I wonder if the HD tuner you have mightn't have the best of receiver sensitivities ?

The two local HD (1080i) stations here are loud and clear with no amplification, using what is essentially a coat-hanger mounted 40' off the ground, with good RG-6 coax from there to the tuners (HDHomeRun).

Now our more distant 3rd HD station is just not reliable enough (about 80 miles away, I think), despite my best efforts thus far with exotic antennas and amps. But their analog counterpart is now nearly crystal clear 100% of the time with the new setups.

Cheers

Loren, I don't think pirating is a good suggestion. It doesn't bother me that you get your shows that way, but it's not really a good alternative to Tom's experiment. I received four notices during the period that I was downloading shows, and frankly that was enough to get me to stop.

Besides, purely from a convenience factor, each of those notices were accompanied by a freeze on my internet access for at least a day.

I won't mind paying for FIOS TV when I move. I'm willing to pay $43 a month to avoid all the hassle associated with the other methods discussed here.

I still download episodes I may have missed (due to PVR crash for instance). My last downloads were of unaired episodes of cancelled shows. The networks put them up for viewing on their web sites, but only allowed access to US-based visitors. I haven't received any notices when sniping just individual shows like this, likely due to the amount of time actually spent getting/sharing which is minimal.

I see no ethical problem getting programs in this manner considering I am a cable subscriber with access to those same programs on my paid subscription. Trying to download instead of subscribing to cable (or DTV) would be a huge pain and a massive time sink.

Bruno

I completely agree with what you said. I was saying that Loren's method of downloading all of his TV content is not a valid alternative to Tom's experiment. Tom was attempting to see if it was feasible and economical to legally circumvent the cable and satellite providers. Besides the legal issues, of course it's possible to do this by pirating everything. But that's not the point of the experiment.

As for ethics, I agree with you, believe me. I'm pretty sure I had a post a long while ago in which I outlined all the reasons why I thought it was perfectly ethical to illegally obtain content that is otherwise unavailable to me. If there's a music video or TV show that is not being aired on TV and is not available for rent or purchase, I consider that a failure on the part of the content owner. But I won't argue that it's legal.

And no, I really don't think that you're going to get caught for what you're describing. Three out of the four times I got caught, it was downloading individual episodes, but it was for very recently aired programs. They caught me pretty quickly for that stuff. I had downloaded hundreds of gigs of older content that they never seemed to blink an eye at.

You are safe (for the moment) regardless, as our country's laws are not yet overbalanced against the viewing public. Yet.

Cheers

Here's a moral question: Lets say someone only torrents shows that can otherwise be had from free OTA sources. Say their option is either to record a show OTA onto a Tivo, and watch it time shifted while skipping commercials... OR... download the show off of a torrent network, watch the show, then delete it. The difference in the end result is the method of delivery and nothing else. If something can't be had OTA or from Netflix, that person can purchase it from iTunes. So where is the line?

Do you have a Tivo? If so do you skip commercials? If so how do you separate that morally from downloading a show? Honest questions.

Another question: How are people getting "caught"? From whom were the warnings and by what methods did the warner obtain the info?

EDIT: After reading your last post I'm guessing you'll say the line is at the legal definition. I understand your point.

EDIT 2:

Quote:
That, and I still feel it is wrong, especially now being part of a gaming company who also survives by producing entertainment that people pay for.

And that is where I draw the line. If I can't obtain the same media for free legally by another method (like OTA), it gets paid for.

Wow, very interesting. Thanks for posting that.

I bittorrent the occasional show but it usually falls into 1 of 2 categories. It's either a show that is currently not shown in this country, or a show that is available to the viewing public free of charge. The only exception to that is Lost, but to be honest I think they should be paying me to watch it at the moment.

You could tell them to get lost just like I could in Canada. But it doesn't mean your ISP won't cut you off. It's the ISP that has to either provide them your email address or forward the note. If your ISP provided NBC (for example) with your email address, then I'd dump them anyway. That's more unethical than the download.

Most people who receive notices (I've received two in the past 5 years) do so because they're uploading content. In both instances the content in question was some crap file that I had simply forgotten to delete. Whenever I need to grab a show now, I remove it from the program I'm using to download as soon as it's finished. Yes, that's somewhat against the spirit of the P2P sharing principles, but I'd rather not get snooped and sent emails.

This is all possible because your IP is visible.

Anyway, I grabbed missing episodes of two cancelled shows and one cartoon that gets spotty timeslots here in Canada. Watched them and then deleted them (as I had no reason to keep them around). Morally and ethically the download and watching is, IMO, exactly the same as having watched them on TV as I would have recorded them with my PVR. The difference comes in the timespan where you're actually seeding the content to others. That distribution would never be a part of your normal TV/PVR watching experience. Unfortunately withotu someone uploading, no one can download. So someone has to be violating the spirit/laws, even if we feel justified in watching.

I intend to buy the cartoon I watched on DVD (all seasons) as soon as they're available. If the remaining episides for one of those shows ever make it out and wrap the show, I'll get that on DVD too.

ISPs are in the business of promoting illegal file sharing. Just like gun manufacturers are in the business of promoting gun use (which may include roberies, killings, etc..)

Bruno

Just to add this info - you guys know you can run bittorrent through the TOR network (the onion router) which apparently can perform a large amount of obfuscation and make it very difficult for anyone to find out the IP address.

I don't use it for that myself, but it is a great piece of technology:-)

I put togther a quick video (with no sound) to show how the setup works. If I could get the EyeTV features fixed up, this would be a nice solution for what I want to do. At this point I am likely to buy a newer Mac Mini next time they are revised, likely with Leopard, and use my existing one for a CarPC project.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8217507867243066142&hl=en

I did find a good antenna position to pick up all the local HD stations except Fox with good quality, so when Heroes returns, I should be set to record it.

Well, here we are two years later. The PVR500 got resold (crappy Samsung tuners) and replaced by two PVR-250s (working very well).

The HDHomeRun arrived promptly and has given supurb service for nearly two years. But just after SWMBO and I left for Italy (late September), it died. We ordered a new one from the same retailer the day we got back home.

That was now 3+ weeks ago. The retailer, 9thtee.com, took full payment on the order date, but has not shipped the product, and does not respond to any enquiries.

Googling about them reveals that I'm not alone in that regard -- over the past six months they've gone from being a reliable retailer to a deadbeat fraud for many folks. I'm certainly not the first one to have to initiate a Paypal claim action against them to try and get my funds back.

So.. avoid them. They (well, "he" -- it's a one-guy outfit) were once the only place to purchase an HDHomeRun, but now there are lots of alternative resellers.

Cheers

Wow, that's a shame. 9thtee was one of the very first Tivo hacking sites, and was very highly recommended back in the day. I think Weaknees really killed it and it was forced to sell lots of cheap crap like laser pointers and tiny rc cars and "pool noodles." Sad.

Wow, fun look back at this. Quick update from my side.

Basically I still do the same thing, except the EyeTV sees near zero use. My TV watching has migrated nearly all the way to season based watching now, except for Battlestar Galactica. I've watched nearly every episode of that at the Alamo now since starting this. One that I did miss, I watched for free on Hulu.com, though the commercials reminded me of why I disliked cable/OTA TV. I also just recently started in on season 2 of Heroes since the BluRay box set was so cheep.

If I don't want to watch a DVD of shows on the main TV, I find it very quick to just use Handbrake to transcode the episodes to the NAS, and be able to then watch them on my laptop before bed, or on the iPhone when traveling. The Mac Pro that I have encodes to h.264 at around 120fps, so 4x speed.

The Mini is now running Leopard with the updated Front Row interface compared to the video above. Beyond that, it has pretty much remained the same. I still grab The Daily Show off iTunes, and it syncs the most recent 3 episodes to the phone automatically.

As for current events, like the recent election coverage, online streaming more then made up for needing a TV. All the debates were live on multiple sites, along with all the coverage on election day.

More then 2 years now without paying a dime to subscribe to a bloated channel package I never took advantage of. Instead, that money has gone to ensuring I have a good quality experience that I can enjoy whenever, and however I want without worrying about network schedules, commercial skipping, or even if the PVR was ok to record the show.