"Fail to comply, and you can still publish, but you don't get a copyright on that work. Seems fair to me."
I agree that something like this would return copyright law closer to its original intent. I don't think there is any controversy about the idea that copyright law was originated to protect publishers from other publishers. A sort of deadlock would occur if a publisher had to invest resources in bringing a book to the public that another publisher then had the possibility of publishing and selling for less (using the result of the original publisher's labor). The eventual goal was exactly to bring the ideas as inexpensively as possible to the largest group but the publishers were protected for a limited period to encourage the original publication.
The government enforced monopoly (copyright) was not provided because of some mysterious new form of property but as a quid pro quo to encourage the spread of knowledge. A catalyst to encourage that original publication.
Notice what happens if an effective DRM prevents the "published" work from ever being copied. It can never enter the public domain. The public through its laws guarantees a monopoly to the publisher but it never gets the payoff of the protected work entering the public domain after an agreed upon period of time. This principle has been badly maimed by the Sonny Bono law but DRM, if effective, evicerates it.
So the new compromise would be that a work that is limited by DRM can be published but it would not have the option of copyright protection. If DRM is not used then copyright law would be available to the publisher.
"they'd stop selling DVDs entirely as unprofitable"
It seems as though you need to get a grip on yourself. Consumers with PC's have been able to duplicate DVD's trivially for many years. If it were such a threat why are profits for DVD's so high that almost everyone with any content scrambling to release it on DVD?
If they want to introduce new, marginally compatible formats that inhibit buyers playback options that is their choice. But claiming it is done because they could not otherwise manage a profit is reality distortion of the first order.
It must be gratifying for telecoms to see others making spurious arguments in their defence. The issue here is not people using VoIP twenty four hours a day, seven days a week (24 x 7) which is what seems to be claimed. It is the telecom equivalent to the Microsoft monopoly case.
Microsoft was found guilty of using its effective monopoly position in the computer OS to favor its own applications over competitive products (e.g. the OS doesn't ship until Lotus crashes or whoever the current target was).
In this case the telecom has significant leverage over your IP connection. If it can make independent VoIP companies ineffective by blocking ports or selectively denying them bandwidth it opens the door to allowing the ISP to provide that service. We have already seen this happen with telecoms and ISP service. How many more examples do we need as the telecom companies continue to merge into ever larger monopolistic entities? If we manage to have telecom, cable TV, IP over power lines, and true high speed wide area wireless them maybe there will be enough natural competition to keep them honest. But we are a long way from that currently.
Of course this should all be a moot point since they claim common carrier status, That removes any question of "shaping bandwidth" or blocking ports. If they want to play those games they should lose their common carrier status and face liability for everything that goes over their network.
Gosh, I wish I could be condescending and superior like you. Oops, I guess I just was. Don't forget we are talking about movies, not data that could be a matter of life and death. It probably makes sense to use some form of RAID to limit the possibility of requiring the user to rip a bunch of DVD's more than once. But that doesn't get you anywhere near the $40 - $60 prices range per disc unless you are specifically dealing with the arguably overpriced proprietary systems. Whatever price you compute today, it will continue to drop as raw drive prices go down.
The price with RAID is less than $10 per disc today and that price will look ridiculously large when consumer priced terabyte drives appear.
Yes, I am aware of Carmack's early affininty for NeXT hardware and software. But my point would be that id did not release Wolfenstein 3D for NeXT or Mac OS. They produced a version for DOS. Similarly Gates and Allen developed their original Basic interpreter on a VAX but it was for release on whatever affordable computer kit that was being sold (Imsai?).
Making the claim that Wolfenstein 3D was ported to the PC from a Mac version is quite inaccurate. Any PC gamer knows that and it casts doubt on the other real cases like Bungie products and Myst where the Mac did have an edge.
I think the clarification is well worth noting since so few probably understand how early in the game OS X (then known as NextStep) was a terrific platform. It coexisted with DOS before there was a Windows. We are remarkably fortunate that Apple evolved in such a way that Jobs was first cast out where he could lead (in a business sense) the development of NextStep and then brought back years later with something much better than either Mac OS or Windows.
What others have missed is that Apple doesn't need to release a game console. The Mac Mini is already capable of playing great games. It is also pre-hacked to uncripple any ham handed attempts to limit it (like the XBox which requires hacking to unleash more or its potential). Just think of a Mac Mini as a pre-hacked console that is already able to hook directly to your HDTV screen (DVI) and use those nifty Bluetooth keyboards, mice, etc. Other than no built in AC3 audio, what's not to like?
"Wolfenstein 3d was a mac game before there was a Windows port"
Say what? I think you might want to double check that particular piece of history. The Bungie stuff is true but id did not start on the Mac. On the other hand the first really mass market successful game was originally and exclusively for the Mac for a significant period. That game was Myst. It was Hypercard based with a color capable plugin hack and a lot of production values.
From what I can google about Wolf3D the Mac version was based on the Atari Jaguar version which was ported from SNES. The PC version was written for DOS before there was a Windows.
"I looked at Eye-TV, but it is only suitable for North America, and therefore useless for the rest of the world"
Elgato makes PVRs for regions other than the USA. In fact their first digital reception units were for European markets. It was only later that they introduced the EyeTV 500 for ATSC and the US market. Is your comment intended for just the HDTV market? If that is the case the problem is Australia is the only other market I know of that has defined a terrestrial HD standard.
"Elgato had these devices out long before the mini, I think they just stumbled into a really successful market if they play the cards right."
Since I don't know this first hand, take it with a grain or two of salt. I read a report from the expo that Elgato plans to shut down production of the EyeTV 500 some time this spring. This is due to the dung infested legacy of retiring FCC chairman Michael Powell and his infernal Broadcast Flag. Since there is no practical way to implement it in a computer device, Elgato faces the prospect of selling an illegal device when the BF regulation goes into effect this summer. Rather than fight that battle it seems that Elgato will simply discontinue selling its HDTV device.
So the practical advice seems to be that you need to buy them before the feds make it illegal to sell them. The EFF has brought a lawsuit challenging the authority of the FCC to regulate the design of computer devices but who knows how soon that will provide a result or if it will be a favorable result.
My characterization was probably at least slightly too harsh. I didn't mean to imply that DxVA was no more than a hoax. To be more explicit I found the situation to be too fragile to be taken seriously. You needed to have just the right motherboard, drivers for the motherboard, video card, drivers for the video card. Once you arrived at an environment that "worked" you faced the possibility that updating any of the variables could undermine all that tinkering. If you do other things with your PC, like gaming, you are likely to update drivers or components.
The device from Elgato might faulted for demanding so much CPU but I'd bet the result is it just works, tinkering not required. Whenever I hear low CPU requirements for software rendering on the PC, I think it is important to warn people that their results really will vary. I'm happy with my Fusion I board, but I have a 2 GHz Athlon and I know I have to avoid launching other video apps even if they aren't loaded at the same time. It will cause XP to reset.
"Actually, No.. DxVA is what makes the CPU requirements reasonable, even with the software decode products. The 2.4GHz -> 800MHz was specifically addressing DxVA offload of HDTV MPEG2 decode."
I know they claim that. What I was reporting is that it is a lie. I had a 700 MHz Athlon which was originally claimed to be sufficient for the Fusion I card (using DxVA) and it was not. I upgraded to a 1500 Athlon and finally the 2400+ which is sufficient for software decoding with DvXA assist. Without DxVA you get a more stable picture but it has to throw out every other scan line. I actually prefer that picture generally because it doesn't have the artifacts that you get with DxVA.
If someone has an older box with a sub 1 GHz processor he will need to get a MyHD card to get good results. I wouldn't recommend Fusion cards to anyone with less than a 2 GHz processor. I am using the computer monitor. Maybe the picture from the DVI port gives better results with less CPU.
It has been reported elsewhere in the comments that dual 1 GHz G4 Mac will produce good results with EyeTV 500. If that is the case then the results are not so starkly different. I'm sure the software is less finicky because I have and use EyeTV (I just use it with the EyeTV USB but it is the same software). It doesn't restart the Mac just because I commit the mistake of running VLC or some other video program. In fact on the Mac I have the option of having multiple programs running at the same time without causing a crash.
"In the x86 world, this takes the CPU requirement down from ~ 2.4GHz P4 to ~ 800MHz P3"
That is a marketing lie which was commonly told a few years ago. There are HD tuner cards that specifically include hardware decoding on the card (not the video card) which people have used successfully in less powerful PC's. But using DxVA from a video card doesn't buy you much if you are using a Fusion card or some other software decoding solution.
Also it is worth noting that although Apple's DVD player uses MPEG2 acceleration it still doesn't do de-interlacing decently. You can probably get better results with VLC.
I hope people don't take your casual claims as anything authoritative on the subject. Have you tried to "just build an HDTV capable MythTV setup"? If you follow the discussion on AVS forum of people trying to use the only linux HDTV board you might not be so sanguine about your prospects. The EyeTV product is priced higher than I'd like but once you purchase it you'll have something that just works.
I've used their USB product for a while and it uses the same software. It is much less finicky than the corresponding HDTV software I have for my PC.
"Geosynchronous orbit is sometimes referred to as "Clarke Orbit" as the idea was invented by Aurthur C. Clarke in one of his publications"
At the risk of being pedantic I think it is worth saying the Clarke's remarkable insight in the 1945 publication was how useful such an orbit would be for a communications satellite. I don't think he would claim to have come up with the idea of geosynchronous orbit. That would be a result from Newtonian physics that had been around for hundreds of years.
"maybe they boil off a significant part of the oceans as they cool down"
Why maybe when all the numbers are available online? Ten million megaton of TNT equivalent of energy is enough energy to vaporize 2 x 10^16 kg water. The Atlantic Ocean by itself has 3 x 10^20 kg of water. That is about 1 part in 10,000 of just the second largest ocean.
That's a lot of water but a very small fraction of the total.
"... us lucky people in Europe can receive MPEG2 streams over the air using DVB tuner cards, no encoding necessary"
The lucky people in the USA can get our MPEG2 streams free with an antenna and OTA HD tuner. But awareness of this capability is still quite limited. It seems as though the cable and satellite companies have succeeded in convincing most people that HD is only available by paying a monthly fee.
Take a look at www.elgato.com for more information. They make a whole range of products exclusively for Mac OS X. I have their first product, a USB external box for NTSC video and most recently they introduced a firewire connected HDTV tuner that works with the most recent Macs (you probably need a G5 to get really satisfactory performance). It isn't as though their software has no flaws but it is quite good and they continue to support all their products with software updates.
Elgato does not have a digital satellite solution for the US market but they might have something like that for some european markets. Check their web site for details as they definitely do have products specifically for european markets.
I wish that Apple would do something bold in the TV/PC market like acquiring Elgato in order to promote their solidly designed products with Apple branding. I bet there would be a large percentage of current Mac buyers who would be thrilled to get HDTV capability for a new G5 iMac but it just isn't being marketed effectively. It would add a significant dimension to the digital hub strategy.
It would be similar to their earlier move of acquiring the German company Astarte and getting all that DVD authoring expertise. I get the feeling that Steve Jobs' aversion to TV content might be an impediment to this possibility.
"Leak some tiny crumb about a potential new product, and when you've already taken a million orders, you get to decide what to make."
What the hell are you talking about? Since when has Apple ever taken a million orders for vapor? Their policy of not commenting on unannounced products pretty much guarantees that they wouldn't be taking any orders. Do you even read your own post before you push the submit button?
I thank you for taking the time to reply (especially if you are correct). I have a few of these discs (Step into Liquid and Standing in the Shadows of Motown with intention of getting Italian Job) and mencoder so I'll take a look at it. I'm fairly dubious that a loophole like this would exist but stranger things have been true before.
Having paid for these products I'd prefer to not be dependent on remote servers and discs that might fail.
I don't want to be too nasty but in this case you seem to be unfamiliar with the details. Are you proposing to do some sort of screen capture of the movie? Remember this is not a DVD with an MPEG stream waiting to be parsed, analysed and captured. It is a proprietary closed format and your only access to it is the uncompressed data sent to your screen. Most current PC's have enough of a challenge rendering HD content. Capturing and compressing it on the fly is just beyond their ability.
Insightful? Hell, he didn't even read (or possibly understand) the article. The product is not a DRM'd DVD. It includes two discs. One is a DVD that plays in any DVD player. The second is a disc that plays in exactly NO DVD player in the world. It only plays in a Windows PC that is connected to the internet. That second disc contains a WMV9 file of the same movie as the first disc in a high definition format that you can play on your computer monitor.
There are hundreds of millions of DVD players that will never play DRM'd DVDs. That is why the industry is gearing up to fight the next format war over a successor video format for HD video. Those will both include DRM but the much larger market will continue to be today's standard DVD video with its ineffectual DRM.
By the way, who says people don't play DVD's on their computers? Plenty of people do and essentially every computer sold (PC, Mac, Linux) includes the capability to play and store DVD's. Just download the free player from videolan.org. It is open source has binaries for a bewildering variety of OS's. It also has nothing to do with the specific product discussed in the article.
I'm not sure the article makes this clear to the reader so I'll try to rectify it. The product includes two discs. One is a DVD video disc that plays just fine in any DVD player or computer. You can even rip the disc to your hard drive. There is a SECOND disc that is a DVD data disc. That disc contains a high definition WMV9 file of the same movie that you can play on your computer monitor after you have jumped through the necessary hoops.
I've read (on the AVS forums quite a while ago) that they justify their policies because they consider the second disc to be a bonus. You have a playable version on the first disc and if you can get the second disc to provide a high definition version then so much the better. Not every customer is happy with that view but it is a little more nuanced than one might guess from the reactions provided here by people who are unfamiliar with the details.
"... both the GPL and the xxAA are 'entities' that function solely due to copyright so we can not selectively decide copyright is bad in some cases and good in others..."
But it IS good in some cases and bad in others. The justification given in the Constitution for the existence of copyright law is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts..." The exchange provided is that the government provides a monopoly for a limited time in order that the published work becomes part of the public domain rather than remaining private and ultimately vanishing.
These various DRM schemes attempt to enforce the monopoly portion of the exchange but do so in a way that cheats the public of its part of the bargain. Effectively the work is never "published" and should not be given the benefit of copyright law since it cannot pass into the public domain. The attempt to rob the public domain is not an issue with GPL.
" So, because only one company has the rights to sell its own creation means that suddenly theres no competition. Lets see how fscking stupid that sounds..."
Whether you think it is a good idea or not the nature of copyright is that it provides a government enforced monopoly. That is not a matter of interpretation, it is a simple fact. You can still conclude it is a good idea (and many do) but that is its nature.
Even in freefall (eg objects in orbit) you still need just as much force to accelerate a body. Similarly to change the rotational speed of a rigid body in a situation like this where gravity plays no crucial role is still a factor. My point is that it is the only important factor and for low rotational speeds the power requirements (ie the torque) are impressively low.
As you point out design issues could deliver a rude surprise (bearings getting old and dirty) for a first of a kind building. But I think it is fantastic that someone is exploring this possibility and wanted to point out how ill informed some of the snide comments really were.
Slashdot Mirror
"Fail to comply, and you can still publish, but you don't get a copyright on that work. Seems fair to me."
I agree that something like this would return copyright law closer to its original intent. I don't think there is any controversy about the idea that copyright law was originated to protect publishers from other publishers. A sort of deadlock would occur if a publisher had to invest resources in bringing a book to the public that another publisher then had the possibility of publishing and selling for less (using the result of the original publisher's labor). The eventual goal was exactly to bring the ideas as inexpensively as possible to the largest group but the publishers were protected for a limited period to encourage the original publication.
The government enforced monopoly (copyright) was not provided because of some mysterious new form of property but as a quid pro quo to encourage the spread of knowledge. A catalyst to encourage that original publication.
Notice what happens if an effective DRM prevents the "published" work from ever being copied. It can never enter the public domain. The public through its laws guarantees a monopoly to the publisher but it never gets the payoff of the protected work entering the public domain after an agreed upon period of time. This principle has been badly maimed by the Sonny Bono law but DRM, if effective, evicerates it.
So the new compromise would be that a work that is limited by DRM can be published but it would not have the option of copyright protection. If DRM is not used then copyright law would be available to the publisher.
"they'd stop selling DVDs entirely as unprofitable"
It seems as though you need to get a grip on yourself. Consumers with PC's have been able to duplicate DVD's trivially for many years. If it were such a threat why are profits for DVD's so high that almost everyone with any content scrambling to release it on DVD?
If they want to introduce new, marginally compatible formats that inhibit buyers playback options that is their choice. But claiming it is done because they could not otherwise manage a profit is reality distortion of the first order.
It must be gratifying for telecoms to see others making spurious arguments in their defence. The issue here is not people using VoIP twenty four hours a day, seven days a week (24 x 7) which is what seems to be claimed. It is the telecom equivalent to the Microsoft monopoly case.
Microsoft was found guilty of using its effective monopoly position in the computer OS to favor its own applications over competitive products (e.g. the OS doesn't ship until Lotus crashes or whoever the current target was).
In this case the telecom has significant leverage over your IP connection. If it can make independent VoIP companies ineffective by blocking ports or selectively denying them bandwidth it opens the door to allowing the ISP to provide that service. We have already seen this happen with telecoms and ISP service. How many more examples do we need as the telecom companies continue to merge into ever larger monopolistic entities? If we manage to have telecom, cable TV, IP over power lines, and true high speed wide area wireless them maybe there will be enough natural competition to keep them honest. But we are a long way from that currently.
Of course this should all be a moot point since they claim common carrier status, That removes any question of "shaping bandwidth" or blocking ports. If they want to play those games they should lose their common carrier status and face liability for everything that goes over their network.
Gosh, I wish I could be condescending and superior like you. Oops, I guess I just was. Don't forget we are talking about movies, not data that could be a matter of life and death. It probably makes sense to use some form of RAID to limit the possibility of requiring the user to rip a bunch of DVD's more than once. But that doesn't get you anywhere near the $40 - $60 prices range per disc unless you are specifically dealing with the arguably overpriced proprietary systems. Whatever price you compute today, it will continue to drop as raw drive prices go down.
The price with RAID is less than $10 per disc today and that price will look ridiculously large when consumer priced terabyte drives appear.
Yes, I am aware of Carmack's early affininty for NeXT hardware and software. But my point would be that id did not release Wolfenstein 3D for NeXT or Mac OS. They produced a version for DOS. Similarly Gates and Allen developed their original Basic interpreter on a VAX but it was for release on whatever affordable computer kit that was being sold (Imsai?).
Making the claim that Wolfenstein 3D was ported to the PC from a Mac version is quite inaccurate. Any PC gamer knows that and it casts doubt on the other real cases like Bungie products and Myst where the Mac did have an edge.
I think the clarification is well worth noting since so few probably understand how early in the game OS X (then known as NextStep) was a terrific platform. It coexisted with DOS before there was a Windows. We are remarkably fortunate that Apple evolved in such a way that Jobs was first cast out where he could lead (in a business sense) the development of NextStep and then brought back years later with something much better than either Mac OS or Windows.
What others have missed is that Apple doesn't need to release a game console. The Mac Mini is already capable of playing great games. It is also pre-hacked to uncripple any ham handed attempts to limit it (like the XBox which requires hacking to unleash more or its potential). Just think of a Mac Mini as a pre-hacked console that is already able to hook directly to your HDTV screen (DVI) and use those nifty Bluetooth keyboards, mice, etc. Other than no built in AC3 audio, what's not to like?
"Wolfenstein 3d was a mac game before there was a Windows port"
Say what? I think you might want to double check that particular piece of history. The Bungie stuff is true but id did not start on the Mac. On the other hand the first really mass market successful game was originally and exclusively for the Mac for a significant period. That game was Myst. It was Hypercard based with a color capable plugin hack and a lot of production values.
From what I can google about Wolf3D the Mac version was based on the Atari Jaguar version which was ported from SNES. The PC version was written for DOS before there was a Windows.
"I looked at Eye-TV, but it is only suitable for North America, and therefore useless for the rest of the world"
Elgato makes PVRs for regions other than the USA. In fact their first digital reception units were for European markets. It was only later that they introduced the EyeTV 500 for ATSC and the US market. Is your comment intended for just the HDTV market? If that is the case the problem is Australia is the only other market I know of that has defined a terrestrial HD standard.
"Elgato had these devices out long before the mini, I think they just stumbled into a really successful market if they play the cards right."
Since I don't know this first hand, take it with a grain or two of salt. I read a report from the expo that Elgato plans to shut down production of the EyeTV 500 some time this spring. This is due to the dung infested legacy of retiring FCC chairman Michael Powell and his infernal Broadcast Flag. Since there is no practical way to implement it in a computer device, Elgato faces the prospect of selling an illegal device when the BF regulation goes into effect this summer. Rather than fight that battle it seems that Elgato will simply discontinue selling its HDTV device.
So the practical advice seems to be that you need to buy them before the feds make it illegal to sell them. The EFF has brought a lawsuit challenging the authority of the FCC to regulate the design of computer devices but who knows how soon that will provide a result or if it will be a favorable result.
"I can't even come up with a better word than "rediculous""
Is this word really subject to regional variations in its spelling? I believe the word you intended to use is "ridiculous".
My characterization was probably at least slightly too harsh. I didn't mean to imply that DxVA was no more than a hoax. To be more explicit I found the situation to be too fragile to be taken seriously. You needed to have just the right motherboard, drivers for the motherboard, video card, drivers for the video card. Once you arrived at an environment that "worked" you faced the possibility that updating any of the variables could undermine all that tinkering. If you do other things with your PC, like gaming, you are likely to update drivers or components.
The device from Elgato might faulted for demanding so much CPU but I'd bet the result is it just works, tinkering not required. Whenever I hear low CPU requirements for software rendering on the PC, I think it is important to warn people that their results really will vary. I'm happy with my Fusion I board, but I have a 2 GHz Athlon and I know I have to avoid launching other video apps even if they aren't loaded at the same time. It will cause XP to reset.
"Actually, No.. DxVA is what makes the CPU requirements reasonable, even with the software decode products. The 2.4GHz -> 800MHz was specifically addressing DxVA offload of HDTV MPEG2 decode."
I know they claim that. What I was reporting is that it is a lie. I had a 700 MHz Athlon which was originally claimed to be sufficient for the Fusion I card (using DxVA) and it was not. I upgraded to a 1500 Athlon and finally the 2400+ which is sufficient for software decoding with DvXA assist. Without DxVA you get a more stable picture but it has to throw out every other scan line. I actually prefer that picture generally because it doesn't have the artifacts that you get with DxVA.
If someone has an older box with a sub 1 GHz processor he will need to get a MyHD card to get good results. I wouldn't recommend Fusion cards to anyone with less than a 2 GHz processor. I am using the computer monitor. Maybe the picture from the DVI port gives better results with less CPU.
It has been reported elsewhere in the comments that dual 1 GHz G4 Mac will produce good results with EyeTV 500. If that is the case then the results are not so starkly different. I'm sure the software is less finicky because I have and use EyeTV (I just use it with the EyeTV USB but it is the same software). It doesn't restart the Mac just because I commit the mistake of running VLC or some other video program. In fact on the Mac I have the option of having multiple programs running at the same time without causing a crash.
"In the x86 world, this takes the CPU requirement down from ~ 2.4GHz P4 to ~ 800MHz P3"
That is a marketing lie which was commonly told a few years ago. There are HD tuner cards that specifically include hardware decoding on the card (not the video card) which people have used successfully in less powerful PC's. But using DxVA from a video card doesn't buy you much if you are using a Fusion card or some other software decoding solution.
Also it is worth noting that although Apple's DVD player uses MPEG2 acceleration it still doesn't do de-interlacing decently. You can probably get better results with VLC.
I hope people don't take your casual claims as anything authoritative on the subject. Have you tried to "just build an HDTV capable MythTV setup"? If you follow the discussion on AVS forum of people trying to use the only linux HDTV board you might not be so sanguine about your prospects. The EyeTV product is priced higher than I'd like but once you purchase it you'll have something that just works.
I've used their USB product for a while and it uses the same software. It is much less finicky than the corresponding HDTV software I have for my PC.
"Geosynchronous orbit is sometimes referred to as "Clarke Orbit" as the idea was invented by Aurthur C. Clarke in one of his publications"
At the risk of being pedantic I think it is worth saying the Clarke's remarkable insight in the 1945 publication was how useful such an orbit would be for a communications satellite. I don't think he would claim to have come up with the idea of geosynchronous orbit. That would be a result from Newtonian physics that had been around for hundreds of years.
"maybe they boil off a significant part of the oceans as they cool down"
Why maybe when all the numbers are available online? Ten million megaton of TNT equivalent of energy is enough energy to vaporize 2 x 10^16 kg water. The Atlantic Ocean by itself has 3 x 10^20 kg of water. That is about 1 part in 10,000 of just the second largest ocean.
That's a lot of water but a very small fraction of the total.
"... us lucky people in Europe can receive MPEG2 streams over the air using DVB tuner cards, no encoding necessary"
The lucky people in the USA can get our MPEG2 streams free with an antenna and OTA HD tuner. But awareness of this capability is still quite limited. It seems as though the cable and satellite companies have succeeded in convincing most people that HD is only available by paying a monthly fee.
Take a look at www.elgato.com for more information. They make a whole range of products exclusively for Mac OS X. I have their first product, a USB external box for NTSC video and most recently they introduced a firewire connected HDTV tuner that works with the most recent Macs (you probably need a G5 to get really satisfactory performance). It isn't as though their software has no flaws but it is quite good and they continue to support all their products with software updates.
Elgato does not have a digital satellite solution for the US market but they might have something like that for some european markets. Check their web site for details as they definitely do have products specifically for european markets.
I wish that Apple would do something bold in the TV/PC market like acquiring Elgato in order to promote their solidly designed products with Apple branding. I bet there would be a large percentage of current Mac buyers who would be thrilled to get HDTV capability for a new G5 iMac but it just isn't being marketed effectively. It would add a significant dimension to the digital hub strategy.
It would be similar to their earlier move of acquiring the German company Astarte and getting all that DVD authoring expertise. I get the feeling that Steve Jobs' aversion to TV content might be an impediment to this possibility.
"Leak some tiny crumb about a potential new product, and when you've already taken a million orders, you get to decide what to make."
What the hell are you talking about? Since when has Apple ever taken a million orders for vapor? Their policy of not commenting on unannounced products pretty much guarantees that they wouldn't be taking any orders. Do you even read your own post before you push the submit button?
I thank you for taking the time to reply (especially if you are correct). I have a few of these discs (Step into Liquid and Standing in the Shadows of Motown with intention of getting Italian Job) and mencoder so I'll take a look at it. I'm fairly dubious that a loophole like this would exist but stranger things have been true before.
Having paid for these products I'd prefer to not be dependent on remote servers and discs that might fail.
I don't want to be too nasty but in this case you seem to be unfamiliar with the details. Are you proposing to do some sort of screen capture of the movie? Remember this is not a DVD with an MPEG stream waiting to be parsed, analysed and captured. It is a proprietary closed format and your only access to it is the uncompressed data sent to your screen. Most current PC's have enough of a challenge rendering HD content. Capturing and compressing it on the fly is just beyond their ability.
Insightful? Hell, he didn't even read (or possibly understand) the article. The product is not a DRM'd DVD. It includes two discs. One is a DVD that plays in any DVD player. The second is a disc that plays in exactly NO DVD player in the world. It only plays in a Windows PC that is connected to the internet. That second disc contains a WMV9 file of the same movie as the first disc in a high definition format that you can play on your computer monitor.
There are hundreds of millions of DVD players that will never play DRM'd DVDs. That is why the industry is gearing up to fight the next format war over a successor video format for HD video. Those will both include DRM but the much larger market will continue to be today's standard DVD video with its ineffectual DRM.
By the way, who says people don't play DVD's on their computers? Plenty of people do and essentially every computer sold (PC, Mac, Linux) includes the capability to play and store DVD's. Just download the free player from videolan.org. It is open source has binaries for a bewildering variety of OS's. It also has nothing to do with the specific product discussed in the article.
I'm not sure the article makes this clear to the reader so I'll try to rectify it. The product includes two discs. One is a DVD video disc that plays just fine in any DVD player or computer. You can even rip the disc to your hard drive. There is a SECOND disc that is a DVD data disc. That disc contains a high definition WMV9 file of the same movie that you can play on your computer monitor after you have jumped through the necessary hoops.
I've read (on the AVS forums quite a while ago) that they justify their policies because they consider the second disc to be a bonus. You have a playable version on the first disc and if you can get the second disc to provide a high definition version then so much the better. Not every customer is happy with that view but it is a little more nuanced than one might guess from the reactions provided here by people who are unfamiliar with the details.
"... both the GPL and the xxAA are 'entities' that function solely due to copyright so we can not selectively decide copyright is bad in some cases and good in others ..."
..." The exchange provided is that the government provides a monopoly for a limited time in order that the published work becomes part of the public domain rather than remaining private and ultimately vanishing.
But it IS good in some cases and bad in others. The justification given in the Constitution for the existence of copyright law is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts
These various DRM schemes attempt to enforce the monopoly portion of the exchange but do so in a way that cheats the public of its part of the bargain. Effectively the work is never "published" and should not be given the benefit of copyright law since it cannot pass into the public domain. The attempt to rob the public domain is not an issue with GPL.
" So, because only one company has the rights to sell its own creation means that suddenly theres no competition. Lets see how fscking stupid that sounds ..."
Whether you think it is a good idea or not the nature of copyright is that it provides a government enforced monopoly. That is not a matter of interpretation, it is a simple fact. You can still conclude it is a good idea (and many do) but that is its nature.
Even in freefall (eg objects in orbit) you still need just as much force to accelerate a body. Similarly to change the rotational speed of a rigid body in a situation like this where gravity plays no crucial role is still a factor. My point is that it is the only important factor and for low rotational speeds the power requirements (ie the torque) are impressively low.
As you point out design issues could deliver a rude surprise (bearings getting old and dirty) for a first of a kind building. But I think it is fantastic that someone is exploring this possibility and wanted to point out how ill informed some of the snide comments really were.