Tivo has been running into some problems lately which in addition to making many people clutch their remotes with fear has made Tivo a sparkling acquisition target. So who would want to buy Tivo? Apple. The possibilities of what could happen if Apple buys Tivo makes us so excited that we can’t think straight. Thankfully, the people over at PVRBlog have a more sober analysis of all the possibilities:

A TiVo acquisition would also provide a place for iTunes in the living room. Apple’s AirPort Express proves Apples interest in moving out of the office and into the living rooom. There’s even a way to control an AirPort Express from the TiVo using HME.

The TiVo could also tie into Apple’s iLife suite. TiVo already plays well with iPhoto and iTunes, why not add iMovie and iDVD integration as well? My sister could make an iMovie of my nephew and send it to my TiVo between my 10 hours of Law & Order a day, then I could burn it using iDVD. Heck, why not let me show my Keynote slideshow using my TiVo?

Just in case you did not think that Google is the coolest shit on the planet, Google does itself one better:

Just in time for the Oscars, we’ve created a new “movie:” operator that enables you to find movie-related information faster and more easily, whether you’re looking for titles or actors, director or genre, famous lines or obscure plot details.

Yes, this is all info that you can get from IMDB but Google goes even a step further.

Looking for a multiplex near you? Use “movie:” followed by a U.S. zip code or city/state to find theaters and showtimes in your area (a search for [movie: Mountain View, CA], for example, will show you what’s playing near the Googleplex).

Of course all the search results also automatically link you to IMDB info, reviews and online ticket purchasing.

Warner Brothers has opened a brave new front in the war against piracy in China:

Basic DVDs, to be available shortly after a film’s theatrical release, will sell in China for as little as 22 yuan ($2.65), the company said. That’s still more than the pirated versions readily available in China for 8 yuan ($1).

Warner’s basic versions will not carry any DVD extras such as directors’ interviews and behind-the-scenes footage, the company said. But versions with more features will be available a bit later for 28 yuan ($3.38).

According to the industry, theft in China of copyrights and patents cost Western companies an estimated $16 billion in lost sales each year. Despite sporadic arrests, counterfeit books, DVDs and music are easily available on almost every city street and even in shops.

We’d like to meet the brilliant person who made this decision. We will eagerly await to see the results. WB is doing a lot of expansion into China and may reap some huge rewards.

“You crossed the line,” Judge Harry Edwards told a FCC lawyer during arguments before a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.

“Selling televisions is not what the FCC is in the business of.”

Tears almost came to our eyes. We have always been amused by people claiming that TVs, VCRs and other electronic devices should be able to tell us when we can or cannot watch a certain show. As loyal BBB readers know, any “broadcast flag” would be immediately bypassed by a 12 year-old in Finland and negate the argument put forward by the quivering TV execs.

TV is dead. Get over it.

Now that awards season is here we have to remember that there are many ways to be recognized and sometimes being recognized for being bad is almost as fun as getting some obscure film fest award.

Haven’t you always wondered which TV shows contained necrophilia, “gratuitous sexual innuendo,” or “gratuitous teen sex”? Thankfully the Parents Television Council has provided a weekly updated list of clips called “Worst of the Week.” They helpfully provide us with a warning that the clips contain graphic content. The worst thing possible is to give these horrible shows even more exposure. That warning definitely kept us from watching them and we’re sure it’ll keep you away as well.

Don’t you just love the Internet?

Don’t you hate it when you give your phone number to someone at a club, and then some time later her hardware gets hacked and your number gets broadcast all over the world for anyone at all to see? And then you start getting crank calls from these morons who don’t even know you, and your only option is to change your number so they quit calling you?

We hate that too.

Over a month ago BBB reported about Hilton’s Sidekick II being hacked. We don’t understand why it is only now becoming a big story but we suspect that it has something to do with the girl-on-girl topless action photos.

Celebrity cell hackings would cause one to think that people would become more aware of their wireless security. Alas, we all know that you did nothing. Nothing other than murmur “this won’t happen to me” while drooling over Hilton’s topless photos.

Dave Nardoni at First Response Consulting provided a handy summary of one of the primary ways your cellphone can get hacked:

If you heard about Paris Hilton or Vin Diesel cell phone getting hack this weekend, they are not alone as it can happen to anyone.

The Hack-
Hackers are using website such as https://www.covertcall.com (5 free tries) and others to call a victims cell phone using the victims “caller id”.  This is done via the website, the hacker will enter their cell number and the victim’s cell and called id number.  The cell/pcs provider (Sprint/Nextel/T-mobile) will see the caller id and things [sic] it is the victim calling from his own cell phone.  The cell provider then sends the hacker’s call into the victim’s voicemail.  Now the hacker can listen to voicemail, get group address books, and change passwords*

How to Prevent-
To prevent this hack, you need to make sure your voicemail is set-up to ask for a password when you dial from you cell phone.  This feature is usually called “Skip-Passcode”.

Make sure you have a password setup to access your voicemail.

Are you confused by all those weird text conversations your children have on the interweb? Not to worry, Microsoft has written a helpful little guide to explain it all to you in exhaustingly hilarious detail:

While it’s important to respect your children’s privacy, understanding what your teenager’s online slang means and how to decipher it is important as you help guide their online experience. While it has many nicknames, information-age slang is commonly referred to as leetspeek, or leet for short. Leet (a vernacular form of “elite") is a specific type of computer slang where a user replaces regular letters with other keyboard characters to form words phonetically—creating the digital equivalent of pig Latin with a twist of hieroglyphics.

It is only later in this tutorial that we see the true ulterior motive behind this lesson. Microsoft isn’t trying to make the world all warm and fuzzy by teaching L4/\/\3RZ how to read “leetspeak” at all:

Leet words possibly indicating illegal activity:

• “warez” or “w4r3z”: Illegally copied software available for download.

• “h4x”: Read as “hacks,” or what a computer hacker does.

• “sploitz” (short for exploits): Vulnerabilities in computer software used by hackers.

Its all a plot to teach your parents how to report you to the nearest Microsoft attack squad. Sorry kids, maybe now you will actually have to learn another REAL language. If you’re lucky your parents are American and only speak one language anyways…

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Here at the BBB offices we regularly download TV shows from other countries that are not available anywhere in the USA. Turns out that some bright Brits have figured out how to do the same thing. Only this time they are doing it to get American TV shows long before they ever get released on the other side of the pond:

According to Envisional, Britain accounts for about one-fifth of TV downloads through file-sharing networks such as BitTorrent and eDonkey, more than any other country, followed by Australia and the United States.

“Because there’s such a demand for U.S. TV, the UK is going to be the main downloader,” said Envisional research consultant David Price.

Popular U.S. television shows such as “The West Wing,” “The Sopranos” and “Friends” usually air in Britain months after they are broadcast stateside. For impatient fans, the Internet offers bootleg, advertisement-free programs that can be downloaded in a few hours over a high-speed connection.

Distribution is obsessed with restricting viewing to certain territories over windows of time but now any release is essentially a global release with the internet. Goodbye region coding…

It’s not very often when you see a corporate PR flunky who knows more about technology than a tech journalist. But that’s exactly what happened over at Reuters. They published an article about how users had defeated the Digital Rights Management on Napster’s new service within “days” of its launch.

What the Reuters reporter didn’t realize is that the same technique has existed for decades and is not specific to any service. It’s called “the analog hole” and is ultimately the biggest problem in copyright protection (as Valenti always lamented). The PR flunky pointed this out when quoted in the article:

“The DRM (digital rights management) is intact. Basically, people are just recording off a sound card. This is nothing new and people could do this with any legitimate service if they want to use a sound card,” she said.

While most people rail against piracy because of copyright infringement the real danger lurks elsewhere. Soon the need for all sorts of distribution will be completely eliminated as evidenced by this grammy anecdote:

Jazz composer Maria Schneider took home a Grammy on Sunday for her album “Concert in the Garden,” without selling a single copy in a record store.

Schneider, 44, financed her Grammy-winning album through a Internet-based music delivery service called ArtistShare that opens the financing of production to dedicated fans…

“This record cost $87,000 to make. I already made my money back,” she said. “I’m not splitting the profits with the distributor, the record store and the record company. It’s working so well for me.”

One of our tipsters sent in the single most frightening thing we have ever seen online: https://www.yub.com/

Yub is an online mall and social network that connects people with similar tastes.

Earn 1% on everything you buy. Earn 1% on everything in your profile that friends buy.
You Meet. You Hang. You Shop. We Send the Check. [TM]

Want to have a little fun? Check out what used to be the site of one of the most popular movie downloading sites.

There are websites that provide legal downloads. This is not one of them.

This website has been permanently shut down by court order because it facilitates the illegal downloading of copyrighted motion pictures. The illegal downloading of motion pictures robs thousands of honest, hard-working people of their livelihood, and stifles creativity. Illegally downloading movies from sites such as these without proper authorization violates the law, is theft, and is not anonymous. Stealing movies leaves a trail. The only way not to get caught is to stop.

Over the last five years there has been a war going on right in the air around us that you may not have noticed. While companies like Clear Channel have been quietly consolidating power in the radio spectrum all across the country, low-power FM stations, musicians and pirates of all kinds have been fighting for their right to broadcast at the FCC.

The new terminology for these low-power, local radio stations is called “Localism.” The FCC has setup a task force where you can read some of the dry descriptions of the battle.

Many of our friends over at the FMC (the Future of Music Coalition) have been filing interesting briefs on behalf of those voices that are lost in the monopolization of the public airwaves.

On January 3, FMC, AFTRA, AFM, the Recording Academy and the Recording Artists’ Coalition filed joint reply comments at the FCC on localism in broadcasting.  In this filing, the musicians’ groups focused on three areas in which the Commission sought input, and which broadcasters and citizens filed comments:

• Local musicians’ concerns about local programming and access to radio;
• The existence and impact of “pay for play” business practices; and
• The domination of centralized programming masquerading as local programming through such developments as voice-tracking.

Our filing included excerpts of comments filed by citizens, broadcasters, on-air talent and musicians, many of which articulated the problems of localism and access to local radio on a very personal and concrete level.

In addition to these points, the recording artist groups repeated at the outset - media ownership matters.  It is simply impossible to discuss how to promote localism without consideration of the consolidated ownership patterns emerging throughout this country.

Now that Chairman Powell is stepping down the whole future of broadcasting is up in the air again (no pun intended).

Sometime an idea so horribly bad comes along that you wonder how even a committee of incompetent bureaucrats could come up with it (and I’m not referring to the name change of the Angels baseball team).

Without much further ado let us introduce ”Parent Scan.” This nifty application will seek out every single file trading service, music and movie file on the computer it is installed on. It was designed as the 21st century way for parents to “search Billy’s room for pot and/or porn.” I can understand that many parents might feel daunted by the task of having to search a child’s computer for illegal activity but there is one glaring problem with this rent-a-cop provided by our friends at the MPAA: it cannot distinguish between legal and illegal files.

Case in point, the 1359 music files it found on our test system are all legal files created from the owner’s CD collection.

How do you determine which files are legal and which aren’t?

Parent File Scan offers that “You must clarify this question for yourself.”

How? By “discussing with the persons who have used the computer where the music and video files are found.”

Father: Billy, can you tell me which of these 1,359 music files were illegally downloaded from the internets so that I can immediately report you to the nearest MPAA attack squad?

Billy: Can’t we just go back to awkward discussions about where-babies-come-from and that time I caught you smoking a joint?

Don’t you all just love movies based on videogames? I can’t even imagine how a movie based on a videogame could ever go wrong. They’re box office success.

It would seem only logical then that Microsoft would want to make a film based on the successful Halo 2 franchise:

February 03, 2005 - In an unorthodox move that’s sure to raise some industry eyebrows, Microsoft (developer Bungie’s corporate overlord) has hired screenwriter Alex Garland (28 Days Later, The Beach) to adapt its hit videogame series Halo for the big screen.

Variety reports that Garland signed a million-dollar deal with the tech giant.  Garland’s finished screenplay will reportedly be offered to studios as a complete “turnkey” script and rights package.

The trade adds that Microsoft isn’t expected to be involved beyond the script development stage.

Any news source that refers to Microsoft as a “corporate overlord” will definitely win brownie points with the BBB staff. However, to mention the evil of Microsoft minions and “isn’t expected to be involved beyond the script development stage” in the same paragraph boggles the mind. I can’t guarantee that the Halo 2 movie will be a success but I can most certainly guarantee that everyone’s favorite nerd empire isn’t about to give up control of anything.

MSFT has been trying to get studios to adopt various technical standards for years and I can just see them using this as an opportunity to advance their agenda. Maybe we’re just being cynical but then again we could just be having accurate premonitions…

We know that many readers were shocked by our last post that there are companies out there offering legal streams of new studio release features. With impeccable timing CinemaNow announced that they have now signed deals with 6 out of the 7 major studios:

Online movie provider CinemaNow on Tuesday said NBC Universal has agreed to offer its films to CinemaNow subscribers giving the Internet service content from one more major studio as it continues to expand.

CinemaNow allows clients to legally download films and television shows for a fee, and it now has six of Hollywood’s seven major film and TV studios as content providers. It lacks only Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom Inc .

The CEO goes on to claim that he expects 100% growth by the end of 2005. Someone should explain to him that two times any small number is still a pretty small number. These precentages sound great because its impossible to find out about any hard numbers in their actual revenue.

Now we could go on about why CinemaNow and their main competitor Movielink haven’t gotten anywhere very fast but Damian over at Media Thinking has said it far more succinctly than we ever could:

Why Movielink and CinemaNow don’t matter

I’m really not clear on why so much press is given to the internet-based video-on-demand (VOD) services - it’s pretty clear that they are going nowhere fast.

1. Broadband pentration, while increasing, is still a small portion of the internet population.

2. Given that the music services have had trouble signing up people, I can’t see why Movielink is going to do that much better.

3. Who wants to watch movies on their computer? I consider myself a computer person, but I’ve never wanted to watch a movie on my computer. If it’s supposed to appeal to the traveling executive, then they’ll likely just rent a DVD and play that in their laptop - who’s going to wait 2 hours to download the movie?

Unlike Damian we here at BBB watch movies on our computers all the time. But then again our motto is “we live in the future so that you don’t have to.” In your future we don’t see much Pay-Per-View on your desktop.

Back in 1993 it was “multimedia CD-ROMs” that was going to revolutionize Hollywood and then in ‘96 the “Internet” was going to revolutionize Hollywood. In the ashes of the dotcom bubble it was videogames once again and now like clockwork the pendulum has swung back to the “Internet” meme.

Perhaps some of you saw the LA Times piece on Yahoo’s new Santa Monica lease for a 1,000 employee campus.

Yahoo’s headquarters will remain in Northern California, but the vast expansion in Santa Monica will split the company’s center of gravity between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Yahoo’s newly formed media group, headed by former ABC television network Chairman Lloyd Braun, will be based in Yahoo Center.

That will allow executives to rub elbows with Hollywood deal makers without the hassle of flying in from Northern California, said investment banker Gary Adelson.

Sometimes I wonder if the journalists are cackling over such thinly disguised puff pieces. They probably had a Kazaa window open downloading the studio pre-release du jour as they typed it up. Yahoo’s desire to snag a piece of the entertainment industry action is nothing new as they already have a large westside office. The timing of this release comes just after the announcement that Yahoo and Google have both released new TV/Video search tools and it makes one wonder why we haven’t gone down this road before.

One hint kids: it contains the words “copy” and “right.” Those are the only hints you’re going to get. Good luck.

I wonder what CinemaNow and Movielink think of all this. After all they are owned or have deals with all the major studios. What’s that you say? You’ve never heard of or used them? It’s totally the wave of tomorrow (I tried to keep a straight face while typing that but failed miserably).