The Butt Ugly Weblog

Finally figured out how to get DVB/YLE subtitles working when streaming the original .TS -file (also known as .REC) from my Mac. There is a lot of info on this on the internets, but they're mostly about "I have this .SRT subtitles file that came with this illegally downloaded program, how do I show them" -variety. Not a whole lot of info on how to get it working if you grab the original media stream from the air and just want to have it nicely playing back. The thing is - YLE uses DVB subtitles which are embedded within the TS stream itself, unlike all other Finnish channels who just burn it the texts directly into the media stream (which means they can't be turned off, so this simplicity comes with a cost). Unfortunately MEncoder and FFMpeg just sort of assume that subtitles are for extreme nerds who understand intimately the structure of MPEG2 transport streams.

After trying out a myriad of extremely obscure command line options for MEncoder and FFMpeg, I ended up just disabling everything else and going with VLC. Hover on the image for further info.

That's it! Restart server, and browse to your collection with your PS3. You should now see a text "[VLC]" behind most of your media files (except the ones that can be streamed immediately).

I used PS3 Media Server 1.81.0 and VLC 2.0.6.

My recent phone conversations with magazine sales menseem to go pretty much the same route.

"Hi! I have some happy news! I'm calling you to offer you this free magazine as a thanks for being our customer! Would you like X or Y?"

"No thanks. I'm not interested in any of those."

"But it's... free!?!"

"Save your money. Use it to make them better 'cos right now I don't want them even for free."

There's enough papery stuff delivered in my mailbox already, so I'm not adding any new stuff unless I actually want it to be there. Yes, I still do subscribe to paper versions of magazines because of the convenience (compact size, enough to read so it's worth carrying them to places, no big loss if they're used in garden games by two-year-olds). However, getting rid of physical objects is a burden, even if the trip to the paper recycler is just a few meters. I still need to actively do something to get rid of the "free" stuff, and suddenly it stops being free. Time is money, etc.

However, if they offered me a sampler PDF directly to my inbox, or a magic code to get 7 days of access to their online site, I might take it. I want my crap to be digital, 'cos I have the tools to deal with them, and I can deal with a larger amount of crap and samplers and ads on my computer than I can physically. The delete button is less than five centimeters from my right pinkie...

The more stuff there is, the more important disposability and deletability become.

You may have noticed the black popup covering this site today, calling you to sign a petition to make some sense to Finnish copyright legislation. Well, for those who don't know about this, Finland has a law which says that "if 50,000 people sign a petition, the government must take it seriously". Unfortunately, what it actually really means is still up for debate, but to get 50k people to sign something in a country of less than 5M eligible voters is quite significant (especially if you're an MP who cares about being re-elected).

Anyway. The real reason why my blog and plenty of other sites went all black was that few people realize that the copyright struggle is a three-party thing. There's the content creators (like the artists), the content consumers (like me), and the middlemen (like record companies). For the most part, the middlemen like to play the creator's side, but when it comes down to actual profit - well, there's a saying in Finland: "The artist pays."

You have to think about it this way: who gets the most out of strong copyright? The middlemen do not create or consume anything. Yes, they do facilitate, and as such they are a valuable part of the ecosystem, but strictly speaking - they're not necessary. However, since individual content creators often lack the resources to enforce their copyrights - and the content consumers don't care - there is a spot in the ecosystem for companies which have the money and the interest to police copyright - and there we find the middlemen.

This is why we're in this fight. Not because copyright is a bad thing (it isn't! It's a great thing!), but because it's no longer in the hands of people. New copyright legislation is dedicated to removing rights from both consumers and creators and concentrating it in the hands of middle-men corporations, because they have the money to write the laws, and lobby them incessantly until they get what they want.

This is why this site is black. To support a copyright law that does not make corporations force the police to seize laptops from 9-year olds. To support a copyright law that allows artists to have a say on whom to sue. To support a copyright law that says that people must be listened to.

Please do support the petition.