I guess I sort of agree with this. If one can give up the ability to watch and record cable television in HD... more power to them. You don't *have* to have cable.
The problem is that I require ESPN. This requirement trumps all of the ideological ones. On Nov 20, 2007 2:08 PM, willhill <williamhill2 at cox.net> wrote: > I'm not there yet but I'm not likely to give my money to the bad guys when I > give up. I'd like to have a video source and library that does not depend on > some third party's permission scheme. The problem is digital restrictions > that should be against the law: > > http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/20/2322202 > > The ultimate price is not $5/month, it's technological stagnation. HDTV today > reminds me of MTV and the early days of cable TV. High quality, commercial > free entertainment did not last many years. Competition never arrived and > the broadcasts are hardly better than broadcast used to be. HDTV today looks > like a come on to get people hooked into the secure path, and the game is > rigged. There are land mines at every step of the way from patents on > obvious compression routines, DMCA outlawing of DeCSS to civil lawsuits that > can strip you of everything for "making unauthorized copies". We should > stand up to this nonsense now and not give our money to people who have > trampled our freedoms and will do worse in the future. If you think you miss > cable+VHS now, just wait a while. Big media has done nothing but consolidate > over the last 40 years. If you think restrictions on entertainment are bad, > imagine future libraries ruled by the same greed. > > BT878 based cards work well enough but will be increasingly difficult to use. > I've made 640x480 movies that stand up to SD quality and are good enough for > entertainment. CPU hit is not significant on a 1GHz machine, which is modest > now. My wife and I mostly watch YouTube and analog DVDs and neither of us > care about seeing actor's pimples. The kids get PBS, DVDs and tapes of the > same. It would be very easy for us to replace our ancient CRT TV with a > monitor and PC. Still, I can see that VHS and DVD have already been > consigned to oblivion along with analog output that the card requires. > > On Tuesday 20 November 2007 1:21 pm, -ray wrote: > > I'm in the same boat. I gave up on MythTV/SageTV/BeyondTV/etc. Maybe i'm > > getting old. Tinkering with the hardware/software is fun, and you learn a > > lot. But at the end of the day, I just want to watch TV. The Tivo > > hardware is cheap, the software works, and the $10/month is worth it to > > me. > > > _______________________________________________ > General mailing list > General at brlug.net > http://mail.brlug.net/mailman/listinfo/general_brlug.net >
