IP: more on Piracy concerns may make older digital TV sets obsolete

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>


[Note:  This comment comes from reader Steve Schear.  DLH]

At 17:20 -0700 4/21/02, Steve Schear wrote:
> Cc: "Dewayne-Net Technology List" <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> From: Steve Schear <schear () lvcm com>
> To: "Chmielewski, Dawn" <DChmielewski () sjmercury com>
> Subject: RE: Piracy concerns may make older digital TV sets obsolete
> Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 17:20:47 -0700
>
> Dawn,
>
> I think your article too readily accepts the Hollywood party line
> that the studios will be successful in thwarting consumers from
> copying HDTV broadcasts through legislation and pressure on major PC
> and consumer electronics manufacturers, and that no viable consumer
> alternative will develop
>
> First, I think its instructive to review what's happening now.
> Large numbers of digital video aficionados are already swapping
> movies on-line.  These include not only the the lower quality, often
> computer playable only, first-run movie fare more common on popular
> P2P services, but also the SuperVHS+ quality SVCD format compatible
> with many/most consumer DVD players.  If first-run, these higher
> quality movies are either clandestinely ripped from studio and
> distribution digital sources or from "screener" DVDs sent to
> industry insiders for review or award show voting.  They are most
> often traded on Usenet bulletin boards (e.g., alt.binaries.vcd)
> rather than P2P services or ICQ.  Consumers with broadband links can
> download them at megabit rates from their ISP's "local" Usenet
> servers, as opposed to downloading them over the Internet at a
> fraction of the speed from the hard disks of other users.
>
> If traders wanted they could now swap movies at DVD resolution, but
> upstream bandwidth limits on consumer broadband links make this
> impractical for most posters.  Also, DVD burners and media are still
> pricey vs. CD, so the costs still outweigh the benefits to most.
> Even with Microsoft's recent endorsement of the DVD+RW standard,
> more consumer PCs being shipped with DVD burners, and the price of
> DVD-Rs falling, its unlikely that DVD quality movies will be
> commonly swapped on-line until consumer upstream bandwidth
> increases.  The more so with many cable ISPs are instituting tiered
> pricing and bandwidth restrictions to curb what they see as a few
> "bandwidth hogs".  These price policies are more likely than legal
> threats and technology changes to consumer products to throttle
> on-line movie sharing in the short term.
>
> Second, in order to view a broadcast the information has to
> eventually be converted to an analog form compatible with our
> nervous systems.  At that point is it relatively simple technically
> to resample the image, with minimum degradation, and copy it to a
> digital medium.  Inexpensive chips are now available from which
> professionals and even advanced hobbyists can build HDTV "screen
> scrappers" boards which can be clipped onto their HDTV circuitry to
> capture movies to their PCs.  In the same way cable descrambler and
> MacroVision defeating boxes are openly sold as legit image
> stabilizers, these scrappers can be presented as bona fide signal
> processing test instruments.
>
> Although not particularly practical for consumer archiving, a one
> hour HDTV broadcast will fit nicely on a single 40 GB hard drive in
> MPEG-2 compressed format.  The broadcast industry and consumer
> electronic companies are currently working to approve a next
> generation DVD called DVD-blue (the designation refers to the
> required higher frequency, blue, laser) to pack up to 30 GB of data
> on a single disk side, in order to record HDTV-quality movies.  If
> and when recordable versions become available to consumers this
> could provide a cost effective means to archive HDTV movies.
>
> All these machinations by Hollywood are only forestalling the
> inevitable.  The recording industries owe their very existence to
> Thomas Edison, et al turn of the century inventors.  What one
> technology can bestow another can even more quickly take away.
> Stock option rich studio execs may not want to face the inevitable
> but up-and-comers in Tinsel Town may wish to ponder deeply the place
> in the creation of music and movies once their distribution monopoly
> is no more.
>
> steve

For archives see:
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/