A PowerBook 15 is priced almost identical to a similar ThinkPad,
Yes indeed, and that's where my point is hiding. A ThinkPad isn't, in my opinion, a beige box computer either. A Dell Inspiron is a beige box computer, but a PowerBook or a ThinkPad are something slicker. I got my Inspiron for about half of what I paid for my PowerBook, but my Inspiron is (no offense to Dell fans) absolute crap by comparison. I guess what I'm reacting to is the notion that just because there's an Intel inside, somehow the computers themselves are suddenly going to devolve into junky, cheap-ass clunkers that most people (un)affectionately refer to as "beige box". My guess is Apple is going to keep being Apple, regardless of the chip, BIOS or any of those way-under-the-hood elements.
Apple themselves has said the Mactel boxes will have a BIOS and be capable of booting Windows. That says beige box with some gimick to try to keep OSX locked to their brand of beige boxes.
Not to sound like an Apple fanboy, but beige box to me implies generic PC, which (even with the BIOS issue) is not what Apple is about. One the one hand, they'll be making their incredibly proprietary computers (for better or worse) as always, and though you could run Windows on it, why would you pay more for a computer to effectively ruin the experience of using it?
And on the other hand, OS X has always been intended to be tied to Macs and Macs alone, and I can't see how anyone would be surprised they'll lock it out of any other PCs. They did it with the clones, and this is a much bigger deal.
Anyway, the OS X running on other beige boxes issue doesn't fully connect to the "Apple as beige box maker" issue anyway. Apple is a slick closed-system computer maker, and they use OS X to help sell the sexy hardware. No matter what's in the box, they're never going to be a beige box company in the truest sense of the word. They don't really equate to Dell or Microsoft.
Face it, Apple is going to suck as a beige box seller unless they completely reinvent themselves from a low volume, high margin vendor to a low margin, high volume outfit.
I haven't been paying full attention to this subject, but where does it say that Apple is going to be anything close to a beige box seller, as opposed to turning out shiny metallic powerbooks that just happen to have the word "Intel" on a part inside, instead of "Freescale"? The Apple market should probably stay exactly the same through this switch... only the crazed geek minority will ever bother to run OS X on a Dell or Windows on an iBook. This whole thing is a huge deal for developers, but it's hardly worth talking about otherwise.
Then again, I haven't read that much on the subject, so I could be off-base.
Just to follow-up... that's exactly it, yes. My kids are wonderfully adept at understanding silliness. We just moved to the left coast and my older daughter's new teacher asked our two kids on the first day of school: "And where did you come from?"
"Walmart!" says my older daughter;
"Loblaws!" says my younger one.
Teacher looks at me, perplexed. Older daughter adds: "I was on sale!"
Somehow I don't think anyone but A-list actors get points from movies.
And that's the point, I think, they're getting stuck at. Without a Tom Cruise leading the movie, Michael Ironside gets shuffled up to "top billing" for the production, and therefore expects he deserves the same relative perks that Cruise would have gotten in a big-budget movie. And they do see the programmers as set builders or make-up artists, simply helping to execute the performance. But then the guild is only supposed to be concerned with the actors...
This kind of thing has been going on in animation since forever. Animators execute the vast majority of the magic in any animated film, but they get crap wages next to the actors who come in for a few hours to record some audio. In most cases, the average Hollywood actor doesn't get points for their work in a Pixar movie, and they don't expect they will... but games are a new industry where they think they can "fix" the playing field for themselves, so they're giving it a shot.
The real issue is that the programmers don't form a union and demand better treatment. Hell, they can probably team up with SAG or something and make it nigh impossible for EA to hire programmer scabs, or to offshore the work. That's why unions donate to politicians. It's just that most programmers find unions shady, so they're reluctant to try...
The function of a union is to be angry and greedy on behalf of its members, at the expense of everyone else, because they expect everyone else has a union doing the same. Whether in the short term or the long term, a strike will change things for the games industry... it's just a question of how the programmers choose to react.
You gave her away?!? I know it was a Sony but come on..
Actually, I believe my exact words at the time were: "Okay, that's it, we have to give it away..."
Wife: "The whole CD changer?"
Me: "Hell no, the kid. I might be able to fix the changer, but the kid's obviously broken."
Then my daughter, being the comedian she is, climbs into the garbage can in the kitchen and says she wants to ride in the garbage truck, just to make me feel bad.
It could be I use the whole "These children are terrible! How's the warranty on them? Can we still return them for a full refund?" schtick a little too often.
I used to have one of those 200-disc Sony CD changers, and the last thing my 2-year-old did before we had to give it away... she took all the CDs out, put them on the floor, and made a merry-go-round for her dolls on the carriage. Then she thought she'd left a black toy in the back, reached in, and pulled the rig that loaded the CDs for playing straight out of the machine. Yeep! One of those "What IS that noise I hear from the other room...? Oh no... no no no...!" moments.
On a semi-related note, the same daughter said just the other day, holding a regular audio CD, "What's this movie, daddy?" She has no concept of music coming on plastic discs... kids these days...
When I was in high school I somehow avoided real jobs and got into early multimedia-type projects (mostly Hypercard... not sure how anyone made money doing that, but hey). I was actually more interested in programming and other hackery, but couldn't get a job doing that.
Eventually I got to work in video editing as people starting bringing computers into that realm, where I had the fantastic job of post-processing TV shows frame-by-frame to see if it was possible. The most computer-intensive work I did was writing scripts to rename large directories of files so they'd import into the video printer properly. Ugh.
Point being: you'll never get to do what you really want to do, but what you don't necessarily want to could be far more exciting than you realize. Get paid $10/hour doing low-level grunt work, just so long as you're NEAR a computer, you'll get bloody invaluable experience in real-world work.
I never did learn to be a real programmer, but I learned that I much prefer doing a mix of entertainment and coding anyway. Don't close any doors at this stage.
I've been working on a theory like this, and my feeling is that there needs to be some kind of credit system implemented as a standard, where each addition along the chain adds a "point" for the contributor... so if recorded lyrics that ended up in a totally different song, and that song ended up in a movie, you'd be getting a share of the profits based on what the weight of the lyrics was. THAT's where the trouble is, tho: determining relative weights to such a diverse array of contributions.
We have the technology available to keep track of things like this, so it's just a question of defining and implementing it. (any takers? no?:)
I am working on a project that aims to better co-ordinate that kind of idea... pulling together ideas and art at various stages of development, making them searchable, retaining credit and license information, and helping people find the other parts of the puzzle they need to get their idea off the ground. This Blender thing goes in a slightly different direction, but the end result should be close to the same: giving people more tools and resources to do cool stuff.
That, for me, is one of the biggest stumbling blocks for a fully-open movie... I can't live without my Final Cut Pro. Are there any other options anyone knows about?
Open source enterainment is new to the world that requires the term "open source entertainment" to imply a new, old way of doing things. It's really just an attempt to say: "Whoa, we went way too far in the other direction... let's find some happy middle ground."
I'm glad the mention of Verse survived into the blurb!
I left that bit in when I submitted it specifically because I wanted to see if I could drag someone like you into the discussion:) I am curious: what exactly does Verse do for this project, and is it used in Blender dev generally already? It seems like a brilliant technology, but I'm a bit confused about how it works in practice.
I read about this kind of product a few months ago (probably here) where one of the newer game engines was being adapted to work in a super-Machinima environment... you would basically just "tell" the characters to go from A to B and wait, and then move the camera around to capture the shots as you like. RvB with finer control. My feeling is something like that is almost entirely in the UI, so if one could completely re-write how people interact with Blender's animation tools, you could probably achieve what you're after.
On the other hand, you still need the story and models and voices etc. But I agree it would be a fantastic next step.
I've been mulling this whole open entertainment concept for a few years now, and what you said was what I always came back to: too many directors and you get a big mess.
The key, I think, is not that anyone can or should be in charge of changing the script, but that anyone can contribute to the final product. How many developers have commit access for the Linux kernel? How many can suggest changes and have them integrated if they're good? How many can fork the entire codebase at any given time to focus on a version they want to see developed?
Most video entertainment is written by at least two people anyway (writer and story editor), but the real difference in open entertainment is that anyone can freely (in both senses) adapt what they do. And not just in the same context, but as branches from the main work... using a short throwaway scene from Attack of the Clones as your base, you could write an entire series about the adventures of some long-forgotten character, and not worry about a lawsuit from Lucasfilm.
Open source methodology actually fits amazingly well when you think about the limitations we already impose on the software side of things, and figure out their equivalents in entertainment.
Absolutely, but just because you CAN do it, doesn't mean you SHOULD. If you watch the first hour and say "this isn't for me", then that's fine... but if you spend five hours of your time enjoying it... freely-distributable or not, you should consider paying for it. You're thinking of the "enforced" morals that Hollywood pushes... these are your basic citizen's morals, where you pay for what you enjoy because it's the right thing to do.
I'm not saying you NEED to pay for it, I'm saying you need to clear your mind of all the push-and-pull nonsense you're used to with movies and DVDs, and think of it as "you and this guy's documentary". Evaluate and proceed.
Most of us here are relatively well-off (we can afford video games and Sith screenings at midnight). If we don't start really supporting our own community (both in entertainment and software) we're going to relegate ourselves to hobbyist producers, rather than a professional alternative market. Here's someone who put his money where his mouth is, and we should strongly consider following suit.
I know you meant that as a joke, but if you do download it somewhere and enjoy it, do the right thing a buy a copy on disc. This guy has done something really gutsy making his own documentary (it's not easy or cheap), and we should all be supporting his effort with our wallets. If we don't support the artists in our own community, they won't go out on a limb for us anymore.
</preaching>
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to search through wachovia.csv for a new credit card number.
Well yes, but it comes from the same group of people that say that it's "theft" and "bittorrent is bad". I was just curious if there was actual legislated truth to their claims.
(from the link provided): "Infringement takes place when any one of the rights is violated: where, for example, a printer reproduces copies without selling them..."
That answers it right there. I guess it's not always a question of profiting from someone else's work so much as it's a question of preventing them from profiting as much as they otherwise would.
I had a question about that, and being the lazy bastard I am, I'm going to ask here: is the non-commercial distribution of copyrighted works considered copyright infringement? The $1 SVCDs on street corners, sure, but if no money is changing hands, is this technically copyright infringement?
I ask this with absolute sincerity. Does anyone have a link to the actual bit of legalese that nails it down?
Take Blender http://www.blender3d.org/ and re-write its UI. It's got a massive learning curve like any other program, but maybe if someone was obsessed with usability took a crack at it, something revolutionary might happen. It gets you further along than you'd want to go on your own.
I love the concept of being able to just mark two places in a room and tell a character to walk from A to B, and worry about subtleties once the basics were down. Making the software work for the artist is the first step to something better.
So yeah, start coding. I say that cause I can't code at all.
Indeed, yes, my site is bloody upside down, isn't it? I started off with the glitz without substance, and then had a flood of inspiration for substance, and forgot to change the glitz. Once I get through with some more coding (and of course write some more Slashdot comments), I'll change that. I'm all confused.
Anyway, the project is taking a show I produced 4 years ago, opening up all the content and resources we have made, and letting people create their own projects like OSS. To make it easier we're going to post 6 short scripts and storyboards and resources to get people started, and see what happens. What we do with the final products is yet to be decided, actually. "First things first" and all that.
The real problem is that the sourceforge project is what really enables the creative side, and since it's not ready yet, the whole thing is slowed a bit. The front page would have so much more content if I could point to something real:)
I recently had a conversation with a director of acquisitions at a network here in Canada who told me the biggest problem with sci fi was that there were only maybe 300,000 people in the country that would watch it, and that wasn't enough to build a production around. If you're not bound by geography anymore (which is SUPPOSED to be one of the benefits of the internet, non?), you can then collect your 300,000 viewers in Canada, U.S., England, Australia etc... and now you're looking at better numbers, and you're starting to look at GOOD numbers... so why would anyone avoid that? The key is to make the kinds of shows you like and you know your fellow [xyz]s like, and just do it. Don't put Ewoks in to make it fun for kids, cause that's just costing you passionate core viewers.
Okay, this is way too close to my personal project so I HAVE to plug it (sorry). http://www.dustrunners.com/ It's in the early stages yet, but that's the basic idea. Creative Commons source, lots of raw materials to use, and an attempt to open the source of a show. Oh, and I'm also looking for a PHP dev for the companion FOSS project here: http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/cpvs.
Phew. Plug done. I'm sorry if your eyes are watering.
I'll be interested to see how this turns out. For music, you're used to the same songs being on several stations, because the content isn't tied to a distribution outlet. For video and film, usually only see Lost on ABC, and you are made to associate ABC with "new fresh shows", despite the myriad of producers behind the scenes. If you have 5,000 producers all able to cast, how are they going to group themselves, and WILL they choose to group themselves? In this venue, you don't need to pool your resources to get to someone's TV, you just have to work with whatever standards emerge. I can't wait to see if some sort of powerhouse brand turns up to hold all the hip new 'net content together...
Slashdot Mirror
A PowerBook 15 is priced almost identical to a similar ThinkPad,
Yes indeed, and that's where my point is hiding. A ThinkPad isn't, in my opinion, a beige box computer either. A Dell Inspiron is a beige box computer, but a PowerBook or a ThinkPad are something slicker. I got my Inspiron for about half of what I paid for my PowerBook, but my Inspiron is (no offense to Dell fans) absolute crap by comparison. I guess what I'm reacting to is the notion that just because there's an Intel inside, somehow the computers themselves are suddenly going to devolve into junky, cheap-ass clunkers that most people (un)affectionately refer to as "beige box". My guess is Apple is going to keep being Apple, regardless of the chip, BIOS or any of those way-under-the-hood elements.
Apple themselves has said the Mactel boxes will have a BIOS and be capable of booting Windows. That says beige box with some gimick to try to keep OSX locked to their brand of beige boxes.
Not to sound like an Apple fanboy, but beige box to me implies generic PC, which (even with the BIOS issue) is not what Apple is about. One the one hand, they'll be making their incredibly proprietary computers (for better or worse) as always, and though you could run Windows on it, why would you pay more for a computer to effectively ruin the experience of using it?
And on the other hand, OS X has always been intended to be tied to Macs and Macs alone, and I can't see how anyone would be surprised they'll lock it out of any other PCs. They did it with the clones, and this is a much bigger deal.
Anyway, the OS X running on other beige boxes issue doesn't fully connect to the "Apple as beige box maker" issue anyway. Apple is a slick closed-system computer maker, and they use OS X to help sell the sexy hardware. No matter what's in the box, they're never going to be a beige box company in the truest sense of the word. They don't really equate to Dell or Microsoft.
Face it, Apple is going to suck as a beige box seller unless they completely reinvent themselves from a low volume, high margin vendor to a low margin, high volume outfit.
I haven't been paying full attention to this subject, but where does it say that Apple is going to be anything close to a beige box seller, as opposed to turning out shiny metallic powerbooks that just happen to have the word "Intel" on a part inside, instead of "Freescale"? The Apple market should probably stay exactly the same through this switch... only the crazed geek minority will ever bother to run OS X on a Dell or Windows on an iBook. This whole thing is a huge deal for developers, but it's hardly worth talking about otherwise.
Then again, I haven't read that much on the subject, so I could be off-base.
Just to follow-up... that's exactly it, yes. My kids are wonderfully adept at understanding silliness. We just moved to the left coast and my older daughter's new teacher asked our two kids on the first day of school: "And where did you come from?"
"Walmart!" says my older daughter;
"Loblaws!" says my younger one.
Teacher looks at me, perplexed. Older daughter adds: "I was on sale!"
Damaged? Sure, but they're cute!
Somehow I don't think anyone but A-list actors get points from movies.
And that's the point, I think, they're getting stuck at. Without a Tom Cruise leading the movie, Michael Ironside gets shuffled up to "top billing" for the production, and therefore expects he deserves the same relative perks that Cruise would have gotten in a big-budget movie. And they do see the programmers as set builders or make-up artists, simply helping to execute the performance. But then the guild is only supposed to be concerned with the actors...
This kind of thing has been going on in animation since forever. Animators execute the vast majority of the magic in any animated film, but they get crap wages next to the actors who come in for a few hours to record some audio. In most cases, the average Hollywood actor doesn't get points for their work in a Pixar movie, and they don't expect they will... but games are a new industry where they think they can "fix" the playing field for themselves, so they're giving it a shot.
The real issue is that the programmers don't form a union and demand better treatment. Hell, they can probably team up with SAG or something and make it nigh impossible for EA to hire programmer scabs, or to offshore the work. That's why unions donate to politicians. It's just that most programmers find unions shady, so they're reluctant to try...
The function of a union is to be angry and greedy on behalf of its members, at the expense of everyone else, because they expect everyone else has a union doing the same. Whether in the short term or the long term, a strike will change things for the games industry... it's just a question of how the programmers choose to react.
You gave her away?!? I know it was a Sony but come on..
Actually, I believe my exact words at the time were: "Okay, that's it, we have to give it away..."
Wife: "The whole CD changer?"
Me: "Hell no, the kid. I might be able to fix the changer, but the kid's obviously broken."
Then my daughter, being the comedian she is, climbs into the garbage can in the kitchen and says she wants to ride in the garbage truck, just to make me feel bad.
It could be I use the whole "These children are terrible! How's the warranty on them? Can we still return them for a full refund?" schtick a little too often.
I used to have one of those 200-disc Sony CD changers, and the last thing my 2-year-old did before we had to give it away... she took all the CDs out, put them on the floor, and made a merry-go-round for her dolls on the carriage. Then she thought she'd left a black toy in the back, reached in, and pulled the rig that loaded the CDs for playing straight out of the machine. Yeep! One of those "What IS that noise I hear from the other room...? Oh no... no no no...!" moments.
On a semi-related note, the same daughter said just the other day, holding a regular audio CD, "What's this movie, daddy?" She has no concept of music coming on plastic discs... kids these days...
When I was in high school I somehow avoided real jobs and got into early multimedia-type projects (mostly Hypercard... not sure how anyone made money doing that, but hey). I was actually more interested in programming and other hackery, but couldn't get a job doing that.
Eventually I got to work in video editing as people starting bringing computers into that realm, where I had the fantastic job of post-processing TV shows frame-by-frame to see if it was possible. The most computer-intensive work I did was writing scripts to rename large directories of files so they'd import into the video printer properly. Ugh.
Point being: you'll never get to do what you really want to do, but what you don't necessarily want to could be far more exciting than you realize. Get paid $10/hour doing low-level grunt work, just so long as you're NEAR a computer, you'll get bloody invaluable experience in real-world work.
I never did learn to be a real programmer, but I learned that I much prefer doing a mix of entertainment and coding anyway. Don't close any doors at this stage.
I've been working on a theory like this, and my feeling is that there needs to be some kind of credit system implemented as a standard, where each addition along the chain adds a "point" for the contributor... so if recorded lyrics that ended up in a totally different song, and that song ended up in a movie, you'd be getting a share of the profits based on what the weight of the lyrics was. THAT's where the trouble is, tho: determining relative weights to such a diverse array of contributions.
:)
We have the technology available to keep track of things like this, so it's just a question of defining and implementing it. (any takers? no?
I am working on a project that aims to better co-ordinate that kind of idea... pulling together ideas and art at various stages of development, making them searchable, retaining credit and license information, and helping people find the other parts of the puzzle they need to get their idea off the ground. This Blender thing goes in a slightly different direction, but the end result should be close to the same: giving people more tools and resources to do cool stuff.
If anyone has any time for PHP goodness, I could use some more assistance (http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/cpvs), and for a preview of what I'm planning on beta-testing with (and releasing all my pre-existing assets from), check http://www.dustrunners.com/.
Okay, done now.
</shameless plug>
I read a discussion about this a few days ago on elysiun (Blender-centric site)... the consensus is that there aren't any really solid GPL NLEs out there yet, but there are lots of attempts:
http://www.pitivi.org/
http://kdenlive.sourceforge.net/
http://positron.sourceforge.net/
That, for me, is one of the biggest stumbling blocks for a fully-open movie... I can't live without my Final Cut Pro. Are there any other options anyone knows about?
Open source enterainment is new to the world that requires the term "open source entertainment" to imply a new, old way of doing things. It's really just an attempt to say: "Whoa, we went way too far in the other direction... let's find some happy middle ground."
I'm glad the mention of Verse survived into the blurb!
:) I am curious: what exactly does Verse do for this project, and is it used in Blender dev generally already? It seems like a brilliant technology, but I'm a bit confused about how it works in practice.
I left that bit in when I submitted it specifically because I wanted to see if I could drag someone like you into the discussion
I read about this kind of product a few months ago (probably here) where one of the newer game engines was being adapted to work in a super-Machinima environment... you would basically just "tell" the characters to go from A to B and wait, and then move the camera around to capture the shots as you like. RvB with finer control. My feeling is something like that is almost entirely in the UI, so if one could completely re-write how people interact with Blender's animation tools, you could probably achieve what you're after.
On the other hand, you still need the story and models and voices etc. But I agree it would be a fantastic next step.
I've been mulling this whole open entertainment concept for a few years now, and what you said was what I always came back to: too many directors and you get a big mess.
The key, I think, is not that anyone can or should be in charge of changing the script, but that anyone can contribute to the final product. How many developers have commit access for the Linux kernel? How many can suggest changes and have them integrated if they're good? How many can fork the entire codebase at any given time to focus on a version they want to see developed?
Most video entertainment is written by at least two people anyway (writer and story editor), but the real difference in open entertainment is that anyone can freely (in both senses) adapt what they do. And not just in the same context, but as branches from the main work... using a short throwaway scene from Attack of the Clones as your base, you could write an entire series about the adventures of some long-forgotten character, and not worry about a lawsuit from Lucasfilm.
Open source methodology actually fits amazingly well when you think about the limitations we already impose on the software side of things, and figure out their equivalents in entertainment.
Absolutely, but just because you CAN do it, doesn't mean you SHOULD. If you watch the first hour and say "this isn't for me", then that's fine... but if you spend five hours of your time enjoying it... freely-distributable or not, you should consider paying for it. You're thinking of the "enforced" morals that Hollywood pushes... these are your basic citizen's morals, where you pay for what you enjoy because it's the right thing to do.
I'm not saying you NEED to pay for it, I'm saying you need to clear your mind of all the push-and-pull nonsense you're used to with movies and DVDs, and think of it as "you and this guy's documentary". Evaluate and proceed.
Most of us here are relatively well-off (we can afford video games and Sith screenings at midnight). If we don't start really supporting our own community (both in entertainment and software) we're going to relegate ourselves to hobbyist producers, rather than a professional alternative market. Here's someone who put his money where his mouth is, and we should strongly consider following suit.
I know you meant that as a joke, but if you do download it somewhere and enjoy it, do the right thing a buy a copy on disc. This guy has done something really gutsy making his own documentary (it's not easy or cheap), and we should all be supporting his effort with our wallets. If we don't support the artists in our own community, they won't go out on a limb for us anymore.
</preaching>
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to search through wachovia.csv for a new credit card number.
Well yes, but it comes from the same group of people that say that it's "theft" and "bittorrent is bad". I was just curious if there was actual legislated truth to their claims.
Danke!
(from the link provided): "Infringement takes place when any one of the rights is violated: where, for example, a printer reproduces copies without selling them..."
That answers it right there. I guess it's not always a question of profiting from someone else's work so much as it's a question of preventing them from profiting as much as they otherwise would.
I had a question about that, and being the lazy bastard I am, I'm going to ask here: is the non-commercial distribution of copyrighted works considered copyright infringement? The $1 SVCDs on street corners, sure, but if no money is changing hands, is this technically copyright infringement?
I ask this with absolute sincerity. Does anyone have a link to the actual bit of legalese that nails it down?
Take Blender http://www.blender3d.org/ and re-write its UI. It's got a massive learning curve like any other program, but maybe if someone was obsessed with usability took a crack at it, something revolutionary might happen. It gets you further along than you'd want to go on your own.
I love the concept of being able to just mark two places in a room and tell a character to walk from A to B, and worry about subtleties once the basics were down. Making the software work for the artist is the first step to something better.
So yeah, start coding. I say that cause I can't code at all.
Indeed, yes, my site is bloody upside down, isn't it? I started off with the glitz without substance, and then had a flood of inspiration for substance, and forgot to change the glitz. Once I get through with some more coding (and of course write some more Slashdot comments), I'll change that. I'm all confused.
:)
Anyway, the project is taking a show I produced 4 years ago, opening up all the content and resources we have made, and letting people create their own projects like OSS. To make it easier we're going to post 6 short scripts and storyboards and resources to get people started, and see what happens. What we do with the final products is yet to be decided, actually. "First things first" and all that.
The real problem is that the sourceforge project is what really enables the creative side, and since it's not ready yet, the whole thing is slowed a bit. The front page would have so much more content if I could point to something real
I recently had a conversation with a director of acquisitions at a network here in Canada who told me the biggest problem with sci fi was that there were only maybe 300,000 people in the country that would watch it, and that wasn't enough to build a production around. If you're not bound by geography anymore (which is SUPPOSED to be one of the benefits of the internet, non?), you can then collect your 300,000 viewers in Canada, U.S., England, Australia etc... and now you're looking at better numbers, and you're starting to look at GOOD numbers... so why would anyone avoid that? The key is to make the kinds of shows you like and you know your fellow [xyz]s like, and just do it. Don't put Ewoks in to make it fun for kids, cause that's just costing you passionate core viewers.
Okay, this is way too close to my personal project so I HAVE to plug it (sorry). http://www.dustrunners.com/ It's in the early stages yet, but that's the basic idea. Creative Commons source, lots of raw materials to use, and an attempt to open the source of a show. Oh, and I'm also looking for a PHP dev for the companion FOSS project here: http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/cpvs.
Phew. Plug done. I'm sorry if your eyes are watering.
I'll be interested to see how this turns out. For music, you're used to the same songs being on several stations, because the content isn't tied to a distribution outlet. For video and film, usually only see Lost on ABC, and you are made to associate ABC with "new fresh shows", despite the myriad of producers behind the scenes. If you have 5,000 producers all able to cast, how are they going to group themselves, and WILL they choose to group themselves? In this venue, you don't need to pool your resources to get to someone's TV, you just have to work with whatever standards emerge. I can't wait to see if some sort of powerhouse brand turns up to hold all the hip new 'net content together...