A Brave New World

Lately I've been watching a lot of "TV" on the computer; ie, netcast, or podcast as the traditional term for audio, and now audio and video broadcast over the internet, either streamed live as they happened or played off a site or downloaded and saved to and played on a portable mp3 player, both without video and more and more with video.
What I'm mostly watching is TWIT.TV, TWIT stands for; "This Week In Technology".

It started out a a audio taping of a informal conversation about tech by Leo Leporte, and several of his old Tech TV friends.

It was later put up on a site and, eventually broadcast and downloaded. Long story short;
Leo Leporte has over the last several years built TWIT into a small station. They now do about 30 hours of netcast a week, besides streaming the feed live during the taping of the shows. and running repeats of the latest shows when now one is there.. They now have sponsors and so there are a limited number of comericals , which are all of products they they use .Theses "comericals" harken back to the days of old when the announcer would go into a ad for a particular product and then righ back to the show at hand. This is what they do on TWIT tv. When its time for the few, usually 2-3 ads that they need to run, Leo, or whoever is hosting the show, will say that its now time to mention a word from our sponsor, and do a speil about the particular product or service, there is no fancy music or other gimmick, just Leo hawking the product for that day.Orgininaly they only put out audio versions of their netcast, which are available to download from I-tunes and a number of other venues. Recently within the last couple of weeks Leo Leporte, founder and owner of TWIT TV anaunced that he had just signed a deal with a company called Media Fly which is a web media, ie podcast aggeriator. They collect and put out software and products to bring media off the web to other platforms, everything from traditional auduo/video mp3 players, to smartphones, and many other devices, so essentially you an either stream it directly fom the web or or download it to you portable device of choice and take it with you, includes both regular audio only podcast, and the a/v podcast. The importance of deals like this are many:

For starters they give the whole podcast industry a creditability they haven't had before. Suddenly they are no longer just those strange things that the geeks search out and listen to. On a equally important note, it also brings the podcast to a whole new market that would never take the time to look for them, then figure out how to download and play them. Suddenly they are almost as easy to play as turning on your tv. Actually Leo Leporte explained this whole ease of use and the whole though process that went into the making of TWIT tv and why podcasting hasn't taken off like it should in this speech he did in early October. The Second link is to the speech at Blogworld, where he announced the deal with Roku and Media Fly.

The two links below explain what I have been trying to explain here much better then I can.

http://www.businessinsider.com/leo-laporte-is-raking-in-15-million-a-year-for-his-podc-2009-10

http://player.theplatform.com/ps/player/pds/BNWNBgJyOy?pid=mcm5sKEK3pLSNsOXmgnDt_Hv_g8Q5bys

Also, earlier this month he in connection with the media Fly deal , he announced that the entre TWIT program would beput on the set-top box called a Roku. You may ask what a Roku box is, it is a small black box the you hook up to your tv and then it connnects to your network either wireless or by wire and allows you to stream content over it to your tv. Right now they have 3 main sourses of content. Amazon, which has both rent and buy options for their movies and tv series. If you don't rent or buy anything it don't cost you anything. The other is Neflix, which uses a subscription model, one flat rate starting around 10.00 a months allows you to rent one movie at a time, ie, physical dvd, they send to you, the big thing however is, with this box you can stream as much content as you want off their library, which is quite extensive. The last provider is MLB, major league baseball. again a subscription model, which I know nothing about exept you have to pay for it. Its there, which is cool for thoses who want. Now they are adding the Media Fly content to the box. Further research shows there are content provider coming on board over the next probably couple of months. At least that is my hope.

What platforms like Media Fly and and anything lets lets one take content from locked in device and play the same content on any device, be it a tv, natively, or through a box like Roku, or Boxee, or even Apple tv, and then take the same media and play it on a portable device and take it with you give adertisiers a whole new market to sell ads to. By the podcasting doing short content related ads the support the content maker and allow him to afford to make his product and keep it free to give away, and the adviritsers get a captive audience , which is also a niche market, which is more likely to be interest in a product related to what they're watching or listening to. And probably more likely to respond to the ad. On top of that, they will be able to track how their ads preforms, and get better demographics about the audience. Its a win-win, for everyone, the podcaster gets to pay for his show, the advertisers get to sell to a niche market that is interested in their products, and the listener hears ads he's probably more interested in.

Any way that it comes out in the end, ie,over the next few years,; things are going to change drasticly. A lot of how this will play out will depend on how the FCC and to a large extent they large telecos and content providers react to the shift. In theory, the consumers should be the ultimate winners. But How do you define winner;

Yes you will be able to stream almost anything you want whenever, wherever, you want, but your account is being tracked and advertisers, are keeping track of what you watch, so they can show you ads related to the content your watching, and possiblity based on where your watching it, and on what device your watching it on.

So in the end, the consumers have to decide if this is a fair trade, what and when they want for constant tracking of their viewing habits, and possibility even more sinister uses of the data..

Yes its a brave new world....

Ken Lawson

"Reports of my Death have been greatly exaggerated.... "

"Reports of my Death have been greatly exaggerated.... "

Said the Television Industry to the Media,



Over the last few years media pundits have have been predicting the downfall if not death of traditional television.
Due to both the advent of the Internet and DVD, high definition and the ability to take your media almost anywhere you go. Yes portable media is nice, handy and a nice way to kill time while waiting for doctor,ect, It will never replace the experience of sitting in your favorite lounge chair watching a High Definition Movie with 7.1 surround and eating your favorite snack, and when its over turning out the lights and going straight to bed, without driving a hour to get home.
In spite of all of the types of media there are, and ways in which one can listen to, or watch the main hub to organize and centrally locate the source seems to be some kind of media server, which uses your tv as a display screen to both navigate your media, and play it.
our old friend, Microsoft has a media server,which from what I have seen in on-line demo clips show it looking pretty good, But they didn't say exactly what was under the pretty interface, Of course it didn't crash during the demo. The idea of ripping all your movies onto a couple of huge hard drives and watching them form one box on any tv in the house is both nice, and scary at the same time.
However, with the move to a all digital format in February of next year and the popularity of content from many other sources It no wonder the death dredge for tv has been sounded.
I think it a lot premature to call the television industry dead. As long as there is mass marketing there will be mass media of some sort. Television will evolve and programing will change and the interface will change, however the lure of sitting mindlessly watch a show all evening is still strong. Hopefully the content will improve. Anyone who has followed my blog for anytime know I have little use for 99% of the new content of tv today.
What the networks are starting to understand is that the days of a captive audience are over. They have been , for the last 20 plus years when VCR and cable came along, as soon as consumers had more choices and the ability to tape something and watch when they wanted, they weren't as tied to schedules and being there when a show was on. and of course they had more shows to tape..

The tie-in between the web and the tv is getting tighter every month. Both Playstation3 and XBox360 are positioning themselves to become a media hub in the living room. Not just a box to play games on. Thats not even counting the dedicated media servers and other ways to get content to the tv.

The media content providers are saying that revenue are down. Viacom just released 2nd quarter statements, basically saying that ad revenue was stalled had only grew worldwide by 2% and US Ad sales only 1%. Which means they're not selling the ads like they had been and they fewer people are seeing the ads they do sell. Link to story;

http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/07/how-american-yo.html

You can read it and draw your own conclusions, Essentially the MTV generation is moving away from just sitting in front to their black box for hours at a time. They want their media with them, wherever they go, Be it MP3s notebook, or a device that plays everything from music to full motion video on a small portable screen.
The Television and Movie industry have to accept that they're not the only game in town anymore. With new computer coming out that are designed to be used as both a tv and a computer, playing content from other sources is even easier and more of a option for many folks.

The choices of content to stream on you computer, and hopefully eventually stream directly to you tv and sound system have grown considerably over the last year or so, The start with Google Video and now Youtube have opened the door for many types of streaming media to be available and the growth of broadband have allowed more people to take advantage of their faster connection by doing things they never dreamed of, Such as streaming classic tv shows on their laptops while sitting in a MacDonald's, or Starbucks or even the Library. The point is they have more options.

The top of the tv streaming heap is Hulu.com. launched back in March it is already racking up huge number of streams and users. 83 million in June, and it keeps going up. Why all the hulua over Hulu.com? For several reasons: One picture quality is excellent, while its not as good as watching natively on you tv, its the best I've seen online. However their compressing the feed , it opens and plays with very little shudder or lag most of the time. Compared to YouTube, its night and day. The other big thing is their selection. While they have a large number of newer programs, they have a even larger number of old classic tv, Which is great way to introduce a young person to shows you watched as a kid and still miss. While there are commercials during the shows they well spaced out and VERY sort, ie 15-30 seconds and right back to the program your watching.
Another contender for tv viewing time is DVDs. With the drop in price for a standard definition DVD player to well under a $100. most everyone has some kind of player, that not even mentioning all the Sony PS2 out there that play dvds and are used as stand alone players, and rarely play games. Of course the Movie studio have been crying pirertcy and that they're losing money for years.
With all of theses and more options available to the consumer is it a wonder that the Tv-land is shaking in its boots. There are surveys that say as much as 20% watch tv on the internet, and it will probably grow, The networks need to work to provide a wider platform to allow viewers to watch whenever they want. One may catch a show as its broadcast one week, and the next week be busy and not able to see the show, being able to go to the web and watch the show you missed and keep up is something that networks need to work on. On the web side commercials need to be kept to a mimmium or they'll drive viewers to other sources for the programing they want, and not watch the "Official" streaming version. Also the ability to download shows and watch later is also something that networks need to work on, But then there you get into the Dirty word...DRM...
Once you start actually downloading material, your opening the door to DRM issues and how dose the network control its material once its downloaded.
To compete and hold its own with the new medias coming out almost daily, the networks need to rethink their stragies, the old captive audience has long ago unlocked he door and flew away. Web content should add to the viewing experience, with such things ans interview with actors, producers ect, and behind the scene looks at how the show is made, maybe even web only offering to ad to the knowledge of the background stories of the show. this would keep viewers on the"official" site and probably make them more interested in watching the show on tv more often. By embracing the new media and helping the audience enjoy their favorite shows how and where they want to, they will in the long run build up the viewer ship they and their advertisers crave. Television has to continue to evolve with the demands of the audiences, or the television industry as a whole will wind up in the same shape as the recording industry has in the last few years. Trying to control their material and protect their precious copyright will strengthen the consumers view of the tv industry as Big Brother, and put them in the same light and breath of disdain of the RIAA. And No one wants to be thought of on their level.


Here are some Links to check out:

http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/07/hulu-is-kicking.html

http://www.betanews.com/article/Surveys_Many_people_are_now_watching_TV_online/1217453732#c1785095



http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/07/30/online_tv#cooliris



http://www.topix.net/forum/source/chicago-tribune/TSIIHOURCUEE25DGC

More on DRM and Other Issues of Importance

Image this; You sit down with your family in front of your brand new 50+" High definition tv with 7.1 Surround; sound and all the trimmings to watch a Blu-ray movie you borrowed from a friend. You played the movie in your brand new Blu-ray HD DVD player the hooked up to the Internet via your wireless connection which for your wi-fi network for the computers. This give you extra features not on the player itself,,, or so you thought.

A week latter you receive a summons to the Piracy Court in your area, Apparently the movie your borrowed from your friend was a copy and not the original, and the DVD player realized this and played it anyways and then "phoned Home"

The above scenario is make believe right now.However,the hardware is available now to do exactly that or something very similar to it. Once a device is put a network theres no end to what can be done even in the background, if the program is in the rom chip it can run in the background and the owner never know its even there until its too late. By then everything that they've done with that device is no longer their own personal business, it now part of a giant profile either a general profile or a specific profile based directly on them by name, or other qualifying data.
There are other issues here beside just devices spying on us.The ramifications of this are frighting.

Other issues that have come up in the last few years include music, and of course HD and the DRM in General. The music industry has pretty much given up on drming their mp3s. Theres has been a huge backlash against the perceived enemy's, in the form of the RIAA, and the MPAA and other media distribution bodies, . Over the last several years there has been a huge drop in CD sales, this is blamed in large part on music sales though on-line retailers such as I-Tunes ect. along with everyones old scapegoat piracy . yes there is piracy however I don't believe its the only reason the sales have gone down. Maybe most of the music isn't all that great in the first place and people don't want it. All that aside, two artist tried something very different last year, they got shed of their contract with the big studios and independently publish their cd. the big twist is was they didn't price their cd,
RadioHead released their album "IN Rainbows" was released Oct 10, on their site and anyone could down the entire album and pay what they wanted for the album. They also had the option of pre-ordering it and also a special box set with a vinyl version and other items. Although they wouldn't release exact figures, all indications are that they did very well, and the best part is they got all the money not most of it going to middlemen. Here are couple of link to story's about the Radiohead ablum;

http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Oct02/0,4670,OntheNet,00.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/opinion/14sun3.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all

Earlier this year Nine Inch Nails followed Radiohead by releasing their album free and offering better quality versions for fees. They said that so far they have earned 1.6 million on their free album. See Link;

http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,23390248-5014239,00.html

While theses two example prove that people will pay even if they don't have to most artist are not in a position to do something like that. But it dose prove the concept of people paying the artist directly without the middle man, AKA the record companies. When people know the artist is getting all the money they're more willing to pay more.


There are other venues that also lend themselves to artist self-producing their works, such as publishing. Do a quick Google search and you will find thousands of places that will publish your book. Some are places that will publish your book for a price, while other are real publishing houses that actively look for talent and will publish your book. The biggest boom is the idea of on-demand publishing, there are many places where they only actually print and bind a copy of the book after it has been sold, the idea being theres no no huge inventory of books sitting around wasting paper and taking up space, they only print exactly what they need.

Which bring us to a another new concept that has been getting widespread attention, Creative Commons licenses.

http://creativecommons.org/

The idea of Creative Commons Licenses is that you can decide what kinds of rights that you want give your work.

Here are several ways in which you can copy write your material,

1. Others can copy my personal videos, edit if they like or even distribute them on their own sites but should not sell the videos.
2. Others can copy photos from my Flickr Gallery, use them on blogs but they are not allowed to edit or manipulate the photos.
3. Other are allowed to take my images and even manipulate them using Photoshop but they should license their new creations under identical terms.
4. Others can take my music albums and distribute them on their own sites but they should neither modify the contents nor make any money out of my music.

This lets you have a say in what ways your work can be used. The Creative Commons Licenses can be used with anything from music to art, to books published online. This is a idea which is catching on all over the world, One look at the Creative Commons website shows that they developed it to work in many languages and countries.


There are a myriad of other issues to be dealt with over the next several years. Among them; the idea of Net Neutrality, the idea of keeping the Internet a even level playing Field for everyone regardless of how get on line or what speeds they're going be 56k or a T1 line, One the we everyone is equal, President Bush as access to the exact sites and information as I have or anyone Else on at the time, I could be shopping at the same on line store as Bill Gates and never even know it, and we're both equal as far as the web is concerned.Except that Bill Gates can spend WAY more then me..
Theres also the recent auctioning off of spectrum by the FCC. One round of Auctions has ended. The 700MHz bandwidth is the bandwidth that analog tv uses to broadcast you tv signal from your local broadcasters to you. With the coming transition to digital in February 2009, that bandwidth is now freed up for other uses. The FCC has had a auction to licences the bandwidth to various providers, who can then use it to either add or upgrade their services to the consumer.Among the winners were big players likeVerizon, and AT&T won most of the licences and blocks .

Here are two links;

This is the FCC site with the Auction Summary;

http://wireless.fcc.gov/auctions/default.htm?job=auction_summary&id=73

Here is another story on the results,;

http://mobilitytoday.com/news/008421/verizon_att_wireless_spectrum

For more reading do a search on 700MHZ auction Results. The eventually outcome of this and the future auctions for other bandwidths will not be known for quite some time, However, consumers should be aware and keep informed of whats happening in the wireless space as well as in cyberspace.
Its very important for consumers to not take what their fed by the mass advertising and other media outlets at face value . They need to question and do research and find out exactly what going on behind the sences and try to understand how it will affect their rights asa consumer and as a citizen. To to this end I offer the following links to places and peaple who are trying to protect our freedoms as we know them now;

Public Knowledge.org
http://www.publicknowledge.org/


Below are a listing of all the links at the bottom of the Public Knowledge.org front page. Please take your time and go through them, I think you'll find some interesting reading.

• CDT: Policy Beta
• Susan Crawford blog
• Cybertelecom
• EFF: DeepLinks
• Electronic Retailer Blog (ERA)
• IPac Blog
• KEI Policy Blogs: WIPO Casting Treaty
• Lawrence Lessig
• On the Commons.org
• Open Access News
• SIVACRACY.NET
• Jon Taplin’s Blog
• The Technology Liberation Front
• Tim Wu: What’s New

Organizations

• Alliance for Taxpayer Access
• Center for Democracy & Technology
• Center for Digital Democracy
• Creative Commons
• Digital Freedom Campaign
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Fair Use Network
• Free Press
• Free Software Foundation
• FreeCulture.org
• Future of Music Coalition
• Internet Archive
• IPac
• Knowledge Ecology International
• Media Access Project
• National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture
• Save the Internet
• Software Freedom Law Center

Syndicated Feeds

• Blogs, Events & Releases
• Policy Blog
• Events
• Press Releases
• In the Know Podcast
• Enhanced Audio and Video
• Copyright Office Filings
• FCC Filings
• Letters to Policy Makers
• Policy Analysis
• Testimony

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Round One of the DRM War......

Ding...Ding...
Round One
Of the DRM War
Has Started....

As any one who has read my blog over the last several months know I have very definite ideas about the upcoming digital transition, and more importantly issues surrounding it, i.e. DRM and the consumers right to play what they want when, and on what they want. The first salvo of the DRM war against High Definition media owners vrs the consumers was fired earlier this year when a hacker was able to find the AACS Code the encrypted the title and locked the High Definition Disc. This was posted and eventually made its way to the Digg.com website, where it was posted. Digg.com soon received a cease and Desist order requesting they take down the code and any post related to it. However, there was a revolt and very soon after it was remover it was put back up in many different forms by thousands of readers, The folks at Digg finely relented and let the post stay up.

The bigger picture is that while the Media companies and studios will try to limit how consumers use their media, forcing people to find workarounds to to what they've always done before, which was well with the preview of "Fair Use" I have seen reports of some rather nasty ideas floated using hardware embedded software that "phones home" and alerts the powers that be what your doing if your playing a DVD that not quite legit they will know and may do anything from shutting down the machine either later next time you try to play that disc, or right then and there, or filling a report to someone who can make your life miserable for months after.

it was just brought to my attention that Direct tv, has put a 24hour cap on letting folk view a per per view movie, that include items you've started watching and haven't finished, once the 24 hrs was up it disappeared, and if you want to see it again you have to pay again. Heres the link;

http://www.hothardware.com/News/Your%5FDirecTV%5FWill%5FBe%5FDRMOld%5FAnd%5FBusted/

The encryption code used in Blu-ray HD DVD is called AACS code its a encryption used for content distribution and digital rights management for dvd, I foresee other uses for it, none of them good..

Here are two Links to information about AACS Code;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Access_Content_System

Also related to the AACS Code the page detailing the crack to the DRM on the HD DVDS:

http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1104

Heres a link to the DIGG Story about their taking down the code and putting it back up again.

http://www.techimo.com/forum/t185930.html

Also heres a link to a page on the HBO Site I found this morning;
This explain their position on recording show off their networks;

http://www.hbo.com/corpinfo/cgmsafaq.shtml#jump3




I don't think most people realize how their rights as consumers are being slowly eroded and what we have taken for granted as rights granted to us back in the 1970's with the advent of VCRS , and a supreme courts decision that vcrs did not violate copyrights or tv produces as long as the tapes were made for personal use. its called "Fair Use" What is needed for people to call and email and write their local congress people and let them know they are against DRM and crippling DRM in particular.As far I'm concerned that fair use law extends to CD's DVD, HD DVDs and any other media, as long as I make copies for my own personal use they have no right to limit my ability to record or archive any media.

Today's Media and The Future..

Early Adapters, pay through the nose... That said.....all the formats we have now, Mp3. wave, Apple's AAC, ect, Dvd, HD, & Blu-ray will eventually be superseded by whatever new technology is developed over the next years, However, as the film/movie preservationists have pointed out many times, as we move forward much is lost,, I am thinking both of lost films themselves and the the people who actually were there, and, almost as importantly , the equipment to play edit and do anything with the old media. This premise can be extended to many other things such as old computer hardware, there are millions of computer reels of data siting that no one can access because the machines to play the magnetic memory data tapes are not around any more. Soon there will be millions of VHS tapes laying all over the world with no vcrs to play them on, like the fate of 78rpm records, eventually cd and optical disc will suffer a similar fate... Although it will probably take longer.. All this is not counting what is eventually done with DRM and what effect it has on the hardware. All this is is to say, there is something ,to be said, for the printed page. One can still read a 100+ year old book and one may be able to read the same material digitally 1 year or even a week later after it was digitalized..

DRM is Digital Rights management, What it Essentially boils down to is the copyrights holder, be it the studio, author or production co, whoever, controlling what we can do with the content, whether we can record a show/movie to a pvr, or record something to a dvd burner like I have the big deal in all of this is that its digital, which means every copy is as good as the original, and theres no degradation over the copies like we had on the old analog tapes, What they don't want is perfect digital copies getting out in the world uncontrolled so they can't make any money off them The music industry tried DRM in their MP3s they sold and soon found it was a losing battle, People were still decoding the mp3 or most of them just ripped the music off their legal cds and put them up on file swapping sites anyways. So finely they are giving in and stripping all DRM off the MP3s they sell, Heres a link that will give you a general idea of what were talking about with the music. http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/01/amazon-adds-son.html As for movies Broadcasters can put in flags that tell receivers what they can and can't do with certain material, most of this is getting into the HD realm, Essentially, dumbing down and crippling sat and cable receivers, and making content harder to enjoy. However, the Saga is not dead, for proof, I refer you to the following link, http://wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2008/01/sony_music
The new battle cry will be watermarking so copyright holders can track a piece of material back to the original buyer and hold them responsible for letting the material getting into the wild.. Of course, privacy experts are having their say about the idea. The whole DRM/privacy issue will continue to boil over for many years to come, and probably will never be completly settled one way or the other, There will alway be a contingent of the population the change the status quo and fight for the rights of the average person, in this case, the right of the average person to play his own media as he see fits on what he sees fit.