November 24th, 2008

Going back to Windows Media Center

Posted by John Carroll @ 9:15 am

Categories: Digital Media, Media Center, Television

Tags: Channel, Windows Media, Media Center PC, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows Media Center, Digital Video Recorder, CableCard, Media Center PCs, DVR, Digital Video

I’d been using Media Center as my primary DVR since shortly after the release of Windows Vista several years ago. At the time, my intention was to learn more about the other TV-oriented technology at Microsoft, which was of particular interest to me as I worked, at the time, in Microsoft’s IPTV division. I also lacked a DVR at home, so Media Center added new capabilities to my television viewing experience that I previously had lacked.

The main drawback, however, is that the computer I was using did not have a “CableCARD” slot. This meant that I could only receive the signals I would receive if I had my cable wire plugged directly into the back of my TV set.

A CableCARD insert would have allowed me to receive more digital cable channels, such as HBO and Showtime. Unfortunately, it is not possible to buy CableCARD add-on hardware for my computer. Systems that have CableCARD slots have to be certified by CableLabs, the standard certification body for Set-Top Boxes used in the cable industry. In other words, if your machine does not have the required interface slots, there is no way to provide them after the fact.

That’s the reason Read the rest of this entry »

November 21st, 2008

SAG follows the path blazed by the UAW

Posted by John Carroll @ 10:16 am

Categories: Digital Media, Television

Tags: Union, UAW, Media, Internet, Advertising & Promotion, Marketing, John Carroll

According to a recent article on Betanews, the Screen Actor’s Guild (SAG) is angling for a fight over union rules as they apply to Internet-only productions. Media created exclusively for distribution over the Internet would have to follow the same union rules as applies to bigger productions, regardless of revenue streams expected from them.

SAG proponents would likely argue that they are trying to bring union protections to a fast-growing segment of media production that currently lacks them. If you accept the premise that SAG protections are important for actors working in the industry (and I question that, to be sure, noting that the overwhelming majority of SAG members aren’t full-time actors), then union-won rights must be defended at all costs.

Union life, for some, IS good…assuming you can get into one in the first place. But, by raising costs on Internet productions, SAG makes major studios (the group most often bound by union rules) less likely to bother with Internet-only productions. This benefits the unions, as the Internet, in my opinion, poses the same kind of threat to traditional film production that it poses to traditional newspapers. By lowering the barrier to entry, it brings in new competitors who, by their very nature, offer content at lower cost than the incumbents.

Unfortunately, this is Read the rest of this entry »

September 26th, 2008

Jackson Browne and Copyright

Posted by John Carroll @ 9:14 am

Categories: Digital Media, Economic Policy, Intellectual Property

Tags: Advertisement, Song, Media, John McCain, Advertising & Promotion, Marketing, John Carroll

This is old news for those who follow the legal machinations of musicians, but I didn’t know about it until I saw Jackson Browne appear on “The Colbert Report” on Monday (no, I don’t get ALL my news from Colbert, just the stuff related to musicians who sue people). Jackson Browne, apparently, is suing John McCain and the GOP over the use of the song “Running on Empty” by the Ohio Republican Party in a television advertisement. This follows a number of high-profile demands from other musicians, such as Van Halen and Heart, to prevent McCain from playing their songs at campaign rallies.

Now, just to put this in context, I can’t see any possible way I can vote for a McCain / Palin ticket. In other words, I am currently an Obama supporter. Based on recent trends in American political discourse, I’m supposed to absolutely DESPISE the opposing ticket, rejoicing at any and all humiliation which can be heaped on the candidate for whom I do not plan to vote.

I, however, HATE that aspect of American politics. Our tendency to turn the opposing side in political differences of opinion into demon-possessed caricatures demeans the political process in this country, though it is likely a result of the difficulties associated with running a campaign in a country as large as the United States. Elections are particularly expensive in the US. This provides ample opportunity for special interests to corrupt the process by helping to fund national campaigns, but it also creates incentives for parties to create simple stereotypes by which to characterize the opposition. Simple stereotypes travel well in the few seconds candidates have to communicate with the public through television advertisements, a medium which serves as the most important means by which candidates get their “message” out and which, consequently, is often the biggest expense of a national presidential campaign (which in my humble opinion should be banned; TV ads are like eating styrofoam, as they serve no informative purpose even as they make campaigns insanely expensive).

But the point of Read the rest of this entry »

August 27th, 2008

The role of media in the Internet age

Posted by John Carroll @ 9:24 am

Categories: Digital Media, Television

Tags: Newspaper, Internet, Media, News, Jon Stewart, Advertising & Promotion, TVs, Marketing, Personal Technology, Home Entertainment

Jon Stewart, host of “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central, a fake news show that has acquired a huge following (a group among whom I include myself), is attending the Democratic National Convention in Denver this week. As a result, he had the chance to meet with members of the traditional press, a group of people who, according to the account of Dennis DiClaudio on Comedy Central’s campaign-related web site, are huge fans.

The setting was a breakfast thrown by Comedy Central to which the network invited a set of prominent, mostly printed media journalists. At some point, one of those journalists asked Mr. Stewart how newspapers could “restore print journalism to its former place as the apex of political discourse.”

Stewart’s responded with the following:

The antidote is to push back. The antidote is to create filters” to remove the muck from the information fish tank, so we can clearly see what’s truth and what’s political spin. Take the ball away from the cable news networks and do what they’re being paid to do. You’re not on anyone’s team. You’re on our team, clearing our tanks.

It’s an interesting Read the rest of this entry »

May 15th, 2008

The newspaper's last stand

Posted by John Carroll @ 8:53 am

Categories: Digital Media

Tags: Newspaper, CBS Broadcasting Inc., London Underground, Consumption Habit, E-books, Internet, Personal Technology, John Carroll

Interesting news today…or was it yesterday? I have no idea. I got off an eleven hour flight from Johannesburg this morning, and then had to race to the US embassy to get more visa pages in my passport because I’ve managed to fill every available visa slot with stamps, causing a border guard to warn me that I could face problems at airports in future if I didn’t have sufficient space.

CBS has bought ZDNet. That’s interesting to me, as the CBS studios on the corner of Franklin and Melrose, which is the same location at which they film “The Craig Ferguson Show,” is about four blocks from my apartment (not that that would affect me much as I never had much reason to go into a CNET office, either, but is interesting nonetheless). I wonder if CBS will find a way to merge more video into the ZDNet experience.  I think that’s a more promising avenue for growth than podcasting, which though useful for people who are stuck in traffic or like to jog while listening to technology news (geeks…jogging???), is not the sort of thing you want to do while sitting in front of your computer at work…which is how most people likely consume ZDNet content.

Contrary to what Read the rest of this entry »

April 4th, 2008

Invincible ignorance and the Pirates Bay

Posted by John Carroll @ 9:33 am

Categories: Digital Media, Economic Policy

Tags: Sweden, Piracy, Nanotechnology, Intellectual Property, Semiconductors, Emerging Technologies, Research & Development, Business Operations, Hardware, John Carroll

Some people are truly exasperating in the depths to which they will go to justify what is clearly wrong. To add insult to injury, their activities undermines the cause of real reformers who might help build a copyright system less tilted against consumers which recognizes that intellectual property is different, and should have reasonable limits on the length of time of its protections.

I’m speaking, of course, of Sweden-based Pirates Bay, an organization that is downright gleeful in its efforts to assist downloaders of copyrighted content. Most recently, they have told the record companies to “go screw themselves” in response to a request for damages lodged with a Stockholm District Court. Previously, they have described attempts by the Swedish government to co-opt ISPs in its fight against illegal downloaders as being a “declaration of war on an entire generation of young voters.” They even managed to inject a bit of pointless nationalism into the debate by declaring it “shameful” to go after young people “on behalf of the American movie and music industries” (if they want, I’m willing to claim ABBA and The Hives as American).

This reflects a Read the rest of this entry »

February 29th, 2008

Digital downloads linked to HD disc format war?

Posted by John Carroll @ 8:53 am

Categories: BluRay, Digital Media, HD DVD

Tags: Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Internet, HD-DVD, Movie, Disc, Blu-ray, Studio, HD, DVD Business, Sales Strategy

As everyone already knows, the HD disc format war is over, resolved in true domino fashion by Warner Brothers’ decision to back Blu-ray exclusively. Most of the studios in the HD DVD camp have now agreed to back Blu-ray, particularly now that Toshiba has announced it will cease pushing the HD DVD format (though Dreamworks is an odd holdout).

HD discs have had microscopic sales compared to standard definition DVD, however, which may partly explain why Dreamworks feels no driving need to switch its allegiance in the near future. I also don’t think the studios are expecting a huge surge in Blu-ray sales, mostly because Blu-ray players always were, and continue to be, MUCH more expensive than HD DVD players. That’s hardly the kind of thing that can be expected to seed the market in expectation of HD disc sales revenues sprouting from the ground.

But, there are other reasons that the studios had a strong interest in making HD disc formats viable…besides the obvious need to keep the movie disc money train moving. They may need them as a way to buy off important distributors who were actively trying to prevent the growth and spread of digital movie downloads.

The following Read the rest of this entry »

February 19th, 2008

Netflix through your XBOX?

Posted by John Carroll @ 9:43 am

Categories: BluRay, Digital Media, HD DVD, Microsoft, Television, XBOX, XBOX 360

Tags: Game, NetFlix Inc., Console, Microsoft Xbox Live, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Xbox, Game Console, Game Players, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology

I wish I could say I had inside knowledge about the veracity of this rumor, but sad to say, I do not. However, I desperately hope that this rumor is true, as it simply makes sense for Microsoft to do something like this.

According to this article on MSNBC, Microsoft may be set to announce a link-up with Netflix, one that would allow the full Netflix library to be streamed for instant viewing through an XBOX (or, at least the ones that Netflix has negotiated rights to stream over network connections, which has to be more than the paltry sum Microsoft has rights to stream through its XBOX Live service).

Timing-wise, it would make sense. HD DVD as a format is now, officially, dead. The manner of its collapse was certainly peculiar, and suprisingly quick. A decision by one studio (albeit a rather important one - Warner Brothers) has led to a domino effect wherein official support for HD DVD has all but disappeared in about a month (with Wal-Mart, once believed to be tilting towards HD DVD on account of its lower price, becoming the company to put the final nail in the HD DVD coffin) .

XBOX will likely Read the rest of this entry »

January 18th, 2008

Hollywood dinosaurs and the Internet

Posted by John Carroll @ 9:27 am

Categories: Digital Media, Television

Tags: Compensation, Hollywood, Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage, Studio, Music, DGA, Internet, Sales Strategy, Benefits, Sales

Not that this tops the list of things that matter to geeks, but if you live in Los Angeles like I do, it’s hard to avoid news about such things.

The Director’s Guild of America (DGA) recently cut a deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) in a record five days. This matters to the ongoing Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) strike, because Hollywood unions tend to engage in pattern bargaining, wherein one union will follow the broad outlines of the contract previously negotiated by another union. The same sort of thing occurs in the automobile industry, with contracts negotiated by GM often reflected in later contracts negotiated with Ford or Chrysler.

The precise details of the contract would probably bore anybody who isn’t a member of one of the Hollywood unions, but it does have ramifications for the digital revolution. As I explained in a previous blog, Hollywood unions, for all their proletarian protestations about fighting the big bad studios, are part of a system that keeps costs high and helps to keep studios safe from competition. It’s a wide-ranging system that includes copyright rules that have de facto non-existent expiration dates, the net effect of which is to price out of the market smaller studios who can’t afford union-negotiated contract fees or copyright licensing.

The DGA contract Read the rest of this entry »

January 17th, 2008

Scrabble ownership and the public domain

Posted by John Carroll @ 8:42 am

Categories: Digital Media, Economic Policy

Tags: Hasbro Inc., Mattel Inc., Domain, Scrabble, Games, Personal Technology, John Carroll

As reported recently, Facebook has been asked by Hasbro and Mattel to remove the “Scrabulous” game from its web site. Hasbro and Mattel jointly own the rights to the “Scrabble” game, something that most people have at some point in their lives played at least once. Scrabulous was a software version of the game which enabled users to play others across the Internet, and proved quite popular on the booming social networking site.

I never played Scrabulous, but it occurred to me while reading news of the takedown notice that the notion that Hasbro and Mattel “own” the rules of the Scrabble game seems very odd. According to wikipedia, Scrabble was created in 1938 by unfortunately named Alfred Mosher Butts, though it only acquired the name “Scrabble” when a lawyer named James Brunot bought the rights to the game and released it under a new title.

The point to that history is that Scrabble has been around for a VERY long time. When does it reach the level of games like Chess, Backgammon or Checkers, entering the public domain so that anyone can use and reuse it, all the while calling it by the name with which history has bestowed it (versus having to, on trademark grounds, call it by a new name so as not to annoy former trademark owners)? The answer, at least from a legal standpoint, is “not for a very long time.” Assuming that Alfred Butts is treated as the creator according to the “Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act” of 1998 (a man who, as member of the singing duo Sonny & Cher, had a vested interest in such extensions), copyright won’t expire until 70 years after the death of Mr. Butts. As he died in 1993, that means Scrabble could be under copyright protection until 2063.

That just seems Read the rest of this entry »