Yeah, I never had problems with MKV files on pyTivo. It should work fine.


I'll admit, I've become a little less snobbish about video quality lately. I say it if looks good to you, just enjoy it! You'd probably need to get to far larger screen sizes to notice any difference in quality, though I've seen HD content on an Apple TV connected to a 60" display, and I thought it look fine.

I'm with you I don't care about the quality much. Right now I am watching How it's made and I don't think I would enjoy it more if the snow blower building robots were in HD.

Actually, How It's Made in HD is kinda awesome.

I mostly get fussy about HD playback when watching fast-motion shows, specifically ice-hockey. It's taken a bit of fuss to get that to be watchable, but it looks great here now.

Dunno if football (soccer) requires the same fussiness or not, but Spain looked really sharp today on our tweaked system.

-ml

Sometimes I've seen playback apps/devices do better if you rename the file extension to something it knows how to parse. Did you try that?

If I renamed the .ts extension, it just flat out failed. Downloading the MKV files, however, made everything work almost smoothly. TiVo's streaming app seems to do 15-minute read-ahead to fill its buffer, and then drains the buffer until it's empty. After this, it freezes the video and lets you know it's refilling the buffer. How nice. Might be even nicer if they streamed data the whole time.

Ok, done and done. We are now cable/satellite free and solely relying on iTunes and purchased DVDs for viewing TV. Our library is sitting at about 1300 episodes for various TV shows and I'm STILL ripping down stuff we've had or I've gotten cheaply used.

Next question is whether to get one of the new apple TVs for $99. If it's really an upgrade, that's a nice price point. I'll kind of hate losing the local hard drive, though.

Anyway- we'll see how it ends up going. We haven't turned on our satellite in the last two months though, so I don't think it's going to be a great loss.

Do you really have a choice if you're relying on iTunes? Isn't that the point of the walled garden? You can't get anything BUT the Apple TV if you want to get your media through iTunes.

On the other hand, Amazon has similar selection (and Netflix is pretty good for TV), and you can access that through the cheaper Roku boxes.

I can stick with the older models I already have.

And yeah- it sucks being so limited in options- but everything plays together so nicely it was easy to get suckered in. I suppose I'm still feeling the sting of the Rio Karma- it was the superior product but it never got the love from its creators that the iPod did. On the whole, once I finally got an iPod the overall ownership experience is better than with the Karma, even though the Karma had better features. I suppose I just enjoy the comfort of working within the same family of products produced by a company that is going to be around for a while, even though in the back of my mind I know I'm committing myself deeper and deeper every time I take the convenient route and buy something off iTunes (non-music that is, since the music doesn't have drm anymore).

Don't get me wrong, it's certainly attractive, and I love how well everything works in the Apple universe. I just wish they'd let other people play, but I understand why they don't and I don't blame them for that. It's just not something I want to get into because I want to have my options open, and at least these days there are other options like Amazon/Roku or Netflix on, well, everything.

Matt, how is the Apple way so significantly different here as far as your other options? He either buys a new Apple TV to access bought iTunes content and Netflix streams, or a Roku to access bought Amazon content and Netflix streams. Either way, he's in a "walled garden" with Amazon and their store, or Apple and their store.

Jeff, I would recommend looking into the selection on Netflix though. I passed it up in the early days myself when I dropped satellite, but I now subscribed this weekend. The streaming selection is quite good, and the service is working great off my iPad, PS3, and Mac.

I'm also going to be dropping Hulu Plus. The selection there is ok, but the commercial interruptions are just too annoying. Even before I left "traditional" TV, I had a Replay with automatic commercial skip, so commercials haven't been part of my viewing experience for a good 8 years or so now. It's hard to go back, especially when paying for a service.

Tom, for material your sourced from Hulu Plus where are you now sourcing it from?

I second the Netflix streaming, particularly given that the lowest tired Netflix account, one DVD at a time, is $8.99 and comes with unlimited instant watching.

I was mostly trying out Hulu Plus and hadn't really integrated it much. Most of what I was watching on the service were older shows, and so far all have been in Netflix too. I've been out of the habit of watching new shows for so long now, the new episodes of an unfinished series just weren't pulling me in on Hulu. I'm willing to at least wait for a season to wrap up, and by then Netflix will likely have it on DVD at a minimum.

I don't strictly define Amazon and Netflix as walled gardens because unlike Apple, who controls the content AND the hardware, they only control the content. While that's not ideal at least you have FAR more choice of hardware (Netflix lists 33 devices, mostly bluray players and TVs). I'm fine if you want to have a different definition, but that's just how I see it.


For a while there, NBC was letting Netflix stream new stuff too, though a day or two behind. I think the last two seasons of Heroes were handled that way, but NBC may have considered that a failed experiment (whether it was or not). The process of getting these companies to let us see their content is like pulling teeth. Worse, because sometimes these teeth have to be pulled repeatedly.

Netflix is definitely the horse I'm betting on and rooting for in this race.

We are definitely going to be looking into Netflix- that would be a reason to upgrade to the newest Apple TV. However, first stop will be getting a trial account and using our Wii to see how the selection works with our viewing habits.

They recently added a good deal of TV content. Somehow they seem to be accelerating in their content acquisition after languishing for years with a very sub-par selection. They still have almost zero recent movies, so hopefully that will get better.

Thats fair, and Amazon is going a similar route of trying to get their service on as many hardware devices as possible too. For me though, walled garden tends to hint at lock-in, and I seem similar lock-in if I were to choose Amazon, even though I have choice in hardware. I personally have stayed away from any digital only service including iTunes for any video content I wish to own. For The Daily Show, or for rentals, I've been fine with iTunes, since it's not content I'm keeping around.

What does that leave? Those digital files you get with DVDs?

Even those turn into iTunes DRM locked files for me, as I'm not even going near the alternate version that uses Windows Media. Basically I still buy movies I like on DVD or BluRay, then rip them to my NAS. If I want to play them back at home, I just play the raw files via DVD Player or Front Row. If I'm going on a trip, I use Handbrake to transcode them to standard h.264 files that the iPad will play. The Mac Pro lets me transcode a full movie in usually 20 minutes, so in the time it takes me to pack, I have a few movies ready too.

I'm just not convinced any of the current DRM locked video solutions will provide me the flexibility I want for the next 10 years. Looking back 10 years, I had a growing DVD collection (all still playable today), and was a mildly annoyed Windows user. I can't predict how things will end up in 10 years down the road, but I have a higher confidence in my ability to play back DVDs then then I do in playing back DRM locked files in 2020.

Same reason I still buy physical CDs.

Okay, well I thought we were talking about legal options. Of course there's that route, but that's a different discussion entirely. There's no walled garden when you climb over the wall and take the flowers

? It's not legal to buy DVDs now? Because it's most certainly legal to circumvent the copy protection on a DVD you own to be able to play back its contents in the US.

There's no such thing as DRM-free commercial video right now, so I suppose it's all a matter of how you want to play back what you buy. At the moment, DVD and BluRay offer the best quality SD and HD image and sound, potentially at comparable prices to download-only options.

MOST of our content is ripped from DVD (and recently Blu Ray). The only shows that we are downloading for purchase now are new shows as they come out- and it still is ending up cheaper than we were paying for satellite to do it that way. I figure that we may not get to play this content in 20 years- but with cable/satellite we wouldn't be able to anyway. At least this way we get to play the content multiple times for the next few years.

The real value we've found is purchasing older TV shows used on DVDs- you can get entire seasons of Family Guy, King of the Hill, Buffy, Friends, etc. on DVD for ~$10 including shipping if you buy used.

Where did I say that? What is with you, dude?


From what I understood of those rules passed by the LOC, that is still not the case. I think you're mistaken. Link.


I know there's not, which is why I was asking Tom what his alternative to the current services available were, because there were none that I knew of. If you count the illegal practice of ripping DVDs, then of course there's an alternative that will let you do whatever you want with your digital movie files, but I contend that that doesn't count in this conversation. I'm not going to say that I've never done it myself, but I don't have any delusions about what I'm doing, and in many cases if it's available on Netflix, it's just easier to stream it for $9-10 a month.

I'm 100% ethically comfortable with ripping DVDs that I own, whatever the law states, even though I'm generally in favor of protecting intellectual property. I'd say there is a large difference between ripping a DVD I own and downloading protected content I have never payed for. Of course, I know there are tons of people who have no ethical difficult with the latter either, so at that point I guess it all comes down to what your conscious allows. That certainly does cloud the question of what the best options are in a general discussion though.

So, how's life breaking the law by using your Tivo (or betamax before it to be specific)? They do after all break copyright law though the case 464 U.S. 417 (1984) clarified fair use to allow it.

For me, copying my personally bought discs to a NAS is fair use. Now I'm not a lawyer, and indeed could face legal action for this, but I'm willing to wade into grey territory here, just as betamax owners did. I've come down hard here in the past on torrents due to their nature to attract lawsuits that the defendants don't win. But copying what I legally own, and keeping ownership of the original media remains pretty much towards the white side of the grey area. If I turn around and sell my DVDs, then yes, you can start accusing me of illegal actions. Call my side of it a delusion if you want, but legally this is an unclear area either way, with precedent favoring fair use.

Matt, the LoC "interpretation" of the DMCA rules are not applicable here. The laws, as backed up by case-law/precedent, allow fair-use. Ripping your own legally purchased DVDs is non-commercial fair-use.

Maybe you're confusing this with selling ripping software - that's commercial and where some companies have gotten themselves in hot water.

It's also possible to copy DVD movies to HDD without removing the protection, so as long as you have something suitable to do that and to play them back, you can be even more at peace than the rest of us.

Also, with regards to downloading, has anyone in the US ever been prosecuted for that yet? As far as I know, while illegal, defendants have only ever been charged with distribution/uploading. It's an easier case to make because there's no fair-use scenario that covers distribution.

Anyway, I don't buy media from Apple for a number of reasons, and they don't center around only being able to play the content back on Apple hardware.

The music while now DRM free, isn't at a high enough quality for me. And the price is too high. The same pretty much goes for movies and TV shows. It's also the same reason I don't buy download-only media from anyone else either.

The DMCA explicitly requires the Library of Congress to "make the determination" for fair-use exemptions. The DMCA says "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." The Library of Congress's exemptions do not include copying for personal use; in fact, proposals as simple as requesting access to circumvention of CSS for operating systems where "legal" decrypting is not available have been dismissed three times.

That said, this is about bypassing encryption. If you perform a bit-for-bit rip of the DVD and play it back with licensed software, you should be okay. But I bet most people are using mplayer or VLC, which are not licensed.

With regards to DVDs, the DMCA covers specifically the circumvention of copy protection. It seems to me that fair use still applies for simply making a "copy." Someone in the US could always send out their DVD to another country where it can be decrypted and copied, receiving both the original and copy back. Now you'll have your fair use copy without ever having touched the copyrighted encryption. Just make sure you don't pay for the service.

Ugh- just got my first Blu Ray with a digital copy. I had no idea the digital copies were not HD- looks like I have to rip the Blu Ray anyway

You would think if you shell out for a Blu Ray, the digital copy would be a high copy too . . .