All may not be lost.

I’ve got an iPod dock hooked up via the Apple component cable to an amp in my lounge so that I can play video back through my surround speakers and on the screen hanging on the wall. Since the connector for the component cable fits the iPad as well, I can play video back from that device, too.

The other day, I was charging the iPad using the component cable, looked up a video on YouTube and as it played back on my big screen, I started wondering what else would work and my first port of call was BBC’s iPlayer. What I found is that while the site itself shows up in Safari as normal, the video portion plays quite happily on my big screen!

In the photo above, you can see I’ve got the iPad plugged in via the component cable, and an episode of Top Gear is on the screen…! Actually, that might have been far more effective if I’d put up a video clip instead.

Convinced this was nothing new, I Googled around but couldn’t find any “Hey, guess what?” posts describing the same behaviour, so perhaps I’ve stumbled into a minor victory that will allow content from other Flash-based sites to be watched via the iPad, and it’ll only cost you the price of Apple’s component cable!

I was spending the weekend in the North East of England with friends; Mrs T was already in that neck of the woods because of some work stuff, so I cadged a lift with the friends that we’d be spending the weekend with. I can’t remember the last time I actually bought a newspaper, but thought I’d take full advantage of being driven around, and bought a copy of the Daily Telegraph to read along the way.

As I flicked through the pages, I realised I wasn’t actually reading any of the stories because pretty much everything I was looking at in today’s paper had already been covered in yesterday’s news feeds and blog posts. Oh well, at least the crossword kept me busy for an hour or so.

(Before I describe my next collision with old-media, I should point out that I don’t have TV, and haven’t had TV for about 4 years. I have a wall-screen for the Xbox360 and DVD player but don’t have a tuner or satellite dish for broadcast TV. As a result, watching TV is used to be something of a novelty)

In the evening, we had a couple of hours to kill in the hotel room before going out, so I switched on the TV. Being a Bank Holiday Friday, I was expecting to be overwhelmed with a choice of televisual treats, but instead I got game show (BBC1), game show (BBC2), game show (ITV), a repeat episode of The Simpsons (C4) and Airplane (Five) (yes, the almost-30-year-old-funny-the-first-time-not-so-much-now spoof about a chaotic plane journey). I didn’t even bother trying any of the satellite channels, opting, instead to grab my iPod and watch a couple of episodes of Mahalo Daily and Unwired, followed by a topping of Diggnation.

These two experiences got me thinking – the oldspaper distribution (I’m sorry – I just can’t bring myself to call them newspapers any more) model is doomed. There will always be an outlet for good journalistic writing, but it won’t be the printed daily paper. It might be a Kindle-esque model, like that adopted by the New York Times and the WSJ, but even then, it’s still akin to pushing a day-old square peg into an online, immediate round hole.

As for broadcast TV, based on Friday evening’s offerings, it appears to be doing a great job of screwing itself. I don’t know many qualifications it takes to be a TV schedule programmer, but it clearly doesn’t take any effort.

So there I was, an ABC1 demo, at prime viewing time a on a Friday evening – oldspaper consigned to the dustbin, unread; TV switched off; choosing, instead, to watch independently produced media on my iPod.

And why? Because old media isn’t providing me with any compelling reasons to stick around.

• Transformers (available in SD and HD)
• Goodbye Bafana (available in SD and HD)
• Intersection (available in SD)
• Primal Fear (available in SD)
• Clear and Present Danger (available in SD)
• Naked Gun 2 & 1/2: The Smell of Fear (available in SD)
• Naked Gun 33 & 1/3 (available in SD)
• Top Secret! (available in SD)
• Bug (available in SD)
• Hardball (available in SD)
• The Phantom (available in SD)
• Orange County (available in SD)
• 1408 (available in SD and HD)
• Disturbia (available in SD and HD)
• Hot Rod (available in SD and HD)
• A Mighty Heart (available in SD and HD)
• Heartbreak Kid (available in SD and HD)
• Stardust (available in SD and HD)
• In to the Wild (available in SD and HD)

Not only that, Warner Bros will be adding to the catalogue too with:

• The Assassination of Jesse James (Warner Bros, available in SD and HD)
• Beowulf (Warner Bros, available in SD and HD)
• License to Wed (Warner Bros, available in SD and HD)
• No Reservations (Warner Bros, available in SD and HD)
• The December Boys (Warner Bros, available in SD and HD)
• Nancy Drew (Warner Bros, available in SD and HD)

Standard definition will cost you £3.23, while the hi-def versions will set you back £4.56.

Since my not-so-great initial experience with Video Marketplace, I’ve used it several times without any problems – my only frustration had been with the slow pace of updates to the catalogue, so this news is most welcome! Who needs to be stuck in the middle of a “phoney phormat war” between the HD-DVD Jets and the Blu-Ray Sharks, anyway? (Via: CrunchGear.)

Users “suspected” of having illegally downloaded something will get an e-mail from their ISP notifying them of their anti-social behavior. A second offense will result in a temporary suspension of Internet connectivity and a third will see the contract with your ISP ripped apart.

This is, of course, is being lobbied hard by the music and film industry who are quoted as saying that ISPs had “done little or nothing to address illegal downloading via their networks”. The most laughable quote of all, though, is:

This is the number one issue for the creative industries in the digital age, and the government’s willingness to tackle it should be applauded.

So, it’s the number one issue for the creative industry, and how do they tackle it? By suing the pants of people or bleating to Ministers. What they’re not doing is addressing the real issue: Why do people download copyrighted material? Here are a few thoughts, just off the of my head.

Maybe it’s because they’re frustrated with the “creative” industry’s DRM, which prevents them from playing their legally downloaded purchased content on which ever device they choose.

Maybe it’s because they’re tired of being stiffed by their local cinema, who charge more for a Diet Coke and a bucket of popcorn than the local drug dealer charges for a week’s worth top-notch snort (so I’m told).

Maybe it’s because they’ve shelled out for the latest in DVD player technology, only to watch the “creative” industry render that technology obsolete thanks to a $400m back-hander.

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because the majority of the content produced by the “creative” industry (especially mainstream music) is such generic, mass-produced, pop pap that people don’t think it’s worth spending their money on.

I’m tired of being told that the content I want isn’t available for download in my region – even though I can buy it on DVD from my local store; I’m tired of buying stuff from iTunes only to find that it will only play on my iPod; it pisses me off that you think of me of as a pirate before you think of me as a consumer.

So, here’s little tip to the “creative” industry – it’s time to get a little creative. Instead of whining about illegal downloads and hoping that someone else will sort it out for you, how about you look at better ways to make it easy for people to legally download your content.

And here’s a tip for HM Govt, too. You’ve got more important things to worry about than this. Tape cassettes didn’t kill their industry, neither did video tapes or writeable CDs. Nor will the Internet. Their current distribution model is broken and it’s up to them to fix it, not you.

To show you this in action, I’ve embedded Paul O’Flaherty’s channel, just here. If you click Start, you’ll see a small “t” icon just above the player controls; click the icon and the channel is paused, while a box is displayed over the top for you to provide your Twitter username and password. The message you twitter will include a link back to the channel.

I can’t think of any other site that has Twitter messaging so deeply embedded into its guts; something echoed by Rick Turoczy. Twitter users are used to manually processing URLs they want to tweet through services like TinyURL, or URLTea, but Splashcast viewers can now do this without having to leave the site.

Via Marshall Kirkpatrick, who has been Twittering this like a proud Dad!

The thing I don’t get is, why would Viacom bother? One of the podcasts I listen to is Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code. On each episode, he plays (at least) a couple of podsafe music tracks – independently produced music, which often puts “mainstream” artists to shame – and pretty consistently, the artists who have had their tracks played send some feedback to Adam along the lines that after being played they’ve seen an increase in sales of their music.

Robert Scoble recently reported:

To watch my videos you used to have to go to PodTech. Then in January we let go a little bit of our controlling attitude and made a player that you can embed on your own site. What happened?

Traffic tripled.

Read that last bit again – “Traffic tripled“.

A paradoxical, golfing maxim goes something like, “to gain control, you have to give up control”. Which brings me back to my opening question: why would Viacom bother suing YouTube?

If I hear a great tune on the Daily Source Code, I’m driven to go and buy it; if I hear enough good stuff from that artist, I might buy/purchase/spend my hard-earned cash on more material. If I’m browsing YouTube and see one clip that makes me laugh, I might look for another clip featuring that same comedian; and then another. If I see enough funny material from one show, guess what? I might actually tune in to the entire show on TV week after week.

YouTube gets a lot of eyeballs. Somewhere along the line, that must translate into increased viewing figures of the full-length versions of the very clips that Viacom is looking to have removed. I don’t work in the media business so this might be stupid question; increased viewing figures is a good thing, right?

So, why strangle a potential revenue stream?

[tags]Google, YouTube, Viacom, copyright, lawsuit[/tags]