[prisoner6]

I found this to be an interesteing article so I thought I 'd toss it out here. It comes from the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group website. What is the BPDG? Here's some info...

In the year 2006 all over-the-air television will be digital. This is pretty hot stuff: crystal-clear pictures, ear-popping audio and interactive features for days. But as the technologists give, the studios take away.

The Broadcast Protection Discussion Group is an obscure group of Hollywood studios and technology companies that are negotiating a "consensus" for any gadget or code that can touch the studios' product. Once they're done, they want to go to Washington and ask Congress and/or the FCC to give their "standard" the force of law.

So what? Well, this is a radical departure from the way it's usually done. Usually, bright nerds invent something cool and the entertainment industry has a nervous breakdown and runs around telling everyone that the sky is falling (Marconi got sued over the radio, Sony got sued over the VCR, and it took a near miracle to get movies out of the studios' vaults and onto television). People pick up on the tech and all the interesting ways that it can be used as a creative tool, and gradually the entertainment industry realizes that a new day has dawned and gets its act together, starts shipping product for the new media, and takes home yet another squillion dollars.

This time around, the entertainment industry wants to take away all that sloppy, inefficient fooling around where technology companies try out lots of different approaches, where garage inventors go from obscurity to posterity under a hail of customers, where you and I get to invent amazing new uses for our stuff that a bunch of engineers in a board-room never would've thought of in a million years. This time around, everything not forbidden is mandatory.

prisoner6

[breakem]

bump

[for-q-clinton]

They are also wanting to control ADCs to prevent copying of HDTV. So if you bought an HDTV "ready" set it won't really be HDTV because they plan to down-rez your signal UNLESS you have a new digital interface.

[coydog]

So, why don't the techies get together and picket Hollywood? This will not inspire a love of Hollywood in the hearts of users and developers. In fact, it would lead to a black market that would make today's look like Sunday school.

[Arthur McGowan]

This is meant to work like so: You point your camcorder at a movie screen. The magical, theoretical watermark embedded in the film is picked up by the cop-chip, which disables the camcorder's ADC. Your camcorder records nothing but dead air. The mic, sensing a watermark in the film's soundtrack, also shuts itself down.

Since American popular music has been pure garbage since 1942, this is not a problem, as it would not apply to 78 rpm records.

[ReaganIsRight]

I built an A/D converter from discrete parts before you could just plunk down a couple of bucks and buy a chip.

These guys are inhaling.

[Britton J Wingfield]

Hollywood Wants to Plug the "Analog Hole"

That's about what they want to do to all consumers, and they won't even kiss you first.