My Apple-powered home continues to grow – to go with the medley of Apple powered computers, screens and wireless kit, I’ve just added an Apple TV. I previously had no interest in them since as I really only use iTunes for music, and still haven’t bought in to the whole downloading and renting TV over the wires.
But when I learned that AirPlay – a feature of iOS 4.2 – would support streaming video over the air, it instantly had new appeal – I have an old TV that has no digital box so is essentially useless but AirPlay in theory meant that I could stream iPlayer from my iPad to the AppleTV and watch it on the TV.
Any H.264 content from the web can be broadcast over Airplay to your HDTV.
I’ve used AirPlay extensively in the house (with three Airport Express…) so figured this was a good solution, and reason enough to invest in an AppleTV. Apple’s marketing confirms this:
If it’s on iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, it’s on Apple TV. Coming Soon.
You can already stream music and video from your computer to Apple TV. With AirPlay, you can stream music and video from your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch too. So if you feel like watching a film you have on one of your devices, you don’t need to rent or buy it again. Just tap to start playing content on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, then tap again to instantly stream whatever you’re watching — or listening to — directly to Apple TV. AirPlay is coming soon to an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch near you.
Simple right? Except, it doesn’t work like that. Now that it’s hooked up, the only video that can be streamed to AppleTV from my iPad is from Apple apps, like the Video app. But since the video needs to be synced to the iPad (via iTunes) and then streamed, this is of little value. Embedded videos (e.g., YouTube) can stream their audio to the TV, but that’s of no value. Most pertinently, I can’t watch iPlayer off the iPad on the AppleTV. It’s unclear whether this is something the BBC could fix by creating a dedicated iPlayer App.
So for the first time in a long while, I’m left disappointed by a piece of Apple kit and the promises I’d heard. Maybe things will improve in time, but until then, it’s just going to be an albeit good looking but nevertheless very expensive dust catcher.
Argh, WMG can suck my balls. I must admit that in *all* the years of the DRM / Copyright / file sharing / Napster debate, I’ve never really been hit by it. Although in principle, DRM or similar is kind of annoying – I mean, I paid for it – I should be able to do what I want with it, right? Well, no, not at all – you just bought a license to listen to the music. The reason I’ve never really got in to downloading music – either illegally or legitimately through iTunes is two-fold – 1) I don’t trust myself to remember that I’ve bought some music in case I start deleting stuff and 2) I have an ever growing CD collection which I’m proud of, and I like having the actual CD.
OK, slight tangent there. Anyway, I’ve just been bitten – albeit algorithmically – by the copyright debate. Shortly after I got my new Macbook Pro, I was farting about with iMovie HD and making some silly videos. These included a bit of my brother’s dog, and a trip when we went to a shooting range, and shot some guns. Hardly ground-breaking or Cannes-winning stuff. In fact, they’re so amateur that they’re pretty laughable now. But nevertheless, they were good fun when I was putting them together, part of which was figuring out the soundtrack. I spent ages working out the best tunes to back my brother’s dog running around in a park (Jungle Brothers) or being driven around in a car (Passenger, by Iggy Pop).
Anyway, some of my videos got WMG’d at YouTube. On some of these videos, I now just see a message that says
Your video, Seven Stages of Dog – Part 2, may have audio content from Growing On Me by The Darkness that is owned or licensed by WMG.
Obviously referring to the part where Iggy (a 2 year 50lb bull terrier / shepherd mix plays with Dante, a 130lb Italian Mastiff, with humourous consequences).
So the point is, WMGs access to YouTube and its algorithms to analyse all videos to find illegal use of their music has caught me out and the music to the video is muted. And that makes the video even more dull than before. What’s unusual however, is that there are other videos I have made that use exactly the same styles, but they didn’t get flagged. And a cursory search of YouTube shows thousands more videos with copyrighted music on arguably much bigger or questionable videos. So obviously whatever software they’re using isn’t perfect.
But I’m still struggling to understand how my use of the music for my crappy “home videos” can really be damaging them and I’d argue that my use is “fair use”. It’s not for profit, it’s clearly not for anything sensible or real, it’s just a bit of fun for me and anyone who might be interested (which, judging by the view count, is not many) and whereever I use music, the artist is credited for it. If anything, I’d go the opposite way and say that for the odd few people who actually watch these videos, might think “oooh Ocean Colour Scene, haven’t heard them in a while” and go and buy a CD. (Or fire up Limewire I suppose.)
Well needless to say, I find it all very crap. This sort of thing can only stifle the creativity that places like YouTube are slowly opening up. Fat little kids who previously had no lives are somehow “cewebrities” because they get creative with a webcam. (Ooer!). But no, WMG can’t monetise it (yet) so their decision is to pull the plug. Of course, you can use the “AudioSwap” – i.e., a list of public domain tracks that are free for use – but how long before they’re used up and everyone’s videos starts to look very very similar. In fact, it gets worse. I saw one poor who had her videos deleted for singing her favourite bands music!
If I really cared enough about this, I’d find a list of all WMG’s artists and never buy their music again. But I don’t, so I won’t. But still, it’s tiresome and officious, and is nowt but a sign of things to come.
So on a lighter note, here’s another video I made that doesn’t have any copyrighted music. It is obviously a blatant rip off of a movie, so quite how long it stays out there, well, who knows.
As a fully-fledged Apple fanboi (as the idiots would call me), I was waiting with great anticipation for the iPhone to arrive in my area. In mainland UK, the iPhone is locked to o2, but here in Guernsey, we have three mobile carriers (none of which are o2) so there was a long, long wait for them to arrive here. And when they did, they were by no means official – that is, the two carriers offering them are importing them certain European countries for sale unlocked, and I’m reasonably sure Apple has little to no idea about it. As I was on the waiting list, I was one of the first to get my hands on one.
I’d needed a new phone for ages, as the ghetto orange Sony Ericsson I had been using was both a) a girl’s phone and b) a lesbian one at that. Not to mention totally beaten to hell and displaying typical “old phone” behaviour in randomly turning off when it ballywell felt like it. Not a good look. When the iPhone arrived here, it was a no-brainer to get one. And, as it turns out, I really had disengaged my brain in getting one.
“The Word Aerobics comes from two Greek words: aero, meaning ‘ability to,’ and bics, meaning ‘withstand tremendous boredom.’ This is the difference between a world-class marathon runner and a normal person: a world-class marathon runner has undergone sufficient aerobic conditioning that he can run for nearly three hours without falling asleep, whereas a normal person will quit after a few minutes and look for something interesting to do.”
(Dave Barry)
‘Nuff said.