View Full Version : Showtime no longer a premium service
Since Showtime has started putting their logo on their programming, they have become a non-premium service. Premium service means a clean picture uncluttered by logos and the like.
I am not paying premium money for a poor picture.
Bye Bye Showtime. No wonder your company is in dire straits.
Mike123abc
02-09-03, 02:35 PM
Hmm, just looked at all the Showtime movie channels on Dish and did not see a logo. The only time I see them put a logo on is when they showing one of their own series.
They are there. I have it PVR'ed. I have dish also. They were in the movie Getting even With Dad and I saw them in Hardball (both on 318) I PVR'ed Shoto for a bit and didn't see them there. I have only seen them on 318/319 so far.
Of course it was up from time to time. But thats how it starts before its there all the time.
It just showed up on Hardball (318) on the hour.
It also showed up on the half hour.
Shame on you Showtime for hiring low-life losers that don't have a life or any other vocational ability who put logos on your programming.
TNGTony
02-09-03, 04:50 PM
Showtime has been doing this for years. So has Starz. I don't like it either.
See ya
Tony
Steve Mehs
02-09-03, 05:07 PM
It's annoying as all hell on the Encores.
Mark Holtz
02-09-03, 05:48 PM
It was the premium channels that stated the channel bugs in the first place.
waydwolf
02-09-03, 06:19 PM
Ostensibly, it is a form of station identification. When the world is all digital and every device can decode a digital service identifier from the stream and tell what it is, then maybe they will go away, but most likely not.
After all, they are a way of advertising. Your complaint proves you paid attention and got their service and its name in your head. History Channel puts small occassional animated bugs on as advertising for various shows.
Can product placement be far behind?
Which brings to mind those news stations with the tickers and crawlers all over the place reducing the availible space for actual video subject. How long till news anchors are craning their necks and tilting their heads to fit their faces between the various info boxes?
Never mind. Sounds like a Saturday Night Live skit.
When I saw the title of this thread I took it at face value. iIthought that there had been a chane in Showtime's status. That it was discontinued, or that the basic showtime channel would now be free.
I understand that we sometimes want to vent. But could we reduce the hyperbole? I hate the black bars, the logos etc. But they have nothing to do with a whether Showtime is a premium service.
Originally posted by TNGTony
Showtime has been doing this for years. So has Starz. I don't like it either.
See ya
Tony
I don't know about for years. They just started doing it. I have a bunch of movies that I have taped from Showtime that have no logo in them.
Originally posted by waydwolf
Ostensibly, it is a form of station identification. When the world is all digital and every device can decode a digital service identifier from the stream and tell what it is, then maybe they will go away, but most likely not.
After all, they are a way of advertising. Your complaint proves you paid attention and got their service and its name in your head. History Channel puts small occassional animated bugs on as advertising for various shows.
Can product placement be far behind?
Which brings to mind those news stations with the tickers and crawlers all over the place reducing the availible space for actual video subject. How long till news anchors are craning their necks and tilting their heads to fit their faces between the various info boxes?
Never mind. Sounds like a Saturday Night Live skit.
But Showtime is supposed to be a "premium" service. Unlike History channel which depends on ad revenue, you pay a lot extra for a premium service so you don't have to have ads. There is no need to identify themselves either, since you are paying a lot extra, you know what the channel is.
Originally posted by Z'Loth
It was the premium channels that stated the channel bugs in the first place.
I only ever saw the logos on the the everyday cable networks. Never considered the Encore channels becuase they were basically included on some cable systems and satellite services.
But since Starz/Encore is owned by Malone, I would expect anything from him. Look what he did to cable!
3 or 4 years ago on the first day of May, HBO tried putting logos on top of their programming. A bunch of people complained (I believe through their website) and it was gone the next day.
TNGTony
02-09-03, 11:31 PM
Originally posted by manicd
I don't know about for years. They just started doing it. I have a bunch of movies that I have taped from Showtime that have no logo in them.
I have a few movies taped from Showtime in 1985 that have the logo pop in and out from time to time. :-) This aint new. they may have stopped for a while and begun again.
See ya
Tony
All I know is that if I ever noticed a permanent burn-in on my RPTV from some stupid station's logo, I would have my lawyer on it so fast, their heads would spin. I have already complained to two of the local station here in Des Moines not to put high contrast and/or color logos on the screen, and the idiots don't listen. We KNOW who the hell we are watching, so get over yourself already!
I hate all the logos too, but they are a result of "dumbing down" the American TV viewer. The channel providers claim that the logos retain viewers who surf the channels. There may be an element of truth in this, but as was posted before, it would be nice to have that info digitally encoded in the signal and have the equipment able to decide whether to display it or not - similar to close-captioning.
MarkB49
02-10-03, 07:52 PM
Yea
Was watching MSNBC this morning-news report.
It was kindda neat they had a map of IRAQ the reporters were standing on,they were using a pointer to explain some things LOL you couldn't see what they were pointing at BECAUSE of all the Stuff going on at the bottom of the screen.
I just kept SURFING.
Mark
Once upon a time, the logo (or station bug) was placed there to prevent piracy. Some folks would (GASP!) make video tape copies of "premium" programs and would sell them to unsuspecting people as "the real thing." This was an attempt to reduce piracy. They have since devolved into an annoyance ... especially to RPTV owners as channel providers have emblazoned their "flag" for all to see. National Geographic has a particulary annoying "bug" that is anything but transparent! There are many more ways to "brand" a picture that is, for all intents and purposes, invisible to the user but is a signature to those that know how/where to look.
BobMurdoch
02-12-03, 01:26 PM
CNN started the wave by putting their logo to discourage other news channels from lifting their video feed (which they of course counteracted by placing their OWN bug over the CNN logo).
waydwolf
02-12-03, 08:44 PM
Originally posted by davhol
Once upon a time, the logo (or station bug) was placed there to prevent piracy. Some folks would (GASP!) make video tape copies of "premium" programs and would sell them to unsuspecting people as "the real thing." This was an attempt to reduce piracy. They have since devolved into an annoyance ... especially to RPTV owners as channel providers have emblazoned their "flag" for all to see. National Geographic has a particulary annoying "bug" that is anything but transparent! There are many more ways to "brand" a picture that is, for all intents and purposes, invisible to the user but is a signature to those that know how/where to look.
Not to give ideas to any broadcasters reading this, but think of the next step. All they'd have to do is watermark their program by raising the brightness levels of pixels according to a map corresponding to their logo, repeated all over the screen, by just a slight amount.
Unless the picture was static and you stared, or they raised it just a slight bit too much, you'd never notice... consciously.
All digital systems do provide some interesting ideas.
Or with audio, they could mix in a very low volume chatter mentioning their name or doing audio commercials and unless you had the volume cranked, you wouldn't notice it... consciously.
They say that subliminal advertising is nonsense, but I once slept through a radio show sometime after 2AM that was essentially an interview with Chef Tell Erhardt and him talking about his pasta sauces. The entire next day I could think of nothing but looking to buy a new pasta sauce and could not for the life of me figure out what brand I was looking for until a friend noted that boring early AM show. He had been awake for it.
Oh look, there's another bug on Food Network...
The technique is called steganography.
MarkB49
02-13-03, 07:36 PM
I just mentioned something about how much i paid on another topic.
Nonetheless WE pay alot of $$$.
I paid over $600 this past year w/D*.Many of you paid more.
My mom was 1 of the first on her street to get cable back in 1971.Not to much programing back then.NO commercial or logos bugs.LOL i guess it's the price of progress!!
Mark
vBulletin® v3.7.6, Copyright ©2000-2012, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.