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Viidoo.com Streams TV Live

From http://www.tvtechnology.

com/


You want to see the Raiders take on the 49ers, or the Rams up against the Packers? You don't have to be there, and you don't have to tune into CBS or Fox. It's all on Viidoo.

com, and it's all free.

"This is the Napster of TV," said Bob Seidel, vice president of engineering and advanced technology at CBS. Seidel participated in a panel discussion on broadcast technology at the MSTV conference Oct.

3. When talk turned to the broadcast flag, which continues to languish on Capitol Hill, Seidel observed that content pirates were already several steps ahead at Viidoo. "You can watch soaps, the NFL, Major League Baseball.

...

it's a major problem."

It's not just a broadcast problem. In addition to the big broadcast networks, the Viidoo lineup includes several cable nets--Comedy Central, Disney, Animal Planet, Cartoon Network, USA Network, ESPN, TV Land, CNN and others.

Sports leagues are covered, with the MLB Channel, NBA TV, select NFL games, golf tourneys, even wrestling events from WWE. It also has a selection of international fare--HunanTV, Italian sports net Telecapri, KNNSBS out of Korea and Al Jazeera among them.

IP attorneys at the MSTV event were quick to suggest the Web site would soon come down in a hail of legal fire, even though Viidoo doesn't appear to have originated in some college kid's dorm room.

The domain name is registered to Paul Shen at a post office box in Emeryville, Calif. The phone number listed for both the administrative and technical contacts yielded an automated answer that the recipient's voicemail box was full. The site server is listed as being located in Shanghai.

No problem, said Jim Burger, an attorney with Dow Lohnes in Washington, D.C., and an expert in copyright and intellectual property law.

Burger said China is obligated under the Trade-Related Intellectual Property treaty, which the nation joined in 2001. Copyright is protected under the international agreement, referred to as "TRIPS."

"This is very easy to shut down under the assumption that China obeys it's treaty obligation," he said.

"This is a slam dunk. All CBS has to do is show up and say, 'this is our copyright.'"

Burger likened it to iCraveTV.

com, a TV streamer out of Canada that broadcasters and sports leagues went after in 1999. It was shut down by early 2000. iCraveTV initially argued that it had as much right to retransmit TV signals as cable and satellite companies, as long as it didn't insert commercials.

While signal theft is not enjoined under international agreements, copyright violations are. iCraveTV founder Bill Craig offered to pay copyright fees, but not before he was utterly out-gunned by network and sports league lawyers. At the time, news Web site C|NET ask Craig if his company's very public demise would prevent other startups from streaming TV signals.

"Who knows who might have the gumption," he said.

The folks at Viidoo clearly do. The network selection is extensive and the software player downloads within a minute or two.

The "TVUPlayer" is still going through iterations; a new version is being beta tested by "invited" users, who then post their results to an online forum on the site, some of whom want to know what happened to HBO.

The current version of the TVUPlayer worked fine at the offices of TV Technology, allowing editors to watch "Judge Alex" on Fox in real time. Based on the advertising, the feed appeared to come from the San Francisco affiliate KTVU.

Viddoo isn't exactly being stampeded. There are very few ads on the Web site; just a few other URLs. It has 11,780 registered users, 14 of whom were online Friday morning.

The most online users ever, according to the Web site, were 593 on June 16 at 3:19 p.m. CBS discovered the site through it's own pack of Web lurkers, who are paid to look for signal theft and other forms of content piracy.

Broadcast signal theft is covered domestically by U.S. communications law; there is no comparable international protection.

"We want that protected under WIPO," Burger said. "WIPO" technically refers to the World Intellectual Property Organization, an agency of the United Nations that handles IP matters. "WIPO" as it refers to broadcast signals is the agreement recently debated by the 183 member nations, and scheduled to be hammered out next year.

A schism over the agreement emerged when broadcast interests pushed for further copyright protections. Representatives of companies that license content, Burger among them, argued that content copyrights were already too labyrinthine and instead pushed for signal theft protection. The WIPO general assembly concluded Oct.

3 with an agreement focused on signal theft.

Nonetheless, there are still plenty of places to set up a server where international law would mean squat.

"The problem that could occur is if it were happening in the Gaza Strip," Burger said.

VOA Persian Expands to Four Hours of Daily TV Broadcasts

From http://voanews.com


PRESS RELEASE - Washington D.C.

, October 6, 2006 - Voice of America (VOA) adds a fourth hour of daily Persian-language television broadcasts to Iran beginning Sunday. News Talk, an hour-long program featuring a panel of experts discussing the day's top news stories, will debut on October 8 from 7:00-8:00 p.m.

in Iran.

News Talk will open VOA's daily four-hour Persian-language television block every day with a brief recap of the day's top headlines. The show will also feature in-depth discussions of the issues of greatest concern to Iranians.

News Talk will close with a segment on worldwide media coverage of Iran. Sunday's debut broadcast, hosted by Jamshid Chaharlengi, will look at the nuclear issue in Iran.

After News Talk comes News and Views, Roundtable With You, and Late Edition, all one-hour shows that constitute a four-hour daily block of Persian-language television broadcast by satellite to Iran.

News and Views, which debuted in 2003, features correspondent reports, interviews, and the top news stories from Washington and around the world. Roundtable With You, which debuted on television in 1996, takes calls from viewers and features a wide variety of guests discussing issues ranging from popular culture to politics. Late Edition, a youth-oriented program which first aired in July, looks at major world events and issues of interest to young people.

The Voice of America, which first went on the air in 1942, is a multimedia international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government through the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

VOA broadcasts over 1,000 hours of news, information, educational, and cultural programming every week to an estimated worldwide audience of more than 115 million people. Programs are produced in 44 languages.

For more information, contact the Office of Public Affairs at (202) 203-4959, or by e-mail at mailto:pubaff@voa.

gov.


Pentagon Confirms China's Anti-Satellite Laser Test

From http://www.allheadlinenews.

com

Washington D.C. (AHN) - The Pentagon has confirmed that China has tested its anti-satellite laser and jammed a U.

S. satellite but wouldn't say which satellite was involved.

The U.

S. has 30 Global Positioning Satellites that it relies on for a number of tasks. That ranges from military uses such as targeting bombs and finding enemy locations to consumer uses such as automobile navigation systems and bank automatic teller machines.

The Pentagon's National Reconnaissance Office Director Donald Kerr acknowledged the incident to Defense News last week, but said it did not materially damage the U.S. satellite's ability to collect information.

"It makes us think," Kerr said.

The incident has sparked worldwide concerns over the vulnerabilities of communications satellites and has made watchdog groups to re-consider if satellite problems are caused by malfunctions, weather anomalies like solar flares, or targeted attacks.

Air Force Space Commander General Kevin Chilton said, "We're at a point where the technology's out there and the capability for people to do things to our satellites is there.

I'm focused on it beyond any single event."

The reports of Beijing's testing of the anti-satellite laser is likely to reignite the debate over the U.S.

' own anti-satellite program, Starfire, for which the House of Representatives attempted to block funding.

The funds were reinstated after Air Force told lawmakers that the program would only be used for tracking.


Malaysian broadcaster to cooperate with CCTV

From http://news.

xinhuanet.com/
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- Malaysian national broadcaster, Radio Television Malaysia (RTM), will soon enter into a tie-up with China Central Television (CCTV), a senior official said Sunday.

Through this tie-up, CCTV and RTM will exchange economic, cultural and tourism-related programs, said Information Minister Zainuddin bin Maidin.

However, CCTV is not keen to air political programs so as to avoid being accused of interfering in Malaysian politics, said Zainuddin.

Meanwhile, China Radio International (CRI) has also expressed interest to work with RTM to strengthen its Malay language service in China, added Zainuddin.

RTM Embarks On Digital TV Broadcast Project

From http://www.bernama.com.

my
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 7 (Bernama) -- Unaware to many, the government's broadcasting station, Radio Televisyen Malaysia (RTM), has been conducting a pilot project on Digital Terrestrial Televisyen Broadcasting (DTTB) since last September.

A total of 2,000 households in the Klang Valley were selected for the project where they were each provided a "set-top-box" (STB) to enable them to receive the digital TV broadcast by RTM on a trial-run.

The project, costing RM70 million, is important for the progress and advancement of the country's broadcast industry.

Director-General of Broadcasting Datuk Abdul Rahman Hamid said the selected households were the respondents for RTM's digital broadcast for a nine month period, which is until March next year.

"After that, we will study the feedback received from them before expanding the digital broadcast to the whole of the Klang Valley area," he told Bernama here.

Through the DTTB, Abdul Rahman said the respondents were able to get two additional channels, the RTMi (RTM Interactive) and a special channel dedicated for music with quality sound and visuals.

Compared with the current "Standard Definition (SD) TV" service, the High Definition (HD) TV service will give better quality digital broadcast in terms of visuals, sound and contents.

Observers in the industry said many developed countries had complelety shifted from the analog to digital system, which was more competitive in capacity, content and also space saving.

Bernama was made to understand that the goverment had proposed that RTM should go digital nationwide by 2015 and from a study made in 2002, the move is expected to cost RM2 billion.

If this can be done, there will be no more analog TVs in the market after 2015 as they will be replaced by digital ones. This harks back to the late 70s when colour TVs were introduced to replace black-and-white ones.

This will also mean consumers will need the STB (similar to that of Astro or MiTV) to be able to receive RTM's digital broadcast or they can just buy a new digital TV.

"RTM has been entrusted by the government to pioneer this project, after its (project) success, it is up to the Energy, Water and Communications Ministry to also get the private TV channels to do the same," said Abdul Rahman

However, he said the process would take at least 10 years and depended on the outcome of the pilot project.

So far only Astro and MiTV (pay TV stations) have gone digital in their broadcasts while the government-run TV stations, RTM1 and RTM2, as well as the privately-run TV stations TV3, NTV7, 8TV and TV9, which are all owned by Media Prima Bhd, are still using the analog system.

"But, there is no need for the people to worry because the analog system will not be terminated," Abdul Rahman added.