HIS is simplicity and ease of use?
How about this:
-Buy Blu-ray player
-Attach to TV using HDMI cable
-Watch movie
Done!
CPU usage: 0%
Well,… yeah… but it wouldn’t make a very interesting blog post. Remember, Jeff is the guy that almost get arrested for hacking telephone line in his teenage year, and brought 2kgs book on hacking for lightweight reading during flights.
I wonder how many of you would still see no problem with this if you owned Netflixs, or at least your paycheck came from them…
I’m sure a quick e-mail to customer service could resolve this rather than using assumptions. I guess, more or less, ignorance of the law isn’t protection from the law… be careful…
@anon :
And it looks sh*t, and it’s 10 times harder to setup/use than Vista MCE! Great!!
I’ve just switched to MediaPortal after 6 months on VMC. VMC might look good and be easy to set up, but :
Alternativly, you can put a little time into MediaPortal, and have everything working in a few days. The configuration difficulty is mostly due to a braindead design in some parts. Some things which are configured on the client really should be on the server for example, and the documentation can be a bit painful to find. However it’s in no way worse than the afformentionned crap you have to put up with to get VMC to work reliably. And at least I know i can modify things I don’t like if I really want to, and don’t feel like throwing my HTPC through the window at the end of the day…
Dear Jr. Law Enforcement Deputys,
Get a grip, he isn’t shooting kittens.
Love,
Echostorm
PS. Cool writeup Jeff.
A couple interesting quotes from the Netflix TOS:
The use of the Netflix service, including DVDs rented to you by us is solely for your personal and non-commercial use.
No problem there. I think everyone agrees Jeff’s usage in this case is personal and non-commercial.
Netflix does not promote, foster or condone the copying of DVDs or any other infringing activity. If you believe your work has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement…
Doesn’t that imply there’s a way to copy it in a way that doesn’t constitute copyright infringement?
Also, with the new Xbox 360 update, there’s an option to copy games to the hard drive. I’ve been doing that with most of my rented games because they’re often a bit scratched and crash when playing from the disc, but play fine from the HD. Is that copyright infringement?
Why is no-one asking the question about NetFilx’s business model that is obviously flawed from the start?
To instigate a business that is so easily ‘ripped off’ that you can do it accidently (just look at the debate about the legality of what Jeff is doing. Obviously, people are NOT absolutely sure of the legality or otherwise) and then to initiate all sorts of DRM and legal action to force people to comply with their defective business model is screwy.
In the art world, if I bought a Matisse painting, I would own it. It does not belong to Matisse, his estate or any other corporate.
This whole mess about copyright is being pushed by middle men who did not create the works and have no legal right to claim they have sole right to copy.
Pirates are people who, from a vessel on the sea, steal from the land or other vessels, usually with violence. Copying data is simply that, not piracy.
Perhaps some RIAA executives should be violently robbed by pirates to make clear to them the difference in definitions between Pirates and those who copy data.
Once long ago, copyright protected the creators of a work form someone else claiming to be author, or from illegal broadcast (distribution) of that work. It had NOTHING to do with copying data. We need to put the law back into perspective and prosecute the distributors of works who do not have permission of the true authors to distribute the work. The RIAA affiliated companies are guilty of this themselves and should be prosecuted.
@department_g33k I’m responding to I think you missed my point, and to your earlier statement I use Windows because … b) I don’t think people should just give me the software they write.
Many people use Linux because they can fix bugs themselves, develop job skills, display their code publicly, contribute to the common good, and especially because no one preaches to them it’s not ethical to take code you wrote on one job to your next job (because your employer owns everything you write).
The point is not that Linux is superior (frequently it isn’t, especially regarding secret hardware like nVidia) or more geeky. It is that proprietary software is written by people forced to give away their right to re-use their own work. The salary might pay for their time, but it doesn’t pay for the loss of the right to re-use and publish. The people who work to write free sotware are also paid for their time, and they don’t have to give away those rights. When you use Windows, you contribute to the power of Microsoft, nVidia, etc., to force this bargain onto their employees.
You’re pirating the movies. You don’t own them, nor do you have the right to copy them and keep them on your hard drive for a millisecond longer than you have the physical DVD. If you plan to break the law that’s your choice, but don’t act like you’re above the law because you already already own more movies than I could possibly ever watch in one lifetime.
Dear rmf - don’t act like you’re above the entire world and the laws of your country apply everywhere. Actually, there are countries, where you actually HAVE THE RIGHT TO MAKE A COPY OF ANY COPYRIGHTED WORK (EXCEPT SOME EXCEPTIONS LIKE SOFTWARE OR DBs) AND USE IT FOR PERSONAL, NON-COMMERCIAL PURPOSE. Taken as such - yes, you can download whatever movie on the internet (given that it was already made public, no pre-premier movies and so) you wish and store it on your hard drive and it is perfectly legal, since you paid a compulsory fee from every CD/DVD media you bought, every hard drive, every computer, copier, memory card, toner, recorder, everything.
If you live in country where downloading movie is more severe crime than murder, it is your choice, but don’t act like you rule the world and your stupid laws apply everywhere in the world.
By ‘business model’ I mean the model between Netflix and the movie studios. Sure its no skin of Netflix’s back if people copy and return, but the Studio who sold the DVD will absolutely care. The price of the DVD is set assuming exclusive viewing for whomever currently possesses it. Once people copy the contents and return/sell the disc this is no longer the case. So what should studios charge for a DVD if it no longer guarantees single ownership of the content? Perhaps they should just stop selling DVDs altogether and only offer digital copies with stifling DRM that punishes the majority of law abiding consumers.
If Jeff was indeed deleting the copy at the exact moment he returns the movie then I could see this as a reasonable use despite whatever the Netflix ToS and DVD content laws are. I’m guessing he isn’t though simply because, despite what he says, there’s simply no advantage to copying a DVD other than for later viewing.
Copyright (under law in most countries) falls mechanically (legalese for automatically) to the creator of a work. Mechanical copyright remains with the author for their lifetime (and with their estate usually for 100 years after their death).
Although permission to copy and distribute may be granted to third parties, mechanical copyright REMAINS with the true author. Mechanical copyright cannot be sold and become the property of another.
*** Only the true author of a work has copyright!
please upload Planet Earth rips! thanks jeff!
The difference here is that customers don’t own the discs Netflix sends them in the mail. They’re renting them and in fact pay much less than the price of the disc. For this model to work for Studios the single exclusive viewing model has to hold up.
Is it legal to buy media, copy it for you own use, then sell it again? Whatever country you’re in you can see why this shouldn’t be legal.
to ed,
It can be argued that closed source companies that claim ownership of code written by someone else are transgressing the law.
The true creator of the code has mecanical copyright over their creation.
You seem shocked that hardware acceleration could be faster than software. Come on! When you absolutely need a brand-new technology to run fast, of course you do it in specialized hardware. Later on you start doing things in on a general-purpose processor when they catch up. Examples: Firewalls, video games, and now video decoding. Plus hundreds more.
Spending too much time programming makes you forget how really fast hardware can be.
Eyal (measuring time in gate delays, not clock cycles)
You forget the part where you have to stand up, walk to the DVD cabinet, find the DVD, open it’s box and take it out carefull 
Just kidding ofcourse. Though I do have my giant collection of live concert dvd’s ripped to my HTPC HDD. Convenient to select the right DVD with just a few remote buttons.
Thanks for this post. Will give this a try when i get back from work. On my work laptop, my mkv sample stops playing after 15 secs. Maybe it has to do with the fact the videosystem is not up to the task. With ffdshow it kept running though.
Maybe you should add that a media splitter should also be installed. Haali will do, but the MPC-HC MatroskaSplitter will do fine too.
For all the linux geeks out there, have you found a linux equivalent to what Jeff posted above? I suffer the same problem of 99% CPU usage when attempting to play HD content on a decent machine. So far I haven’t seen any codecs that will offload the decoding to the GPU, but if there is one…especially one for Nvidia, please post!
Scott, it looks like people are working on it, but I don’t see anything solidifying yet.
a href=http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=Hardware_Accelerated_Video_Decodinghttp://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=Hardware_Accelerated_Video_Decoding/a
a href=http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/11/1210224http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/11/1210224/a
And to all you people who are SO ANAL about DRM, DCMA, copyright and all that…get a life, get a grip. If you were this passionate about something constructive, the world would be a better place.
Crap…didn’t notice that little no HTML marker. Here’s those links again, in a less confusing format.
http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=Hardware_Accelerated_Video_Decoding
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/11/1210224
Jeff,
I’m not sure why you’re so surprised that offloading CPU work to your graphics card (which is another CPU) lowers your system CPU usage. Um, duh? The important fact is whether or not your GPU, assisted by your CPU can seamlessly playback the videos (which apparently it can). That’s the only thing that matters.
Yes, you may want to just edit this post. Who knows when the wrong person might come along in 2 years and go after you.