programs are filmed, then converted to video during editing. Usually drama's, sci-fi, made for TV movies, etc.
Studio's hate HDTV. Why? Because it ruins a very important Video market. They now count on the fact that VCR's make low quality, grainy copies of on-air content. This means they can make tons of bank on [insert fav show here] box sets. Once you deal with a digital format they are sunk. People can now make a high quality recording for personal use. Hence no reason to buy an over priced box set from the local retailer.
While people can contend the studios and networks are free to do as they please, I would counter that the networks are allowed to use OUR airwaves for next to nothing. With out over the air content no one would buy a box set show. Like it or not, Timeshifting is legal and is considered a RIGHT we have gained in exchange for allowing networks to use the airwaves.
HD prices could have dropped like DVD prices by now if the studios didn't stand in the way. The mear fact that hardware vendors keep having to go to the design stage to add new copy protect and transports to please the studios is just crazy.
HD is $$$ and in it's intfancy because of the DMCA and studio money. It's doesn't matter if you're a Dem. or Rep., because neither party took a stand and did any thing to protect the consumer.
I thought it was a nice transfer. However, I was disapointed that the Japanese sound track wasn't remastered in 5.1. I had the Laserdisc of this movie. Certainly having a DVD copy brings better sub titles and slightly better audio than the LD. But after putting in the disc and hearing all these special effects in the menu and then seeing the japanese track wasn't in 5.1...well, it was a let down.
I think the idea of having a AV centric computer is a plus. Having actual vendor support for getting to the GFX chipset is a big plus. I like the idea of having a single machine on my coffee table I can use for Gaming and Surfing. Of course I have a 110 inch HDTV projector, so that helps. But I think as more and more people get DTVs the more useful something like this will be.
Slashdot Mirror
My reference to DMCA is in regaurds to 5C and HDCP. Not specifically the software encryption AccessDTV is doing. Although the signal would not be encrypted, there will be flags in the stream that indicate if you can even timeshift the show. To date I don't think any of the PC based HDTV solutions support the flags at this time, so it may be moot...for now.
This PC Card, like most PC HDTV solutions uses the Teralogic Janus chipset. It's pretty slick, and has actually been aorund for several years. Many major companies use Teralogic, including Tivo.
I've been trying to get information on the chipset from Teralogic for several months. On Dec 29, 1999, David Auld of Teralogic posted to the video-4-linux mailing list. "We at TeraLogic are interested in encouraging the development of Linux
drivers for the Janus DTV card." The company went so far as to offer reference cards and driver sets, and was in favor of having a total GPL driver set. You can do a google search to find the archive.
A couple months ago I e-mailed David on this subject and got a fairly kurt thanks but no thanks response.
The obvious reasons for pulling out support for the Linux driver are all MPAA based. The content controls comming down the pipe won't be in the Janus Chipset. It would have to be software based. With a linux driver could could patch an HD-Tivo, or your Windows based solution to ignore the content control flags. Most interesting would be trying to wield the DMCA against people on this. It's doubtful a linux driver would ever ack the content flags in the first place.
Wrong on all accounts. Not to say a sales person might take a short cut and tell you that's how things have to go. It's a change order. All they do is change where the ATM config to redirect your traffic. If an ISP change was a cancel and a new order then old DSL users would get switched from CAP to DMT. Meaning they would have to buy a new modem. (675 to 678). They don't.
As far as connections on the DSLAM there should be no preferential treatment to MSN/Qwest over a third party ISP. If you have evidence of that I'd love to see it since it violates at least one settlement agreement U S West signed with a State PUC/Attorny General.
You don't have to use Qwest or MSN as your ISP with DSL. I have Qwest DSL, I have an Indie ISP, most markets have at least 40 ISP to choice from. You can actually save money doing this. How?
Well, here's a dirty little secret that right on your DSL bill each month. When Qwest did it's semi-hostile take over of U S West everyone was looking to make sure the letter of the law was being followed. One of the things that came out is upstream traffic would have to be carried by an outside company. Now some would think the cost of this would be rolled into the $19 ISP fee on your bill. No. They threw a $5 charge into the tax and fee section where no one would be able to find it.
So, really you get to pay 24.99 for your ISP charges.
It should be noted that before Qwest took over U S West was one of the few National ISP's that uses tons of GNU and Opensource. In fact Qwest Internet is one of the largest FreeBSD installations in the US.
Although you have some interesting points you have factual errors on several.
First, the select plan is not an always on plan. Only Delux is. It's always been that way, even when DSL first came out. The differences between Select and Delux and clearly indicated on the web page. What the sales weasel might have told you on the other hand isn't as clear.
How the DSL circuit works has nothing to do with your ISP. The ISP has no contol over the DSLAM, which is what is disconnecting you. So if you don't like MSN, get a local ISP with DSL, most markets have AT LEAST 40+ choices for your ISP.
I have Qwest DSL, I don't use Qwest as my ISP. My connection has been flawless over the last year.
I don't know if it's just me, but I'm reading the forum and seeing people say they are using 80-250 Megs per album on high bitrate lousy formats. There are several lossless audio compression projects out there that are getting pretty decent compression rates.
Of course the result is never going to be near as small as MPG or OGG, but it does get rid of all the tweaking disscusions (i.e. Which VBR/CBR, CODECs, Bitrates, is best) that seem to be big time wasters.
I look at it like this. HD Space is cheap these days, 60 Gig drives are starting to dip below $100. A pair of 60 gig drives could store 300+ Lossless Albums.
It really depends on how you want to work it. Binary only releases are popular in certain Linux segments that don't want to hasle with compiling. The problem is of course you're only a kernal update away from having a program that doesn't work.
I think there are aspects that of the Linux Universe that would benifit from a well done multimedia compiler. DVD players, or general Home Theater Computer enviroments, Linux Set Top boxes. etc. Games of course would welcome this too.
But the real problem of course is how to you balance making a comcerial distro for Linux that is okay from the Opensource,and GNU communities perspective.
There are a couple ways to go. You can go the QT way, and have a free and comercial version. The hope being that the various projects will use your libs and compiler, and thus it would be popular for comercial aspects that would actually pay you.
Second would be binary only distro. Not as popular mind you because the person who puts together the Binary Distro (Which I assume would be a person who bought the package) may bit off more than they wanted to chew keeping things up to date. In order for this to work in opensource you'd need a lot of compiler directives. The idea being you could compile the project with GCC, it just wouldn't be as efficiant.
Third would be a hybrid method. Some sort pre-compile on the closed stuff, and an included client compiler that would bring everything system dependent together. Perhaps even making the compiler and libs free to distro, but the development enviroment closed.
My person preference would be number one. Anyone know how well QT does?
I did support for a major computer maker at that time. It was well known that Western Digital had a problem. Specifically, the lubracant used inside the housing would heat up real fast. Creating a gas. This would crystalize on the platter when the drive was off and would cool.
In other cases the drive wouldn't start at all. Our offical solution was to lift the computer about 4 inches off the desk and drop it.
Higher education doesn't run just off tuition. Most larger universities take in millions of dollars a year from the State and Federal Gov't. Some in the form of grants. Others straight up dollars into the budget.
As a tax payer I want to know how MY MONEY is being spent. If a tax payer funded organization is wasting thousands of dollars on leagal and domain fees, then I'm pissed. The tax payers of the state entrusted money to see that standard of education was met. And as it stands I can't even fathom a good reason to waste that much money.
Then again, I think the entire higher education system is worse at wasting money then the federal gov't.
Slashdot should include "IANAL" in the article. While there are several state and federal laws to "protect" workers from these types of situations there isn't much in the area of enforcement. In a perfect world the employer is required to tell the staff that they are going to file papers when they decided to draft them. Not after the file. In practice the employees usually find out when they go do work and find a notice pasted to a locked door.
IANAL
Looking at the release doesn't click. What would the RIAA or MPAA have to do with Warrenty? I think Patent infringement and reverse engineering a product when it's shrink wrap lic. forbids it is far more likely.
Something smells. You have a developer who work for Pioneer on the project. Wierd statements that aren't logical. My guess is that someone shot a warning shot across the bow, and that someone seems to have learned something from the RIAA not to put it in writting.
All you have to do is look at HP's comitment to OpenMail and you have a pretty grim outlook. HP has not qualms about killing a project that could be a compeditor to a MS product. I've been to the UK debelopment centre, I've talked to Unix Developers, they all see the writing on the wall. HP does not want to do anything that could upset MS. The enconomics of scale make selling 100 NT/2000 servers to do the job of one V Class HP-9000 Unix box far more profitable.
Last year the same thing happened to a friend of mine owns an ISP. The key is to fight dirty tricks, with dirty tricks. Basically, you set up a sendmail rule to accept the spam message, then drop kick it to /dev/null. So, the Spammer sees in his logs that the message was accepted. But on the backend you're dumping his traffic. If they call just tell them it's SPAM filters upstream and you can't do anything about it. Perhaps you'd like to sue sprint or AOL about it.
The problem with this is that the software needs a source of poeple who shoplift. You could a) Digitize public record information. You could take all those arrested or convicted, etc. Generally speaking a merchant will ask a known shoplifter to leave. I had a friend of mine asks to leave a Barnes and Noble as he was walking up to the check out counter. Sure, they were merchant was right on, as a teen he'd ripped them off. He was asain. However, my other friend who was white and had been ripping them off on a weekly basis walked around the store without a word.
So, basically we are creating a system where the crimes of a youth could haunt those into adulthood. This isn't exactly a good thing for thge merchant. People grow up, and when they do they tent to buy things. Although I think in the long run the merchant loses out, the merchant is free to act however they please in this country. Just as I am free to not buy from them, or someone else is free to sue them for discrimination.
My biggest fear to using public records for face reconition is that you create a system where those who can afford good representation often won't be convicted when they should. Even with a Public Defender a white person is far more likely to be offered a special program that will not place the shoplifting conviction in the public record.
B) Would be to digitize ID from those caught shoplifting on tape. This has the same problem as normal CCTV. You have so much information you have to decide who you are going to concentrate on. There have been a number of shows on racial profiling in retail security over the years. Almost all have demonstrated that minorities are targeted. So when security adds faces to the database are they getting 80% of the minorities caught on tape shoplifting while at the same time getting only 30% of other groups.
While most companies have policies that are designed to avoid profiling and discrimination the fact is you cannot anticipte the how every employee is going to act.
The best idea is not to have a system that tracks peoples faces, but instead tracks the books and detects when people take them.
The alarm line trick as been around for ages. Usually using the line to cross connect a CSU/DSU like it was a frame circuit. The problem isn't technology, it's quality. High speed datacomm expects certain line quality in order to do what it needs to do. Things like quality of the line, minium data throughput, etc are all defined in the tariff. Problem with these types of lines is that the tariff basically says the line should pass a simple continuity test and that's it. Afterall, that's all an alarm needs. So, if you get a real noisy line, you're sunk.
As an experiment that's fine, but don't let a business depend on this because you'll have no recourse with the Telco.
I don't want to come off as a prick, but you didn't burst my bubble. But you're wrong on both counts. One, the US was not the only country that didn't switch to Metric. For example, the UK still has good old MPH on the speed limit signs. And no, we do not use the Imperial system. For instance, an imperial gallon in the UK not the same size as an US gallon.
Although Cable in your part of Canada may be behind, the DBS system in Canada is actually ahead of the game. Even better than US DBS systems actually. You can get the big three US networks in HD, as well as showtime, HBO, etc.
This is the first year HDTV hit widespread comsumer electronic stores for a wide release (i.e. you could go into a top 20 market Best Buy or Circuit City store and walk out today with a DTV.) Sales of DTV's is similar to year 1 of DVD players. By your logic there is no reason DVD sales should have taken off. The only compelling reason for purchasing a DVD player was quality. You couldn't record with it. The media (although cheaper to make) is not actually cheaper than VHS. The is the only compelling reason for purchasing a DVD player or HDTV is quality.
Content Control is a problem. Two of the last three HDTV content control articles on slashdot were posted by me. So know this very very well. There are some brights spots to the Content Control problem. Mostly being that it's against the law to encrypt an Over the Air TV broadcast. Thus it comes down to the hardware vendors honoring the flags sent with the stream. Apex 8VSB tuner and VCR anyone?
Third, it's the FCC not the FTC. And no one is going to riot. Over 80% of the US gets it's Television via cable TV, another 7% get it via DBS. Cable companies are One) Trying to sell digital content. Why? More money because you can force people to lease boxes. Two) they are going to down convert the OTA channels for the customer anyway.
I used to work retail electronics. Although I'm out of the field I still know people who are selling electronics. And they don't agree with you about "no one is buying".
Not to burst your bubble, but the facts don't match up to anything you said.
First off, many cable carries in the top 15 markets are already catering to some form of HDTV. And not Just HBO-HD or Showtime-HD. For instance the Time Warner cable system in my area made a deal with the PBS station to carry 5 DTV feeds. I personally have DBS, which has a small, but expanding selection of premium content that compliments the Over The Air content I recieve.
Second, 0.01%... Man, you're on crack. First off most Front Projection televisions sold in the previous 5 years could be cheaply ungraded to DTV. Most medium to high end data grade projecots (LCD, DLP and the like) can handle DTV from low cost tuner box. Direct View DTV units are falling on a monthly basis, and the price gap in Rear projection DTV is becomming fairly slim.
Sales have been weak, but when you consider that many of the early adopters most likely already have an HDTV compatible display, then consider that major hardware makers have been having to go back to the drawing board to put in place MPAA mandated Content Controls. Yeah, sales could be better, but you're still looking at several hundred thousand units in the channel right just this year.
Point is this. HDTV is not like the Metric system. The only people with a vested interest in changing was sign painters. Every major consumer electronics maker is banking on DTV. The FCC is banking on selling off the old bandwidth.
HDTV is here, it's not going anywhere, and dispite your opinion, many of us are already enjoying HD content.
Problem is there isn't any 8vsb (Read HDTV) support in the platform yet. Which makes me question the long term vision of the project.
Right now most of the current crop of 8VSB computer hardware is based on the TeraLogic Janus platform. While the platform is certainly offers nice features and would be easy to integrate with any open source STB I doubt it will never see the light of day in Linux. Two years ago Teralogic was all over Linux. They sent mail to various lists, offered sample cards. Times have changed. Asking about linux drivers or even docs gets curt responces from the devel team. [Insert standard MPAA rant here].
So, while an actual opensource platform is a cool idea, certainly giving more features than Tivo or WebTV, long term, I just don't know if it's worth while.
It has to be a TRS-80, it took a full 5 seconds before it was slashdotted. Feel the power!
Cost to the station is not relavent to the process since they can't opt out of upgrading. Although certainly some stations have dragged there feet, by the end of summer most of the major markets will be up.
So that leaves us with the cost for producing the actual content. That's usually up to the Major Studio's. (WB for example makes ER for NBC). If you looked at a program like X-files, you wonder, "How much would it cost to get HD-X-files?" The answer is not a whole lot. The show is filmed in 35mm, most likely digitized into a non-linear editing suit, then mastered to a D1 (or similar). There's a good chance the suit is already handling the editing in a Hi-Res format. So at the low end all they have to do is change the mastering process, high end a new editing suit. But one episode of Dave D. pay is prolly 20 times as much as that would cost.
And last, but not least, three people? You're smoking crack. First off the majority of front projection systems sold in the last 5 years have the ability to display HDTV material. All I had to do was add a $400 Dishnetwork 6000 box to the system. Getting Over The Air signal was a matter of adding a $99 module. The number of sports bars alone that had some sort of Front Projection CRT that would jump on a gimick like HDTV should be enough to get content producers going. Let alone Home Theater.
Everytime there is an HDTV story posted I read people WHINE about how bad HDTV is. Just stop it. The reason HD (or DTV for that matter) have not taken off is the MPAA (or rather who they rerosent.) HD content is sparse. Why? Studio's don't want to produce it. And it's not a matter of technology. It's not a matter of costing huge ammounts of money for the studio to make an HD copy. In fact many prime time programs are filmed, then converted to video during editing. Usually drama's, sci-fi, made for TV movies, etc.
Studio's hate HDTV. Why? Because it ruins a very important Video market. They now count on the fact that VCR's make low quality, grainy copies of on-air content. This means they can make tons of bank on [insert fav show here] box sets. Once you deal with a digital format they are sunk. People can now make a high quality recording for personal use. Hence no reason to buy an over priced box set from the local retailer.
While people can contend the studios and networks are free to do as they please, I would counter that the networks are allowed to use OUR airwaves for next to nothing. With out over the air content no one would buy a box set show. Like it or not, Timeshifting is legal and is considered a RIGHT we have gained in exchange for allowing networks to use the airwaves.
HD prices could have dropped like DVD prices by now if the studios didn't stand in the way. The mear fact that hardware vendors keep having to go to the design stage to add new copy protect and transports to please the studios is just crazy.
HD is $$$ and in it's intfancy because of the DMCA and studio money. It's doesn't matter if you're a Dem. or Rep., because neither party took a stand and did any thing to protect the consumer.
Yeah, I know that's the case now, but there was a time when Pioneer was more in tune to the Sub fan. It's not technical, it's marketing.
I thought it was a nice transfer. However, I was disapointed that the Japanese sound track wasn't remastered in 5.1. I had the Laserdisc of this movie. Certainly having a DVD copy brings better sub titles and slightly better audio than the LD. But after putting in the disc and hearing all these special effects in the menu and then seeing the japanese track wasn't in 5.1...well, it was a let down.
I think the idea of having a AV centric computer is a plus. Having actual vendor support for getting to the GFX chipset is a big plus. I like the idea of having a single machine on my coffee table I can use for Gaming and Surfing. Of course I have a 110 inch HDTV projector, so that helps. But I think as more and more people get DTVs the more useful something like this will be.
But that's just my $.02