Here we go. Let's rock and roll. This is the Globalbob Show, episode number 19. We are the crossroads of technology, and politics. Scratch that. We're the epicenter, technology, and politics. Got a real nice show in store for you this week, we're going to be talking about the evolution of home entertainment, and the various nuances around that and some of the legal things around home entertainment. And I really enjoyed putting this show together. This is global Bob, your field commander, and everyone that tunes into the show each week. Thank you so much. I'm here in the wonderful Richard Cook broadcast facility. And each week, I continue to make little tweaks and make few little changes to it. And I have a real nice little little set up here for doing my podcast. Now, you know, you can always reach out to Globalbob, if you got a quick question. And just last week, I had a longtime friend, longtime listener, and he reached out to me because he has a client that has fallen victim to ransomware. Now, of course, it was the typical conversation. Hey, field commander, Bob got a buddy of mine got a client of mine, and they have ransomware on their computer, and they are 100% locked out. Can you crack it open and get the files back? And I always have to let the caller down or the person inquiring about ransomware recovery? And I tell them, it's just one of those things? No, I cannot crack the code. And no, there's probably no way to get it back cheaply. So this is a good public service announcement where you need to make sure that you have good backups of your critical data. And so I broke the news to them and told them that about the best thing you can do is restore from a backup. And I can tell you right now, I don't think I've ever had one person tell me oh, well, that's cool. We got backups. No, usually what it is, is that they say they have all their information backed up to the cloud. Well, depending on how your settings are, even though you backup to the cloud, those files can still be encrypted. So what you have to do is do what I call incremental backups, which means you probably want to backup your computer once a day, and store that. And then keep a week. So you got you know, seven days and then once a month, so therefore you can kind of roll back. But that's the only real defense against this. These guys, the girls and people that are trying to scam you out of money by holding your files ransom. So public service announcement from your field commander Globalbob. Please backup your data and keep a couple of different variations of that backup. So I'd like to thank everybody that tunes in every week, of course, and you can find Globalbob out on the Facebook page by searching Globalbob show. You can hit me on Twitter at Globalbob Show and Gmail at global Bob Show. Moving right along. Speaking of moving right along, got one more tidbit to share with you so I always say that we are cruising the highways and the byways of cyberspace. Well, I did have a conversation with somebody and they said, Commander Bob, you talk about cruising the highways and byways of cyberspace. Well what do you cruise in? And without skipping a beat? I said I cruise and a 1967 Cadillac Deville 18 foot, six inches from nose to tail to door baby blue, white convertible top. He just so happens Globalbob Here used to have a 1967 Cadillac Deville so what I like about radio is is that we can use our imagination. So when you are tuned into the show When I say we're cruising the highways and byways just know that we got the top lead back on the 67 DeVille. Got a little dance and hula doll on the dash and the dice hanging from the rearview mirror. So let's get into the topic du jour. So, today, I want to talk to you about home entertainment, and mainly time shifting of shows and movies. Now, for some that don't know exactly what time shifting is, it's basically a legal way for you to record various content. Now, here's a little disclaimer, I'm not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, please do not go out and do this stuff and say, Whoa, Commander, Bob told me I can do it. No, no, no, no, do your own research. But for all intents and purposes, everything that I'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 that is live or something that you have, and you can then view it later. So to be able to record things did not come into existence, or available to the average person and to the mid to late 70s. Now, we all know that we've had the eight millimeter films and the 16 millimeter films back in the day. But that type of technology was usually reserved for, you know, people that were really, really well off. These days, you show off your your fancy cars, but back then people had screening rooms, and the film would be one of those reel to reel. And sometimes it would not even have sound to it. But coming into the 70s, we could get technology and it would be available to you know some people that could afford it. So you didn't really have to be super mega rich. And what would happen is, is that if you missed a movie in the theater, or if you saw it on television, you didn't get to see it until it aired again. And I can tell you that just listening to some stories that my dad told that there would be shirt shows, and he would rush home and people would rush home and get in front of the TV. And if you were running five minutes late, you missed five minutes of that show. And the technology wasn't there yet, until about the mid 70s, where you could actually record that. So how did we get this technology? Now the major milestone that happened was when a Japanese company named Sony released a system called Betamax. Now that was way before my time, I don't remember the Betamax. Of course, I do remember the VHS. But that was released May 10 1975. And the way that the Betamax worked was, is that it used a magnetic tape, and people could record to that magnetic tape. And this was an analog technology. So nothing digital yet. And the way that Betamax got its name was is that the pattern that the tape would make the magnetic tape inside the cassette when make it look like the Greek letter for beta. So they call it beta. And I guess they threw max on there. So the movie industry is kind of really miscalculated the market hear, they thought that the only play for this technology would be to rent movies, they didn't think that people would want to record their own stuff off the air. And so they kind of kind of missed the boat on that. But people quickly wanted to keep the movies to watch multiple times. And this is real common, right? I mean, you'll be watching something on say Netflix or you rent a DVD, you start to watch it and you say, oh wait, I'd like to watch it with somebody else. Well, with the Betamax technology. This was the first time that you could actually record something and watch it over and over again. And one of the things that came up was is that as you know when new things hit the market here come other people that want a piece of that market. So next enters a company called JV C. And JVC are the ones that invented the VHS tape. And the VHS tape and Betamax were two competing technologies. Maybe some of you all that are a little older than me. Maybe remember those wars back and forth. But JVC isn't nother Japanese company. And it stands for Victor company, Japan, and Betamax. And then we're going back and forth. But what made the VHS have more quality product is that it had longer recording time, the Betamax didn't have that. And so Betamax was first to the market, but they lost share very quickly. And they'd lost the share because of the war going back and forth. And you know, when new technologies come out, there's always a war that happens back and forth, which is better. And we'll see the same thing as we go through the evolution of home entertainment. I mean, am had, you know, a competitor of FM, even when electricity came out, DC was the first electricity that came out. And there were some power companies that would supply you DC voltage and some that would supply AC voltage. And as we know, it quickly became the standard of AC, which we may talk about that in a later episode of why that became, but you had to IBM compatible computers, and you had Apple, but you see, there's a kind of a theme here, it seems like the ones that have the proprietary technology that they want to keep close hold on, like Apple did back in the day, then they seem to not win these wars, right, because we know that IBM compatible computer ultimately won out for market share. But the main thing that it came down to for consumers is is that they wanted to record stuff they wanted to time shift. And one of the downfalls of Betamax where people would argue back and forth that Betamax had a superior quality, but we're talking about, you know, analog back in the 70s. So it's not going to be that much difference. But the main thing was that for all intents and purposes, basically, Betamax was only good for 60 minutes of recording time. And VHS had 120 minutes of recording time. Now throughout this podcast, you're going to kind of hear a theme back and forth, right? One person or company comes up with a technology, then competitor comes and the two technologies kind of battle it back and forth. And then one reigns superior. Now, back to the VHS and the Betamax. While they were invented in Japan, and Asia Pacific is where it all started. Everyone knows that at that time that the American market was where the battle would be waged. And so they all wanted to dominate the American market. And one of the key battles to win in this war of who was going to dominate the market between Betamax and VHS was they were racing to get longer record time. And one of the main benchmarks that both companies were trying to hit was to produce a tape that could record for four hours. And whenever I was doing my research into this, I was having a look. I was like What's Why is four hours the key to winning this war. And it's pretty straightforward, the American football game. So I know I have some international listeners here. Let's see the statistics of the people that stream the show. So the American football game last four hours, I would assume that maybe the European soccer game wasn't or not quite as long, you know, they call that football also. But when they were trying to get to this four hour mark, one of the ways they could do it was to run the tape slower. And by doing that, they could get the length up higher, but the quality was lower. And it's just like any technology right? You don't get cheap and fast. And in this case, you don't get long recording times and high quality. We all know that the VHS tape one out because that's what kind of became the standard. Like I said whenever I grew up in the 80s I never saw a Betamax. It was always VHS. And one of the reasons why that they won out is because they partnered up with companies like zenith and quasar. Now I don't know if they're even in business anymore, but I know that my dad at our house we used to have zenith and it had the words Z Unit superset on it. That was kind of cool. I remember that. But Sony wanted to have complete control of the system. And VHS was, you know, open to other companies using them. Now, this is a technology whenever I was researching, so we had the the tape technology, which we know that carried us for quite some time into the 90s. But also do you remember laser disc, and laser disc from the 80s was kind of well, actually, it was the birthplace of the modern DVD, and probably the CD as well. And I remember that my uncle had a laser disc, and we went and rented one and all I remember was that it was a big platter. A lot larger is almost like the size of an old record. And so I thought, you know, all these years that it kind of went VHS, Betamax, you know, and into the laser disc. Well, VHS and Betamax did come first, but the laser disc was right there with it, believe it or not. But the adoption was slow. And it never really became a real threat. For a variety of reasons. One of the ones was is that the they were racing to this longer recording time, right, they wanted to hit for hours, a laser disc, depending on the quality, it was only 30 minutes to an hour. And so if you had a movie, like Titanic, which is three hours and 14 minutes long, well, if you wanted that in high quality, then you would have to watch 30 minutes, flip it over, watch the next 30 minutes that gets you the first hour. And you see where I'm going with this. So Titanic, if we would have kept the laser disc technology, it would have taken four disc, right, three hours, three disc 30 minutes, each side gets us to there. And then the other 14 minutes, we'd have to have another laser disc. More over. Those laser discs weighed about a half a pound. So you can see that about six and a half pounds of disk would get you the movie Titanic. Now here's an interesting little fun fact. Actually, I got a couple about LaserDisc when I was doing my research. I didn't realize that the last laser disc player and I guess the disc also, last one was around 2006 2008 ish timeframe, I think. And I thought that laser disc would be long gone, especially with the introduction of the DVD and stuff. So yeah, I mean, I was just kind of kind of flabbergasted, like why they still manufacture these things until the early 2000s. But the first movie that was released on the laser disc was actually jaws and 1978. So if you ever on Jeopardy, and they asked what was the first laser disc movie that was released, it would have been jaws and 1978. So couple things laser disc, people cannot record the laser disc, you know, make copies of it. And like I said, really what we're talking about here is the time shifting and with VHS, you can do that Betamax you can do that. So laser disc really never got any traction. But the one thing that we did get from the laser disc is that it was the first time that we could get the special features that we're also used to now. I mean, if I'm streaming Netflix and I want to hear it in Spanish or French I just flipped through it. Well with VHS and Betamax. You couldn't do that. But with a laser disc. You could also one of the benefits of the laser disc and I'm saying laser disc now I'm talking about disc technology. Right. But laser disc is did set that. But one of the things was to be able to skip and you didn't have to rewind the laser disc. And so I think that the laser disc technology as we know eventually did become DVD and we have more wars there that erupted between blu ray and HD DVD. But that really was kind of the foundation for how we consume movies today. So the laser disc was out there. However, not a lot of traction. But what really kind of propelled the VHS tape Believe it or not, was in the 80s the home workout. You know when you would watch movies and they would cut to commercial especially late at night. They would have I remember Jane Fonda I think it was or somebody on there and Richard Simmons and Richard you could buy his VHS tape to sweat into the oldies. Everybody started getting a little more health conscious, right? The 80s That's when we got people that are, you know, the, I guess the term of it is yuppies or city folks. So they're the ones that are wanting to look good. And, and so they were the ones that would buy these VHS tapes and the VHS player so they could get their home workout in. But now, we are going to move into an area in 1995, where the DVD came out. And the DVD and that is a format. It was developed by Philips, Toshiba, Panasonic, and Sony. So it was a conglomeration of companies that came together in 1995, and released the DVD. Now, the DVD had some really neat stuff with it. One, it was a very, very small form factor. And it was, you know, like a CD that we were used to, because in the music industry, remember CDs were coming along. So for, you know, basically all intents and purposes, it was a same shape and size as a CD, so highly portable. And they could last longer than tapes. And so they kind of fix the problem with the laserdisc, big, clunky, heavy 30 to 60 minutes per side with this, the DVD would last a lot longer. Also, they were a lot cheaper to produce the average laser disc. Now this isn't adjusted for inflation. So you know, the price is higher now. But the average laser disc was like $100. And a DVD was only$20. And so I remember some of the first DVD players that came out, they had generation one, generation two, and generation three. And whenever you would go over to a friend's house, they would ask, Oh, well, what generation DVD player do you have. And one of the things I remember is that if the DVD player could play the movie Twister, Twister, the blockbuster movie that came out, then it was a Gen three DVD player. Nowadays, you don't even ask 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 that the TVs were starting to become high definition. And so with high definition, you need high definition medium. And then we have the blu ray and HD DVD, they battled it out kind of the same theme. And we all know who won on that. And it was the blu ray. And at the same time that the DVD market was exploding, here come Netflix. And before Netflix, you would have to go rent a DVD, and then take it back to the store and then get another DVD you're driving back and forth. But when Netflix, they would deliver the DVD directly to your house, and you could watch it, send it back and they would send you another one. Now remember, what people really had a thirst for is to watch content at their leisure. And at the same time that Netflix was becoming popular, what some people would do would order the DVDs. And then they would use programs to rip that DVD. And they would copy it to another DVD or keep it inside their digital library and send them back. And so what that would allow people to do was to get as many movies as possible build up a media library at their, at their house. And they could watch the movie over and over without having to you know, keep reinventing the movie. Now this is where we get the legal stuff starting to get in. And to me, I feel like that's not exactly legal to do that. And I'm sure that some people in the motion picture industry would agree with me. And we then go from the DVD being all the rage in Netflix to now the streaming services. And when streaming services comes out now you didn't have to wait for the DVD. You did not need to drive to the video store like Blockbuster and get your DVD and drive back and forth and stuff. You could just instantly stream 1000s and 1000s of movies. I know the first stream that I ever did was Netflix. And I had an X box when Microsoft came out. I think it was Xbox 360 And it had an application that was directly for Netflix and I was amazed. I plugged it in and my little brother told me about this Netflix streaming I downloaded it and I thought it was the most amazing technology. Now, when you watch this stream on Netflix, one of the things that is really frustrating is is that you want to go back and watch that stream or movie again, and it's just not available. So people figured out how to time shift or rip those streams. Now, fast forward to this month, I not really too much of a movie person, even though I'm doing a podcast on home entertainment. I mean, I'll watch the blockbusters that come out. And I'll, you know, if it's something that's interesting, but my wife, she loves movies, I swear, we probably have one of the largest DVD collections you have ever seen. And one of the problems with her movie collection is, is that, once again, you have to remember the movies that you have, you need to get up goes, looking for the DVD, maybe it's in the living room, maybe it's in the bedroom. And so she wanted to get our, our library, online, at our house. And she found a technology and asked me to look into it. And I started to uncover all the different nuances around standing up a home media server. And the geek in me, who really doesn't watch a lot of movies really get fascinated by this. Because if you think about where we came, and where we're going, and where we're at now, it's just amazing, right? I mean, we have clunky VHS tapes, and Betamax all the way up to DVDs. Now, you can take your whole DVD catalog and library and put it on a server at your house. And you can just search it and you have all the it's almost like a Netflix or any of the other streaming services, but it's at your house. And so I started this out on Friday to build her this streaming server at our house. And I would say within about six hours, there are some you know, little nuances with the setup, I had that aha moment that I've had only a few times in technology, why Wow, this is absolutely amazing. So you can take the movies and put them inside of your DVD player, and it will record it to the local hard drive. And not only does it record it to the local hard drive, but it also has the description, and it's got the cover art on there, you know, like the outside of the DVD, all of this stuff just kind of happens auto magically, it's what I like to say sometimes. And whenever I looked into it a little farther. Now, this is something that I'm not going into yet. But there's these various modules that will allow you to time shift, live television. And so you can set it up. And if you have a tuner for the outside antenna, and you want to watch his show, let's say American Idol. Well, now with this modern technology, you can just schedule it, and it will put it on your home server. And you can watch it whenever. The other thing I find very interesting in this technology is is because the content is stored locally at your house, if your internet word to go out, you can still have access to streaming because it's all streaming locally. And when you think about the power of that this is where the political legal stuff starts to come in. Now doing some research, I found out that when you purchase a DVD, or you subscribe to a streaming service, you're actually being licensed for that. Viewing, right? So if I go down to my local store, whether it's Walmart or Target and I buy a DVD, now that DVD is encased in plastic or plastic wrapper, when you cut that wrapper, you are legally bound to the license of that DVD. And whenever I looked at it, because I want to make sure I don't do anything illegal 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't distribute the copy of it. And the distribution isn't just upload it to the internet. And for God's sakes, guys, please, please, please do not go get a firestick or one of these Kodi servers, they advertise online and say that you get to watch first run movies without having to go to the movie theater. I mean, come on. Let's use some common sense here. We know that if you get to watch something that's still in the movie theaters for free It's illegal. If you take your home DVD collection, like what we're in the process of doing and putting it all on our little, local hard drive. Now that is for our own viewing pleasure at our house, do not send that to grandma and grandpa and aunt and uncle and don't give other people access to it, you will get caught. I know that ISPs get what they call DCMA complaints all the time. And that's where someone is torrenting movies. And I do get people that call me from time to time and say, Hey, Commander, Bob, I got this box and they say all I do is plug it in, and I can watch movies that are still in the movie theaters. Well, those are pirated movies. Today, we're cruising the highways and byways, we're not on the pirate ship selling the Digital Ocean. So make sure just like with any technology that becomes easy for people to do, you don't kind of say, well, you know, it's just a copy of it. And I'm just gonna let my mom watch it because of that proliferates out on the internet. I mean, these artists, and movie houses, I mean, they need to make money. And so if you want to show a movie at your, at your bar, or a public venue, well, you need a different license for that you can't just go down to Walmart and get a DVD and start showing that DVD. So please, you know, this comes up a lot of times that people think digital stuff is not as bad but it's the same thing as stealing. Even the music 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 I put in my information. And so they know that I'm using it for my podcast, so you got to have the right license. But let's get back to how amazing is that we had to carry around all these VHS tapes, or we had to have these laser discs and even the small DVD. But now you can put all of these movies that you are legally entitled to own on your iPhone or iPad and you can just have hundreds and hundreds of it. I just think that's amazing of where we went from only the mega rich back in the day looking at these eight millimeter and going into Betamax and people trying to do the time shifting to now you can have all your shows all of your movies and content right in the palm of your hand. Alright, I know that we're at the bottom of the half hour and I hope you enjoyed this little walk down memory lane as always, maybe sparked a few memories of childhood, maybe a few memories of recording different content and knowing that you can have your buddies come over and you could watch a scary movie on a Friday night and not have to be there at the exact time of when the movie starts. So with that, we will see everybody next week. And thank you as always for tuning in to the global Bob Show. Till next time