Posts by lou 19 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Feb 2011
We have numerous 4k2k screens here in the office and I have to say that for clarity of image there's nothing like it.
I don't think there's likely to be any market for them for a good few years but still the picture quality is excellent and much better than the 1080p screens we have.
DVB-T2 in could be the answer. It offers lots of modes that offer good robustness and coverage is already very good.
Scrapping DAB and DAB+ would be mildly painful, but in the long run a harmonised broadcast system would be much more sane and would allow pan-european reception too.
The sooner DAB dies and is replaced the better.
Defence spending in waste shocker?
Who'd have thought the government would have found a way to channel tax-payers money into the pockets of British companies whilst maintaining a fleet of shiny toys.
At least some of the money will have been paid back in tax by RAF servicemen/women and employees of the organisations that support them.
Most CA systems I've worked with have an ECM period of around 30 seconds.
Having to brute force a CSA key that changes every couple of minutes at best isn't a viable use of computer hardware.
It'd be on dvd/blu-ray by the time you'd finished the crunching, and you _still_ wouldn't want to watch it :)
Don't confuse scrambling and encryption, they're quite different.
The DVB-CSA scrambles the stream and generates a control word that is used by the receiver to put the stream together again.
Some _very_ proprietary encryption systems (from NDS, Nagra, Vermitrix etc) are used to encrypt the control word during transport. Cracking this encryption is a much bigger job and almost certainly not possible in real-time.
As with any encryption system that relies on keys it's how you move the keys around that is important.
Surely running Windows, with an HDD and a detachable keyboard it's a bit of a stretch to put it in the same category as 'tablets'?
Seems to me it's a touchscreen laptop with a wireless keyboard!
I bet the 'droid version with no SSD, no windows tax and better battery life will outsell it 10 to 1.
But it's not the same company!
The rights are sold by one company to the highest bidder in each country.
It's not Sky UK and Sky Greece charging different prices, it's Sky UK and a Greek Broadcaster charging different prices. There is no law to say any product must be sold at the same price by different vendors.
The PL is the rights owner, they sell to broadcasters.
Sky, the Greek Broadcaster and any number of others are licensees.
Sky are, mistakenly, suing a pub for not using Sky, I'd agree this is doomed. As under EU law a consumer can buy goods and services from anywhere in Europe.
Whether or not the Greeks have the rights to broadcast to the UK is another matter. The PL could, if they wanted, go after them for broadcasting outside the contractually agreed area.
Satellite TV can be beamed into specific areas just like terrestrial.
Think of the satellite like a giant Maglite, it can do a wide beams and spot beams at the same time.
Even once the signal has been received there are many ways to limit the decoding of that signal to a specific group of people.
Given the size of the deal between Sky and Premier League, it would seem that withholding rights from the Greeks would be a more popular idea.
Sky just broke the 10M customer barrier, they don't want a mass desertion of subscribers.
Without Sky the Premier League has a very big hole in funding, something that won't be welcomed by either side. With this in mind I'd anticipate the Greek broadcaster being 'leaned on' to ensure only Greek subscribers can receive the service.
I think this talk of countries is wide of the mark.
The Premier League, along with all content owners, sells rights to broadcasters, not nations.
There is no law that says a supplier must sell at the same price to all customers, right? If I have a bag of widgets to sell, if I can get €10 from customer A and €15 from customer B that's down to me. The EU can't knock on my door and tell me to stop.
So, assuming the Greek satcaster has a contract with EPL not to broadcast outside Greece, surely that's where the problem is? And that has to be a matter between content owner and content broadcaster?
Surely the contract between the EPL and the Greek broadcaster will state that they have the right to broadcast in their own territory and not beyond?
I'd have thought that they were likely in breach of their own contract with the EPL.
The legality of that contract is another matter, but I guess it was entered into willingly by both parties.
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