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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

The Future of Red One

Mike 'Fireman' Ross said:
This business has always been Luddite on new tech, especially when it comes to distribution...

"I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone." - Jack Valenti, evidence to Congress, 1982.

They couldn't legislate it away, they couldn't litigate it away. So, kicking and screaming, they learned to live with it and make money from it. We have to do the same.

Mike
Click to expand...

VHS was a new source of revenue, piracy is NOT. You can sell product placement, for a few cents on the dollar over what DVD and ticket sales were pre-piracy. I'm sorry Mike, but have you ever worked in film finance or distribution? I have, and do.
 
Mike 'Fireman' Ross said:
For broadcast I believe there are consumer-level cards and boxes - Hauppauge springs to mind as a name - which have offered that functionality for years. And things like ReplayTV - the box was open enough that 3rd party software was developed to give a lot of additional functionality.

For cable... well that's a pet peeve of mind. Companies like Scientific Atlanta have that sewn up as a monopoly pretty much, with overpriced, limited, mediocre hardware. I'm pretty sure (and I know people in the STB development business) that it won't be long before we see independent Linux-based open-source cable STBs which accept and honor SA access cards (no theft of programming!) but have much more functionality and friendlier user interfaces. There's no law that says you HAVE to rent your box from the cable company, and that's a market ripe for cracking. Who knows, maybe the availability of such boxes, and the extra functionality that will be available once people start to hack on them, will breath some new life into the rather moribund and depressed cable business.

Mike
Click to expand...

Actually there is a law, and the cable company can shut you down as you would be violating the contract between them and their suppliers of content. The reason is that any device that can skip ads will remove the revenue model from TV programming. Somebody has to PAY for content. It would be a sad day indeed when films would be made only hobbiests - and I say this because almost no hobbiest feature length films are any good - I can think of basically none.
 
Speaking of cable, wasn't the original selling point that if you paid for programming, you wouldn't have to watch advertising?
 
Elsie N said:
Speaking of cable, wasn't the original selling point that if you paid for programming, you wouldn't have to watch advertising?
Click to expand...

Absolutely - great point. Us old guys remember! It was a classic bait-and-switch.
 
Rob Ruffo said:
VHS was a new source of revenue, piracy is NOT. You can sell product placement, for a few cents on the dollar over what DVD and ticket sales were pre-piracy. I'm sorry Mike, but have you ever worked in film finance or distribution? I have, and do.
Click to expand...

Rob, of course VHS was a new source of revenue. My point is that the industry, by and large, did NOT see that at the time. The Luddites ruled, they wanted the status quo at any cost, so they kicked and screamed. In congress they screamed that it would kill it the industry and should be made illegal. In court they screamed that it already was illegal, it was piracy, and should be banned for contributing to copyright infringement.

They lost, in both venues. *Then*, perforce, they figured out how to make it a source of revenue.

A few years later they figured out that people were using VCRs and, later still, boxes like ReplayTV to fast-forward and skip commercials. You actually had Jamie Kellner standing up and saying, straight faced and serious, "skipping commercials is theft" - like, you legally have to watch the commercials.

With people like that saying things like that, it's hard to get taken seriously. Anytime *anything* new comes along in the distribution channel that isn't invented here, people scream that it needs to be made illegal, and at the same time say it already is illegal and the courts should ban it. But the genie *always* gets out of the bottle and can't be put back in. If you doubt that, try putting together a business plan to open a record store... do you remember when the music industry tried to get *MP3 players* banned by the courts??We have to figure out, as always, how to monetize it, how to shift our business model to take account of new technology. Anything else is Canute thinking.

Oh and there are a couple of great points down below about paying for programming, bait & switch, and cable; If you saw my cable bill before we gave the cable company the order of the boot, you would know we were damn well paying! My family simply doesn't watch TV any more, period - it's all Youtube, Vimeo, Netflix, and iTunes - the usual suspects. A lot more families will be going that way, I predict.

Mike
 
Rob Ruffo said:
Actually there is a law, and the cable company can shut you down as you would be violating the contract between them and their suppliers of content. The reason is that any device that can skip ads will remove the revenue model from TV programming. Somebody has to PAY for content. It would be a sad day indeed when films would be made only hobbiests - and I say this because almost no hobbiest feature length films are any good - I can think of basically none.
Click to expand...
Bob, in the US you can still buy a cable ready tv that does not require a box... is that illegal in Canada?
also, several manufacturers sell dvd burners that will process the the throughput of a cable signal and record dvd-rs for you...not to mention dvrs..
are these also illegal and unavailable where you live?
 
the funniest thing about piracy is the pirates monetize it more then the actual content creators. try going to projectfreetv or zmovie or one of the hundreds of piracy sites, they have millions of pop ups to negotiate through until you can watch a pretty bad bootleg...

the quality of the bootlegs is often quite lacking, which i think helps keep people paying netflix, itunes, cable, etc and the silver screen...


as for skipping comercials, my friend does it with his Tivo constantly, until he stopped paying for it and started using pirate distribution. me personally, i like netflix since at least its not so overly compressed, and the audio doesn't sound like a handycam recorded it second hand. ps btw the bootlegs....have no commercials....
 
I know I will get ripped a new one for saying this....but piracy, in my opinion, had to somewhat help all the paid sites and DVD's sales. When Napster first came out, I remember my friends and I downloading stuff and eventually buying the real deal from the stores because we wanted quality. At least it gave me the first understanding of what online downloading was all about. I quickly moved to iTunes and forever stayed there.

...and I wonder why I am poor...all those 99 cent downloads add up...Freaky frak!
 
We have been so brainwashed for so long. Remember when you HAD to buy and album of 15 crappy songs you didn't want for the one or two good songs? And there is no tears for Cable monopolies that just act as a middleman. Of those 100+ channels you HAVE TO buy as a package do you actually watch? Why should a cable company or a network receive revenue from the masses, who don't watch or want to watch their programming? At least now we have mostly erased the record company model, and predominately purchase only the single songs we actually want. The need for RECORD labels to distribute and promote music will phase out. The itunes/social media will level the playing field. The same will happen to TV and movies.
 
Cheers to you, Maxi, if you purchase the single. Most people steal them, apparently, which is probably why so few acts will ever get to come up and replace classic acts like U2, etc. I've never been a fan of the record labels, but it sure feels like the ones who really suffer are always the artists.

I say this, having just had an assistant work for me whose bf is part of a signed act on a major label. His bandmates live at home with mom and dad, despite some chart activity and touring with big acts, and being in tv commercials directed by a famous director who likes to call famous actresses "c-nts" on YouTube, slumming for liquor pay (no names, of course, must protect the guilty).
 
Maxi Claudio said:
We have been so brainwashed for so long. Remember when you HAD to buy and album of 15 crappy songs you didn't want for the one or two good songs? And there is no tears for Cable monopolies that just act as a middleman. Of those 100+ channels you HAVE TO buy as a package do you actually watch? Why should a cable company or a network receive revenue from the masses, who don't watch or want to watch their programming? At least now we have mostly erased the record company model, and predominately purchase only the single songs we actually want. The need for RECORD labels to distribute and promote music will phase out. The itunes/social media will level the playing field. The same will happen to TV and movies.
Click to expand...

Maxi you have been brainwashed by those who profit from piracy, such as Google and Pirate Bay, who have huge PR budgets. You can't make a good movie in your garage - it is impossible. Besides, artists would rather just focus on their art, not spend all their time selling T-shirts and signing up "friends" on Facebook - record labels would let them just do their thing, and take care of the rest.

Sure, they took a big cut, but artists used to make a lot more. I'd rather have 10% of $100 than 100% of $1
 
Mike 'Fireman' Ross said:
Rob, of course VHS was a new source of revenue. My point is that the industry, by and large, did NOT see that at the time. The Luddites ruled, they wanted the status quo at any cost, so they kicked and screamed. In congress they screamed that it would kill it the industry and should be made illegal. In court they screamed that it already was illegal, it was piracy, and should be banned for contributing to copyright infringement.

They lost, in both venues. *Then*, perforce, they figured out how to make it a source of revenue.

A few years later they figured out that people were using VCRs and, later still, boxes like ReplayTV to fast-forward and skip commercials. You actually had Jamie Kellner standing up and saying, straight faced and serious, "skipping commercials is theft" - like, you legally have to watch the commercials.

With people like that saying things like that, it's hard to get taken seriously. Anytime *anything* new comes along in the distribution channel that isn't invented here, people scream that it needs to be made illegal, and at the same time say it already is illegal and the courts should ban it. But the genie *always* gets out of the bottle and can't be put back in. If you doubt that, try putting together a business plan to open a record store... do you remember when the music industry tried to get *MP3 players* banned by the courts??We have to figure out, as always, how to monetize it, how to shift our business model to take account of new technology. Anything else is Canute thinking.

Oh and there are a couple of great points down below about paying for programming, bait & switch, and cable; If you saw my cable bill before we gave the cable company the order of the boot, you would know we were damn well paying! My family simply doesn't watch TV any more, period - it's all Youtube, Vimeo, Netflix, and iTunes - the usual suspects. A lot more families will be going that way, I predict.

Mike
Click to expand...

Itunes is great - and Hollywood is delighted by that revenue stream. Netflix is unsustainable - $7 a month to watch all movies any time is just not enough to cover budgets. In the next few years original contracts will end and you will see Netflix slowly disappear. But none of what you say takes away the fact that piracy is not a revenue stream, and can't be except for a few stray cents of product placement, and that you cannot allow peopel to skip through ads while not paying for shows on iTunes or via Netflix, or something liek that, as it means people are watching your very expensive shows essentially for free - and no "innovative new business models" actually work when revenue = $0.
 
Christopher Mills said:
Bob, in the US you can still buy a cable ready tv that does not require a box... is that illegal in Canada?
also, several manufacturers sell dvd burners that will process the the throughput of a cable signal and record dvd-rs for you...not to mention dvrs..
are these also illegal and unavailable where you live?
Click to expand...

DVRs yes, but that's SD and clunky. You cannot legally sell any device that skips through commercials (fats forward yes, but not skip) be it TV, box or other without the express consent of content providers. That is true in all industrialized nations.
 
CocoBermudez said:
I know I will get ripped a new one for saying this....but piracy, in my opinion, had to somewhat help all the paid sites and DVD's sales. When Napster first came out, I remember my friends and I downloading stuff and eventually buying the real deal from the stores because we wanted quality. At least it gave me the first understanding of what online downloading was all about. I quickly moved to iTunes and forever stayed there.

...and I wonder why I am poor...all those 99 cent downloads add up...Freaky frak!
Click to expand...

The realities very omnipresent to all of us who sell content show you to simply be completely wrong in your assumptions. The music business lost 60% of its total revenue, and home video 45% and counting. hurt most were indy films. Many indy distributors counted on home video, and went out of business. Now you need rich parents to fund an indy film. 10 year sago a good one would stand a good chance to at least break even. Paid downloads have contributed almost nothing to offset the decline. iTunes does not generate much revenue in their video dep., and nor do Netflix, PS3 etc. Its' really tiny.

I commend you on paying those 99c At least you are honest.

If someone stopped piracy, all the arts would instantly boom, and all our salaries here would go up many fold overnight.
 
Rob Ruffo said:
DVRs yes, but that's SD and clunky. You cannot legally sell any device that skips through commercials (fats forward yes, but not skip) be it TV, box or other without the express consent of content providers. That is true in all industrialized nations.
Click to expand...

I'm calling BS on that. The only place it came close to being tested was here in the USA, with ReplayTV. The networks sued for copyright infringement due to the auto-skipping of commercials which the ReplayTV software made possible. Think about that for a moment; how exactly do you infringe copyright by allowing viewers to NOT watch commercials which the *networks who sued didn't even own the copyright of!*??!!

That one should be right up there with the 'Boston Strangler VCR' and 'skipping commercials is theft' quotes as the kind of thing that really damage our industry in the eyes of the public. I mean you can see how people can't listen to that kind of stuff and keep a straight face...

Anyway, the case was never decided; the owners of ReplayTV went into bankruptcy protection for reasons unrelated to the lawsuit, and the case was settled.

So, what laws in which industrialized nations make it illegal to 'sell a device' which skips commercials, in your opinion? And what's a 'device'? What if it's a 3rd-party software feature for a DVR or cable box? What if it's an open-source project that's given away rather than sold? (as all the hacks which added functionality to ReplayTV were)

Mike
 
Back in the day artists would create an album, not ten songs.
An album had unity, each song positioned right to make you feel something from one to another.
Harvest, American Stars and Bars and Everybody Knows this is Nowhere from God, Neil Young, Our Mother the Mountain from the Holy Spirit, Townes Van Zandt, just to name a few.
 
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