The Butt Ugly Weblog

I had about the same thoughts about the whole fiasco. For once, we have a way of watching television which is considerably better for the viewers. Of course it had to some agency other than the tv companies themselves - while the watcher doesn't really care which channel some program is on, the companies apparently believe it matters (well, it matters of course to the advertisers). The companies had the chance to provide a common interface to the tv programs, but probably didn't even consider it and implemented their own, not very well working ones instead.

(I don't have tv currently, not even TV-Kaista. Might get one when I have to pay for it anyway.)

--Pare, 24-Dec-2009

not sure about TV-K having one (even, virtual) PVR per customer in their data center (yes, their own commercials might brag about that) if there would be one/PVR, it needs to record all the channels at the same time = fail :-)

anyway, most likely they have one PVR per channel, dumping everything on some NAS, from where the virtual PVR/GUI reads the channel/program the user is interested in. too bad they're not stripping the ads at the same time, LOL

--Life Tester, 25-Dec-2009

Actually, since Finland only has three DVB streams at any time (the streams are multiplexed four channels in one stream), it's quite possible they only have a single PVR per person (just with three tuner cards). The demuxing can be done offline from the stream as necessary.

--JanneJalkanen, 25-Dec-2009

I would hate to see this end or restrict the TVkaista service, or force them to raise their fees.. It's a fantastic service, especially for Finns living abroad; easy access to Finnish children's programmes (for language reasons), no need to go cold turkey when leaving Finland, if you're addicted to Finnish soaps (or B&B, lol..), and so on.

--Stello, 03-Jan-2010