Oh do we have fun this week! After moving through a ton of reader email and comments (THANK YOU!), Josh and Adam get into the question of fair use and recorded TV. How long should you be allowed to keep your recordings? Can you archive them forever or are you obligated to buy the DVD series once it’s available? We try to focus on these questions this week. (Notice I said we try. We stray a bit!)
We had some great emails and comments this week and you’ll find links shared by our listeners below. Don’t forget to call and leave us a voicemail (1-877-856-4933), post a comment or email us your questions and comments. Our shows are getting better and most of that improvement has to do with listener feedback and questions like yours. We don’t know everything but if we don’t know, we’ll find out for you.
Show notes:
- Guide to building an HD HTPC
- Video Cards with Component Out
-
SONY CORP. OF AMER. v. UNIVERSAL CITY STUDIOS, INC., 464 U.S. 417 (1984)
- Apple wants to offer unlimited TV for $30/month
Click here to download Episode 52!
As always, we want to thank Dragon Global, creators of Show Analyzer for their support of Entertainment 2.0.
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I think your wrong-sized MC problem can be solved by running through the setup again to select the new size. It could also help to play around with the type of display (RP, built-in, LCD, etc).
My concerns w/ content availability windows aren't that I can watch it the night of, but that I won't be able to watch it in 6, or 12 months out. When I record a show, I know that it's there when I want to watch it not on a limited window. For e.g. I watched last season's Fringe this summer.
I've tried to run the setup again and there's not option for keeping it the same as the desktop. I haven't tried picking a different screen type though. Have to do that next.
Thanks for the advice from my last post on the show. I think I'm going to give up on Vista (and thus Webguide) and forget the Hauppauge HD PVR for now. I'm just looking for the low hanging fruit on HTPCs these days.
Good show again, guys. For me, I think one problem of local v. streaming (and DRMed) media could be access and licensing. I've lived in 5 countries in the last 6 years. Any media I own (bought or, I suppose, recorded) is mine to play, wherever I happen to live. But what happens in a scenario where, say, I buy a license to play every episode of Lost and then I move?
If my license is affiliates with a local internet/cable-tv provider and I don't live in that service area anymore, could my license move with me to a new provider? What if my license is with Apple and there is no iTunes store in the country where I move to (which there isn't where I live now).
And this is not that easy to solve even if I license from the network. NBC might not be able to sell me a global end user license for Lost. NBC relies on overseas partners to sell the show for TV in local markets (currently, this type of arrangement would do things like delaying sales of the last season of Lost on DVD if that season has not yet aired in the country). None of the major networks or Hulu stream overseas. Microsoft hasn't licensed Internet TV in media center for overseas use. I think MLB Online has some international licensing but the NBA-TV doesn't. I recently read that Netflix is going to try streaming globally, so that will be a good sign if they are able to offer a full library to a large number of countries.
What happens to media licensing in 10 years time? Who knows? 🙂 Back when I started HTPCs, I played DVDs on a PC hooked up to a TV and it was a huge pain to deal with region-encoding and a 5 time limit on changing your region (if I remember correctly, I had to do this in the software DVD player, Windows98 and the actual DVD drive). But Blu-rays are now generally region-free and so are players. I think online BD bonus content (which I never try) is probably global too. Even Apple eventually started to sell no-DRM MP3s and allowed people to un-DRM songs they already bought (despite charging for the privilege). And check it out, Kindle is now a global media service and I can buy a license to a book anywhere in the world at US prices. So maybe there could be a solution that develops in the future that is international consumer-friendly. While it's true what Adam says about having to pay for multiple times for the same show on different media, I believe that the trend is always going to be towards more consumer options rather than fewer as more delivery technology are developed.
Cheers, Joe.
I know I am a week late but couple issues about fair use. I don't agree with these but best arguments I have heard are.
1. recordings are now digital (same quality) as the original where before vhs this was not the case.
2. With time shifting I record more then one show at once. Is this ok? When I pay the cable bill it is related to watching one show at a time you can make an argument for. Does it change the view when I record 4 channels at once then watch the shows during low cost commercial time (middle of night, daytime, or summers). This is of course is not important if they can account for the recording numbers but that I don't think is completely accepted with all the different recording modes.
Just a couple thoughts which again I do not agree with but can see some small points in these.
I know I am a week late but couple issues about fair use. I don't agree with these but best arguments I have heard are.
1. recordings are now digital (same quality) as the original where before vhs this was not the case.
2. With time shifting I record more then one show at once. Is this ok? When I pay the cable bill it is related to watching one show at a time you can make an argument for. Does it change the view when I record 4 channels at once then watch the shows during low cost commercial time (middle of night, daytime, or summers). This is of course is not important if they can account for the recording numbers but that I don't think is completely accepted with all the different recording modes.
Just a couple thoughts which again I do not agree with but can see some small points in these.