![[Bank teller]](/public/2007/06/mh.jpg)
0001 © thebluedino / CC
In an otherwise predictable Slashdot discussion of the only companies that manage to suck more than Microsoft in providing services that people want, I found this gem:
With the recent improvements to graphics cards, computers have now got enough power for the next level of PVR to become possible. I refer of course to Personal Video Rendering, ie locally generated real-time TV. Even modest AI can handle the retarded talk shows and formulaic sycophantic interviews.
Just imagine: you can watch computer generated random pointless drivel such as ‘my boyfriend left me for a transexual limbo dancer and now i am marrying his mother’ with 5.1 surround whooping and hollering from the audience for as long as you like (with artificial repetitive and annoying ‘advertisement’ breaks, of course), then decide to watch a blu-ray hd film. The software would automatically flip to rendering 20 minutes of a sports game, followed by 30 minutes of tedious analysis by virtual sports presenters before showing the film. Artificially intelligent filtering would then cut many of the scenes and redub profane dialog no matter what time it was being watched. Monitoring daemons would flag the kind of shows that you like to watch and then ‘cancel’ them.
In related news, I canceled our DirecTV subscription last week, as planned. Wake me up when I can watch quality content, on my terms, for a reasonable price. Or when I can buy one of those Personal Video Renderers. They sound cool.
I’m pretty happy with the UK’s Freeview http://www.freeview.co.uk (via aerial!) combined with a reasonable dvr http://www.topfield.co.kr. I wish they offered Scifi channel tho. And I haven’t yet figgered out how to watch stuff from computer on tv, possibly after transferring to dvr. But you’ve got to love the free in Freeview.
Comment by Anonymous — Sunday, June 10, 2007 @ 3:28 am
+ 1 to the Freeview comment. Enough channels for me to get bored flicking through them all and it all pipes into my laptop through a little USB plug (albeit which is plugged into an aerial socket in the wall). So you can’t get the major film channels or the premiership and league football matches, but for film it turns out, they’ve invented this on-demand service called DVD where you can watch them over and over again at your own liberty in high quality and for football it turns out they’ve invented this thing called the pub, which not only shows it on big tvs for free, you can also buy beer from them!
Comment by Mark — Sunday, June 10, 2007 @ 4:47 pm
Mark Sparticus, enjoy that “on-demand service” while you can.
Comment by Phil Wilson — Sunday, June 10, 2007 @ 6:19 pm
I hear LinuxMCE is decent. Check it out:
http://www.linuxmce.com
Comment by Anonymous — Sunday, June 10, 2007 @ 8:21 pm
“Quality content”, “reasonable price”, “on my terms”. Pick
twoone.I’m still waiting for the iTunes Store to support 720p with no DRM at their existing prices. Then I’ll buy.
Comment by Tyler — Sunday, June 10, 2007 @ 8:53 pm
The phone company brought dsl to the small town where I live (pop. 1000) a few years ago.
Financially, I had a choice: satellite or dsl.
dsl won.
I haven’t even hooked up rabbits’ ears since.
It’s more fun to go down to the local pub and get the info on popular culture from actual humans.
I do dream of the day when I can go get the “content” I really want, say coverage of the World Rally Championship or Formula 1, for a reasonable price, at whatever time I choose to watch. Sigh
cp
Comment by cp — Sunday, June 10, 2007 @ 11:11 pm