The Great Television Migration

I ran across an interesting topic today in one of of the mailing lists I subscribe to:

Why have TV when you can stream anything you want any time you want from the internet?
Where is the place for it, and advertising when you can download shows for free, or close to it?

As a video content producer who has researched online distribution,  I feel somewhat qualified to answer.  You may disagree, but it makes for interesting speculation.

First of all, you can’t currently stream everything for free.  Less than 3% of all major networks’ shows are available online from the networks (ie. legally).

Secondly, TV won’t die any time soon, but is changing into a quasi-music-industry model.  Meaning, pop music artists today hardly make any money off of their CD/online store sales; instead, they make their living from live shows.  From the standpoint of the artist, all of the radio play and CD sales are “advertising” to go see the live shows.  (This is not the standpoint of the publishers, which I will tastefully not comment on in this post.)  So how is TV like that?  In the case of television, shows like Heroes, 30 Rock, and CSI are available online 1-7 days after the broadcast.  When you go to watch them online, you are treated to advertising — but unlike broadcast television, there is no way to skip the advertising, as the DRM’d player won’t let you.  (No doubt hackers will find a way around this, but for now, that’s the case.)  To broadcasters and advertisers, a single advertisement that you cannot skip is worth a dozen that you expect the user to skip with VCRs and DVRs.  In these shows’ cases, the broadcast brings in advertising dollars, sure, but more serves to drive the user online, where distribution can be audited (think Neilsen ratings with a much larger sample size) and other company offerings can be promoted (like DVD sets) without cutting into broadcast time.  There is a very large market for DVD sets of shows, and as long as the set contains extra materials (commentary is usually a requirement), the set can sell to a customer even if they have watched all of the shows online.

There is a tipping point, but we won’t get there until high-speed broadband becomes a utility in every home (ie. 6mbps or greater, enough to support picture quality identical or better than broadcast SDTV).  The only reason it is happening at all is because networks are trying to reclaim their user base.  Perform an inventory of all of the shows being offered online and you will find that, almost universally, they are shows that are followed by the technologically savvy.  Putting nerd-centric shows like 30 Rock and Heroes online makes sense because that is more of where those shows’ viewers are anyway (“I spend more time on the computer than on the couch”).  Conversely, putting shows online like talk shows or old reruns doesn’t make sense, since the viewership of those shows is primarily non-technical or lower-income and wouldn’t have broadband.  (One of the few exceptions to this are soap operas, because each show of a soap is broadcast only once and is not repeated/re-run.  Putting them online gives viewers a second chance to catch up on the story in missed shows, which gives the broadcasting company a second chance to earn advertising revenue.)

My prediction is that the future of traditional broadcast television will ultimately be determined by the future of online/digital copyright law.  But that’s a topic for another day.

The Next Big Thing

As some followers of a certain thread on pouet might have guessed, the MindCandy crew has started production on MindCandy 3.  This time around we’re mixing the familiar with the unfamiliar:  We’re revisiting the PC — specifically Windows  — but unlike any other demoscene project, we’re doing it all in HD.  That’s right:  MindCandy 3 will be Blu-Ray.

Oh, we’re going to make a DVD available as well, don’t worry.  In fact, we’re tossing around the idea of including the DVD in with the BD, so that there’s only one package to get and you can enjoy the BD when you eventually upgrade your hardware.  Nobody gets left in the cold, and the demos get the proper treatment they deserve.  And it’s one hell of a treatment; thanks to kkapture, we’re able to get clean and pure video from most demos, 60 frames per second, at 720p.  For those who hate interlacing artifacts, this is the fastest progressive video specification HD supports. For some demos (like Into The Pink), the video exceeds what most 2008 machines are capable of.

Work on MindCandy 3 actually began before MindCandy 2 was finished.  In mid-2003, a good friend of the project, Steinar H. Gunderson, worked with us to create “demorender”, which did exactly what it said it did:  Hooked DirectX 8 and 9 calls to grab the data from a frame, dump it through a VFW codec, and then continue, all the while faking the timer so that the demo would be fed a constant timebase.  We were able to capture around 50% of the demos out there when ryg announced kkapture in 2006 and we found that, right off the bat, kkapture did everything our tool did.  We weren’t ready to begin MC3 at that time — and farbrausch is, well, farbrausch — so Steinar contributed the source code of demorender to ryg to fill in a hole or two in kkapture (I believe it was in .wav writing or something but I’d have to check the sources to be sure).

Fast-forward to 2008, and we start to get the MindCandy bug again.  We were in the middle of tossing around ideas to cover, when Blu-Ray finally won the HD format war, and we took that as a sign that that’s what we should target.  The first MindCandy, which was in production from 2000 to 2002, came right at the cusp of the DVD revolution; it was the right product at the right time, and as a result, it did well and the demoscene gained some new converts.  We’re at another cusp:  HD video.  We’re excited to work in that medium and we hope that we can live up to the standards set by MC1 and 2.

While the www.demodvd.org website will remain and start to get updated as we get rolling, I’m moving the Developer’s Blog over here, because this space is an actual blog and not some Python code I slapped together.  I’ll tag them appropriately, for those who want to follow only MindCandy development.

Because part of capturing HD material is making sure you have an HD monitor, I have one now.  Unfortunately, I can’t stand how my 1920-wide window displays a 640-wide skinny little blog in the center, so I will be checking wordpress.com every week to see if they have a theme available with a flexible width that doesn’t royally suck.

People started dancing a long time ago

Back when I worked at Bank of America in the first few years of this century, I met Matt Hite.  Matt is something of an authority on mash-ups, and he inspired me to try my hand at creating some mixes.  Not mix tapes, that melodramatic lost art of the 1980s, but full-on beatmatched mixes that pay a passing respect to basic musicology.

Surprisingly, I turned out to be quite terrible at it.  I mean, I can beatmatch and match songs somewhat competently, but it turns out I just don’t have The Gift for this kind of thing that results in clever, listenable music.  After three strikes, I figured I was out.

For anyone with minutes to kill, I offer up my mutations for a post-mortem.

Attempt #1

Title: Memories of Medusa, Cuesheet (with track breaks and CD-TEXT info)

During my senior year of high-school (1988-1989), and during summers inbetween college, my friend Victor and I used to go to Chicago every Friday night to Medusa’s, a dance club in Chicago (it has since relocated to Elgin).  A converted two-story house, Medusa’s had two distinct components:  House/Dance on the giant lower floor, and a somewhat experimental upper floor that would alternate between rock, punk, experimental electronica (I remember watching Kraftwerk’s Music Non-Stop video up there), and anything else you could think of.  This was my first attempt at making a mix, and I unwisely chose to make a tribute to that time period at Medusa’s.  The choice was unwise because I was still in the “mixtape” mentality and the mix plays like someone walking up and down between the two floors, alternating between late 1980’s house music and… not 1980’s house music.  While that evokes great memories for me, it does not make the most listenable mix.  The first two songs in particular don’t belong in ANY mix, I think, but I had to include them because they were so representative of Chicago house music at the time I was going (including that damn ACIEEED house period).

Attempt #2

Title: Goth Chicks Dig It, Cuesheet (with track breaks and CD-TEXT info)

After realizing the mistake of my mixtape mentality, I decided to put together something modern that would be darker and more intense, with maybe the slightest new-wave influence.  Whether or not it turned out that way is up to you.  This one is listenable and flows well 60% of the time, if not very cleverly.  It’s quite self-titled; I figured it would be female-friendly electronica that goth chicks could tolerate.

Attempt #3

Title: Ultimate Tribal Dance, Cuesheet (with track breaks and CD-TEXT info)

Inspired by the MindCandy 2 easter egg hidden in the first five seconds of 9 Fingers, this was an intentionally silly challenge:  Mix together as many versions as possible of 2 Unlimited’s Tribal Dance without losing my sanity.  The end result is a 24-minute ultra-mix of Tribal Dance, probably 16 minutes more than anyone should be subjected to in a single run.  And yet, this one is my favorite, mostly because it mixes together so damn well.  If it weren’t for the track breaks in the cuesheet, I’m not sure people could pick apart the individual sections.

When I knew that my silliest mix was also my favorite, I knew it was time to stop trying.  Enjoy these, if you can.

You, sir, are no hero

I loved the first season of Heroes, the X-Men-style soap opera that ran on NBC from 2006-2007 — that is, I tried to love it, but threw my hands up in despair at the last episode of the season. As a fan of comics and sci-fi, I grew increasingly disappointed that, throughout the run of the season, there were more and more moments of missed opportunities and direction. Sylar, a truly creepy villain with a streak of vulnerability, grew increasingly powerful; for example, he could stop bullets using telekinesis. Yet in the final episode of the season, he is killed by a slow-moving weak individual who runs at him for at least 3 full seconds before impaling him with a sword. He didn’t even have his back turned. How do you go from stopping bullets to being unable to stop a chubby nerd running at you from a distance of 18 feet? I’m not a hollywood writer; I’m just a fan.  But even I thought that killing Sylar using the chubby nerd’s power (the ability to stop time, and also teleport) would have been much more believable and satisfying. What about stopping time, wrestling with the decision to kill a human being, slowly and tearfully doing it after much deliberation, and then resuming time to see what must be his victim’s incredibly surprised reaction? Or hell, go the dumbass route and teleport Sylar into a brick wall or something? I know I’m just an amateur, but surely something better could have been done as a finale to the character.

The season had brilliant moments, such as properly resolving the Peter/Nathan storyline (brothers at odds), and also having the courage to show — graphically — what happens when you transmute your fist inside someone’s head. But as it dragged on, the number of missed opportunities started to outweigh the number of cool moments.  I am still waiting for the scene where Sylar picks up Claire using telekinesis and starts slamming her into everything, only to become more and more frustrated as she quickly regenerates.  I can dream.

Hey, it was a first season. Many first seasons suck; for example, we simply do not speak of the first season of ST:TNG in my household. So it was with high hopes that I started watching the 2nd season, the first episode of which I just now saw (thank you ReplayTV). In it, we see that the spectacular explosion of Peter (more powerful than Sylar; he absorbed everyone’s powers automatically) was survived by his brother Nathan, who could fly and flew him out of harm’s way before he (Peter) exploded as a result of being unable to contain one of his powers. Peter is assumed to be dead, as one would normally be from a crazy powerful explosion. Nathan, depressed and drinking in a bar, looks at himself in the mirror and for a split second sees not his own face but the face of his brother Peter, charred and melted (presumably from the explosion). He looks away, looks back, and his face appears normal in the mirror.

At this point I got really excited, because what that scene hinted at was that Nathan was actually Peter in disguise. Why would that make sense? Because Peter had absorbed a regeneration power, which would account for him surviving the explosion. He had also absorbed a power that allowed him to disguise his appearance. Masquerading as Nathan would be Peter’s way of dealing with the enormous guilt he must feel at being the cause of his brother’s death, as his brother gave his own life to fly Peter out of New York to go explode harmlessly over the ocean. It’s one of those brilliant MY GOD IT ALL FITS moments, and would make for one incredibly kick-ass storyline. I told Melissa what I was thinking, and, for a moment, we were in awe of how clever such a storyline would be.

And then ten minutes later, Peter is found, alive and well somewhere. So much for being clever. My hopes dashed, I kept watching, only to find that Peter has…wait for it… amnesia! Yes, amnesia. Most episodes of Full House have deeper revelations than that. Hell, I’ve seen Teletubbies episodes with more cunning and insight. So it’s now obvious that Heroes is pretty much a soap opera that appeals to nerds without them realizing it’s a soap opera, because nerds don’t (normally) watch soap operas.

I don’t hold much hope for the series. I would probably ditch it if it weren’t for the fact that my wife enjoys it, which is the closest I will ever get to her sitting down and watching Sci-Fi with me on a regular basis. But personally, at this point it’s just something that is keeping me from catching up on my Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, and Farscape.

PS: The best show you all missed the last three months was Burn Notice on the USA network. Torrent it, catch reruns, whatever — it’s clever, it gets better with every episode, and I’m thankful USA is giving it a second season.

Reaching Voyager Saturation

In my last post, I mentioned that I was battling depression using several techniques, one of which was a mystery fourth ingredient.  That ingredient was the complete immersion into the world of Star Trek: Voyager.  To whit, I have completed the following:

1. Watched seasons 1 through 5, in order
2. Played and finished Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force
3. Watched seasons 6 and 7, in order
4. Played Elite Force II’s first mission (fills in some of the Endgame story)

On completing this, I have now seen every single Star Trek regular series episode (I did the same saturation with DS9 last year).  Actually, that’s not entirely true; I haven’t seen every Enterprise episode.  But I never will, due to its overwhelming suckitude (when the season finale is essentially a mediocre TNG episode and is one of the best episodes of the entire series, you know your series should have died on the vine a long time ago).

This complete immersion into all things Voyager has raised me to Grand Flaming Nerd Echelon 5 Alpha, where I’ve been enlightened by a few new pieces of information:

• Voyager was better than most people credit it.  There was a little too much reliance on hologram technology as a major plot point, and the Borg weren’t nearly as threatening as they were in TNG (due to overexposure), but overall it wasn’t nearly as bad as the criticism it has received.  If you want to check Voyager out, I highly recommend renting (or downloading) entire seasons at a time, so that you can quickly skip past secondary plots you don’t care about, episodes you’ve already seen before, etc.
• Like most Star Trek series, Voyager follows the “thirds rule” pretty faithfully:  One third of the episodes are best forgotten, one third are average entertainment, and one third kick ass in one or more ways.  (The only series to not follow this rule is Enterprise.  I leave it to you to figure out the percentages of good/avg/bad on that one.)
• Jeri Ryan made the best of her situation (ie. “let’s bring in a sexpot to raise the flagging ratings”).  There are about five episodes where she genuinely acts — skillfully — and the story is much better as a result.  That’s about 5 percent of the episodes she appeared in, which sounds like a slam, but it’s not meant to be.  I don’t think any fan of the show was expecting her to hold her own with the other actors as well as she did.
• With the exception of Kate Mulgrew, most of the actors had two basic categories of operation:  Flustered or Jovial.  This unfortunately caused some of the story progressions to become predictable, as the writers fed off of the actors’ portrayal of their characters.
• Kate Mulgrew is a much better actress than most people realize.  She manages to find the right, subtle notes for almost every scene that requires her to say something more than the standard stock library of “Shields!”
• Some stories should have been rejected as duplicates.  We have two stories where a bomb needs to be defused by reasoning with its computer A.I.; four (or more, I lost count) stories where characters on the holodeck either become aware of the holodeck, escape the holodeck, or both; multiple stories where characters are killed then revived; etc.
• The attempt to fit some of the Endgame story in the Elite Force II game was a dismal failure.  The game’s portrayal of what happened inside the sphere lacks any sort of urgency or coherence.  It removes all skill from defeating the Borg (evidentally all you have to do is shoot power couplings here and there to defeat an entire Sphere) and there’s no consequences for taking too long to do something.  (It also didn’t help that the voice actor for Ensign Munroe is also the voice actor for the new animated The Batman series — it was unsettling playing Bruce Wayne disabling a Borg vessel).  In retrospect, I wish I hadn’t bothered.

Believe it or not, I’m not a die-hard ST fanboy; I don’t own any collectables, I’ve never been to a convention, and I never will.  I just like science fiction that, while sometimes average and predictable, explores areas that aren’t normally explored in conventional drama, including new takes on moral dilemmas.  Some of the episodes deal with things I can find in conventional fiction, like Neelix’s decision to commit suicide when his entire faith and belief system is dissolved (“Mortal Coil”, exceptionally written and a showcase episode for Ethan Phillips), or how history is inevitably written by the victors (“Living Witness”, also excellent), or whether or not it is ethical to use data from experiments conducted by a war criminal to save the living (“Nothing Human”).  But where else can I experience fiction that deals with things like:

• Trying to reason with a bomb to convince it not to explode (“Dreadnought”)
• Being captured by a race of semi-sentient robots and being coerced to mass-produce them (“Prototype”)
• Two people being merged into one by accident, and the ethical dilemma of whether it is right or wrong to seperate them again, since it means the death of the new individual (“Tuvix”)
• A scientist unable to publish his new findings on the definitive origin of life for his species due to an oppressive regime (“Distant Origin”)
• A holographic servant with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder who finds organics repulsive (“Revulsion”)
• Experiments on a race where the race is sentient and doesn’t wish to participate, and how far they’ll go to stop being experimented on (“Scientific Method”)
• Trying to prevent the loss of one race by committing genocide against another through the manipulation of history (“Year Of Hell”)
• Selectively wiping a section of memory from a person to prevent them from going insane (“Latent Image”)
• Being digested by a pitcher plant, from the perspective of the fly lured into it (“Bliss”)
• Switching one personality for another due to an accident, and the moral implications of whether or not to switch it back (“Riddles”)
• Whether it’s ethical to genetically engineer your unborn child’s appearance (“Lineage”)

I mean, come on, it’s not like I can get this stuff on the typical network dreck shoveled to the masses these days.

Irresponsible Casting on “Geek”

Melissa and I like to watch the show Beauty and the Geek, currently starting its second season, because she’s attracted to the intelligent nerdy type (lucky for me!) and I live vicariously through them as the nerd who didn’t get that kind of advice when he needed it and wants to see what happens to nerds that do get it in time. However, watching the season 2 premiere, it became increasingly apparent that the contestant named Chris is undiagnosed autistic, probably Asberger’s Syndrome. He may have come off as a jerk, but having been around many autistic people in my life (not to mention my own son, who is on the autistic spectrum), I’ve come to recognize the traits of a high functioning autistic person.

This really bothers me, because one of the hallmarks of an autistic person is an inability to pick up on social and facial cues — it’s like they’re aliens living in our world and trying to figure out our customs. They simply don’t pick up on non-verbal body language, and as a result grow up not really knowing how to relate to others properly (depending on the level of their affliction).

I don’t know if the producers of the show knew this or not; if they didn’t, they made a mistake and I hope for his sake that Chris is voted off the program quickly. All of his “jerk” behavior, such as the arrogance, the methodical quizzing of all the other contestants, choosing not to participate in the first night’s social gathering because “he didn’t want to embarrass them” (complete misreading of social situations), etc. — these are all hallmarks of a high-functioning autistic person. Keeping him in the show will be the social equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel and will do more harm than good.