[subego]

As per usual. DRM doesn't stop piracy for shit, but makes it impossible to play my legitimately purchased Mythbusters because it thinks my HDTV doesn't have HDCP.

Which it the **** does have. I know this because it played fine two days ago.

And, I looked it up.

The whole media industry deserves to die in a fire.

[Mac Write]

I bought a TV Show (the only one I watch) and it says my Apple Cinema Display is not HDCP compatible and that the season pass I got isn't compatible with my Mac!

[subego]

That's extra sad, because it's true.

I could find very little about people with HDCP compatible display problems because of all the (legit) bitching that you can't play stuff from the iTunes store on brand new (non-HDCP compatible) Apple gear.

[lpkmckenna]

It has certainly been a complete cock-up. I never bought into the HD media, and glad I didn't. I'm sitting Blu-Ray out and waiting for the next gen.

[subego]

This was my first attempt at seeing what it'd be like if I cut the cord.

Not the most auspicious of beginnings.

[Athens]

Unlimited or high bandwidth Internet + piratebay + vuze = happiness

[subego]

Why would I want to **** over the Mythbusters?

[Athens]

I still buy most of the stuff I download. Just easier to download / transcode then ripping from DVD. When you watch Mythbusters on TV are you **** them over, or how about when you watch it at a friends house. The idea of **** over TV shows which are both on free stations, over the air stations and part of cable is ludicrous. New release movies on the other hand is different. And Mythbusters never see a dim from what you buy on DVD either....

[subego]

Huh?

I pay Comcast, who pays Discovery to have them as part of the basic cable package.

Likewise, "free" TV is advertiser supported. Ad revenue is based on number of viewers. Torrents don't register as a view.

I'm going to need evidence for your claim they don't receive income from DVD sales.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by lpkmckenna 

It has certainly been a complete cock-up. I never bought into the HD media, and glad I didn't. I'm sitting Blu-Ray out and waiting for the next gen.

Same here.

-t

[Athens]

Originally Posted by subego 

Huh?

I pay Comcast, who pays Discovery to have them as part of the basic cable package.

Likewise, "free" TV is advertiser supported. Ad revenue is based on number of viewers. Torrents don't register as a view.

I'm going to need evidence for your claim they don't receive income from DVD sales.

Ok lets start with the TV part of it. Unless you get called by Nielsen Television to be part of the Cume Rating to do the survey of veiwership or you have one of there tracking boxes to do it automatically which means your still signed up for it, your views of what you watch are "NOT" counted. Its all based on statistical sampling to rate the shows. Comcast for you, Shaw for me pay Discovery a fee every year to carry its shows. If you watch it or not, Discovery gets the same amount its not based per watcher = a % of revenue. The networks (Discovery) make there money from the commercials which comes down to the Nielsen studies, for North America. Different companies take care of other markets.

DVD sales go so the company that owns the title. IE Fox, Paramount, Discovery and so on. Does not go to the show itself. And a shows production is based on the Nielson ratings not DVD sales. In some cases actors might have in the contract a % for DVD sales.

Im not saying be a pirate. Continue to buy the media to support what you like. Its just easier to get around HDCP via downloading stuff. And for TV shows its easier to download then waiting a year for it to hit DVD considering its on there a hour after a show aired.

[subego]

1) DVR usage is counted.

2) The talent and crew negotiate their pay based on the fact they know there are other revenue streams (like DVDs). If those streams didn't exist, they'd get paid less. Saying they're not getting income from that is just creative bookkeeping.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by Athens 

Unlimited or high bandwidth Internet + piratebay + vuze = happiness

Also, the reason you've got HDCP in the first place.

No high bandwidth Internet + no piratebay + no Vuze = no need to copy protect anything 'coz there'd be much less piracy hit on revenues. The media industry has always had a bit of leeway for physical copy financial losses (like the old "tape of an album for a friend"), but can't handle that and mass Internet piracy. Hence, HDCP.

If you weren't generally a bunch of freeloaders, no need for HDCP.

[subego]

Or DRM on the music we buy from iTunes.

Oh wait...

[mduell]

Apple really botched the HDCP adoption.

Zero issues with my TiVo. I hear PS3s have issues, sounds like a poor implementation.

Originally Posted by Doofy 

Also, the reason you've got HDCP in the first place.

No high bandwidth Internet + no piratebay + no Vuze = no need to copy protect anything 'coz there'd be much less piracy hit on revenues. The media industry has always had a bit of leeway for physical copy financial losses (like the old "tape of an album for a friend"), but can't handle that and mass Internet piracy. Hence, HDCP.

If you weren't generally a bunch of freeloaders, no need for HDCP.

HDCP doesn't stop Internet piracy, so it's useless. What does HDCP do, other than make equipment more complex, and annoy actual customers when it doesn't work right?

[Athens]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

Also, the reason you've got HDCP in the first place.

No high bandwidth Internet + no piratebay + no Vuze = no need to copy protect anything 'coz there'd be much less piracy hit on revenues. The media industry has always had a bit of leeway for physical copy financial losses (like the old "tape of an album for a friend"), but can't handle that and mass Internet piracy. Hence, HDCP.

If you weren't generally a bunch of freeloaders, no need for HDCP.

I would argue HDCP and DRM is the reason for downloading HDCP and DRM free content. As its already been pointed out, media companies treat the buyer, the consumer as the criminals using these invasive technologies to limit and hinder our enjoyment of the content while at the same time doing absolutely NOTHING to prevent the actual piracy of content.

And I buy most of my content. I have well over 400 DVDs and a 100 Blu-rays in my collection alone.

Missed this

Originally Posted by subego 

1) DVR usage is counted.

2) The talent and crew negotiate their pay based on the fact they know there are other revenue streams (like DVDs). If those streams didn't exist, they'd get paid less. Saying they're not getting income from that is just creative bookkeeping.

1) Only if your part of the poll sample. Your mistaken in thinking that every TV that watches a show is actually logged as watching that show. Its not.

2) Not really, pay is based on air time popularity only. If the estimates of viewership for a show is massive, and the contract is due for a show, during negotiations the actors has some wiggle room to negotiate more pay. ER would be one of those shows that was very popular and after the initial contracts ended some people where in a position to demand more. And even in those cases, networks some times rather replace characters then pay them that. Its all based on TV viewership numbers.

[subego]

1) It isn't given the same weight as a Neilsen view, but it is absolutely factored into what's charged for ad time.

2) What talent gets paid is based on what the market will bear. TV stations make more money from ad revenue, so that gets a larger representation.

[Athens]

whats factored into whats charged for ad time?

[subego]

Whether a DVR records a show, and then whether that show gets viewed.

This is in fact more valuable informaton than a Nielsen point because it's attached to an individual, and you can build a very accurate profile of spending habits from it.

[Athens]

only if the person is part of the poll group for Nielsen........

If you record it don't count. If I record it don't count. If you watch it don't count. If I record it don't count. What is so difficult about this concept for you to understand. All TV ratings are from a sampling list.

Are you a member of the Nielsen sampling list, yes or no.

[subego]

I have a TiVo.

TiVo sells my minute by minute viewing activity. Who do you think they're selling it to?

[Athens]

Slam dunk.....

You could have said you had a TiVo vs just a PVR a few posts back Tivo is one of the only ones that collect usage data like that.

[el chupacabra]

I popped a movie into my laptop the other day and it gave me a message it couldn't decode it. A 400MB download later and I had an updated driver that fixed the problem. It still pissed me off though; seeing as on windows I could have just loaded up Anydvd and cracked it's encryption much faster and easier. It's sad when the "illegal" ways is so much easier than the legal way. I wish the government would just ban media encryption like this... rather than nail grandma to the wall so persistently who's grandson dl'ed an old movie. It's out of control and has proven a complete failure. I think I read somewhere that several gigabytes of the windows OS is dedicated to anti piracy.

[subego]

I used to play D&D. Hasbro had a piracy problem, so they yanked the entire PDF catalog, including a good 500 out of print books.

I wanted one. I was irritated they wouldn't take my money. The easiest route to this book was to steal the entire 500 book collection.

I'd still give Hasbro every cent they're due for every book I've read, and surprise, surprise, I ended up reading about 50 times the amount of books I had originally intended.

Die in a fire.

[Athens]

theft, intention to pay isn't paying

[subego]

Hence me describing it as "stealing".

[Athens]

theft, you will suffer horribly in the after life. Will some one think of the children....

[lpkmckenna]

Originally Posted by subego 

I used to play D&D. Hasbro had a piracy problem, so they yanked the entire PDF catalog, including a good 500 out of print books.

I wanted one. I was irritated they wouldn't take my money. The easiest route to this book was to steal the entire 500 book collection.

I'd still give Hasbro every cent they're due for every book I've read, and surprise, surprise, I ended up reading about 50 times the amount of books I had originally intended.

I remember trying to get into AD&D after playing Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds on the Commodore 64. I was amazed at how bloated and padded the hardcover AD&D books were.

Just to begin, you need to buy the Player's Handbook, the DM's guide, and Monstrous Compendium, and needed the campaign set Forgotten Realms. This was more than $120 at this point.

The handbook and DM's guide was bloated with optional rules which added nothing but more math to the game that slowed down play, and they were packed with high level spells, monsters, and treasure information which would require years of play before being relevant.

The pack-in instruction guides for the AD&D computer games had everything you needed to begin playing. There was really no reason for SSI to make those hardcover manuals so thick and expensive except to rake in money.

I'm to understand the recent rule books are much more sensible now.

[subego]

Basic D&D ended up putting it all in one book, and getting rid of most of the unnecessary rules.

At the time, I avoided it because it was "basic", but when I actually read the thing I realized it had thrown out exactly the same rules I had in order to make AD&D manageable.

That book, the "Rules Cyclopedia", was one of the few PDFs I was able to snag legitimately, before Hasbro shot themselves in the foot.

[subego]

Originally Posted by lpkmckenna 

The handbook and DM's guide was bloated with optional rules which added nothing but more math to the game that slowed down play, and they were packed with high level spells, monsters, and treasure information which would require years of play before being relevant.

The pack-in instruction guides for the AD&D computer games had everything you needed to begin playing. There was really no reason for SSI to make those hardcover manuals so thick and expensive except to rake in money.

To specifically address this, AD&D was originally intended as a tournament game, so it needed extensive rules to serve that purpose.

[Athens]

I am pretty sure D&D was designed as just a game and it morphed into a tournament game when it had commercial value and a company took it over.

Here is my problem with modern media companies who are trying to grasp on a old business model and DRM technology is just result of them not wanting to adapt.

In the old days you had a cost involved in finding talent and promoting it. You had a cost in the production of media, and the movie industry is the one with the largest costs. You had only a few methods of distribution and a much more narrow market.

The digital format takes away many of the costs related to distribution and manufacture. It also provided access to many more people. I can and never will support paying the same price for a digital media for the same price as physical media. And I will absolutely not pay new product prices for old catalog items.

I can support the idea of a new CD and a new movie being priced high in its first year. First to market prices is acceptable to me. But beyond that the price should be reflect the fact its no longer new. And for digital versions not a chance am I paying the same price as a physical version.

The prices I find acceptable, what I will pay and what I usually end up paying
$10.00 for DVD or Blu-Ray movie, $12.00 for DVD/Blu-Ray/Digital Copy Combo and $5.00 for Digital Movies.
$10.00 for Music CD's and $5.00 for digital albums. Per track 99 cents is fine.

At impulse buy prices the industry would stand to make a lot more in volume of sales then what would have been lost. At the same time see less people pirating because it becomes cheap enough to not bother. The money wasted on DRM should be stopped because it is impossible to defeat pirating. Only appropriate pricing will slow it down. Going after people who share for free is also a waste. They should only concern themselves with people who are pirating for profit, like the $2.00 pirated movies coming out of China made to look like a real product. If I loaned you my DVD its no different then if I sent you the file to watch. Sharing media has always been apart of the system. And I don't see piracy as theft until your selling what your pirating and making money off it.

[subego]

Originally Posted by Athens 

I am pretty sure D&D was designed as just a game and it morphed into a tournament game when it had commercial value and a company took it over.

Original D&D started as a game. Once it achieved commercial success, Advanced D&D was released with the intention of being used in tournaments.

However, this was long before there were any takeovers The tournament rules were introduced because the game's creator was a wargamer, tournaments were (and are) a big part of wargaming, and D&D was, in essence, a variant of wargame.

The irony is, tournament play never took off, so you had this enormously bloated ruleset, which most people thought were supposed to be used as written for non-tournament play. It should also be said that at the time, pre-planned adventures were wildly more successful than rulebooks. A money grab would have been to spend all his effort on those.

He put out the tournament rules because that's where he thought the hobby should go.

[Athens]

Interesting. I never followed D&D much, I have always been a Rifts / Robotech person, the paladin RPG system.

[subego]

Bill Coffin is 12 kinds of awesome. Though he wrote most of his stuff for Palladium Fantasy.

Unfortunately, Kevin Siembieda is one of the giant *********s of the industry. He's jacked over numerous writers, Coffin included.

I only buy used Palladium books. I don't want Kevin getting any of my money.

[Athens]

All my books and major playing time was before Coffin. I got into Robotech and Rifts in the early 90's. Though I have to agree Kevin is a giant *********s.

[subego]

According to Bill, this is the Kevin way:

1) Meet with an author, be an awesome guy, say he loves the author's ideas. Starts them writing.
2) Become completely unavailable for questions or discussion. Kevin doesn't "do" email.
3) When the deadline comes along, look at the manuscript, say "this is shit!"
4) Hastily add stuff (ever wondered why Palladium products are so disorganized? Now you know. It isn't helped by the fact he does all the layout and pasteup by hand. Kevin doesn't "do" computers).
5) Add own name as author.
6) Praise himself for dealing with "these impossible" writers. Blame slipping ship dates on them.
7) Pay the author ⅓ of what they're owed.

[nonhuman]

Originally Posted by subego 

1) DVR usage is counted.

2) The talent and crew negotiate their pay based on the fact they know there are other revenue streams (like DVDs). If those streams didn't exist, they'd get paid less. Saying they're not getting income from that is just creative bookkeeping.

Disclaimer: I am a former employee of Discovery Communications, and much of what I say here is informed by that experience. However, nothing that I say should be viewed as representative of the position of Discovery Communications or any of their networks (Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Military Channel, OWN, Hub, Science Channel, &c.).

DVR usage is not counted by Nielson except where it is done by someone to whom Nielson is already paying attention. And even then it's counted in a ****ed up way in that it is the recording of the show by the device that is counted, not the watching of the show through the device. So if you record a show that aired at 5pm and then watch it as 2am (or never watch it at all!) the network is inaccurately informed that you watched it at 5pm.

Television ratings, are, essentially, a mostly fictitious numbers derived primarily through statistical analysis of the viewing habits of what may or may not be a representative sample of viewers. Networks know this, and know that the ratings really aren't worth very much, but it's still the best currently available metric with which to value a network's airtime for the purposes of selling ads (the primary revenue generator).

Syndication, DVD sales, and modern internet-based viewing methods are also an important, and growing, revenue stream, but are still all secondary to ad sales.

Hopefully this will change in the future as more content delivery happens online in a manner which can actually be reliably tracked and measured, but, for the most part, this will not happen very soon, as the major networks are all tied into long-term contracts with the old-school content distribution companies that preclude them from leveraging these technologies to the extent desired. Until those contracts expire, are re-negotiated, or are voided, things aren't going to change very much.

The pay for the talent and crew, for the most part, has nothing to do with the network. The programs are generally produced by independent production companies and are then shopped around to the various networks, one of which will then, hopefully, purchase rights to air the program. After the first season, the cast and crew will have some opportunity to negotiate pay, as we're currently experiencing in the delay of the next season of Mad Men, at which point the Network will get involved because it affects the cost to them to acquire continued rights to air the program, but the situation is quite complex and DVD rights are not, necessarily, going to go to the same entity as air rights.

[Athens]

Just want to point out when he said DVR he was referring to his Tivo which sells viewing numbers to companies like Nielson. *Smacks Subego with a trout* for not just saying Tivo from the start lol

[olePigeon]

Welcome to the club. I eventually bought a HDFury III with the DVI adapter so I could hook up my friend's Blu-Ray player to a multimedia projector so we could watch some movies.

I hate HDCP and the HDMI connector. Piece of sh*t technology.

[subego]

My actual introduction was the impossibility of getting a workable video assist playback off my Canon 5D.

It's not copy protected, but because everything else HDMI is, no one made a recorder with an HDMI input. I ended up needing to run it all through an HD-SDI box which I need to power off a battery.

[subego]

Originally Posted by nonhuman 

Until those contracts expire, are re-negotiated, or are voided...

By, say... dying in a fire.

[Eug]

I like bananas. I like Apples too.