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How The Content Industry Is Trying To Prevent TiVo From Innovating
from the innovation-not-allowed dept
It's an innovation that TiVo should have done years ago, and which others have already hacked their TiVo to do, or setup other systems which allowed it, but now that TiVo wants to let users transfer what they record to other devices, the content industry is freaking out. Among those complaining is the NFL, who is worried that someone will use this system to send a copy of a game to an area where TV coverage is "blacked out." As TiVo points out, it would take 144 hours to transfer a game at this point. That's a bit misleading, of course, as bandwidth is getting faster, but the system TiVo is designing seems clearly set up to limit unauthorized copying. If someone actually goes through the trouble of getting a football game in a "blacked out" zone, does it really matter that much? For the most part, what TiVo is doing would allow more people to view the commercials that help the TV industry make money. Of course, the end result, like everything the entertainment industry tries to block, is that people will continue to hack their way to do this anyway, and the entertainment industry will have even less control. Once again, with their short-term thinking they're shooting their own businesses in the foot.
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not quite
not sure how TiVo did the math, but...
If you use etivo to download and compress the game automatically (though slowly: re-encoding takes hours), you'll get a file that fast broadband could serve up to a friend in about 2 hours of downloading.
So, say game ends, game downloaded to tivo (1 hour), game reencoded (3 hours), game downloaded (2 hours), you could have a very nice copy of the game in 6 hours.
I know someone who has done this with every single day's coverage of the Tour de France...
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No Subject Given
correction and clarifications...
So, say game ends, game downloaded *from* tivo *to PC* (1 hour), game reencoded *on PC* (3 hours), game downloaded *from PC*(2 hours), you could have a very nice copy of the game in 6 hours.
I know someone who has done this with every single day's coverage of the Tour de France...
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NFL Zealotry
The NFL are freaks when it comes to blacked-out games. One time a bar in Cleveland put up a tall TV antenna so that they could pick up blacked-out games from the NBC station in Toledo. The NFL sued, and even though the bar was picking up a publicly available over-the-air TV signal, they lost the case and had to pay the NFL for "stealing" the broadcast.
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Re: NFL Zealotry
Source, please?
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Re: NFL Zealotry
There is another device that can transmit the audio portion of an NFL broadcast in realtime, perhaps the NFL should get that outlawed as well.
It's called a telephone.
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Re: not quite
In response to your final comment rather than your main point, would the some you know be willing to share a copy of last Thursday's Tour de France coverage? I am trying to track it down for a friend. Thanks - Zak
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