Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/05/11/free-as-in-to-air.html
I’d like to share a project I’m working on that could have an impact on
your future freedoms in the digital age. It’s an open video development
board I call NeTV2.
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Big fan, been following Bunnie’s career since the Chumby days. Miss it and sad that never did as well as I hoped. Will look into this, good luck 
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Oh, I think I see what’s going on here. The NeTV2 is designed to handle unencrypted streams, but by a quirk of its open hardware FPGA design, it could be modified to break copyright law.
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High-Definition Content Protection? More like HDmi Cartel Protection.
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Chumby still lives! The chumby.com site is up and can still serve your dashboard and apps. Recently found mine again (actually the small Insignia branded version) while doing some housecleaning (a Rare Event) and fired it up.
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I like the cut of this mans jib.
The DMCA has been abused by too many companies to add a single small chip with often laughable “encryption” on it to try and block you from fixing your own stuff and making it a felony to do so. Be this a farmer trying to fix his John Deer tractor, and being threatened by John Deer with the DMCA and federally served time or something as simple as trying to make a cup of coffee in a Keurig without having to use their specifically approved coffees or just wanting to save money and not waste plastics by refilling your ink jet cartridges. The vast majority of how the DMCA has been (ab)used has been for anti-competitive, anti-consumer practices and the companies will continue to subvert and twist this law to desperately grasp at their monopolies and threaten their customers if they step out of line with one of their products. If you like to tinker with old electronics and enjoy fixing old hardware and making it work again there’s a good chance your hobby has led you to do things that in the eyes of our laws would make you a felon multiple times over, and that is straight f*cked up in my book.
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Chumby! Now that is a name I haven’t heard in a long, long time.
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bunnie is my hero
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Breaking the rules? Where do I sign up?
I still have mine but when I heard that it had been bought out by some random company I lost interest. Dunno how it’s being run these days
oh my god… his shirt says MiT! god level geekery!
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I was trying to work out what his shirt said…
"Mass imaginary temperature? "
But yeah, MiT, lol.
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Greetings, to you all. So, I just stumbled on bOiNGbOiNG while doing some research on blogging itself, in this case I was simply just looking for ideas as to the “look and feel” of successful personal blogs of other people to hopefully create a successful blog myself. When I googled, top visited blogs, I saw a title in the search results that fit perfectly. If you didn’t already know, “bOiNGbOiNG” came up an incredibly impressive No. 2!!! …on the “Guardian’s” website in that article titled “The world’s 50 most powerful blogs”
Naturally, I felt I should take some notes, but before I could do that, this particular blog post was the first to (more than) pique my interest, as it seemed like it was something on the razor tip of the cutting edge of a subject I know little of, but am wanting for. I read the article about the creation of this NeTV2 device, From there I immediately wanted to know more about this NeTV2; and so I eagerly dove down the rabbit hole, reading, but not truly being able to appreciate the insight but for my lack of any knowledge of this type of tech.
I eventually ended my sojourn at the landing page of the crowdfunding page for this developer; wanting to contribute, but not really knowing what I would be contributing to. Allow me now to indict myself freely as someone who has no idea what 99% of the terminology being used was; even in the comments section of this page, and that of the crowdfunding site; much less could I decipher the information given on the campaign page… thorough and detailed as it was.
I have great admiration and respect for the work all of you in the tech community do to protect our personal freedoms, and level the playing field for the individual, over the large monopolist corporations who take advantage of this “1201.” The right to creative freedom is near and dear to me as a writer and artist (non-affiliated, non-officially published, and amateur)
So the short version to my long question, and thank you if you’ve stuck with me this far, is: What does this NeTV2 do? More specifically for the end-user. If someone could give me a brief rundown; in layman’s terms; again, pardon my ignorance, however my curiosity and zeal for learning new things has overpowered the fact that this comment will clearly expose my absolute ignorance on the subject. So yes, I would love to know even a little about what exactly this device can do for someone like me? Or is it not even meant for someone like me, and instead just for developers?
I’m very curious, and if someone could elucidate me on this even a little, I’d be greatly appreciative. I want to potentially contribute. Hell, I kind of want to buy one and I don’t even know what benefit, if any, it could have for me. All I know is that it seems to be on the cutting edge of some aspect of video technology, and video tech? Well, that’s my favorite tech. From the little I gather this is force for good per the developers intentions. However, it seems it could technically be used in a manner that is NOT consistent with the intention of its developer, nor the law for that matter.
To al of you who put up with this comment. Thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this to the end, and I appreciate whoever decides to give this NOOB even a short explanation. All responses are welcome regardless.
Cheers,
Charlie “The Long Winded”
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It’s a device that can alter the contents of a video feed, for example translating text in a video from one language to another so it appears in the translated language on the screen.
Because of restrictions in US law that forbid breaking encryption on digital content, it’s forbidden to alter most video feeds because of the widespread use of the HDCP protocol. So this device can’t do that. It can only alter unencrypted video.
But the hope is if he can demonstrate a user base for this technology, he can leverage a portion of the law that will allow for innovations if there is user demand for it.
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