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Archive for category Television and Movies

FCC Proceeding 08-82: Selectable Output Control

Nov 11

Posted by Brad in Bad Business Ideas, Consumer Electronics, Television and Movies | 3 Comments

Here’s a copy of a letter I recently sent to the FCC. Since they said it was part of public record, I felt like posting it here, too:

I am writing to express my concern about Selectable Output Control. SOC represents a struggling industry’s attempt to block consumer choice and limit the usefulness of products already purchased. Disabling the ability to use analog outputs is an absurd leap, for the sake of “protecting content”.

And let’s be honest: this will do next to nothing to stop piracy. One copy is all it takes, typically leaked from within the studios themselves, or by one of the many content partners. A federal involvement will only devalue the hardware and software already purchased and in use by consumers, harming innovation and damaging consumer confidence at a time when our country needs it most.

Imagine a parallel: what if the highway billboard industry claimed that in order to offer full video billboards (with sound!), highway speeds must be limited to 20mph or less, so that users could receive the full benefit of the new ads. In such a situation, the governing body would be severely harming a large number of consumers to protect the interests of a private industry.

I strongly urge the FCC not to agree to the MPAA’s request for SOC. SOC would represent an industry artificially limiting customer choice, and negatively impacting a much larger industry (consumer electronics) for their own favor. It does absolutely nothing to benefit the consumer in any way, increase the value of new and existing technologies, or grow the industry in a meaningful way.

And now, a little backstory, if anyone’s curious:

Selectable Output Control is a technology that the movie industry developed to cripple your TV. Basically, the idea was that while watching Pay Per View (or anything else) on your TV, the MPAA should be allowed to, at their discression, disable any and all of the analog outputs from your television (audio and video). The idea was that this would “limit piracy”, by making it harder to record something and later distribute it. Since digital connections (DVI, HDMI, DisplayLink) all conform to a High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) standard, the recording device can’t actually record “protected” content. That means that if you plug your HD cable box into your BluRay burner, it won’t let you record anything. Sounds just fine right?

But what happens when I have a legitimate reason for wanting to do this? Suppose I buy a PPV event and want to record it onto my computer so I can watch it on my laptop on my next flight. With HDCP, this is impossible (and even trying is a felony). I used to be able to use the component outputs and plug it into one of these or these. These products could happily collect data, record it, and let me do with it what I please (you know, the exact reason people BUY products like this).

SOC is bad for consumers and bad for the electronics industry. Pretty much the only people it benefits is the MPAA, who wants to do everything in its power to stop users from recording TV, since it means you can skip commercials, share with friends, etc. Trouble is, all it’ll do is push more and more users to the illegitimate services, since they won’t have any of these restrictions.

I think that’s something the MPAA forgets: they’re not fighting piracy, they’re competing with it. Right now, pirated movies offer a better experience to the user: they’re cheaper, I can do whatever I want with them, I can re-format them to put on a mobile device (iPod, phone, etc), and they never expire. I’d be perfectly happy to buy such things if I could, because I’d be guaranteed quality and a virus-free file. Since the MPAA insists on trying to fight piracy, it ends up exhibiting all manner of destructive behavior, and SOC is just the latest.

Limiting consumer choice has never been good for the consumer, and in a world where there are more and more options, locking down my TV’s outputs will probably never directly affect me. I’ll just hop to a technology that isn’t restricted, and one that the MPAA gets no money at all from. What it will do is create a headache for legitimate users (like those that still get HD cable over component video), an expense for the FCC, and a burden on consumer electronics companies, especially their support departments.

It sure as hell won’t stop piracy though!

New Year, New Hope for IPTV

Jan 23

Posted by Brad in Internet Technology, Television and Movies | No Comments

So as a new year (and a new President) are upon us, I find myself wondering about the future of television. I hypothesized last year that in the future, we’d free ourselves from arbitrary schedules and the concept of a “broadcast network” entirely. Why should a network (or “channel” for that matter) have to release only one show at a time? Why not let all the new shows for a day come out at a certain time?

Certainly, a portion of this country receives broadcasts over the air, and probably will for quite some time. This will limit us to the time-locked, one-show-per-channel But an ever-growing number of us have a feed from our local cable or phone company for internet. What that means is that the same person providing me the access to some arbitrary multicast feed of channels that I pay an exorbitant amount for is also letting me stream from the myriad of services online – Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, and a myriad of network-specific sites, like NBC.com and ABC.com. I feed all the “channels” into my Tivo DVR and then watch them when I want. The whole thing seems silly though, and there has to be a better way for everyone involved.

And here it is:

Currently, networks like NBC see themselves as content providers, effectively they are both publishers and distribution houses for a very narrow stream of content. They have a limit on the content they can carry, both from a financial resource standpoint, but more importantly they only own a few channels, which can only put a single show at a time on. This is a choking point which doesn’t NEED to exist in a modern system, but is vestigial backwash from when radio waves carried a signal out from one tower to your house.

I envision a day when networks like NBC act almost exclusively as content aggregation. They pay for shows to be made, insert their commercials and so forth directly into them, and then send dozens (or hundreds) of shows directly to my local cable / internet provider each week. Then, my provider can set up a “portal” – possibly even give me a little Set Top Box to stream it directly from their servers. Even manage subscriptions through the box – letting me automatically download a show (effectively subscribe), letting me pick my shows and pay for groups, seasons, genres, or just single episodes. Or an “all I can eat” pass to watch whatever I want when I want it.

Everything is On Demand. The amount of traffic I pull down from the Internet is dwarfed by the amount I pull down over a high-speed, local connection to a server sitting halfway across town. Why stream from NBC’s servers over an expensive, “real” internet connection when I can pull down from my local ISP?

What this will do is basically abolish the concept of a TV “network”. They’ll be feed services, and can focus on what they’re actually supposed to do – provide content. They’re publishers, not distributors, and they should stick to that. The value of a themed “schedule” pales in comparison to the value of watching what I want, when I want it, with not limit to storage, capacity, or the number of channels I can record at once. And I shouldn’t need a $1000+ piece of hardware or something I pay an extra $15/mo for. I should just do it.

Microsoft is working on something called “Media Room” – it is effectively a DVR for an entire cable provider. Record everything, turn your entire network into an “on demand”. It is incredibly promising, but the current content providers are crying “Foul!” at the concept of delivering content to users whenever they want it, rather than based on an arbitrary schedule. They’re fighting with lawyers and lawmakers, and it’ll be a while before technology and consumer benefit win out. The old, lumbering media giants don’t want to give up a piece of their estate, even though they’d be better off in the long run. Also, they don’t want to make it really easy for new competitors to enter the business of media distribution. There isn’t a way to easily monetize Youtube (yet), but if I could put content on my local ISP’s network and let people pay a quarter per show? I wouldn’t need NBC at all, except to make the expensive shows. The value of their distribution network would no longer be a hurdle, just the amount they can front for famous actors / sets / equipment.

Leveling the playing filed scares them, so they’ll fight it as long as they can.

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NBC Offers Online-only Television Show

Aug 12

Posted by Brad in Internet Technology, Television and Movies | No Comments

NBC is dipping its toes in the Direct Content business for the first time in my memory. They’re offering Coastal Dreams, which their site describes as “[the story of] two young women living, working and playing in the scenic seaside town of Pacific Shores,” exclusively online. Imagine a Baywatch Soap Opera.

What’s most fascinating to me is the breadth of extra content available. They’re not just showing episodes online, there’s a tremendous amount of additional content. The inbox of one of the characters on the show, interviews with the cast.

But what does NBC get out of it? Well, they get the exclusive advertising rights. No longer are mid-show commercials shared (or overwritten) by local broadcasters. They show me ads, and install four cookies on my computer to track (presumably) which shows I visit, which ads I click on, which shows I learn more about. It looks like they’re getting ready to build a passive profile of “me” on their site, with page ads and commercials all targeted at me, rather than hoping I fit the largest demographic for whatever time period the show is on. As it happens, I saw commercials for tampons. Go figure.

The other big advantage? The adoption cost is incredibly low. Suppose a friend told me that Coastal Dreams was her favorite new show. The season started in October, so the chances that I’d be seeing all the old episodes in the right order are virtually zero. I can’t exactly join in midway through, or else I wouldn’t know if April overreacted by firing Christian. Well, now NBC doesn’t have to waste airtime with reruns to attract new viewers. If I want to watch the story from the beginning to catch up, I can simply log on and view all the past episodes. No waiting for the Season 1 DVD, no reading episode synopsis on Wikipedia or Torrenting the first half of the season. It’s all right there, and that way NBC still gets their advertising buck for me watching.

I think this is a very interesting experiment. The cost of launching a show this way is dramatically lower, the fans feel more “invested” because they get more than a passive interaction with the storyline, and best of all, all the Ad revenue is pointing right back at NBC. No middlemen, no cable company taking their cut, nothing.

I haven’t had the time or desire to actually watch an episode of Coastal Dreams yet, but I’d bet you can’t fast forward through the commercials, either. Take that, Tivo!

I’ll be watching this one closely. Not the show, the experiment. The show seems aimed at pre-teen girls.

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