[mythtv-users] Comcast to drop analog cable

[Mark Knecht]

On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 4:12 PM, Michael T. Dean
<mtdean at thirdcontact.com> wrote:
> On 06/16/2008 05:56 PM, Mark Knecht wrote:
>> I'd love to be able to access anything shown on
>> anyone's TV anywhere in the world by just accessing a Global TV menu
>> in MythTV and getting a copy delivered sometime the next day.
>> Unfortunately we, as a group, are not a company and copyright stuff
>> really says we cannot do this, but I think companies that are
>> interested will appear that offer services like this. For $10/month I
>> could legally get copies of every newscast shown on every TV station
>> around the world from some business source like NetFlix but oriented
>> toward current affairs not movies.
>
> Though in truth, you may never be able to do this--just like someone
> living in central Florida can't get WCBS TV ("the flagship station of
> the CBS television network, located in New York City") without express
> written approval from WKMG (the Daytona-Orlando market area CBS
> affiliate).  The FCC prevents this to protect WKMG's investment (but yet
> my local stations can decide to preempt network programming to put on
> "Florida on Fire 2008" or some other ...).
>
> Even though the satellite companies are broadcasting nearly all local
> channels (and are required to eventually broadcast them all, if they
> choose to broadcast any) to nearly everyone in the US, you can only get
> your local channels from them (because getting a waiver signed by your
> local affiliate is basically impossible).
>
> Granted, you can probably go to the WCBS website and watch some of their
> content over the Internet, but as soon as someone tries making a
> business out of providing "out-of-market-area" content to consumers, I'm
> sure big government will step in and laws will be adjusted before too
> long...
>
> Mike

Mike,
   I completely understand the issues and I understand that it will
likely never happen. However if a company designed to provide
non-local programming content over the net paid money to the license
holders of the media they were delivering then they've most likely
complied with what they need to do. I suspect that we'll see more and
more of this done legally over time, but only time will tell.

   Personally I'm more just hypothesizing what it would be like if you
could get recordings I've made and I could get some from you,
invisibly, quietly, without any intervention on our parts. There isn't
any technical reason when you want to record a football game that it
has to come from a station in your area. I've got a free tuner so I
record it and you get it without my even knowing. Why do I care? What
stops us, beyond the legality of all this recording and time shifting,
is that it's really just leftovers from a time when all we had was
OTA, then local cable. Why stay local? If my BitTorrent says I have
The Daily Show and you want a copy, then take a copy. Why should I
care.

NOTE: Specifically BT is not really a good example because unless I
seed the network part of the program recorded here won't match with
part of the program recorded elsewhere. The idea is truly more
conceptual than that. I just used BT as a filler name.

   Again, I completely understand the legal issues involved, but I
also figure those will be solved by interested start-ups...

Cheers,
Mark