Entertainment Industry Looking To Keep Place-Shifting At Home?

from the full-of-shift dept

The Slingbox and other place-shifting products are pretty interesting. The general idea is that like time-shifting unbinds you from watching TV according to the network schedules, place-shifting lets you watch video content from anywhere you can get a net connection, rather than just on your TV or home computer. The Slingbox will even stream live TV from your home -- a cool feature if you're out or traveling. Predictably, right after Sling announced a huge funding round, some people in the TV industry are saying the Slingbox's rebroadcasting is illegal. Keep in mind this is the same business whose member sued ReplayTV for letting people skip ads, then it's not too hard to believe they'd want to make it more difficult for pretty dedicated people to actually watch their channels, regardless of their location at any given moment. Sling says as far as it's concerned, what its product does falls under fair use -- but, of course, that's a concept that many in the entertainment industry would like to do away with.
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  1. identicon
    Randy Roach, 6 Feb 2006 @ 2:12pm

    Placeshifting

    As both a TiVo and Slingbox user, I find that combining time-shifting an place-shifting is the ideal situation for the consumer.

    Slingbox supports only one connection at a time. It is not in any way re-broadcasting. It is NARROWcasting.

    I'm disgusted, but not surprised, that the same pplayers who tried to stop VCRs, DVDs and MP3 players would attempt to kill this innovation as well. I guess they better ban coaxial cables too, so I can't watch TV programing on my PC through the "analog hole".

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 6 Feb 2006 @ 2:17pm

    No Subject Given

    If I could get the wife unhooked I would get rid of the tv altogether. Most of it is mindless slop and when the do introduce a decent show some right wing god fanatic has it taken off the air.
    If I pay 60+ for shows i should be able to do whatever the hell I want to with it.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Carlo, 6 Feb 2006 @ 2:24pm

    Re: Placeshifting

    Slingbox supports only one connection at a time. It is not in any way re-broadcasting. It is NARROWcasting.

    That's a good point, Randy, and I could have used a better word there, like retransmission. I think you've hit the nail on the head, but I think it's a stretch to believe the entertainment industry will agree, as you also say.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    A Funny Guy / The Poison Pen, 6 Feb 2006 @ 4:57pm

    Re: Placeshifting

    Of note - while a little depressing to think of in this capatialistic world, there is one way to release software and plans for hardware that no one can sure you over.

    Give it away and release it on the net through the hacker sites and through places like freenet and usenet. Millions of people will have access to it and in the case of hardware, be able to build.

    Many people have the code to defeat macrovision, and i've heard of code that can decrypt live cable
    and sat signals as well.

    While most of you may fear to use these items, you should not..... as they become more and more used the less likely anyone will ever be able to but the genie back in the bottle

    For instance - the code that decrypted the encryption placed on dvd's. Originally placed on alt.2600 ( at least publically the first place ) they were sued and forced to remove it. By the time that happened, so many people had it that there was no way to censor it anymore.

    But if you want to bnefit all, you must forget about profit and donate to the public domain :)

    And make damn sure you do so in a way it can't be tracked back to you so you can't be sued

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Kajunerd, 6 Feb 2006 @ 5:46pm

    Re: Placeshifting

    I can't agree with you more. I too combine these technologies, but with different hardware and free software. Having a weekend job, i would hate missing out on some of the best shows on television. This weekend place-shifting came in handy for the Superbowl. I didn't want to miss it for the world. Using VLC I was able to stream it live to my cube at work. And when I get home I have other shows that I recorded with MythTV that I can watch. If the TV industry could (which they can't) stop place-shifting and time-shifting, they would be just hurting themselves.

    Maybe they need to look at this technology in a different way. Instead of having a few mins. of commercials every 15 mins., they could maybe just maybe get rid of the commercials (since we skip over them anyways) and format the commercials into the shows like they did when B&W televisions were around. This way we both win, they get about 30 mins. of commercial and we get 30 mins. of show.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    Evan, 6 Feb 2006 @ 7:03pm

    No Subject Given

    I had a feeling when I first read about Slingbox that this was coming. It's kinda the same premise as mp3.com originally was, where you could stream your music collection from any online computer, and we saw how long that lasted...

    link to this | view in thread ]


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