Shaw Cable Again Blocks Firewire On Canadian Set-Top Boxes 257
WestCoastSuccess writes with this excerpt: "A year and a half ago, Canada's Shaw Cable began encrypting channels with the '0x02' flag. This flag has the effect of making the IEEE1394 (Firewire) output useless to customers who use third-party PVRs (such as the excellent MythTV, for example). After complaints to the CRTC and Industry Canada about this practice, the encryption flag was dropped on most channels and the Firewire connection again functioned. Until last night, that is."
Re:I am Canadian, (Score:5, Insightful)
Write to the company and inform that you are droppng your cable subscription because you are completely unable to record your HD shows in HD quality, and that until they fix this issue you will be enjoying your HD on dvd and/or bluray.
And if they contact you trying to offer you a discount or something, stick to your guns. If they aren't willing to offer you the ability to record HD shows in HD quality, you aren't willing to subscribe to their service.
Give it a go. You'd be amazed at how quickly you stop worrying about what's on the TV anyway.
It's like quitting smoking. (Score:4, Insightful)
Give it a go. You'd be amazed at how quickly you stop worrying about what's on the TV anyway.
This. I gave up TV a while ago and I don't miss it at all. It'll be one of the most liberating things you'll do. After a while, you'll be wondering why you ever let that shit get into your brain for hours a day. Just like how a chain smoker quits and starts wondering to himself why he let himself breathe in a pack a day worth of smoke and carcinogens.
Every once in a while, I'll watch the Daily Show or 30 Rock, but I figure that's like having the occasional smoke or cigar with a drink.
People can go on and on with their righteous indignation over how they record their HDTV programming but when you walk away from it, you'll realize that getting your panties in a twist about a TV program is indicative of an addiction, not rationality.
Re:I am Canadian, (Score:2, Insightful)
You'd be amazed at how quickly you stop worrying about what's on the TV anyway.
I second that. How many people here just turn on the TV, as a habit? And just sort of watch TV, out of habit? I know I did, and would flip through channels complaining how there was nothing worthy on TV. (And yet I'd watch all the unworthy programs.) I don't remember what the trigger was (it wasn't a broken TV, it functioned fine) but I eventually stopped watching TV all together. Then I started getting mad that this ugly, ugly "tube" was destroying the overall aesthetics of my living room. I gave away the TV.
I still have a projector now, but no tuner. Don't need one, just a DVD player for movies. You'd be amazed at how much you DON'T miss with the TV. You can tend to get more unbiased news from the internet (or biased to an extreme, depending on your taste!), and, surprise surprise! You end up with a lot more time to do other things.
Anyhow, for those that have issues with the cable companies and/or TV programming in general, I strongly suggest you try kicking the habit all together. It's not as hard as it sounds, and has much fewer consequences than you may think. "Hey, did you see the episode of XXX last night?" "Nope, I don't have a TV. Don't want one either!" "Wha... wow! You mean, so you watch the shows on the internet? YouTube?" "No, I just don't watch. Most shows waste too much time anyhow." "Wow... Hmm, you have a point. I just turn on the TV out of habit... What did you do with your old TV?" The conversations are actually pretty amusing. And have a tendency to drift off towards more interesting topics than what an actor said on some show the night before.
Two Words. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's like quitting smoking. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, if you're anything like me, you substituted one addiction for another. Mine teh internets. It's like trading nicotine for cocaine.
Re:It's like quitting smoking. (Score:4, Insightful)
I gave up on TV when I realized that I was often feeling bad for missing shows I wanted to watch and how meaningless my attachment to them was. It makes no sense to be emotionally manipulated by worthless entertainment. It doesn't hurt that the networks only pump out dreck nowadays. Other than small dose of news and educational shows I occupy myself elsewhere.
Re:It's like quitting smoking. (Score:1, Insightful)
I have found that righteous indignation usually comes from those that don't watch TV and feel the need to tell everyone about it.
Re:It's like quitting smoking. (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly! I used to waste 6 hours a day watching television. Instead, I now waste 10 hours a day on the Internet, and it's done wonders for my life!
Re:It's like quitting smoking. (Score:3, Insightful)
Nah. You're but an AC, but I'll help you out anyway. If you had any sort of decent education, you'd know how to pick up the tone of a given written passage. Because you are failing to understand the blindingly obvious that even the most brain dead blithering idiot would have picked up is that parent post and this reply are examples of condescension.
Okay, now you have a chance to be righteously indignant.
See what I did there?
Re:Comcast in Mass played the same games (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait until the kids that grew up with broadband are old enough to approach venture capitalists, to lobby congress, to go to court. Then we'll see some change.
Probably not (although I hope I'm wrong.) We're being trained to accept this bullshit as the price we have to pay to receive our entertainment. Personally, I like to keep things in an open format so I can transcode them to, say, my G1 and watch them when I want to, wherever I want to. I guess I'm one of those people that hasn't been adequately monetized yet.
Re:I am Canadian, (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? History Channel and Discovery "interesting"? There was a time when they were 90% documentary/educational and 10% infotainment but these days, the reverse is true. Ghost hunters? Axe men? Deadliest Catch? UFO HUNTERS??? WTF is this shit?
I came back to the US this past December after several years in Africa. For a brief month, I had cable. In fact, it was the first thing I set up. Then I saw what was on and realized that not only had I not missed much, but I actually got a lot more out of not watching TV then I ever could watching it.
Just drop your cable. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's probably already been said before but just drop your cable all together. Anything you could want to watch is available online.
Just over a month and a half ago my tv broke. So I decided to just get rid of it rather than buy a new one. So I canceled my cable all together, and I just use my computer to watch whatever I want and it's bloody fantastic. You don't realize it till you don't have cable precisely how useless and overpriced it is. Most people have a set number of shows they want to watch and that's about it. Maybe some extra news, which you can just get off whatever news site you want. New episodes show up on bittorrent with a lot of seeders so it only takes an hour or so to get them, and you can watch them at your leisure. It's a lot like having a PVR except you pay a lot less.
It should also be noted that I watch a LOT less now. Since I don't have the outright waste of channel surfing just watching crap because there's nothing *good* on.
I also hooked up my 360 to my monitor and it works just as well as my tv. Maybe a little smaller but the quality is still there. Computer monitors and projectors are getting cheaper and cheaper, despite most ISP's efforts high speed internet is abundant, and cable's fast becoming an anachronism.
Re:I am Canadian, (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Obsolete? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's like quitting smoking. (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you ever actually watched the news on TV? Especially cable news?
It's just a morbid form of entertainment, 99% of the time you aren't getting anything useful out of it, and would do better getting your news elsewhere.
Re:It's like quitting smoking. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can someone explain this? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's like quitting smoking. (Score:3, Insightful)
Word.
Re:It's like quitting smoking. (Score:2, Insightful)
The downside is that the urge to tell people that you don't watch TV [theonion.com] becomes very, very strong. :)
They really want P2P to take over, yes? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a decade ago all over again, just with visual content this time instead of music.
Flashback: We get CDs that don't play (and copy) and radio broadcasts with DJs yabbering into the songs so you can't record them. Quickly, a thriving "market" in P2P sharing of music started, using the then-still-new medium internet. The, also still-new format MP3 made songs small enough to compress them into 3-5MB size, small enough that contemporary means of transport, even dialup, were fast enough to handle it in reasonable time. Users got their music without hassle and without troubles, it worked. You didn't have to deal with copy crippling that not only disabled copying but more often than not also playback, you didn't have to deal with half-assed quality, you didn't have to stay glued to the radio 24/7 to catch your tune and endure hours of inane chatter and mindless ads. It was sleek, easy, quick and people started to see it and like it, like it far better than trying to catch the song off the radio or trying to figure out how to play back the CD despite all efforts of its maker.
Fast forward to now. TV networks do their damndest to make recording of shows impossible, they want to sell you their own recorders which almost invariably suck and which don't offer the functionality you want. People start looking around and notice that TV shows consisting of half an hour entertainment are available as torrents, consist of roughly 100-150MB, small enough to be transfered by contemporary connections in reasonable times, aren't cluttered with ads every 5 minutes, aren't prone to random hicckups in the TVs bandwidth-minimizing artefact-creating compression schemes and can be played back on every box you plan to hook up to your TV set, including but not limited to any arbitrary computer able to play back the show...
While P2P has taken over the music market that is now slowly being reconquered by services like iTunes and the like, now that music makers noticed that they cannot simply force people into buying their crap by restricting it as they wish and the consumedrones should be happy they are allowed to buy anything, it's not the case with video content yet. Yes, of course the swapping and exchange of videos on P2P happens, but to a far, far lesser degree than with music. The average half-hour show consumer still watches his show on TV and buys the collection DVD once it gets available, he doesn't P2P it. Not yet at least.
It's been said here already, why have a TV? Now, of course this is /. and the average person here is anything but the average TV consumer, but is it so far fetched to assume that, if this trend continues and the restrictive nature of content crippling takes roots, that the average consumer will do what he did when it came to music in the late 90s, that he starts looking around and shopping for alternatives? Alternatives that give him the content he wants in an easy to use, transport- and transferable form that suits his needs?
We'd not have iPods today if it wasn't for the success of P2P and MP3 in the late 90s. We'd probably have some other players, maybe players that would only play some proprietary format because MP3 wouldn't have become so popular if it wasn't for the widespread use of P2P in its early days.
So maybe this is a good thing. More people annoyed means more people looking for alternatives. That in turn means that some de-facto standard will be established, probably long before any company starts trying to push into the market with their own product and a locked up format to accompany it.
Re:It's like quitting smoking. (Score:1, Insightful)
yeah but 5 of these are on the job so I ahve a net gain !
Re:It's like quitting smoking. (Score:1, Insightful)
I believe the statement necessary here is "to each his own". And for your initial argument of having the TV on while doing other things... one can do that JUST as easily with either the DVD series of a show, or by downloading or streaming the show online. And it saves a ton of money.
Alternatively, since you just have the tv 'on', one can do the same with the radio, only completely for free. Or a CD. Or an mp3 player. Or again... streaming audio media.
Nnnnope, I count myself in the 'To hell with TV' pile of people... over 2 years running. Of the maybe 3 or so shows I want to watch... that's what the good old internet is for. No ads, and I watch when I want, how I want, without the need to buy/build a PVR.