U.S. Lets Hollywood Disable Home TV Outputs to Prevent Piracy | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Lets Hollywood Disable Home TV Outputs to Prevent Piracy

bloomberg.com

30 pointsjackfoxy25 comments

> “This action is an important victory for consumers who will now have far greater access to see recent high-definition movies in their homes,” Bob Pisano, president and interim chief executive officer of the MPAA, said today in a statement.

groan

The chocolate ration has been raised to 25 grams per week.

What does this actually mean on a technical level? How can anyone disable features on my TV?

Or does it just mean that at some point in the future I'll be able to buy a TV which is capable of streaming movies at the cost of having its video outputs disabled for the duration? If that's the case I can hardly see myself getting too worked up about it.

TVs have been capable of streaming movies since they were invented. The proposal is to retain that feature and add a defect, not to add a new feature.

Stories like this are why the term "anti-feature" was invented. Here, we see a useful feature being removed from consumers for no technical reason-- what else can you call that other than anti-feature?

It means pretty much exactly what you say, only its the set top box that's doing the streaming, and the video outputs are only disabled for movies that are still in theaters.

I also find it hard to get overly worked up about it - it seems like a reasonable inconvenience to put up with for the ability to watch newly released features at home.

Digital usually looks better anyway.

I expect you won't be able to watch "newly released features" at home in the near term (up to 5 years from now), even when Tee Vees with the anti-feature are the norm. You'll just get the new inconvenience, and probably on old crap you wouldn't have recorded anyway.

In this case, Cory Doctorow and the other freedom paranoids are correct.

I feel like there will be people who can't watch a movie they pay for because of this but even if the studios manage to execute this perfectly I'm worried about the precedent that this sets. How long will it be before they are pushing for the same restrictions on sports programs and cable tv shows?

How long will it be before they are pushing for the same restrictions on sports programs and cable tv shows?

I think the FCC specifically said that they won't allow this.

This week I finished reading George Garrett's novel _The King of Babylon Shall Not Come Against You_. Requested by his girlfriend to tell her what Hollywood is like, a sometime screenwriter tells this joke:

Two movie producers are lost in the desert, dehydrated and in imminent danger of death. Suddenly they come upon a pure, bubbling spring of water. Thank God! says the first. Wait a minute, says the second, just let me piss in it first.

I expect a surge in piracy as a result.

I'm not particularly interested in practicing piracy, but I am interested in retaining control including access guaranteed under current fair use statutes.

So... are the any recommendations for the best current tuner cards and devices (e.g. housed with a USB connection) that don't have the restrictive control built in or enabled?

I'm not too familiar with the field and so don't know, in light of current content distribution channels, what exactly I'm asking for. But I have the sense I should go out and buy something, before I can't.

SOC really only applies to cable boxes, which are already full of DRM anyway. I don't think this decision should cause anyone to buy anything different.

Yeah, I'm not really understanding the anger over this just yet.

What is an "output" on a TV? You mean like an HDMI passthrough?

So we're getting mad that we can't attach a second monitor to a monitor display a first-run Hollywood film?

This has nothing to do with TVs; most TVs don't even have outputs. SOC disables the analog outputs on cable boxes. If your TV is attached to one of those disabled ports, you won't be able to use your cable box to rent movies that aren't out on DVD yet.

Okay, so when I read a headline like this (consumerist.com)

MPAA Asks FCC For Control Of Your TV's Analog Outputs

That means nothing. Can we get the terminology correct before we begin?

Ha, by the time the movie hits theaters it is almost always leaked onto net sites.

This won't do much, and I keep wondering why they spend so much money trying to protect their movies rather than trying to make them cheaper to produce, something which they do have control over.

"Cheaper to produce" would mean that there's less leeway in the process. That directly equates to fewer ways to game the system to get free money from the process of making, marketing and distributing movies.

Type "byzantine accounting" into Google and see what comes up.

Is it just me, or does this sound like an article from The Onion?

So if I downloaded a movie illegally and am watching it on my TV, they can disable my TV? How will they remotely know it's been downloaded illegally?

No, SOC is about preventing people from recording movies; they're trying to stop piracy at the source. If you manage to download a pirated copy they won't stop you.

dup: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1329226

Yes, but the other way around.

Unfortunately the other one got a bunch of comments and wound up dead, while this one is still alive with only a thread about how the other one is dead.

Would be nice to merge them. Or even leave a comment in the other thread to come over and post here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com