Frank Caico's Blog

Of course nobody's watching lost.  It won't reappear on network television until February!!!  In the meantime though, you have to check out this video's hilarious parody of a couple of serious Lost fans:

Lost (s3e5) is on tonight...

I could swear that the previews for this week's episode indicated that someone would die?! Has anyone else heard that?

edit:  Yes, someone did die.  Damn, Damn, Damn!  Why couldn't they have killed off one or both of the new guys? (Nikki, Paulo) Those two are whiny useless bitches!

I've had a Hi-definition TV for a couple of years now. If you haven't seen real Hi-Def you don't know what you're missing - its a pretty spectacular upgrade in picture quality and sound from regular standard definition TV. I get my Hi-Def picture via Time Warner Cable, and as far as cable companies go they do a pretty decent job with Hi-Def.

The one downside to my switch to Hi-Def was that TiVo didn't (couldn't) support it. I could go into the reasons for it but I've already covered some of them in the past. So I had to switch to Time Warner's DVR.

While TW's DVR isn't awful (its actually gotten better over the last 2 years thanks to firmware upgrades), it still is a shadow of TiVo's power and flexibility (not to mention that it still occasionally "forgets" to record shows). For one, TiVo's guide has 2 weeks of data versus TW's 1 (this becomes a big deal when you are trying to record a program for next Wednesday and its Wednesday of the prior week or earlier - you can't). TiVo also lets you search for programs while TW's DVR will not - you have to find the program manually, which is a real chore if you don't know when it runs. Add on TiVo's wishlists (e.g. record any movie with Humphrey Bogart) and TiVo suggestions (TiVo will automatically record shows that it think you might like based on your viewing habits) and all the networking features (like playing MP3s from my computer upstairs).

Anyhow, a couple weeks ago TiVo released a DVR that supports CableCard. This is a new technology that essentially wraps a mini "cable box" inside the TiVo. Now it can support digital cable - including Hi-Def! I bought it and returned my TW DVR. Long story short - it doesn't disappoint (well, it has a few bugs but TiVo is working on them).

The downside of this is that I've found so many new and cool TV shows to watch since getting the darn thing that I've become a real couch potato. I've also gotten hooked on a few old shows (like Scrubs and The Venture Brothers) that I never wouldn't have watched if TiVo hadn't suggested them. I'm sure once the novelty wears off I will go back to more normal viewing habits, but for the time being i'm a damn Hi-Def couch potato - and I'm lovin' it!

Okay, this is not a rant about the quality of Hi Definition television. That is actually a no brainer - the visual quality is remarkable and quite evident to anyone with eyes.

No my friends, this is about Hi-Def's ugly draconian shaperone: Digital Rights Management (DRM). The movie studios and big television content houses are worried about your ability to make perfect digital copies of their content. So they (and electronics manufacturers) have settled on a DRM scheme called High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP). This scheme allows them to fully protect any Hi-def content transmitted through HDCP devices. Non HDCP-compliant devices cannot even unlock the digital stream in order to display/listen/record it. HDCP compliant devices play nicely, but they must honor its dirty little pact and consumer unfriendly requirements -- such as not being able to make 1:1 recordings of HDCP material (even at the cost of Fair Use).

This may sound reasonable to you, but talk to me in a year or so when you find you can't access digital content on your computer. Digital content that you wish to legally access via your Windows Vista computer. Why? you say. Why wouldnt I be able to do this? Ah - because that fancy digital LCD display you bought is not HDCP compliant. And it cant display the DRM'ed HDCP digital stream coming accross its DVI cable. Oh it is HDCP compliant (some of the new ones are)? Ah, well that doesn't matter much because that fancy new video card you are using (even if it says it does) doesn't support HDCP properly. And since Windows Vista is going to honor the HDCP specification (it really has no choice in the matter) you are going to have to make sure that everything in your PC is HDCP compliant, and enabled if you want to use or view any HDCP DRM'ed content on your computer.

So I ask you, is Hi-Def content worth all this trouble? Are consumers going to replace every piece of electronics in their home (PCs, TVs, DVRs etc) just to upgrade? Time will tell, but in a wierd way I hope not. Its my beleif that all this tight control stifles innovation and keeps smaller players out of the game. The HDCP specification is proprietary and an implementation of HDCP requires a license - which costs money. Writing software or making cool innovating electronics is hard enough without a large barrier to entry like HDCP licensing.