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Bit Torrent Can Save your Relationship and Internet Based TV Distribution Would Be Super Cool
For the past couple weeks I have been recording some TV shows for my girlfriend Kymberly on my DVD recorder. There is cable at my place and none at hers. I have been taping Lost, Alias and The Office US but a while back I screwed up and didn't get it set up in time to record. This week I did get it set up and I set the DVD recorder to tape every week at that time. I finalized the disc and thought that everything was cool. I took it over to her place and we were un-pleasantly surprised that it did not boot up in the DVD player. Now I tooak it back to my place and the disc would not boot up in my iBook, PS2, DVD player or DVD-Recorder. What I think happened is I might have ejected it from the DVD-Recorder before it was done finalizing. So I was in the dog house. This week Kymberly was pretty tired from work and took a nap and accidentally slept through Lost and Alias. Now she is some what fanatical about both shows especially Alias and this really rubbed her the wrong way. So I had an idea to put things back on the right track.
I did an Google search for "Bittorrent TV " for some sites that tracked folks trading TV shows. I found the episodes of Lost, Alias and The Office then I downloaded the Torrent files and booted up my favorite Mac OSX native Bittorrent client Bits On Wheels and started the torrent. Then I went to bed and let it run all night. The next morning I had three AVI files of the TV shows. This totaled to around 800 megs and they were pretty damn close to DVD quality. I then took them into iDVD on my iBook and toasted them on to a silver platter for my girlfriend. I could have just gave her the digital files but she would be much more down with watching her shows on the couch and not on a laptop. I was surprised at how long it took iDVD to re-encode the video files and that there was no way to do a more lossy compression in iDVD but it ended up worth it. I had three DVDs of the very same TV episodes that I failed to deliver earlier that week. Needless to say I hope that she was impressed and appreciate the effort. It only cost me a $1.50 for the blank DVD+Rs. I shop at Costco so I have a big ass spindle of blank discs.
Now the weird thing is that it was legal for me to record those shows off the cable but it was technically unauthorized reproduction when I downloaded those shows and burned them on DVD for her. I did not make any money off it and we will probably get those shows on DVD when they come out later this year or so. I mean I did have the right to tape them but due to a technical problem I could not view my copies. Did I have the right to download another copy of the same program? I am not going to do this on every show but in the cases when the recording does not go as planned I doubt that any TV star will go broke because I downloaded a show and toasted it to DVD.
I guess I hope that the TV networks would realize that the Internet could be a great opportunity to distribute their content and make more money off advertising. What if after a show was aired the TV networks would make an Internet version. This would be an MPEG 4 or Quicktime file but with the same commercials that aired on the broadcast version they could sell advertising to more high tech clients such as Internet and computer companies. I am sure that the nerd consumer could be targeted like this. Then they could distribute them via Bittorrent or over the web. They could either sell it on a per show basis or a subscription of say ten bucks a month for all their shows or they could just use the advertising revenue from the sponsors to pay for it.
This would not add to the production cost of the show and I doubt that it would cut into their DVD sales since a DVD version typically comes out almost a year after the initial broadcast. The thing is that Internet based distribution of TV shows is already happening regardless if the network executives like it or not. They could help themselves out by making Internet based TV distribution legit. The thing is that just by broadcasting the show they are giving the ability for pirates to make bootleg version and sell them in the street. At least this way they could make money off it and they could track the popularity of the show via it's on line distribution pattern. By having user register for a download they could track a shows popularity with a much greater accuracy than using some broadcast ratings survey box.
DRM restricted Windows Media files would suck for this because not every system can read WMV files. Streaming video would not work because no one has that kind of bandwidth to deliver and I am sure that they don't have enough servers to stream TV quality video to everyone who would want it. Also having a Internet version of a show could be a world wide opportunity. Wouldn't it be cool to watch an anime show just as it is broadcast in Japan or a US baseball fan who is now living across the globe could download a game of their favorite team off the net the very next day? Of course the problems is that the networks are not ready to take a look at a distribution system that is radically different from what they are used to. Porn videos has been distributed over the net for almost decade but no TV network is willing to take the chance and offering their own content over the net.
I think the next evolution of TV is not a better picture but the ability to watch what you want when you want. This is already happening right now and if the TV industry offered net based TV show distribution the could be on the cutting edge of digital media rather than letting the pirate Internet deliver the content on line that they wont. They could either have a slice of the pie or none of the pie but we are going to be eating our digital video TV shows over the net pie whether it is cooked by NAB members or not. I remember Larry Ellison give his made for TV infomercial speech in the early 90s about how Oracle servers were going to usher in a new era of on demand streaming TV but with Bittorrent those servers don't matter because we are all doing our part to share the digital wealth and bring the future to us all today.
Jake at April 24, 2005 
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Comments
We've used bit torrent to be able to watch Lost, Medium (time shifting in both cases when one or both of missed the shows.
I hear it comes in handy for watching fan-sub anime, and episodes of the new Dr. Who also.
Posted by: Anita Rowland at April 25, 2005 10:41 AM
How did you burn DivX files to play on a DVD player? Did you have to reformat to VCD? You should do a quick tutorial!
I have iDVD myself, is there an option that I've over looked? I haven't played with it too much yet.
Posted by: Shawn at April 25, 2005 6:46 PM
iDVD will re-encode the video clips to MPEG-2 it imports when it makes the DVD image to burn.
Posted by: Jake of 8bitjoystick.com at April 26, 2005 12:05 AM
For people who like to keep bang up to date with shows such as the The O.C. and South Park in the UK, BT/P2P is a godsend.
In fact, this is true of pretty much all US shows that I watch (ER, Scrubs, The Sopranos, Friends).
They can all be had online, some 2-6 months earlier that if we waited around for TV to air them in this country.
If things were sorted out so they were aired at the same time I wouldn't bother. These days, I only look at the US air dates for things, and I rarely watch TV at all. I just download exactly what I want to watch, when I want to watch it. 8MBit broadband is cool.
As for DRM, what a joke. DRM will throttle the legal download scene and to be honest, legal downloading is still too expensive anyway. Downloading must reduce the cost of production costs by about 80%, yet their isn't a 80% reduction in price - and there is still a reduction in quality ('inaudible' as it may be...). Those who are more tech-savvy don't rely on P2P for downloading anyway, usually looking more towards BT, FTP, Newsgroups and so-on. I'd like to see someone prosecuted for downloading of their ISP's NNTP server(!).
BTW I download the first episode of the US version of "the office", that is a truly terrible butchery of one of the best BBC comedies I've seen in years. They may as well hold a sign up above their heads every time they make a humourous remark saying "look, I'm telling a joke get ready to laugh!". Some things are definately best in Britain...
Oh yeah, if you want a program to quickly converet XVid/DivX to DVD format jake, check out WinAvi. You'll have to ditch your MAC for a while if you want to use it though i'm afraid!
Posted by: Rich at April 26, 2005 3:12 AM
What's the point of cable companies distributing shows with commercials if people are just going to bittorrent the ones with commercials cut out? Plus, they think they've got the solution with the broadcast flag, sending encrypted cable signals and forcing people to use hardware that allows the cable companies to control what people can do with those signals. Why step up to new technologies when you can just take those technologies away from people with the help of the government?
Posted by: Mr. Falcon at April 27, 2005 2:10 PM
The broadcast flag is pure evil. There is now way in hell that I will ever pay money for a crippled cable service. I would rather rent DVDs and join the EFF instead.
Posted by: Jake of 8bitjoystick.com at April 27, 2005 8:21 PM
