Sponsor's Message

Come on guys, get real! A year is a very long time in the consumer-electronics industry and if you're not a lot faster, you may find that someone beats you to finish line.

Of course Sky have an ace up their sleeve, and that's its ownership of the programme listings associated with the various channels it carries on its satellite service.

Since the backbone of any really useful PVR service is a well constructed and comprehensive programme guide, one might think that this will give Sky an unassailable advantage in grabbing and retaining the dominant position.

But will it?

Surely we haven't forgotten the utter dog's-breakfast Sky made when it introduced a change to the programme-guide software in hundreds of thousands of older set-top-boxes just three years ago.

Let's hope they've learned a lesson from that botch-job and the levels of customer dissatisfaction it generated.

The fact that they chose to repeatedly downplay the magnitude of the problems however, leads me to believe that they might not have learned as much as they should have.

Now have your say Got something to say about today's column, or want to see what others think?  Visit The Forums While you're here, why not visit the Aardvark Hall of Shame and perhaps make your own nomination.

Right now however, I wonder if there are any enterprising entrepreneurs who might be looking to take advantage of the way the Net allows you to "bend" the law.

Here's what *could* happen...

Someone looking to usurp Sky TV's impending dominance of the PVR programme guide marketplace could simply set up virtual-shop in a country which is not party to the Berne Convention.

From that "safe haven", they could use the programme listings from Sky TV and the various free-to-air broadcasters in order to create a very comprehensive electronic programme guide (EPG). Access to, and the use of that EPG could easily be controlled by various cryptographic methods so as to ensure that it was only available to chosen parties.

If that entrepreneur then imported their own PVRs, complete with firmware that contained the necessary keys to access that encrypted EPG, they'd get up to a year's head-start over Sky.

Sky could try to sue the off-shore virtual-operation for copyright breach, but they'd probably find that to be a rather fruitless exercise.

If the firmware in the entrepreneur's PVR was suitably designed, it could be configured so that, in order to use the EPG, customers need only log onto the remote website and download a key which would, in conjunction with the key stored in the PVR, would allow decryption.

Since the entrepreneur's local (NZ-based) operation was not supplying any copyrighted material, maybe they'd be immune to prosecution.

Competing PVR vendors would lack the critical key component that is burnt into the entrepreneur's own PVRs so, even with the public key, they'd be unable to decode the EPG's contents.

Now I'm not suggesting that anyone engages in such a ruthless and unethical abuse of Sky's intellectual property -- but I think it's important that we realise just how easy the "wild west" nature of the Net makes this possible.

Mind you, if Sky botch things up as badly as they did before, it might be a damned good idea for someone with more competence to bring out an EPG that really works.

And here's Aardvark's question of the day:

Will you be buying/leasing Sky's PVR when it (finally) arrives? Or would you prefer to use a PVR or EPG from an independent third party?

If you feel that this is a good thing and/or you hold a "geniune affection" for yours truly -- then you are welcome to gift me some money using the buttons provided. In gifting this money you accept that no goods, service or other consideration is offered, provided, accepted or anticipated in return. Just click on the button to gift whatever you can afford. NOTE: PayPal bills in US dollars so don't accidentally gift more than what you were intending :-)

Contacting Aardvark
I'm always happy to hear from readers, whether they're delivering brickbats, bouquets or news tip-offs. If you'd like to contact me directly, please this form. If you're happy for me to republish your comments then please be sure and select For Publication.

Other media organisations seeking more information or republication rights are also invited to contact me.

Just add a couple of lines of JavaScript to your pages and you can get a free summary of Aardvark's daily commentary -- automatically updated each and every week-day.

Aardvark also makes a summary of this daily column available via XML using the RSS format. More details can be found here.

Contact me if you decide to use either of these feeds and have any problems.

Linking Policy
Want to link to this site? Check out Aardvark's Linking Policy.

Did you tell someone else about Aardvark today? If not then do it now!