> > >My point? it's not always as easy to take an off air broadcast and put > it online. > > > I see you've never tried Myth TV, my box is in the process of being built, > the only thing stopping me is cash for my ridiculesly over-specced box; not > difficulty. Plucking signals straight out of the air and onto a hard drive > isn't hard with multiple DVB-T & DVB-S cards. Hardware prices are only > coming down, and building a box with 2 * 500GB drives 6 DVB-T and one DVB-S > tuners (with room for expansion) etc. won't be as expensive or difficult in > a couple of years.
Agreed. But such automation have been technically possible for several years and I've been surprised that it's had no impact on TV piracy here or abroad. I've commissioned several generations of such multi-channel DVB -> Web systems both inside and outside the BBC. Started off using Myth then dumped it cos it was too clunky. Latest version dumps indexed flash video to Amazon S3. http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2007/view/e_sess/10186 A rather sweet xvid version (backend by the amazing Dom Ludlam, web front end by the equally mercurial Phil Gyford ) ran during 2005 inside the BBC firewall, offering all BBC TV programmes transcoded real time from DVB-T to xvid using commodity *nix kit. I demo'd this version (BBC Macro) to the BBC Executive Board and Board of Governors in 2005 to show them what was inevitably coming down the line. However, the industrialised TV piracy of free to air TV isn't *yet* a problem - as I said, the capping is still done by hand, and so only a tiny minority of UK programmes get pirated. I do agree that it's probably going to come sooner rather than later, so long as the broadcasters download offerings remain separate and thus of limited appeal. But it does suggest that demand for on demand TV onto a PC isn't as vast as was the case for music, since some enterprising pirate would surely have industrialised & automated the whole end to end DVB -> .torrent process by now. And when it *does* comes I'm willing to lay a small bet that the "see, DRM is pointless" (it is) argument will be drowned out by a loud lobby of rights holders demanding that the BBC encrypts its broadcast signal. But I'm sure we're all well-versed in the arguments as to why the BBC broadcasts in the clear in the first place, aren't we? Aren't we? - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
