Why Do People Want Free TV?

Emmy Advanced Media - Television Business News: MythTV ... a non-mythical solution Shelly Palmer, Chair of the Advanced Media Committee New York Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (whew!), is out with a television industry insider's write up that initially examines the realistic threat to the television industry of MythTV (given Sunday's front page article on the software in the New York Times), but then turns to examine the reasons why consumers want free TV in the first place. Initially Palmer refers to MythTV as a DIY TiVo but notes that the Times lumps it into "a genus of technologies dedicated to helping people steal pay-per-view and premium television."

Then Palmer's article kind of turns.

As a television veteran, Palmer basically challenges the networks to rethink what they offer the television viewer by way of a value proposition:

"So the conversation has to turn to why. Why do people want free TV? Is is because TV is too expensive? Yes. Is it because the current commercial structure is so emotionally unsatisfying that people will do anything to skip commercials? Yes. Is it that programming mostly sucks and individuals who can take control of their viewing experiences will take control? Yes. In fact, is there any possible reason that someone who could change the way they consume television wouldn't change it? No.

So, the problem really isn't the technology. The problem is that the TV industry has been enjoying a technological monopoly for so long that it has forgotten how to serve its customers. How quickly will the industry learn that the past decades of research never, ever asked the most important question: If you could watch this show at your convenience, on any device, anywhere you are at anytime, would you still watch the show?

This particular media advancement is the true definition of Advanced Media. The solution for the television industry is explosively complicated in practice, but in principle it's easy: improve the customer experience and clarify the consumer value proposition to keep your customers."

It is refreshing to see someone from within the television industry come up with a truly critical self examination that may be the first step necessary for the television industry to heal itself.

By the way, anyone ever notice what the initials of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) spells backwards?

Part Two of the BBC News Interview with Bill Gates

BBC NEWS | Programmes | Click Online | Gates says security is priority: The BBC News is out with part two of their interview with Microsoft visionary Bill Gates. I love it every time I see Gates publicly mention Microsoft's Media Center technology and he does so again in this article. I think the fact that Gate's stresses the technology so often shows how important it is to Microsoft and puts a very optimistic spin on what we might expect from Microsoft for home media in the future.

Although most of the article talked about what Microsoft is doing (or what the interviewer felt not doing enough of) regarding security, the interview also referenced Longhorn and it's future as a Microsoft product. Gates did not specifically set a target date but did provide rough estimates of a 2005 beta followed by a 2006 launch -- but on a to be determined type of basis.

Media Center came into play once again when Gates admited that fame does carry a price but also has benefits as to his ability to promote innovative products like Media Center for Microsoft.

"Stephen Cole:

Do you enjoy the celebrity focus - being in the spotlight, being on camera like today. Do you enjoy being the celebrity that you are, the media focus?

Bill Gates:

It's certainly got some minuses, but there are some pluses in terms of being able to get out and articulate breakthrough products like the new music devices, talk about the Media Center and really let people know about the new opportunities they have. "

Music Delivery Evolution in the Digital Age

LIVEdigitally - articlesLIVEdigitally appears to be a new online digital magazine that "offers original content on living digitally. The content is focused on product news and announcements, independent and original product reviews and analysis, as well as commentary and opinion."

The article that caught my attention today was one entitled' "Music Delivery Evolution in the Digital Age." The article is a thoughtful write up on the current advesarial relationship between the music producer/distributor and the music consumer.

Regarding digital music, LIVEdigitially seems to think that the root of the problem for the music industry revolves around them more than anything not wanting to lose control over their means of music distribution. As digital music can represent competition to the model of yesterday it is a threat. "That which we do not understand, we fear. It is a fear borne out of a mindset that music can only [make] money while under tight control. Basically, they don't believe in the free market. Worse still, they don't trust us. It is easier for them to create and market an artist than to research and discover good music and promote it."

With the new digital tools out today the music consumer becomes empowered and wrestles control away from the content publishers and producers and undermines their monopoly for our ears.

The article also provides a brief "how to" chart on "ripcasting" and shows the consumer yet another way to better control the who, what, when, why and how of what they listen to. I published another article a while back on more ways the music consumer can help themselves to the chagrin of the RIAA at Nine Things the RIAA, MPAA, Apple, Walmart.com, et. al. Do Not Want You to Know… or How to Build a Large Digital Media Library on the Cheap. Thanks, Alice and Bill!

TiVo: Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

MSNBC - TiVo Toy Story Brad Stone of Newsweek is out with kind of a high profile piece (Newsweek, MSN, get it, high profile) that puts a pretty negative spin on TiVo. Stone writes about an initial personal love affair with TiVo that has ended due to irreconcilable differences as TiVo has not been able to keep up with the technology of television.

Specifically Stone seems to feel that by not keeping up with the HDTV market (at present there is no standalone HDTV TiVo unit, although one is supposedly coming out later this year) TiVo has made a colossal misstep that has cost it dearly. I'm not sure why Stone didn't reference the HDTV TiVo model that is available, the Hughes HR10-250 DirecTV offering, but it doesn't seem to appear in the article.

In the end Stone concludes:

"No wonder TiVo's stock has lost two thirds of its value in the past year and its pioneering CEO, Mike Ramsay, decided recently to step down. Thousands of other TiVo fans, like myself, find that they have little choice but to accept the cable company's alternative.

And my TiVo? It has ended up alone, forgotten, way up on the shelf."

Ouch -- sharp words and certainly not good for the company from a PR perspective coming from a publication with such wide mass distribution -- but then again sometimes the truth can hurt a little.

By the way Brad, don't feel too bad for Ramsay, he managed to unload an awful lot of his stock on the way down at a much higher price than where it is today.

It's ironic that Ramsay would allow himself to be quoted in Fortune magazine's piece, "You Bought, They Sold," as being something of a standout from the rest of the greedy corporate executives that dumped stock personally as their companies fell to the ground. The article described a "moral divide between the CEOs and the CEO speculators." Ramsay was quoted as saying, "by and large for the people doing it [selling their shares], the financial component of being in those companies outweighed the executive responsibility." Ramsay goes on in the article to say "it all comes down to your personal set of rules about what being an executive of a company really means." Very warm and fuzzy words Mike.

Of course since July 2003 Ramsay personally has dumped over 400,000 shares according to EE Times. This represented almost 25% of his position in the company.

Not that I'm down on executives selling their stock. It typically makes huge financial sense to diversify. It might appear to some, however, just a tad bit hypocritical for someone to reference "executive responsibility" in an article critical of insider selling and then see the same CEO go out and dump 400,000 shares prior to their stock taking a huge drop.

Another unrelated TiVo user defects as well.

TiVo seeks new ideas from developers -- Project Tahiti

TiVo seeks new ideas from developers | CNET News.com From the better late than never department it seems that after coming to the party late with their home media option, TiVo now is engaging third party developers to try and figure out a way to provide additional add on type services to somehow differentiate itself from the satellite and cable providers.

My own feeling is that it's a noble effort but quite frankly too little, too late. Initially the company plans to release three add ons: a weather information plug in, an RSS reader and a game. Aren't these things that Microsoft has already had available for over a year in their Media Center Edition software?

Update: Slashdot picks up the story here. As usual the comments flying on Slashdot range from funny to insightful. Here are some of my favorites:

" Let me guess... Pong?"

" These still aren't that unique of features. What's stopping the cable/sat companies from just doing this same?"

" Series 2 tivos already support the playing of mp3s via the home media options...but... What would be really great was if this development kit would allow for a Jukebox type interface...one that allowed the user to browse by Album art to select a song. Also, a plugin architecture that would allow some snazzy visualizations would be killer to."

"Just got it 3 weeks ago and for the money, TiVo has no chance in the long run. $10 a month for Cox's PVR. I was paying $13 a month just for TiVo's download of the programming. Plus recording 2 shows at once is huge. If TiVo had never made the Series 2 next to impossible to get the recorded stuff off of it, I would have stayed with it. But they gave in to Hollywood and the TV industry so screw them."

" TiVo should get bundled with TV's. You can get any closer to the target market than that."

"I called last week and cancelled my service. (Boy they make that hard to do...) Why? They're two years behind the ball where technology is concerned. Their vastly superior interface is totally wasted because it can't actually record half the stuff I watch. Its a hack at best to get it to work with a digital cable box, and no HD support at all. They told me all about the new HD box they would have out in 18 months when I cancelled, and I just had to wonder why it wasn't out now? My TV has CableCard. Clearly Sony was able to see it was a needed step to take."

"If I was TiVo I'd branch out into content creation, and sell my stuff over the web for a dollar an episode or whatever, with an eye towards merging the two branches of the buisness into a next generation version of cable. I'd work file sharing and bit torrent into my content distribution and allow people to watch anything they bought on my tivo player or on their computers. Maybe even just release tivo software so people could use their windows box as a tivo machine instead of having to buy the big custom thingy I built. If I was TiVO...."

"They're caught between a rock and a hard place - consumers who will leave them if they protect the content, and studios who will sue them into oblivion if they don't. I think they've chosen the wrong path for long term success. *shrug* (BTW, the embeded DVD recorder versions do look promising, but -once again - they're not available for DTV)"

"I have Comcast and have tried their version of the DVR, and there is absolutely no comparison between that and TiVo. There's no doubt that the cable/satellite companies have 'mastered' recording of shows, but half of TiVo is the UI, and it's simplicity. The Comcast DVR that I had was horrendous. It was slow, difficult to use, froze, crashed, etc, etc, etc. I had it for a week and sent it back. I then bought another refurbished TiVo, threw 2, 80 GB hard drives in there and I'm back in business and I'm never going back."

Techdirt picks it up here.

Fallen Angels

Donna

Early Morning Bus

Weighing TiVo's fortunes

Darknet: Weighing TiVo's fortunes JD Lasica points us to a few more interesting posts on TiVo.

Ed Felton seems to believe that TiVo hasn't improved due to a too familiar relationship with Hollywood, "TiVo made a decision, early on, to cozy up to the TV networks, to stay within their comfort zone. But the networks' comfort zone is awfully confining. ReplayTV took a different path, seizing the technological lead with new features that angered the networks; and the networks brought a lawsuit that ReplayTV couldn't afford to defend. At the time, TiVo execs probably chuckled and congratulated themselves for their caution.

Now the time has come for TiVo to pay for its timidity. Its technology is no longer distinctive, and the rising tide of DRM threatens to cut TiVo's products out of the TV delivery pipeline. (Remember, DRM is just another name for deliberate incompatibility.) It's not clear what the company will have to offer future customers."

Felton seems to feel specifically that, combined with the inability to push the envelope, Mike Ramsay has been another problem as was evidenced by the recent reporting on his inability to get a deal done with the big cable companies.

Now my understanding of the problem with the deal with the big cable companies was that it was almost imminent but went south for Ramsay at the last minute and that it was rumored to have simply come down to money. Slashdot picks up that thread here.. But boy I bet they wish that they had that cable deal now. Even if they had to give it away to cable -- imagine all of the additional viewers TiVo could have. These additional viewers could be monetized through advertising adn other opportunities on the TiVo platform with what would have been a tiny incremental cost to TiVo.

Be that as it may or may not have been, Lasica also points us to some poignent remarks from the New York Time's David Pogue. While everyone has been clamoring over the fact that TiVo's fate might be sealed as no one would pay for a DVR when the cable companies are giving them away for free on a subscription based model, Pogue points out some pretty nice features that you find on a TiVo that you won't necessarily find on the cable freebie box.

Specifically Pogue points out:

"* Retroactive recording. You come home, flip on the TV, and discover that you’re 35 minutes into what looks like a great show. If you have TiVo, you can either rewind into the past (to view what you missed while the TV was off) or even record it, thanks to the TiVo buffer that always stores the most recent 45 minutes of the current channel.

* Wish list. On a TiVo, you can type something—an actor, movie title, anything—that you’re interested in, even if it’s not anywhere in the TV guide. If and when it’s ever broadcast, on any channel at any time, the TiVo will record it for you. ...

* Built-in reaction time. When you’re fast-forwarding through a show [and] you hit Play, it doesn’t begin playing from that point; it begins playing a few seconds before that, with uncanny “it knew what I wanted” accuracy.

* 30-second skip. It’s not a documented trick, but it’s nonetheless a juicy and delicious one. Press the following buttons on the remote while a show is playing back: Select, Play, Select, 3, 0, Select. Now your Advance button is a 30-second skip button. Press the same sequence again to turn off this feature. (You have to re-do this after a power failure.) It’s a much quicker, more precise way to skip ads.

* Season pass. On many DVR’s, you can ask to have a certain show recorded every week automatically—“Desperate Housewives” or whatever. But on a TiVo, you get some important options with that. For example, you can tell the TiVo to record only first-run episodes and not repeats. ..."

My own level of distaste with the cable offerings right now comes down to one simple thing. Storage. My understanding is that they can only get about 15 hours of high def programming. I can get about 35 on my HDTV DirecTV TiVo and that is definitely worth the extra cost for me (but then again I'm a gadget freak who probably spends too much money on this kind of technology as it is.).

What the cable companies need to do if they want to address the high end is to either offer to sell boxes (or increased subscription fees) for boxes with larger drives in them capable of HDTV recording or to allow people to connect their own external hard drive up to the unit to use this as overflow storage. Not sure how likely the second scenario is as it might give people a way to get the content off of the machine.

Although my Media Center PC doesn't record cable and satellite high def, it is nice that I can always add recording time simply by plugging in an external USB hard drive at any time.

Falling in Love For the Fourth Time

Columbus at Dusk

Today's 20 Random Songs From Thomas Hawk's Windows Media Player 5 Star Playlist

1. Big City Stripper, Cory Morrow, Man That I Have Been
2. I'll Never Let Go of Your Hand, Tom Waits, Unpublished from the soundtrack American Heart (no soundtrack available) (bootleg)
3. Red Light, Jonny Lang, Long Time Coming
4. Beer Run (live), Todd Snider, Near Truths and Hotel Rooms
5. Forgetable Song, Freakwater, Absolutely Live 1994
6. Down the Road, Steve Earle, Guitar Town
7. Flying on the Ground is Wrong, Kendra Smith, Rainy Day Compilation
8. Monkey and the Engineer, Grateful Dead, Reckoning
9. Tell Her to Come Back Home, John Fahey, Return of the Repressed: The John Fahey Anthology, Disc 1
10. Let Him Roll, Bobby Bare, Bare Tracks
11. Heaven Tonight, Hole, Celebrity Skin
12. I Will Buy You a New Car, Vertical Horizon, Unknown Bootleg
13. Ring of Fire, Smokestack Revisited, Johnny Cash Revisited
14. I Need You, Scrawl, Smallmouth
15. Girl Like You, Pete Yorn, musicforthemorningafter
16. Anthem, blink-182, Enema of the State
17. Sundown, Elwood, The Parlance of Our Time
18. Honey, I've Found a Brand New Way, It's All the Same to Me, Bad Livers, CMJ New Music Monthly, Volume 60, January 1999
19. Heard it in a Love Song, The Marshall Tucker Band, Easyriders Vol. 5.
20. Bleed to Love Her, Fleetwood Mac, Say You Will

Album Art Fixer Review, Two Thumbs Up!

Wow! Let me say it again. Wow! Album Art Fixer is one amazing piece of software. Despite the expected bugs here and there, this freeware (donations happily accepted via Pay Pal) utility is one of the most impressive pieces of code that I've seen in a number of years. 1. Microsoft should quickly buy this software and incorporate the technology into their Windows Media Player. 2. Wow! I mentioned yesterday that I'd be trying this software out this weekend and I am seriously impressed.

So what does Album Art Fixer do?

Well being an avid .mp3 collector over the years I've built up an impressive library. The problem? Many of my tracks have missing or incorrect artwork. We've all become familiar with the famous blue note of death that Microsoft uses as the default image when it can't find album art. As much as Media Center Edition and Windows Media Player 10 provide a platform to beautifully display album art, when the album art is missing it's just plain annoying. This is where Album Art Fixer comes in.

Album Art Fixer does a quick scan of you library (through WMP). It then begins an analysis of your music to look for problems. First and foremost it finds albums that are missing artwork or that have the Microsoft "blue note" as the default artwork. You go through your library album by album. You can chose to either skip an album (possibly you still may need to go back and fix manually later) or you can choose to let Album Art Fixer correct the album for you. If the artwork is already correct Album Art Fixer automatically skips it. So you only see the albums that need work. (See below).


AV Soft's Album Art Checker's Fix Tags

Once a problem album is identified you have the opportunity to have Album Art Fixer correct a number of things. Album Art, Album Artist meta tag, track numbering and location of tracks.

I found that for the vast majority of pretty mainstream stuff Album Art Fixer found the artwork quickly without a problem. It uses Google Images to actually go out and search for the album covers for you allowing you a convenient and quick way to "save as" these files into your music library. I was surprised that Album Art Fixer even found some of the more obscure titles in my collection.


Album Art Fixer uses Google Image Search to find missing album art for your Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center library.

I encountered a few bugs along the way (the software would occasionally hang and get stuck when it hit an album) but 1. C'mon on it's free and 2. Any minor inconvenience with a bug here and there was so insignificant in the big picture of what this software allows me to accomplish.

Previous to discovering Album Art Fixer I was doing much of this stuff manually myself. This piece of software will save me hundreds of hours in updating my mp3 library. It really is amazing. Hats off to the guys who developed it.

The software works with both Windows Media Player 9 and 10 (although if anyone is still using 9 you should immediately rush out and download 10 as quickly as you can, it really is a nice upgrade).

It's nice every now and again to find a little piece of software here or there that just totally impresses you. Nice work AV Software and again, all I can say is wow... well wow and thanks.

Skipping commercials on XP MCE 2005

Skipping commercials on XP MCE 2005 I haven't explored this yet but it sounds promising. Anyone have any experience with it?

Brian Bailey on the Important Things in Life

Leave It Behind: Hand on the Guitar: And then I think about my 9-year old son.

And this wonderful Apple laptop.

And the number of times I've said, "Just a few more minutes."

And the number of times he's said, "It's been 20 minutes. You said it would be 10."

I think about the number of times I've listened while my eyes finished scanning the screen.

He deserves better.

(Thanks, Charlie)

More Crap from the MPAA

It's 10PM: Do You Know If Your Kids Are Downloading Movies? So now the MPAA has a software (shouldn't this really be called spyware) download that will scan your computer for you and let you know how many of your files are illegal. Extreme Tech tested the service out:

Parent File Scan "does not distinguish between legal and illegal copies."

Case in point, the 1359 music files it found on our test system are all legal files created from the owner's CD collection.

How do you determine which files are legal and which aren't?

Parent File Scan offers that "You must clarify this question for yourself."

Maybe the MPAA will next create some software that can give me a good nice long lecture each night. And while they're at it they ought to invent the ass kicker so that evey now and again when I need to give myself a good beating I'll have some software to do it for me.

This is about the stupidest thing I've ever seen.

Slashdot picks it up here.

Free TiVo?

Retailers try a new pitch--free TiVo | CNET News.com: Well after TiVo gave away boxes late last year in response to Comcast's DVR push in the Bay Area, many thought it was only a matter of time before you began to see the strategy for TiVo/retailers shift to one entirely based on subscription and advertising revenue and not on the actual hardware units themselves.

It appears that CompUSA and Good Guys are rolling out a campaign (when rebates are used) that results in free TiVo boxes -- a good move if you ask me. Of course you do have to buy $499 worth of non Apple crap from them in order to qualify -- so perhaps free is a little misleading.

My opinion has always been that TiVo should focus less on making money from the boxes today and more on building market share with the end goal of monetizing an army of viewers to be implemented at a later point. Techdirt raised the question should TiVo be Free a long time ago back in August of 2003. The model that the cable providers are now pursuing is basically a free offer -- this is also how the cell phone industry hooks people.

Album Art Fixer for Windows Media Player and Media Center Edition

Album Art Fixer I haven't tried this album art fixer application yet but was pretty excited to find it and am planning on testing it this weekend.

Update: I wrote my review on Album Art Fixer here.

MyHome for Media Center

MyHome for Media Center Mike Walker has a post on "My Home" one of the first attempts to incorporate home automation into Microsoft's Media Center Edition software.

This is a fantastic area of opportunity and natural extension of what folks should be doing with their Media Center PCs.

Maximum Starbucks Density

The Caffeinated Life, by Thomas Hawk

Maximum Starbucks density (kottke.org) Just how many Starbucks are there within a 5 mile radius of where you live? 162 seems to be the high at the moment (from the top of Regent's street in London). I've got 65 stores in a 5 mile radius from where I work in downtown San Francisco. It looks like Starbucks needs to do a little expanding in San Fran, we've got over 100 less than London.

Today's 20 Random Songs From Thomas Hawk's Windows Media Player 5 Star Playlist

1. After You're Gone, Iris Dement, Infamous Angel
2. Heartland, Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan, Revolutions of Time, The Journey 1975-1993, Disc 3
3. Slow Ride, Beastie Boys, License to Ill
4. Breed, Nirvana, Nevermind
5. Alcohol and Pills, Fred Eaglesmith, Live: Ralph's Last Show, Disc 2
6. Flower (BBC Version), Eels, Elctro-Shock Blues
7. Christmas in Prison, John Prine, Souveniers
8. Knockin' on Heaven's Door (Flip City Demos), Elvis Costello, Nashville and More (bootleg)
9. Soul Surfing, Fatboy Slim, You've Come a Long Way Baby
10. Samedi Soir La Terre, Francis Cabrel, Double Tour, Triple Album
11. Our Good Thing (Just Gets Better), Jeb Loy Nichols, Lovers Knot
12. When the Music Stops, D12/Eminem, The Eminem Show
13. Mercedes Benz, Uncle Tupelo, So Called Friend (bootleg)
14. Come Undone, Duran Duran, The Wedding Album
15. Nothing Like a Song, Azure Ray, Hold on Love
16. Polla Asado, Ween, Freedom of '76 Single
17. Lay Around and Love on You, Delbert McClinton, Delbert McClinton
18. Any Time at All, The Beatles, A Hard Days Night
19. Between Us to Hold, Hayden, The Closer I Get
20. Pecan Pie, Golden Smog, Down by the Old Mainstream

Nina Gordon Covers NWA's "Straight Out of Compton"

Nina Gordon
carbongeek: You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge Ex-Veruca Salt vocalist Nina Gordon covers NWA's Straight Outta Compton.

"So when I'm in your neighborhood, you better duck! Because Ice Cube is crazy as fuck! I leave, believe I'm stomping! But when I come back, boy, I'm coming straight out of Compton!"

Something unusual about a voice so beautiful singing something so deeply dark. She only covers the first verse which is Ice Cube's part. It would be interesting to see her finish the song and do M.C. Ren and Easy-E's parts as well.

My Experiences setting up Windows Media Center 2005

My Experiences setting up Windows Media Center 2005: Dave Glover, who seems pretty tech savvy, had a great time setting up his new Media Center PC.

The Madness of Market Street

Another TiVoToGo Review

Update: Justin Hall has updated his original thoughts regarding TiVoToGo with the following:

" i was corrected on some stuff i'd posted about the tivo2go:

- you can play the .tivo files in other media players besides WMP. go figure - i assume that it's the only one because i haven't tried. VideoLan Client can do it - i've never tried the windows version, only the linux one, and i wasn't super thrilled, but it's an option.
- there is a way to burn them to DVD. which may be what pushes me to buy an IDE DVDR drive.
- you can use Dr. DIVX to decode the files as well - however, it costs $30. but i'm sure more free options will be available soon.

i guess i'm just disappointed that a company that champions the ease-of-use of their product would make something that you can do so little with - that just seems so limiting."

neurological dryer lint: news is good food for your mind Justin Hall points out the good, "you can watch recorded content from your Windows PC" and "it's free," but like most other people he has a laundry list of bad things about the new TiVoToGo service.

"- you can't watch them in any other app besides Windows Media Player
- their proprietary .Tivo MPEG format is huge
- you have to enter a password every time you open a video
- you can't do things like change the brightness on the video (still can't believe that one)
- you can't burn them to DVD from your PC

and why is this, kids? that's right, DRM. frightened by pressure from the handful of large media companies that control the entertainment industry, Tivo locked down the video format. instead of making it a standards-compliant format, there's one app and one OS you can watch it on. rather than allow the consumer who has paid for the device and the Tivo service to do what they want, they maintain control and set the rules. legally, can they do it? yes. is it better than nothing? yes. is it right? is it beneficial to their business? n*&@#*a please."

The Streets of San Francisco

Bay Area Comcast Getting Fox in High Def

Comcast, Fox strike S.F. HDTV deal | CNET News.com Good news if you live in the Bay Area and have HDTV Comcast. You are about to get HDTV Fox... finally.

Candy