Broadcast Flag

[nobody481]

There was an article on Slashdot a while ago about this. But you know Slashdot, more than 3/4 of the posts were off topic. So what is everyone here planning to do about the Broadcast flag? How do we know what HDTV card to buy for our PC before July 1 that will be best supported in the future?

I know that some organizations such as the EFF are doing "Make Your Own TV" sessions. But they are doing it with Linux and MythTV. What about Windows? And what about something that isn't difficult to configure, as MythTV usually is?

[jorm]

I would like to know which HDTV card to buy. Right now my plan is to always keep my analog card to to backup the shows my HDTV card cant.

[bgowland]

What's the Broadcast Flag?

[jorm]

The Broadcast Flag is a signal embedded in a digital television signal. If it's set to "true," the receiving device is supposed to restrict the distribution of the program in which it's found; if it's set to "false," the receiver is supposed to let you do anything you want with it.

The FCC has mandated that every device sold in the States after July 1st of this year have support for the broadcast flag.

There are lots of battles going on trying to stop it.

[bgowland]

Thanks - I'm the UK side of the pond so I hadn't heard of it.

[jorm]

What is sad is america considers itself the land of the free and then spends its time restricting its citizens. To protect powerful corporations.

Hopefully the flag will fail in court. Otherwise we will just have to record our shows with analog cards till they stop supporting them next year or I will have to write a bittorrent client for gbpvr so I can download my shows from my friends abroad. Oh wait I think there is a law to illegalize peer to peer networks as well.

Sigh!

On a serious note. It would be really nice to be able to setup a small private bittorrent community to share shows. Especially if we can write a plugin to manage it.

[reven]

Quote[/b] ]I will have to write a bittorrent client for gbpvr so I can download my shows from my friends abroad

i was thinking of doing this

Quote[/b] ]Oh wait I think there is a law to illegalize peer to peer networks as well.

if you dont tell, i wont tell

Quote[/b] ]On a serious note. It would be really nice to be able to setup a small private bittorrent community to share shows. Especially if we can write a plugin to manage it.

would have to law some ground rules first
1. convert shows to xvid/divx (probably xvid) first. it would take less time to convert and send say 300 megs than it would take to send just 2gbs.

but yeah thats a good idea.

[jorm]

it would be nice if you had a private network of your friends that you could share videos with.  Xvid would be a rule.  I dont want to send 2 gig files around.

Maybe after the settings plugin we can investigate this.  Or you can start investigating if you have the time.

I have seen C# code for bittorrent.  We need to think about how to keep it private maybe add some encryption.

It should be a bittorrent client that has a socket interface that the plugin can talk to.  So if you shut down your mvp it doesnt shutdown the client.

It might be as easy as finding a bittorrent client with an interface socket/command line that we can talk to.

Important things are.

privacy (so people can privatize their group)
encryption (incase it does become illegal in the states)

I actually have a show that I like here in the states that they have cancelled and will not play season 2 but are playing it in New Zealand. As well as a missing 24 season 3 episode sigh... A good use for it.

[reven]

Quote[/b] ]I actually have a show that I like here in the states that they have cancelled and will not play season 2 but are playing it in New Zealand. As well as a missing 24 season 3 episode sigh... A good use for it.

tru calling is the only one where this has happened (we are usually a few season behind america with tv, sometimes it even comes out on dvd before it comes to tv).

Quote[/b] ]It might be as easy as finding a bittorrent client with an interface socket/command line that we can talk to.

yeah i was thinking more the lines of this, just set a reference to a dll, get a few info like percentDone(), etc, there should be a bittorrent client out there that can do things like this.

Quote[/b] ]privacy (so people can privatize their group)
encryption (incase it does become illegal in the states)

now thats the hard part. are torrentz themself legal? they could be hosted with the autoupdate, and just download them from that, but i got a funny feeling that sub will want nothing to do with this, for legal reasons.

[sub]

I'm all for some form of file sharing. That said, I dont want to host any torrents on my site. I believe if its more of a private thing, then it wont cause any legal problems (even if it's not strictly legal).

I can picture groups of users sharing torrent address among themselves, to implement some form of private file sharing between groups. Of course, you'll all have to let me know so I can download everything I'll ever possibly need.