[mythtv-users] Removing laugh tracks from recordings

[Brian Wood]

On May 4, 2006, at 6:31 PM, Michael T. Dean wrote:

> On 05/04/2006 07:45 PM, Brian Wood wrote:
>
>> On May 4, 2006, at 5:08 PM, Nick Rout wrote:
>>>
>> Please Add a Prohibition Against the Following:
>>
>> Previews and commercials on purchased DVDs/Tapes
>>
>>
>
> Gotta say that I personally think the previews on purchased DVD's are
> often more interesting than the feature.  So, I'll have to write my
> representative to voice my opposition to this act.

I never have understood folks who like to download trailers, it seems  
to me that you're going to a lot of trouble to get what is  
essentially a commercial.

Of course a lot of trailers contain all of the interesting material  
in a two-hour movie, and they take  perhaps 90 seconds to run. That  
says a lot about the quality of modern movies.

>
>> Useless "FBI" warnings
>>
>>
>
> Heh.  Funny you should mention that because it's /already/ illegal to
> skip over that warning if the DVD is played back in a certain  
> country in
> which the warning is commonly found...  So, we currently have pretty
> much the exact opposite of the law you want (thanks to DMCA and DVD  
> CCA
> licensing).

Called a "UOP" or User Operation Prohibition, and I guess defeating  
it would constitute a violation of the DMCA, since you would have to  
defeat the UOP somehow, hadn't thought about that before.

I'm in the process of dubbing all of my VHS tapes over to DVD, and if  
I simply don't press "Record" on the DVD deck until after the warning  
I haven't "defeated" anything so that should technically be legal.

Of course what I'm doing about Macrovision is probably a no-no, but I  
feel morally right because I paid for the tape and I'm tossing it  
after I dub it.


>
>> Newscasts that spend more airtime teasing a story than actually
>> presenting it
>>
>>
>
> I'll support this one.  The one that prevented me from ever watching a
> newscast again was the ~6:00pm teaser I saw for the local TV station's
> 11:00pm newscast on Saving Private Ryan's opening day.  The announcer
> said something to the effect of, "Many veterans are experiencing  
> trauma
> due to the intense scenes in Saving Private Ryan.  The VA has set up a
> help line for veterans to call for help.  Tune in at 11:00 and we'll
> give you the number for the help line."
>

It got really bad when CNN was teasing stories on Headline News which  
ran in the last 5 minutes of the half-hour. Some cable systems pre- 
empt that time slot for local news, so you would see 5 minutes of  
tease for a story you would never actually be able to watch.

When I worked for WWOR we would sometimes tease a story that was to  
run in the second half-hour of the newscast. We re-ran the first half- 
hour only later that night, so we had the same problem. Finally we  
convinced them to only run such teases in the second half.

The real problem with teasing news stories is that research shows  
that it works, whether the viewer is actually able to see the story  
or not.