It's like TVs are getting dumber and smarter at the same time...
The movie studios and the FCC are slowly helping me manage to turn my life into something resembling that of a drone in a rather shabbily appointed Borg cube. I didn't get out too much before my son was born, and now that I'm pulling double duty as daddy day-care and struggling artist/writer/home improvement technician third class, my car has started to sink into the street from lack of use. Enter the proposal to get first-run films directly in our homes. This is, other than conventions and groceries, probably the last reason I'd need to ever leave the house. But the implications are far-reaching and have more than a few people raising alarm bells. Some problems with the system occur to me as well:
Theaters would take a hit. The whole reason we go out to films is because we want to see them now, or pretty close to it, in a setting that is light-years beyond what we've got available at home. Theaters pay a pretty penny to get movies when they open, and pray that you're willing to buy overpriced concession-stand popcorn and fizzy sugar water because (correct me if I'm wrong) they make more money on that than on ticket sales. The margin from ticket sales that stays with the theater increases the older the movie is, but ticket sales naturally decline over time with a few rare exceptions (when Cristi and I first saw "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," it had been out for a month, but word-of-mouth meant we saw it during a sold-out screening).
As a sub-text to this, theaters are often less attractive for another reason: some of the other patrons. Unless a movie is being attended by people who are polite, really jazzed to see the movie in question, or both, you're going to get people who talk during the movie or whip out the cell phone. And I'm not harping on the young whipper-snappers, here. The worst offenders I ever experienced were three elderly women who had apparently transferred their normal verbose act from their living room to the row behind me. It was kind of like MST3K by way of Grandpa Simpson, but it didn't add much to the experience. Now, when I saw the Lord of the Rings movies, the bulk of us seeing it were so enthralled that any noise not related to reacting to the screen was thoroughly quashed by the collected nerd-rage at, say, a mother with three unruly children who wouldn't keep them from fighting, dancing in the aisles, and trying to perform an impromptu dance routine. As she led her brood out of the theater, she tried to mutter something about "what's happened to America," but the crowd's intimidate skill was too much to overcome.
The MPAA is going to control the horizontal and the vertical. Basically, the movie studios and their proxies want to be able to cut off your movie stream if they think you're somehow pirating their movie. They want gizmos in your home theater that they can use to send your TV into lockdown at the press of a button. As someone who has a TV card in his computer, I've seen channels mistakenly display that they've been prohibited from being viewed (a quick restart of the video application is usually the solution). Even with glitches reduced to near zero, I'd be curious how this and other electronic "safeguards" could be used for other purposes, including data gathering for sale to third parties.
This isn't going to end piracy. As was stated in a link above, there's nothing that can't stop a determined pirate. From just filming a nice hi-def screen to having some means to technologically overcome the aforementioned gizmos, it's going to be hacked by someone in about five minutes after the first unit sells at Best Buy. Further, as one can see on this snarky infographic, it is getting to the point where the legal copy of a movie is more of a pain to use than a pirated download. This is sometimes the case for games as well (see the recent debacle involving the DRM for "Assassin's Creed 2"), and I've had friends who just pay for their legal copy and count the pirated one they download (which runs faster) as their "legal backup."
While I don't think this is going to be the end of the world, it's going to be one more thing to overcome or work around whenever I get a new computer or TV set (though we tend to go through one of those about once ever decade or so, if not longer). I'll no doubt find forums that have programs I can download to keep this new hardware from gumming things up, which is where it really impacts me the most. I've got a whole slew of processes I either have to disable or kill whenever their parent program is done with them, as they seem to all want to make sure I'm keeping things nice and legal or they'll do... something. And all they do is make everything run a hiccup or two slower, which is even more annoying than three unskippable FBI warnings. Though it occurs to me I could use these annoyances to gauge the tech-savvy of my kid. I'll say I'd love to let him poison his brain with "Alvin and the Chipmunks VI: Gregorian Munks," but the DRM devices aren't cooperating. If he manages to work around them, I'll be proud of his skills, if not his taste in movies.
On to TV: I'm not too sure what to make of this week's UK episode of Doctor Who. It's got good points: Quips from the Doctor, three people in the TARDIS, and a pretty unusual and funny opening. Other than that, it's a fairly standard "aliens in Earth's past that need defeating" story, with just a few more dribs and drabs about whatever it is that the Doctor will face later in the season. It's highly reminiscent of how Eccleston and Tennant kept running into refugees from the Time War. I suppose it's necessary to have a familiar setting/threat to acclimate a new companion, but I would have enjoyed a little more cleverness from the plot. And is it me, or is the Doctor's sonic screwdriver getting more and more functionality? It's almost as if he could point it at a cow and change it into a hamburger stand.
Oh, and last week's Supernatural had Jen Titus' amazing cover of "O Death" show up as part of the soundtrack for the debut of the appropriate Horseman of the Apocalypse. I do so love that track.
So while I dive back into drawin' and writin' stuff, I leave you with a cornucopia of linkage:
- I'm torn between which is the best oven mitt ever: The classic Picard model, or the new space slug model.
- I know the movie version of Dune wasn't everyone's cup of tea, but here's an ambitious project to update and enhance the film.
- There are people who make pancakes, and then there are people who lift the making of pancakes to an art form. Jim is the Michelangelo of pancakes.
- The G** D*** Batman would like to express his rather dim view of Mother's Day.
- From the "I didn't know Star Trek had caused this" files, here's an old commercial for Milwaukee's bus system starring Mr. Sulu.
- Here's Give Up Robot, a grappling-hook game with old-timey synthesized robo-voice accompaniment. The difficulty curve between levels is a bit uneven, but it's pretty fun.
- I think miniatures-based wargames would get a lot more respect (and injuries, and losses due to property damage) if they made miniature weapons like this, that actually fire projectiles. I think aluminum-cased laptops would become required gaming equipment as well.
- Just in case you can't come up with the name for your thrilling tale of zap-gun-oriented derring do, the Random Pulp Science Fiction Title Generator is standing by to help.
- You've seen the beatboxing dog. You've seen the Russian trolololo guy. The two, naturally, have merged and this is the result.
- This is a nifty puzzle game: Gem Grab. Move blocks around a maze of passages and drag the gem to the exit, so you can save your village.