Posts Tagged ‘DRM’

A note to TV show producers

Friday, April 6th, 2007

You may post new episodes of shows like Battlestar Galactica and The Office on the iTunes store, but you have to do it faster. I can usually find a new episode of such a show from the BitTorrent network an hour after it airs, and can have it downloaded before the night is over. If I miss my show, I want to see it ASAP, not 24 hours after it airs. Get your shows up faster, because I’d much rather pay for and download a new episode right away with the iTunes store instead of waiting for my P2P download to finish. As long as I can get it faster via P2P, I will.

Reason #2232513 to Hate the Content Industry

Sunday, January 14th, 2007

I’ve been reading a lot of stuff on Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki (one thing about this blog is that I’m never shy about my geeky leanings). I read quite a few articles dealing with Star Trek Nemesis, and decided I wanted to watch it. Since Carrie and I are up in Kalispell, (which apparently has no equivalent of Crazy Mike’s), we could only find a copy on VHS (gasp, horror, horror! What antediluvean technology!).

This was only the beginning of our troubles, however. It turned out our VCR only had RCA composite outputs, while our TV only had a coax input. But not to fear — her brother’s new PC was a ‘Media Center PC’ with RCA inputs. So I had to go through the grueling Microsoft Media Center setup (my favorite part — Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program), because apparently there is no simple ‘play video input’ program.

So I get it all set up, including picking a fake brand for the TV and remote codes. We put the tape in, get ready to watch (on a smaller display, LOL), and see the beautiful picture of — Macrovision. That’s right. Because obviously, why rip a DVD with DVD Decryptor to get a perfect (or near-perfect, if I don’t want to be buggered with a dual-layer DVD) copy of the movie when I can record an analogy copy I rented from a video store.

Give up on the copy protection for videotapes, guys. There are easier ways for us to pirate stuff.