August 2, 2022 • 33 mins
In this episode Field Commander Global Bob (Brian Varner) takes you on a journey from the 8mm film days all the way to modern home entertainment servers. This is not legal advice so please check your local laws before you copy any movie. Don’t be a pirate be a good person!
Transcripts are automatically generated.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:10):
Here we go. Let's rock and roll. This is the Globalbob
Show, episode number 19. We arethe crossroads of technology,
and politics. Scratch that.
We're the epicenter, technology,and politics. Got a real nice
(00:32):
show in store for you this week,we're going to be talking about
the evolution of homeentertainment, and the various
nuances around that and some ofthe legal things around home
entertainment. And I reallyenjoyed putting this show
together. This is global Bob,your field commander, and
everyone that tunes into theshow each week. Thank you so
(00:56):
much. I'm here in the wonderfulRichard Cook broadcast facility.
And each week, I continue tomake little tweaks and make few
little changes to it. And I havea real nice little little set up
here for doing my podcast. Now,you know, you can always reach
(01:19):
out to Globalbob, if you got aquick question. And just last
week, I had a longtime friend,longtime listener, and he
reached out to me because he hasa client that has fallen victim
to ransomware. Now, of course,it was the typical conversation.
(01:42):
Hey, field commander, Bob got abuddy of mine got a client of
mine, and they have ransomwareon their computer, and they are
100% locked out. Can you crackit open and get the files back?
And I always have to let thecaller down or the person
(02:06):
inquiring about ransomwarerecovery? And I tell them, it's
just one of those things? No, Icannot crack the code. And no,
there's probably no way to getit back cheaply. So this is a
good public service announcementwhere you need to make sure that
you have good backups of yourcritical data. And so I broke
(02:31):
the news to them and told themthat about the best thing you
can do is restore from a backup.
And I can tell you right now, Idon't think I've ever had one
person tell me oh, well, that'scool. We got backups. No,
usually what it is, is that theysay they have all their
information backed up to thecloud. Well, depending on how
(02:55):
your settings are, even thoughyou backup to the cloud, those
files can still be encrypted. Sowhat you have to do is do what I
call incremental backups, whichmeans you probably want to
backup your computer once a day,and store that. And then keep a
week. So you got you know, sevendays and then once a month, so
(03:18):
therefore you can kind of rollback. But that's the only real
defense against this. Theseguys, the girls and people that
are trying to scam you out ofmoney by holding your files
ransom. So public serviceannouncement from your field
commander Globalbob. Pleasebackup your data and keep a
(03:41):
couple of different variationsof that backup. So I'd like to
thank everybody that tunes inevery week, of course, and you
can find Globalbob out on theFacebook page by searching
Globalbob show. You can hit meon Twitter at Globalbob Show and
(04:02):
Gmail at global Bob Show.
Moving right along. Speaking ofmoving right along, got one more
tidbit to share with you so Ialways say that we are cruising
the highways and the byways ofcyberspace. Well, I did have a
conversation with somebody andthey said, Commander Bob, you
(04:25):
talk about cruising the highwaysand byways of cyberspace. Well
what do you cruise in? Andwithout skipping a beat? I said
I cruise and a 1967 CadillacDeville 18 foot, six inches from
nose to tail to door baby blue,white convertible top. He just
(04:47):
so happens Globalbob Here usedto have a 1967 Cadillac Deville
so what I like about radio is isthat we can use our imagination.
So when you are tuned into theshow When I say we're cruising
the highways and byways justknow that we got the top lead
back on the 67 DeVille. Got alittle dance and hula doll on
(05:08):
the dash and the dice hangingfrom the rearview mirror. So
let's get into the topic dujour. So, today, I want to talk
to you about home entertainment,and mainly time shifting of
shows and movies. Now, for somethat don't know exactly what
(05:31):
time shifting is, it's basicallya legal way for you to record
various content. Now, here's alittle disclaimer, I'm not a
lawyer, this is not legaladvice, please do not go out and
do this stuff and say, Whoa,Commander, Bob told me I can do
(05:55):
it. No, no, no, no, do your ownresearch. But for all intents
and purposes, everything thatI'm talking about is completely
legal, from my interpretation.
So what is time shifting? Well,just what we talked about, it is
a way to record something thatis live or something that you
(06:17):
have, and you can then view itlater. So to be able to record
things did not come intoexistence, or available to the
average person and to the mid tolate 70s.
(06:40):
Now, we all know that we've hadthe eight millimeter films and
the 16 millimeter films back inthe day. But that type of
technology was usually reservedfor, you know, people that were
really, really well off. Thesedays, you show off your your
(07:00):
fancy cars, but back then peoplehad screening rooms, and the
film would be one of those reelto reel. And sometimes it would
not even have sound to it. Butcoming into the 70s, we could
get technology and it would beavailable to you know some
(07:23):
people that could afford it. Soyou didn't really have to be
super mega rich. And what wouldhappen is, is that if you missed
a movie in the theater, or ifyou saw it on television, you
didn't get to see it until itaired again. And I can tell you
that just listening to somestories that my dad told that
(07:45):
there would be shirt shows, andhe would rush home and people
would rush home and get in frontof the TV. And if you were
running five minutes late, youmissed five minutes of that
show. And the technology wasn'tthere yet, until about the mid
(08:07):
70s, where you could actuallyrecord that. So how did we get
this technology? Now the majormilestone that happened was when
a Japanese company named Sonyreleased a system called
Betamax. Now that was way beforemy time, I don't remember the
(08:28):
Betamax. Of course, I doremember the VHS. But that was
released May 10 1975. And theway that the Betamax worked was,
is that it used a magnetic tape,and people could record to that
magnetic tape. And this was ananalog technology. So nothing
(08:48):
digital yet. And the way thatBetamax got its name was is that
the pattern that the tape wouldmake the magnetic tape inside
the cassette when make it looklike the Greek letter for beta.
So they call it beta. And Iguess they threw max on there.
So the movie industry is kind ofreally miscalculated the market
(09:13):
hear, they thought that the onlyplay for this technology would
be to rent movies, they didn'tthink that people would want to
record their own stuff off theair. And so they kind of kind of
missed the boat on that. Butpeople quickly wanted to keep
the movies to watch multipletimes. And this is real common,
right? I mean, you'll bewatching something on say
(09:35):
Netflix or you rent a DVD, youstart to watch it and you say,
oh wait, I'd like to watch itwith somebody else. Well, with
the Betamax technology. This wasthe first time that you could
actually record something andwatch it over and over again.
And one of the things that cameup was is that as you know when
(09:58):
new things hit the market herecome other people that want a
piece of that market. So nextenters a company called JV C.
And JVC are the ones thatinvented the VHS tape. And the
VHS tape and Betamax were twocompeting technologies. Maybe
some of you all that are alittle older than me. Maybe
(10:21):
remember those wars back andforth. But JVC isn't nother
Japanese company. And it standsfor Victor company, Japan, and
Betamax. And then we're goingback and forth. But what made
the VHS have more qualityproduct is that it had longer
(10:43):
recording time, the Betamaxdidn't have that. And so Betamax
was first to the market, butthey lost share very quickly.
And they'd lost the sharebecause of the war going back
and forth. And you know, whennew technologies come out,
there's always a war thathappens back and forth, which is
(11:03):
better. And we'll see the samething as we go through the
evolution of home entertainment.
I mean, am had, you know, acompetitor of FM, even when
electricity came out, DC was thefirst electricity that came out.
And there were some powercompanies that would supply you
DC voltage and some that wouldsupply AC voltage. And as we
know, it quickly became thestandard of AC, which we may
(11:26):
talk about that in a laterepisode of why that became, but
you had to IBM compatiblecomputers, and you had Apple,
but you see, there's a kind of atheme here, it seems like the
ones that have the proprietarytechnology that they want to
keep close hold on, like Appledid back in the day, then they
(11:47):
seem to not win these wars,right, because we know that IBM
compatible computer ultimatelywon out for market share. But
the main thing that it came downto for consumers is is that they
wanted to record stuff theywanted to time shift. And one of
the downfalls of Betamax wherepeople would argue back and
(12:07):
forth that Betamax had asuperior quality, but we're
talking about, you know, analogback in the 70s. So it's not
going to be that muchdifference. But the main thing
was that for all intents andpurposes, basically, Betamax was
only good for 60 minutes ofrecording time. And VHS had 120
minutes of recording time. Nowthroughout this podcast, you're
(12:28):
going to kind of hear a themeback and forth, right? One
person or company comes up witha technology, then competitor
comes and the two technologieskind of battle it back and
forth. And then one reignssuperior. Now, back to the VHS
and the Betamax. While they wereinvented in Japan, and Asia
(12:50):
Pacific is where it all started.
Everyone knows that at that timethat the American market was
where the battle would be waged.
And so they all wanted todominate the American market.
And one of the key battles towin in this war of who was going
to dominate the market betweenBetamax and VHS was they were
(13:13):
racing to get longer recordtime. And one of the main
benchmarks that both companieswere trying to hit was to
produce a tape that could recordfor four hours. And whenever I
was doing my research into this,I was having a look. I was like
(13:34):
What's Why is four hours the keyto winning this war. And it's
pretty straightforward, theAmerican football game. So I
know I have some internationallisteners here. Let's see the
statistics of the people thatstream the show. So the American
football game last four hours, Iwould assume that maybe the
(13:55):
European soccer game wasn't ornot quite as long, you know,
they call that football also.
But when they were trying to getto this four hour mark, one of
the ways they could do it was torun the tape slower. And by
doing that, they could get thelength up higher, but the
(14:17):
quality was lower. And it's justlike any technology right? You
don't get cheap and fast. And inthis case, you don't get long
recording times and highquality.
We all know that the VHS tapeone out because that's what kind
of became the standard. Like Isaid whenever I grew up in the
(14:39):
80s I never saw a Betamax. Itwas always VHS. And one of the
reasons why that they won out isbecause they partnered up with
companies like zenith andquasar. Now I don't know if
they're even in businessanymore, but I know that my dad
at our house we used to havezenith and it had the words Z
(14:59):
Unit superset on it. That waskind of cool. I remember that.
But Sony wanted to have completecontrol of the system. And VHS
was, you know, open to othercompanies using them. Now, this
is a technology whenever I wasresearching, so we had the the
(15:22):
tape technology, which we knowthat carried us for quite some
time into the 90s. But also doyou remember laser disc, and
laser disc from the 80s was kindof well, actually, it was the
birthplace of the modern DVD,and probably the CD as well. And
I remember that my uncle had alaser disc, and we went and
(15:44):
rented one and all I rememberwas that it was a big platter. A
lot larger is almost like thesize of an old record. And so I
thought, you know, all theseyears that it kind of went VHS,
Betamax, you know, and into thelaser disc. Well, VHS and
Betamax did come first, but thelaser disc was right there with
(16:06):
it, believe it or not. But theadoption was slow. And it never
really became a real threat. Fora variety of reasons. One of the
ones was is that the they wereracing to this longer recording
time, right, they wanted to hitfor hours, a laser disc,
depending on the quality, it wasonly 30 minutes to an hour. And
(16:30):
so if you had a movie, likeTitanic, which is three hours
and 14 minutes long, well, ifyou wanted that in high quality,
then you would have to watch 30minutes, flip it over, watch the
next 30 minutes that gets youthe first hour. And you see
where I'm going with this. SoTitanic, if we would have kept
(16:51):
the laser disc technology, itwould have taken four disc,
right, three hours, three disc30 minutes, each side gets us to
there. And then the other 14minutes, we'd have to have
another laser disc. More over.
Those laser discs weighed abouta half a pound. So you can see
that about six and a half poundsof disk would get you the movie
(17:17):
Titanic. Now here's aninteresting little fun fact.
Actually, I got a couple aboutLaserDisc when I was doing my
research. I didn't realize thatthe last laser disc player and I
guess the disc also, last onewas around 2006 2008 ish
timeframe, I think. And Ithought that laser disc would be
(17:39):
long gone, especially with theintroduction of the DVD and
stuff. So yeah, I mean, I wasjust kind of kind of
flabbergasted, like why theystill manufacture these things
until the early 2000s. But thefirst movie that was released on
the laser disc was actually jawsand 1978. So if you ever on
(18:02):
Jeopardy, and they asked whatwas the first laser disc movie
that was released, it would havebeen jaws and 1978. So couple
things laser disc, people cannotrecord the laser disc, you know,
make copies of it. And like Isaid, really what we're talking
(18:23):
about here is the time shiftingand with VHS, you can do that
Betamax you can do that. Solaser disc really never got any
traction.
But the one thing that we didget from the laser disc is that
it was the first time that wecould get the special features
(18:43):
that we're also used to now. Imean, if I'm streaming Netflix
and I want to hear it in Spanishor French I just flipped through
it. Well with VHS and Betamax.
You couldn't do that. But with alaser disc. You could also one
of the benefits of the laserdisc and I'm saying laser disc
now I'm talking about disctechnology. Right. But laser
disc is did set that. But one ofthe things was to be able to
(19:06):
skip and you didn't have torewind the laser disc. And so I
think that the laser disctechnology as we know eventually
did become DVD and we have morewars there that erupted between
blu ray and HD DVD. But thatreally was kind of the
foundation for how we consumemovies today. So the laser disc
(19:27):
was out there. However, not alot of traction. But what really
kind of propelled the VHS tapeBelieve it or not, was in the
80s the home workout. You knowwhen you would watch movies and
they would cut to commercialespecially late at night. They
would have I remember Jane FondaI think it was or somebody on
(19:51):
there and Richard Simmons andRichard you could buy his VHS
tape to sweat into the oldies.
Everybody started getting alittle more health conscious,
right? The 80s That's when wegot people that are, you know,
the, I guess the term of it isyuppies or city folks. So
they're the ones that arewanting to look good. And, and
(20:13):
so they were the ones that wouldbuy these VHS tapes and the VHS
player so they could get theirhome workout in. But now, we are
going to move into an area in1995, where the DVD came out.
And the DVD and that is aformat. It was developed by
(20:37):
Philips, Toshiba, Panasonic, andSony. So it was a conglomeration
of companies that came togetherin 1995, and released the DVD.
Now, the DVD had some reallyneat stuff with it. One, it was
a very, very small form factor.
And it was, you know, like a CDthat we were used to, because in
(20:57):
the music industry, remember CDswere coming along. So for, you
know, basically all intents andpurposes, it was a same shape
and size as a CD, so highlyportable. And they could last
longer than tapes. And so theykind of fix the problem with the
laserdisc, big, clunky, heavy 30to 60 minutes per side with
(21:22):
this, the DVD would last a lotlonger. Also, they were a lot
cheaper to produce the averagelaser disc. Now this isn't
adjusted for inflation. So youknow, the price is higher now.
But the average laser disc waslike $100. And a DVD was only
$20. And so I remember some ofthe first DVD players that came
(21:47):
out, they had generation one,generation two, and generation
three. And whenever you would goover to a friend's house, they
would ask, Oh, well, whatgeneration DVD player do you
have. And one of the things Iremember is that if the DVD
player could play the movieTwister, Twister, the
(22:08):
blockbuster movie that came out,then it was a Gen three DVD
player. Nowadays, you don't evenask I mean, the DVD players to
play anything. And of course,now we're into into the blu ray.
But what came to be was is thatthe TVs were starting to become
high definition. And so withhigh definition, you need high
(22:31):
definition medium. And then wehave the blu ray and HD DVD,
they battled it out kind of thesame theme. And we all know who
won on that. And it was the bluray. And at the same time that
the DVD market was exploding,here come Netflix. And before
Netflix, you would have to gorent a DVD, and then take it
(22:56):
back to the store and then getanother DVD you're driving back
and forth. But when Netflix,they would deliver the DVD
directly to your house, and youcould watch it, send it back and
they would send you another one.
Now remember, what people reallyhad a thirst for is to watch
content at their leisure. And atthe same time that Netflix was
(23:21):
becoming popular, what somepeople would do would order the
DVDs. And then they would useprograms to rip that DVD. And
they would copy it to anotherDVD or keep it inside their
digital library and send themback. And so what that would
allow people to do was to get asmany movies as possible build up
(23:45):
a media library at their, attheir house. And they could
watch the movie over and overwithout having to you know, keep
reinventing the movie. Now thisis where we get the legal stuff
starting to get in. And to me, Ifeel like that's not exactly
legal to do that. And I'm surethat some people in the motion
picture industry would agreewith me. And we then go from the
(24:10):
DVD being all the rage inNetflix to now the streaming
services. And when streamingservices comes out now you
didn't have to wait for the DVD.
You did not need to drive to thevideo store like Blockbuster and
get your DVD and drive back andforth and stuff. You could just
instantly stream 1000s and 1000sof movies. I know the first
(24:33):
stream that I ever did wasNetflix. And I had an X box when
Microsoft came out. I think itwas Xbox 360 And it had an
application that was directlyfor Netflix and I was amazed. I
plugged it in and my littlebrother told me about this
Netflix streaming I downloadedit and I thought it was the most
amazing technology. Now, whenyou watch this stream on
(24:59):
Netflix, one of the things thatis really frustrating is is that
you want to go back and watchthat stream or movie again, and
it's just not available. Sopeople figured out how to time
shift or rip those streams. Now,fast forward to this month, I
not really too much of a movieperson, even though I'm doing a
(25:22):
podcast on home entertainment. Imean, I'll watch the
blockbusters that come out. AndI'll, you know, if it's
something that's interesting,but my wife, she loves movies, I
swear, we probably have one ofthe largest DVD collections you
have ever seen. And one of theproblems with her movie
collection is, is that, onceagain, you have to remember the
(25:46):
movies that you have, you needto get up goes, looking for the
DVD, maybe it's in the livingroom, maybe it's in the bedroom.
And so she wanted to get our,our library, online, at our
house. And she found atechnology and asked me to look
into it. And I started touncover all the different
(26:12):
nuances around standing up ahome media server. And the geek
in me, who really doesn't watcha lot of movies really get
fascinated by this. Because ifyou think about where we came,
and where we're going, and wherewe're at now, it's just amazing,
right? I mean, we have clunkyVHS tapes, and Betamax all the
(26:32):
way up to DVDs. Now, you cantake your whole DVD catalog and
library and put it on a serverat your house. And you can just
search it and you have all theit's almost like a Netflix or
any of the other streamingservices, but it's at your
house. And so I started this outon Friday to build her this
(26:54):
streaming server at our house.
And I would say within about sixhours, there are some you know,
little nuances with the setup, Ihad that aha moment that I've
had only a few times intechnology, why Wow, this is
(27:16):
absolutely amazing. So you cantake the movies and put them
inside of your DVD player, andit will record it to the local
hard drive. And not only does itrecord it to the local hard
drive, but it also has thedescription, and it's got the
cover art on there, you know,like the outside of the DVD, all
(27:40):
of this stuff just kind ofhappens auto magically, it's
what I like to say sometimes.
And whenever I looked into it alittle farther. Now, this is
something that I'm not goinginto yet. But there's these
various modules that will allowyou to time shift, live
television. And so you can setit up. And if you have a tuner
(28:01):
for the outside antenna, and youwant to watch his show, let's
say American Idol. Well, nowwith this modern technology, you
can just schedule it, and itwill put it on your home server.
And you can watch it whenever.
The other thing I find veryinteresting in this technology
(28:22):
is is because the content isstored locally at your house, if
your internet word to go out,you can still have access to
streaming because it's allstreaming locally. And when you
think about the power of thatthis is where the political
legal stuff starts to come in.
Now doing some research, I foundout that when you purchase a
(28:46):
DVD, or you subscribe to astreaming service, you're
actually being licensed forthat. Viewing, right? So if I go
down to my local store, whetherit's Walmart or Target and I buy
a DVD, now that DVD is encasedin plastic or plastic wrapper,
(29:07):
when you cut that wrapper, youare legally bound to the license
of that DVD. And whenever Ilooked at it, because I want to
make sure I don't do anythingillegal from what I can tell is
is that anything that you buy,you're allowed to make a copy of
it, as long as you don'tdistribute the copy of it. And
(29:29):
the distribution isn't justupload it to the internet. And
for God's sakes, guys, please,please, please do not go get a
firestick or one of these Kodiservers, they advertise online
and say that you get to watchfirst run movies without having
to go to the movie theater. Imean, come on. Let's use some
(29:52):
common sense here. We know thatif you get to watch something
that's still in the movietheaters for free It's illegal.
If you take your home DVDcollection, like what we're in
the process of doing and puttingit all on our little, local hard
drive. Now that is for our ownviewing pleasure at our house,
(30:12):
do not send that to grandma andgrandpa and aunt and uncle and
don't give other people accessto it, you will get caught. I
know that ISPs get what theycall DCMA complaints all the
time. And that's where someoneis torrenting movies. And I do
get people that call me fromtime to time and say, Hey,
(30:35):
Commander, Bob, I got this boxand they say all I do is plug it
in, and I can watch movies thatare still in the movie theaters.
Well, those are pirated movies.
Today, we're cruising thehighways and byways, we're not
on the pirate ship selling theDigital Ocean. So make sure just
like with any technology thatbecomes easy for people to do,
you don't kind of say, well, youknow, it's just a copy of it.
(31:01):
And I'm just gonna let my momwatch it because of that
proliferates out on theinternet. I mean, these artists,
and movie houses, I mean, theyneed to make money. And so if
you want to show a movie atyour, at your bar, or a public
venue, well, you need adifferent license for that you
can't just go down to Walmartand get a DVD and start showing
(31:23):
that DVD. So please, you know,this comes up a lot of times
that people think digital stuffis not as bad but it's the same
thing as stealing. Even themusic you hear in the global Bob
Show, I license that music,there's a website I use, and I
go out and I download it. And Iput in my information. And so
(31:46):
they know that I'm using it formy podcast, so you got to have
the right license. But let's getback to how amazing is that we
had to carry around all theseVHS tapes, or we had to have
these laser discs and even thesmall DVD. But now you can put
all of these movies that you arelegally entitled to own on your
(32:07):
iPhone or iPad and you can justhave hundreds and hundreds of
it. I just think that's amazingof where we went from only the
mega rich back in the daylooking at these eight
millimeter and going intoBetamax and people trying to do
(32:28):
the time shifting to now you canhave all your shows all of your
movies and content right in thepalm of your hand. Alright, I
know that we're at the bottom ofthe half hour and I hope you
enjoyed this little walk downmemory lane as always, maybe
sparked a few memories ofchildhood, maybe a few memories
(32:53):
of recording different contentand knowing that you can have
your buddies come over and youcould watch a scary movie on a
Friday night and not have to bethere at the exact time of when
the movie starts. So with that,we will see everybody next week.
(33:13):
And thank you as always fortuning in to the global Bob
Show. Till next time
Here we go. Let's rock and roll. This is the Globalbob
Show, episode number 19. We arethe crossroads of technology,
and politics. Scratch that.
We're the epicenter, technology,and politics. Got a real nice
(00:32):
show in store for you this week,we're going to be talking about
the evolution of homeentertainment, and the various
nuances around that and some ofthe legal things around home
entertainment. And I reallyenjoyed putting this show
together. This is global Bob,your field commander, and
everyone that tunes into theshow each week. Thank you so
(00:56):
much. I'm here in the wonderfulRichard Cook broadcast facility.
And each week, I continue tomake little tweaks and make few
little changes to it. And I havea real nice little little set up
here for doing my podcast. Now,you know, you can always reach
(01:19):
out to Globalbob, if you got aquick question. And just last
week, I had a longtime friend,longtime listener, and he
reached out to me because he hasa client that has fallen victim
to ransomware. Now, of course,it was the typical conversation.
(01:42):
Hey, field commander, Bob got abuddy of mine got a client of
mine, and they have ransomwareon their computer, and they are
100% locked out. Can you crackit open and get the files back?
And I always have to let thecaller down or the person
(02:06):
inquiring about ransomwarerecovery? And I tell them, it's
just one of those things? No, Icannot crack the code. And no,
there's probably no way to getit back cheaply. So this is a
good public service announcementwhere you need to make sure that
you have good backups of yourcritical data. And so I broke
(02:31):
the news to them and told themthat about the best thing you
can do is restore from a backup.
And I can tell you right now, Idon't think I've ever had one
person tell me oh, well, that'scool. We got backups. No,
usually what it is, is that theysay they have all their
information backed up to thecloud. Well, depending on how
(02:55):
your settings are, even thoughyou backup to the cloud, those
files can still be encrypted. Sowhat you have to do is do what I
call incremental backups, whichmeans you probably want to
backup your computer once a day,and store that. And then keep a
week. So you got you know, sevendays and then once a month, so
(03:18):
therefore you can kind of rollback. But that's the only real
defense against this. Theseguys, the girls and people that
are trying to scam you out ofmoney by holding your files
ransom. So public serviceannouncement from your field
commander Globalbob. Pleasebackup your data and keep a
(03:41):
couple of different variationsof that backup. So I'd like to
thank everybody that tunes inevery week, of course, and you
can find Globalbob out on theFacebook page by searching
Globalbob show. You can hit meon Twitter at Globalbob Show and
(04:02):
Gmail at global Bob Show.
Moving right along. Speaking ofmoving right along, got one more
tidbit to share with you so Ialways say that we are cruising
the highways and the byways ofcyberspace. Well, I did have a
conversation with somebody andthey said, Commander Bob, you
(04:25):
talk about cruising the highwaysand byways of cyberspace. Well
what do you cruise in? Andwithout skipping a beat? I said
I cruise and a 1967 CadillacDeville 18 foot, six inches from
nose to tail to door baby blue,white convertible top. He just
(04:47):
so happens Globalbob Here usedto have a 1967 Cadillac Deville
so what I like about radio is isthat we can use our imagination.
So when you are tuned into theshow When I say we're cruising
the highways and byways justknow that we got the top lead
back on the 67 DeVille. Got alittle dance and hula doll on
(05:08):
the dash and the dice hangingfrom the rearview mirror. So
let's get into the topic dujour. So, today, I want to talk
to you about home entertainment,and mainly time shifting of
shows and movies. Now, for somethat don't know exactly what
(05:31):
time shifting is, it's basicallya legal way for you to record
various content. Now, here's alittle disclaimer, I'm not a
lawyer, this is not legaladvice, please do not go out and
do this stuff and say, Whoa,Commander, Bob told me I can do
(05:55):
it. No, no, no, no, do your ownresearch. But for all intents
and purposes, everything thatI'm talking about is completely
legal, from my interpretation.
So what is time shifting? Well,just what we talked about, it is
a way to record something thatis live or something that you
(06:17):
have, and you can then view itlater. So to be able to record
things did not come intoexistence, or available to the
average person and to the mid tolate 70s.
(06:40):
Now, we all know that we've hadthe eight millimeter films and
the 16 millimeter films back inthe day. But that type of
technology was usually reservedfor, you know, people that were
really, really well off. Thesedays, you show off your your
(07:00):
fancy cars, but back then peoplehad screening rooms, and the
film would be one of those reelto reel. And sometimes it would
not even have sound to it. Butcoming into the 70s, we could
get technology and it would beavailable to you know some
(07:23):
people that could afford it. Soyou didn't really have to be
super mega rich. And what wouldhappen is, is that if you missed
a movie in the theater, or ifyou saw it on television, you
didn't get to see it until itaired again. And I can tell you
that just listening to somestories that my dad told that
(07:45):
there would be shirt shows, andhe would rush home and people
would rush home and get in frontof the TV. And if you were
running five minutes late, youmissed five minutes of that
show. And the technology wasn'tthere yet, until about the mid
(08:07):
70s, where you could actuallyrecord that. So how did we get
this technology? Now the majormilestone that happened was when
a Japanese company named Sonyreleased a system called
Betamax. Now that was way beforemy time, I don't remember the
(08:28):
Betamax. Of course, I doremember the VHS. But that was
released May 10 1975. And theway that the Betamax worked was,
is that it used a magnetic tape,and people could record to that
magnetic tape. And this was ananalog technology. So nothing
(08:48):
digital yet. And the way thatBetamax got its name was is that
the pattern that the tape wouldmake the magnetic tape inside
the cassette when make it looklike the Greek letter for beta.
So they call it beta. And Iguess they threw max on there.
So the movie industry is kind ofreally miscalculated the market
(09:13):
hear, they thought that the onlyplay for this technology would
be to rent movies, they didn'tthink that people would want to
record their own stuff off theair. And so they kind of kind of
missed the boat on that. Butpeople quickly wanted to keep
the movies to watch multipletimes. And this is real common,
right? I mean, you'll bewatching something on say
(09:35):
Netflix or you rent a DVD, youstart to watch it and you say,
oh wait, I'd like to watch itwith somebody else. Well, with
the Betamax technology. This wasthe first time that you could
actually record something andwatch it over and over again.
And one of the things that cameup was is that as you know when
(09:58):
new things hit the market herecome other people that want a
piece of that market. So nextenters a company called JV C.
And JVC are the ones thatinvented the VHS tape. And the
VHS tape and Betamax were twocompeting technologies. Maybe
some of you all that are alittle older than me. Maybe
(10:21):
remember those wars back andforth. But JVC isn't nother
Japanese company. And it standsfor Victor company, Japan, and
Betamax. And then we're goingback and forth. But what made
the VHS have more qualityproduct is that it had longer
(10:43):
recording time, the Betamaxdidn't have that. And so Betamax
was first to the market, butthey lost share very quickly.
And they'd lost the sharebecause of the war going back
and forth. And you know, whennew technologies come out,
there's always a war thathappens back and forth, which is
(11:03):
better. And we'll see the samething as we go through the
evolution of home entertainment.
I mean, am had, you know, acompetitor of FM, even when
electricity came out, DC was thefirst electricity that came out.
And there were some powercompanies that would supply you
DC voltage and some that wouldsupply AC voltage. And as we
know, it quickly became thestandard of AC, which we may
(11:26):
talk about that in a laterepisode of why that became, but
you had to IBM compatiblecomputers, and you had Apple,
but you see, there's a kind of atheme here, it seems like the
ones that have the proprietarytechnology that they want to
keep close hold on, like Appledid back in the day, then they
(11:47):
seem to not win these wars,right, because we know that IBM
compatible computer ultimatelywon out for market share. But
the main thing that it came downto for consumers is is that they
wanted to record stuff theywanted to time shift. And one of
the downfalls of Betamax wherepeople would argue back and
(12:07):
forth that Betamax had asuperior quality, but we're
talking about, you know, analogback in the 70s. So it's not
going to be that muchdifference. But the main thing
was that for all intents andpurposes, basically, Betamax was
only good for 60 minutes ofrecording time. And VHS had 120
minutes of recording time. Nowthroughout this podcast, you're
(12:28):
going to kind of hear a themeback and forth, right? One
person or company comes up witha technology, then competitor
comes and the two technologieskind of battle it back and
forth. And then one reignssuperior. Now, back to the VHS
and the Betamax. While they wereinvented in Japan, and Asia
(12:50):
Pacific is where it all started.
Everyone knows that at that timethat the American market was
where the battle would be waged.
And so they all wanted todominate the American market.
And one of the key battles towin in this war of who was going
to dominate the market betweenBetamax and VHS was they were
(13:13):
racing to get longer recordtime. And one of the main
benchmarks that both companieswere trying to hit was to
produce a tape that could recordfor four hours. And whenever I
was doing my research into this,I was having a look. I was like
(13:34):
What's Why is four hours the keyto winning this war. And it's
pretty straightforward, theAmerican football game. So I
know I have some internationallisteners here. Let's see the
statistics of the people thatstream the show. So the American
football game last four hours, Iwould assume that maybe the
(13:55):
European soccer game wasn't ornot quite as long, you know,
they call that football also.
But when they were trying to getto this four hour mark, one of
the ways they could do it was torun the tape slower. And by
doing that, they could get thelength up higher, but the
(14:17):
quality was lower. And it's justlike any technology right? You
don't get cheap and fast. And inthis case, you don't get long
recording times and highquality.
We all know that the VHS tapeone out because that's what kind
of became the standard. Like Isaid whenever I grew up in the
(14:39):
80s I never saw a Betamax. Itwas always VHS. And one of the
reasons why that they won out isbecause they partnered up with
companies like zenith andquasar. Now I don't know if
they're even in businessanymore, but I know that my dad
at our house we used to havezenith and it had the words Z
(14:59):
Unit superset on it. That waskind of cool. I remember that.
But Sony wanted to have completecontrol of the system. And VHS
was, you know, open to othercompanies using them. Now, this
is a technology whenever I wasresearching, so we had the the
(15:22):
tape technology, which we knowthat carried us for quite some
time into the 90s. But also doyou remember laser disc, and
laser disc from the 80s was kindof well, actually, it was the
birthplace of the modern DVD,and probably the CD as well. And
I remember that my uncle had alaser disc, and we went and
(15:44):
rented one and all I rememberwas that it was a big platter. A
lot larger is almost like thesize of an old record. And so I
thought, you know, all theseyears that it kind of went VHS,
Betamax, you know, and into thelaser disc. Well, VHS and
Betamax did come first, but thelaser disc was right there with
(16:06):
it, believe it or not. But theadoption was slow. And it never
really became a real threat. Fora variety of reasons. One of the
ones was is that the they wereracing to this longer recording
time, right, they wanted to hitfor hours, a laser disc,
depending on the quality, it wasonly 30 minutes to an hour. And
(16:30):
so if you had a movie, likeTitanic, which is three hours
and 14 minutes long, well, ifyou wanted that in high quality,
then you would have to watch 30minutes, flip it over, watch the
next 30 minutes that gets youthe first hour. And you see
where I'm going with this. SoTitanic, if we would have kept
(16:51):
the laser disc technology, itwould have taken four disc,
right, three hours, three disc30 minutes, each side gets us to
there. And then the other 14minutes, we'd have to have
another laser disc. More over.
Those laser discs weighed abouta half a pound. So you can see
that about six and a half poundsof disk would get you the movie
(17:17):
Titanic. Now here's aninteresting little fun fact.
Actually, I got a couple aboutLaserDisc when I was doing my
research. I didn't realize thatthe last laser disc player and I
guess the disc also, last onewas around 2006 2008 ish
timeframe, I think. And Ithought that laser disc would be
(17:39):
long gone, especially with theintroduction of the DVD and
stuff. So yeah, I mean, I wasjust kind of kind of
flabbergasted, like why theystill manufacture these things
until the early 2000s. But thefirst movie that was released on
the laser disc was actually jawsand 1978. So if you ever on
(18:02):
Jeopardy, and they asked whatwas the first laser disc movie
that was released, it would havebeen jaws and 1978. So couple
things laser disc, people cannotrecord the laser disc, you know,
make copies of it. And like Isaid, really what we're talking
(18:23):
about here is the time shiftingand with VHS, you can do that
Betamax you can do that. Solaser disc really never got any
traction.
But the one thing that we didget from the laser disc is that
it was the first time that wecould get the special features
(18:43):
that we're also used to now. Imean, if I'm streaming Netflix
and I want to hear it in Spanishor French I just flipped through
it. Well with VHS and Betamax.
You couldn't do that. But with alaser disc. You could also one
of the benefits of the laserdisc and I'm saying laser disc
now I'm talking about disctechnology. Right. But laser
disc is did set that. But one ofthe things was to be able to
(19:06):
skip and you didn't have torewind the laser disc. And so I
think that the laser disctechnology as we know eventually
did become DVD and we have morewars there that erupted between
blu ray and HD DVD. But thatreally was kind of the
foundation for how we consumemovies today. So the laser disc
(19:27):
was out there. However, not alot of traction. But what really
kind of propelled the VHS tapeBelieve it or not, was in the
80s the home workout. You knowwhen you would watch movies and
they would cut to commercialespecially late at night. They
would have I remember Jane FondaI think it was or somebody on
(19:51):
there and Richard Simmons andRichard you could buy his VHS
tape to sweat into the oldies.
Everybody started getting alittle more health conscious,
right? The 80s That's when wegot people that are, you know,
the, I guess the term of it isyuppies or city folks. So
they're the ones that arewanting to look good. And, and
(20:13):
so they were the ones that wouldbuy these VHS tapes and the VHS
player so they could get theirhome workout in. But now, we are
going to move into an area in1995, where the DVD came out.
And the DVD and that is aformat. It was developed by
(20:37):
Philips, Toshiba, Panasonic, andSony. So it was a conglomeration
of companies that came togetherin 1995, and released the DVD.
Now, the DVD had some reallyneat stuff with it. One, it was
a very, very small form factor.
And it was, you know, like a CDthat we were used to, because in
(20:57):
the music industry, remember CDswere coming along. So for, you
know, basically all intents andpurposes, it was a same shape
and size as a CD, so highlyportable. And they could last
longer than tapes. And so theykind of fix the problem with the
laserdisc, big, clunky, heavy 30to 60 minutes per side with
(21:22):
this, the DVD would last a lotlonger. Also, they were a lot
cheaper to produce the averagelaser disc. Now this isn't
adjusted for inflation. So youknow, the price is higher now.
But the average laser disc waslike $100. And a DVD was only
$20. And so I remember some ofthe first DVD players that came
(21:47):
out, they had generation one,generation two, and generation
three. And whenever you would goover to a friend's house, they
would ask, Oh, well, whatgeneration DVD player do you
have. And one of the things Iremember is that if the DVD
player could play the movieTwister, Twister, the
(22:08):
blockbuster movie that came out,then it was a Gen three DVD
player. Nowadays, you don't evenask I mean, the DVD players to
play anything. And of course,now we're into into the blu ray.
But what came to be was is thatthe TVs were starting to become
high definition. And so withhigh definition, you need high
(22:31):
definition medium. And then wehave the blu ray and HD DVD,
they battled it out kind of thesame theme. And we all know who
won on that. And it was the bluray. And at the same time that
the DVD market was exploding,here come Netflix. And before
Netflix, you would have to gorent a DVD, and then take it
(22:56):
back to the store and then getanother DVD you're driving back
and forth. But when Netflix,they would deliver the DVD
directly to your house, and youcould watch it, send it back and
they would send you another one.
Now remember, what people reallyhad a thirst for is to watch
content at their leisure. And atthe same time that Netflix was
(23:21):
becoming popular, what somepeople would do would order the
DVDs. And then they would useprograms to rip that DVD. And
they would copy it to anotherDVD or keep it inside their
digital library and send themback. And so what that would
allow people to do was to get asmany movies as possible build up
(23:45):
a media library at their, attheir house. And they could
watch the movie over and overwithout having to you know, keep
reinventing the movie. Now thisis where we get the legal stuff
starting to get in. And to me, Ifeel like that's not exactly
legal to do that. And I'm surethat some people in the motion
picture industry would agreewith me. And we then go from the
(24:10):
DVD being all the rage inNetflix to now the streaming
services. And when streamingservices comes out now you
didn't have to wait for the DVD.
You did not need to drive to thevideo store like Blockbuster and
get your DVD and drive back andforth and stuff. You could just
instantly stream 1000s and 1000sof movies. I know the first
(24:33):
stream that I ever did wasNetflix. And I had an X box when
Microsoft came out. I think itwas Xbox 360 And it had an
application that was directlyfor Netflix and I was amazed. I
plugged it in and my littlebrother told me about this
Netflix streaming I downloadedit and I thought it was the most
amazing technology. Now, whenyou watch this stream on
(24:59):
Netflix, one of the things thatis really frustrating is is that
you want to go back and watchthat stream or movie again, and
it's just not available. Sopeople figured out how to time
shift or rip those streams. Now,fast forward to this month, I
not really too much of a movieperson, even though I'm doing a
(25:22):
podcast on home entertainment. Imean, I'll watch the
blockbusters that come out. AndI'll, you know, if it's
something that's interesting,but my wife, she loves movies, I
swear, we probably have one ofthe largest DVD collections you
have ever seen. And one of theproblems with her movie
collection is, is that, onceagain, you have to remember the
(25:46):
movies that you have, you needto get up goes, looking for the
DVD, maybe it's in the livingroom, maybe it's in the bedroom.
And so she wanted to get our,our library, online, at our
house. And she found atechnology and asked me to look
into it. And I started touncover all the different
(26:12):
nuances around standing up ahome media server. And the geek
in me, who really doesn't watcha lot of movies really get
fascinated by this. Because ifyou think about where we came,
and where we're going, and wherewe're at now, it's just amazing,
right? I mean, we have clunkyVHS tapes, and Betamax all the
(26:32):
way up to DVDs. Now, you cantake your whole DVD catalog and
library and put it on a serverat your house. And you can just
search it and you have all theit's almost like a Netflix or
any of the other streamingservices, but it's at your
house. And so I started this outon Friday to build her this
(26:54):
streaming server at our house.
And I would say within about sixhours, there are some you know,
little nuances with the setup, Ihad that aha moment that I've
had only a few times intechnology, why Wow, this is
(27:16):
absolutely amazing. So you cantake the movies and put them
inside of your DVD player, andit will record it to the local
hard drive. And not only does itrecord it to the local hard
drive, but it also has thedescription, and it's got the
cover art on there, you know,like the outside of the DVD, all
(27:40):
of this stuff just kind ofhappens auto magically, it's
what I like to say sometimes.
And whenever I looked into it alittle farther. Now, this is
something that I'm not goinginto yet. But there's these
various modules that will allowyou to time shift, live
television. And so you can setit up. And if you have a tuner
(28:01):
for the outside antenna, and youwant to watch his show, let's
say American Idol. Well, nowwith this modern technology, you
can just schedule it, and itwill put it on your home server.
And you can watch it whenever.
The other thing I find veryinteresting in this technology
(28:22):
is is because the content isstored locally at your house, if
your internet word to go out,you can still have access to
streaming because it's allstreaming locally. And when you
think about the power of thatthis is where the political
legal stuff starts to come in.
Now doing some research, I foundout that when you purchase a
(28:46):
DVD, or you subscribe to astreaming service, you're
actually being licensed forthat. Viewing, right? So if I go
down to my local store, whetherit's Walmart or Target and I buy
a DVD, now that DVD is encasedin plastic or plastic wrapper,
(29:07):
when you cut that wrapper, youare legally bound to the license
of that DVD. And whenever Ilooked at it, because I want to
make sure I don't do anythingillegal from what I can tell is
is that anything that you buy,you're allowed to make a copy of
it, as long as you don'tdistribute the copy of it. And
(29:29):
the distribution isn't justupload it to the internet. And
for God's sakes, guys, please,please, please do not go get a
firestick or one of these Kodiservers, they advertise online
and say that you get to watchfirst run movies without having
to go to the movie theater. Imean, come on. Let's use some
(29:52):
common sense here. We know thatif you get to watch something
that's still in the movietheaters for free It's illegal.
If you take your home DVDcollection, like what we're in
the process of doing and puttingit all on our little, local hard
drive. Now that is for our ownviewing pleasure at our house,
(30:12):
do not send that to grandma andgrandpa and aunt and uncle and
don't give other people accessto it, you will get caught. I
know that ISPs get what theycall DCMA complaints all the
time. And that's where someoneis torrenting movies. And I do
get people that call me fromtime to time and say, Hey,
(30:35):
Commander, Bob, I got this boxand they say all I do is plug it
in, and I can watch movies thatare still in the movie theaters.
Well, those are pirated movies.
Today, we're cruising thehighways and byways, we're not
on the pirate ship selling theDigital Ocean. So make sure just
like with any technology thatbecomes easy for people to do,
you don't kind of say, well, youknow, it's just a copy of it.
(31:01):
And I'm just gonna let my momwatch it because of that
proliferates out on theinternet. I mean, these artists,
and movie houses, I mean, theyneed to make money. And so if
you want to show a movie atyour, at your bar, or a public
venue, well, you need adifferent license for that you
can't just go down to Walmartand get a DVD and start showing
(31:23):
that DVD. So please, you know,this comes up a lot of times
that people think digital stuffis not as bad but it's the same
thing as stealing. Even themusic you hear in the global Bob
Show, I license that music,there's a website I use, and I
go out and I download it. And Iput in my information. And so
(31:46):
they know that I'm using it formy podcast, so you got to have
the right license. But let's getback to how amazing is that we
had to carry around all theseVHS tapes, or we had to have
these laser discs and even thesmall DVD. But now you can put
all of these movies that you arelegally entitled to own on your
(32:07):
iPhone or iPad and you can justhave hundreds and hundreds of
it. I just think that's amazingof where we went from only the
mega rich back in the daylooking at these eight
millimeter and going intoBetamax and people trying to do
(32:28):
the time shifting to now you canhave all your shows all of your
movies and content right in thepalm of your hand. Alright, I
know that we're at the bottom ofthe half hour and I hope you
enjoyed this little walk downmemory lane as always, maybe
sparked a few memories ofchildhood, maybe a few memories
(32:53):
of recording different contentand knowing that you can have
your buddies come over and youcould watch a scary movie on a
Friday night and not have to bethere at the exact time of when
the movie starts. So with that,we will see everybody next week.
(33:13):
And thank you as always fortuning in to the global Bob
Show. Till next time
Popular Podcasts
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com