On 5/17/05, Brad Templeton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Tue, May 17, 2005 at 09:13:26PM -0400, William wrote: > > > Basically correct (with 'blessed' meaning that the device > > > does some preliminary transactions to show it's compliant > > > with the spec) but even once the data is sent from the DVD or > > > cable box to the TV/monitor it's still encrypted as per the above. > > > > > > > These difficulies are what is leading me to think about getting a hd dvr > > from one of the providers. The local cable co is giving them away for the > > same rental as a standard cable box. If its anything like a tivo the content > > of the box should be available over the network connection for easy copying. > > It is this decision which has this community justifiably up in arms. > > As the systems are being architected, open source tools like MythTV > can't compete with the box from the cable company, even though the > software is free as in beer too. For perfectly rational reasons people > like you will get the cable/satellite provided PVR or other blessed > PVR, reducing demand for the open source tools which in turn limits the > number of people who will develop for them and test them and support > them. > > Yet here's were a lot of the innovation is coming from. >
Brad, I agree with much of what you say but, agree with it or not, the folks that make the movies feel they have a right to protect their content. They paid millions of buck to get the movie made and do not want indiscriminate numbers of perfect digital copies being made and given away. As I'm sure you know the ticket office returns for movies in the States are on the order of a few billion a year. That's less revenue than one moderate semiconductor company like AMD. The returns from DVDs is far higher so without the DVD revenue the studios lose money go out of business and we don't get movies in any format. As long as Open Source tools continue to give all users the capability to make perfect digital copies of any source material there is going to be disagreements and issues like this. That said I expect that over time the cable boxes will get much better about this. There shouldn't be any reason that I cannot make a copy of news shows, high school sports events or other low revenue generating shows for time shifting and I expect that cable boxes will make this stuff available over time. In the mean time it's not surprising to me that they take a somewhat draconian view and say all or nothing. - Mark _______________________________________________ mythtv-users mailing list [email protected] http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
