NOOO! Server death 3 hours before Lost Premiere!

[david1234]

Originally Posted by vhurst

Whenever I have this sort of problem, like the power outage that hit me in the middle of the 24 season premere two weeks ago , it's Hulu time...

I'm thinking about putting my server on a 3 hour UPS just for this!

Since I'm just doing OTA, all I need is for the recording server to stay up long enough to get through a couple hours of an outage. Of course the last outage we had was 2 days

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by bthurber

As cool as Sage and the like are, it seems really silly that hundreds of Sage users (me included) recorded essentially the same "Lost" gigabits to their hard drives last night. And then many megaflops of processing cycles were used to comskip those bits when these processes only needed to be done once and then "shared". Certainly current bandwidth and probably legal issues would hamper a technical solution to this, but it seems we're missing something obvious here.

But the reality is that disk space and CPU cycles are much cheaper than communications bandwidth. So I don't see that there's a problem in need of solution here. Broadcasting the bits and letting everyone buffer and process them locally really is the most efficient approach, even if some of that processing seems redundant.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by bthurber

... probably legal issues would hamper a technical solution to this...

Yes, it is called Copyright. Unless you own the copyright, or have permission from the copyright owner, you don't have the right to make copies and share them with others. As such, sharing of copyrighted content is not allowed on this forum.

- Andy

[IVB]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

But the reality is that disk space and CPU cycles are much cheaper than communications bandwidth. So I don't see that there's a problem in need of solution here. Broadcasting the bits and letting everyone buffer and process them locally really is the most efficient approach, even if some of that processing seems redundant.

I wonder if that's a collapsing issue though; engaging in what-if games, what-if $100B of the stimulus $$ didn't go to car companies or banks, but rather got hi-speed broadband to everyone?

In that case the only issue left would be DRM. Granted,that alone is a big enough hurdle to have prevented Washington D.C. from doing the above, but in that case i think it would be the last hurdle.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by IVB

I wonder if that's a collapsing issue though...

If anything I think it's the reverse. Our ability to process and store information are nowhere near their physical limits; there's a lot of headroom left for further improvements there. I don't think the same is true for communications bandwidth.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Yes, it is called Copyright. Unless you own the copyright, or have permission from the copyright owner, you don't have the right to make copies and share them with others. As such, sharing of copyrighted content is not allowed on this forum.

But I think what the OP was getting at was sharing the .edl file that is output from Comskip. This just has a few bytes marking the start/stop all of the commercials.

Would sharing that file be illegal? Who would own the copyright for that? Or could the owner of the copyright of the TV show claim that they own the copyright for the stop/start of all commercials.

The other issue could be - do the commercials start and stop at the exact same time for all network affiliates or is it possible that the show may start 30 seconds later on some stations that would cause the commercial markings to be off.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by wayner

But I think what the OP was getting at was sharing the file that is output from Comskip. This just has a few bytes marking the start/stop all of the commercials.

Would sharing that file be illegal?

Well, the mention of bandwidth indicated to me that sharing the recording was meant. And, topics like this usually end up with offers to share recordings, like one post I deleted from this thread already, so I figured it was worth mentioning.

Sharing the comskip file isn't illegal as far as I know. It has been discussed in the customizations forum before, but I don't think there is any good way to ensure that one person's comskip file works for someone else.

- Andy

[david1234]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Sharing the comskip file isn't illegal as far as I know. It has been discussed in the customizations forum before, but I don't think there is any good way to ensure that one person's comskip file works for someone else.

The file might not be useable, but I wonder if it couldn't be used as an indicator of correctness... I would expect the timing and length of commercial breaks to be different, but the number of show segments and the timing between the commercials should be the very close (within a few seconds).

Could comskip somehow be set up with an internal p2p (maybe add a very small bittorrent client) app to share the .edl files and look for big differences in detected commercials? For me, Stargate reruns never catch one of the commercials right in the middle of the show, by comparing other edl files using the showid, couldn't something like this be caught just by looking at the number of commercial breaks?

[Diginerd]

Originally Posted by bthurber

As cool as Sage and the like are, it seems really silly that hundreds of Sage users (me included) recorded essentially the same "Lost" gigabits to their hard drives last night. And then many megaflops of processing cycles were used to comskip those bits when these processes only needed to be done once and then "shared". Certainly current bandwidth and probably legal issues would hamper a technical solution to this, but it seems we're missing something obvious here.

Content makers are terrified of that idea. Cablevision has been fighting them in the courts for years to be able to provide a "Network DVR" doing just the above.

They want to grab every show on every channel and then serve it out via IP to next gen STBs.

You think the cable Companies love managing all those fragile HD based DVRs in cusomer homes? Also (and this is the bit that freaks out the likes of Fox) Hmm, if we DVR the show for folks, we can insert our own commericals..

[david1234]

Originally Posted by Diginerd

Content makers are terrified of that idea. Cablevision has been fighting them in the courts for years to be able to provide a "Network DVR" doing just the above.

This one's been decided...
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...-hear-case.ars

[bthurber]

Originally Posted by Opus4

...I don't think there is any good way to ensure that one person's comskip file works for someone else.

- Andy

A pie in the sky scenario

User A is watching a non-comskipped show. It could even be live. Whenever show segments start or end they push a button on their remote. A "fuzzy checksum" is created for the frames around each of these button pushes. It would be important to calculate the checksum on a show segment as the show should be the same for everyone - but the commercials could be different. So maybe the logic for the show start checksum is to rewind up to 3 seconds and look for black then the show start and the checksum is always on the frame 1 second after black.

Now envision many user A's sending these checksums up to a central server where they can be averaged (the most users with the most similar checksums win).

Then of course, user B can download these checksums and some magical code is able to use them to find the frames that signal the start and end of show segments.

In the end both user A and user B get highly accurate commercial skipping - possibly before the show is even over.

Now where is that unicorn emoticon?

Brad

[Fuzzy]

[IVB]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

If anything I think it's the reverse. Our ability to process and store information are nowhere near their physical limits; there's a lot of headroom left for further improvements there. I don't think the same is true for communications bandwidth.

Hmmm, Google wants to do something about this.

here's a snippet

Google, the world's biggest online search engine, wants to turbocharge your Internet connection.

The company said Wednesday it is getting into the broadband service business with trials for fiber networks that will deliver Internet access speeds that are 100 times faster than what most Americans are getting today.
...
The company said it will build fiber-to-the-home connections to a small number of locations across the country that will deliver Internet access speeds of 1 gigabit per second. It will take bids from municipalities beginning through late March to determine what areas would be part of its experiment. Google said access prices for consumers would competitive and that its network would reach at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.
...
Downloading high-definition, full-length feature films would take about five minutes, Google said.

Okay, I doubt that'll be ubiquitous in the 5-10 year timeframe, but I wonder what we'll be doing that'll make 1 gigabit connections too small...