In2TV Goes Public 99
An anonymous reader writes "It looks like AOL has finally released In2TV, allowing us to watch some of our favorite shows on the internet. It looks fairly promising." In2TV has managed to bag four major advertisers right from the start but if you want to watch on anything but a WindowsXP machine you may be out of luck.
Re:Watch favorite shows on the internet? (Score:3, Interesting)
Umm.. not exactly. A majority have access to broadband, but a third of the US still doesn't. And even among those who have broadband access, in most places reasonable broadband speeds are still so expensive most households don't have it. If you're on cable it's a boon, but a good portion of that tiny majority has access only via dsl. While BASIC dsl prices are not too bad (30 bucks around here) it's only 128kbs on oversold channels - streaming performance on such a connection is not exactly worthwhile. This is readily proven by surveys and statistical analysis that reveal less than 25% of all those internet users, broadband or no, actually use streaming services on a regular basis. And an equal percentage of that remainder say they rarely use it or have no plans at all to use it. My own experience with dsl was like this - my 80 buck a month 1.5mbit connection was peachy keen when I was one of the first in my neighborhood to bite that bullet, but within six months pacbell had so oversold their lines I couldn't even stream a 100kbps video without stuttering and interruptions - sometimes, they wouldn't even connect at all.
Maybe some shows are slightly less res than television because the provider wants to make money twice.
I really don't have a problem with this. In fact, that's kind of the point I was making: if I really want to watch Bsg an I don't have scifi channel I can just download it via torrents. The quality of this download, even the lower rez 180MB versions, is still going to be better than any "stream" I have ever seen. And if I really, really want to enjoy it in DVD rez then they still get the sale because it costs me nearly as much in time and bandwidth as it costs just to go to amazon and buy the damn things.
Would you pay five times for the same book?
I've bought the same book many times. I buy the book to have it when I want it, then end up giving it to a friend because I want them to have that ability as well. Then I end up buying it again. So? A paperback costs about an hour's pay even if you're on minimum wage.
I've also bought at least three copies of Sgt. Pepper's in my life. Two copies of the "red" album compilation, and probably two or three copies of pretty much every Alice Copper album (or cd0 printed before 1985.
There's also a lot of good stuff I don't have on cd because it still isn't offered. But that's a bit beside the point.
Then why pay five times for a film?
When I was a kid I saw Star Wars at least five times. By best friend saw it six times in a single month! We paid every single time because you could only see it at the theater.
It's easy to forget, when stuff is "free," how it used to be. I'm not defending the machine that cranks out an endless stream of bad action movies, but many of the points raised are really nothing new - what's new is our increasing ability to not have to pay every single time we want to see a popular hollywood movie (and more impoirtantly, to see it whenever the hell we want instead of waiting for it to "come around" again), and not have to replace records that have been damaged by dust or heat or cheap k-mart turntables that grind away the vinyl a little more each time we listen to a recording.
The best possible scenereo for end users is one large MPEG file in high res. MPEG can play on any machine, it does not buffer, it plays fast and well. Most people with DSL and Cable Modems can handle a 1.5 gig file no problem, and that should be good resolution for an hour long show.
Absolutely. I even do this on dialup with "small" files (Until they fill that worldwide "analog hole" there's no way this stuff is really going to compete.
This is going to sound so politically uncorrect. Who cars about the world? They care about the USA, Canada, UK, France, German
AOL stores the high quality files locally! (Score:4, Interesting)
If you look into the service, you can stream the videos for free with nothing but an ActiveX plugin and Macromedia Flash. However, if you want "HighQ" video (what they claim is "DVD Quality"), you have to install a piece of software.
It's basically a BitTorrent ripoff. It's a peer-to-peer upload-as-you-download service. But since the files are stored locally and not streamed, I started poking around. Lo and behold, I found the hiding place for the WMV files!
Download a file with the service, then navigate to:
c:\Documents and Settings\~user\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\*random hash*\filename.wmv
Note: You may have to do this at the command prompt, as any attemps I made to get into the "Content.IE5" folder through the GUI were futile. But take a look around, and you'll find all of the WMV files the program uses. Copy them to another directory, and there you have your DRM'd file. The first one I tried was named "PerfectStrangers_Barcode_151772C_1500.wmv~". It plays fine in the standalone WMP10, but not in BSPlayer or MPC. GSpot also doesn't recognize the file.
So there's the source file. Gentlemen, start your cracking!