random rants - banjax blog

New wrinkle in movie swapping | CNET News.com

Link: New wrinkle in movie swapping | CNET News.com.

A group of anonymous programmers has released a new software tool online that threatens to raise the stakes for Hollywood studios fighting Internet movie-swapping.

Dubbed ratDVD, the new software crunches video from movies into small packages, while creating a single file that keeps intact DVD "extras"--alternate endings, outtakes, director's commentary and the like.

Because it retains all these extra features, allowing them to be burned back onto a DVD or browsed on a computer, the software is already being discussed in video-focused Net circles as a potential successor to the most popular formats used for trading movies online today.

ratDVD FAQ
afterdawn's how to guide

Whatever: The Stupidity of Worrying About Piracy

Link: Whatever: The Stupidity of Worrying About Piracy.

Let's ask: Who are pirates? They are people who won't pay for things (i.e., dickheads), or they're people who can't pay for things (i.e., cash-strapped college students and others). The dickheads have ever been with us; they wouldn't pay even if they had the money. I don't worry about them, I just hope they fall down an abandoned well, break their legs and die of gangrene after several excruciatingly painful days of misery and dehydration, and then I hope the rats chew the marrow from their bones and shit back down the hollows. And that's that for them.

:-)

BetaNews | Google Adds 14 Channels to TV Search

Link: BetaNews | Google Adds 14 Channels to TV Search.

Google Adds 14 Channels to TV Search

Turning its Internet search prowess to television, Google has added 14 new channels to its Google Video service. Although Google will not release a full lineup, Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Travel Channel, Discovery Health Channel, and CNN are among the new channels covered by the service.

Google Video archives television content by capturing the closed captioning text of TV programs. The text is enriched with still frame images uploaded from each show. Google cannot provide full transcripts or video clips as a result of unsettled licensing terms.

Programming will be expanded internationally when work is completed in the U.S. television market, Google told BetaNews.

Development of TV indexing is running parallel to Google's new video distribution platform. Content owners may upload video to Google's servers and maintain control over distribution rights. When the system is in production, end users will search, preview, purchase and play videos through Google.

Google is not alone in its show biz ambitions. Competitor Yahoo is promoting its TV and video search service that scours the text surrounding video links, including metadata. Yahoo has also partnered with TVEyes to index closed captioning content from the BBC, Bloomberg and Sky.

The Latest from Brightcove: The online ad attack

Link: The Latest from Brightcove: The online ad attack.

The Economist 28 April 2005

"This year the combined advertising revenues of Google and Yahoo! will rival the combined prime-time ad revenues of America's three big television networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, predicts Advertising Age. "

Interesting observation!

Hong Kong Broadband Launches 1 Gbps Home Service

Wow, I want that! In Northern Ireland, like most of the UK and Ireland, it is an expensive struggle to get 1-2 Mbps broadband...

Link: New Network Services.

Hong Kong Broadband Network (HKBN) officially launched its 1 Gbps symmetric service for the residential market. Approximately 800,000 households, out of a total of 2.2 million households in Hong Kong, are wired to receive the service. The 1 Gbps symmetric service is priced at US$215 per month.

Google Video (Beta) Upload Program launches | PVRblog

Link: Google Video (Beta) Upload Program launches | PVRblog.

It's crazy to think that searches on Google Video will now include random people's own video and hopefully you won't be limited by what you can search for and they highlight the good stuff. I suspect the main Google Video site will look less like google.com and more like Google News someday, as they showcase video of all types.

Google again! It was an obvious move. Their new service will be interesting to watch, but why no OSX client?

Docu-Blog/Steve's POV: Should TV be saved or exploded?

Link: Docu-Blog/Steve's POV: Should TV be saved or exploded?.

But the power of the promise of the Long Tail isn't that we want to have all 500 channel content on a server in an on demand world - what a pile of junk. Rather it is that evolutionary economics could actually create an entirely NEW kind of media.

Coming to you soon, online: Good, bad, ugly indies

Link: Coming to you soon, online: Good, bad, ugly indies.

Wired News: Cable and Tech Bigwigs Make Nice

Link: Wired News: Cable and Tech Bigwigs Make Nice.

I thought this was an interesting observation:

Jon Mandel, chairman of media buyer Mediacom U.S., said his advertising clients continue to scratch their heads over VOD -- especially when it comes to tailoring commercials for niche audiences rather than the traditional mass audiences they are used to.

"The problem is the creative people," he said, regarding traditional television advertising agencies' approach to VOD. "We need to find a way to somehow get the creative people to use this beast."

Leaving out that he was referring to advertising creatives, I think this is also one of the key issues regarding creative media producers too. In fact it is probably more important to this group with the squeeze on prices paid for TV programmes by broadcasters with shrinking markets and the universal desire to "cut out the middlemen" and go direct to consumers.

Slashdot Discusses 'RSS meets BitTorrent'

That Wired News story (Speed Meets Feed in Download Tool) has now kicked off a fresh discussion on Slashdot.