Seen almost all of Blade now and although I really liked it ( lots of lesbian vampire tension ) and I watched the pre-air of Jericho which really didn't appeal very much to me. So I'm going for Torchwood if it's half as good as Dr Who it should be a laugh and a half.

Should this really be in the 'Meets' forum?

lol we moved it but it left a copy in meets...... bug!

Removed from Meets

Actualy only heard of Torchwood.

I went for Jericho because I've seen the pilot and really enjoyed it. Be really interesting to see what direction it takes during the first season.

Another one I'm now looking forward to but it's not on the list is Men In Trees. Watched the first episode this morning and it looks like it's going to be a fun little drama... sort of somewhere between Sex and the City and Ally McBeal Definitely a must if you enjoyed either of those!

(Edited by lil_miss 14/09/2006 13:12)

I'm just curious about one thing--and it will show how much I don't know about the Internet and downloading things. I've never downloaded a TV show--and wouldn't know how to do it if I wanted to. But here's the question. I've noticed here and on some other sites that people in locations outside of the US and Canada have seen Jericho--just to pick one show. Yet Jericho doesn't air its first episode in the US until September 20 as far as I know.

I understand that people put shows on the Internet for download after they are broadcast in the US. But how do folks get them off the Internet BEFORE they're even broadcast here? And, from what I'm reading, people are discussing a number of shows on the Internet that haven't been broadcast yet in North America. Can anyone tell me how that happens? As I said above, I'm just really curious.

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by Sandia
How do folks get them off the Internet BEFORE they're even broadcast here? And, from what I'm reading, people are discussing a number of shows on the Internet that haven't been broadcast yet in North America. Can anyone tell me how that happens? As I said above, I'm just really curious.

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The answer is pretty simple as these are pre-air releases. Or in other words releases from shows that haven't aired yet. There are many varieties of pre-air releases and Jericho and most of the pre-air releases floating online are of the "screener" variety.

Throughout the year a couple of dozen new shows are developed yet very little of them actually make it onto your screen. Some never make it past the script stage, others maybe even get a pilot episode and if everything goes really well a studio will order a company to shoot a whole season (which normally costs a good few million (shows like enterprise costed around 1.5 million dollars per episode to shoot)).

You need to keep in mind that shows are shot way in advance to when you actually see them and lots of people work on things like marketing, finding commercials to fit in the breaks etc. To enable these people to do their work and for businesses to know what the show is about and if they want to buy commercial space they create screeners which they give out to those "important" people. Nowadays this is nothing else than for example the first episode that they pressed on a dvd. Seeing as making a copy of a dvd takes all of 3 minutes or so these do tend to end up in the "wrong" hands.

So if somebody gets their hands on this dvd and rips the content and they dump it online for everyone else to download it you have a pre-air release (in reality this is slightly more complicated but you get the idea).

You also used to have the satellite feed pre-airs. Studio's would normally send out the "raw" show without the commercials etc in it to the different stations that would be airing it, say next evening. Instead of sending them tapes they used satelites to send these shows directly from the studio to the different tv stations. If you know which satelite is being used and when the signal is transmitted you can also receive this signal if you have the right kit. Nowadays this pretty much undoable due to the heavy encryption that is used which makes it faster and easier to just cap it from the satelite when it's properly aired and cut out the commercials by hand.

The same happens with movies (dvdscr's) as many people will want to see the movie before it actually hits the cinema (cinema owners (do I buy this movie), film critics for oscars etc). As the quality of vhs tapes doesn't generally give a good impression of the real quality of a movie they used to have special screening session where they would use a proper cinema and stack it full with cinema owners, marketing people, people that had a part in the movie but haven't seen the edited movie yet, critics etc etc etc. However this is expensive and very inconvient (get all those people together) so instead they now just send out dvd's.

If you want to know more on how this works I suggest you check out the first season of Welcome to the Scene.

(Edited by Chambler 14/09/2006 17:34)

I watched the pre-airs of Weeds the other week.

Also, with regard to screener releases, one might like to consider it was the shows that were lacking 'buzz' that got out onto the internet first....

Youd think it would be the most awaited shows that get out first wouldnt you. Its also true that just about every show preair gets onto the internet pretty early.

Now either a very large number of the journalists that get the screeners for review purposes have the motivation and knowledge to capture and release a show on the net...

... one particular journalist is releasing everything, and youd think he would be pretty easy to trace...

...or perhaps certain people who market the shows think its a good move to get the shows out there, creating buzz on the net, as buzz is what makes or breaks a show. Lost is the perfect example.

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by Wobag
... one particular journalist is releasing everything, and youd think he would be pretty easy to trace...

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Only if they had a watermark otherwise you still wouldn't know who did it as these discs are sent out in relatively large numbers (couple of dozen at least)

Thanks Chambler for the detailed explanation. And thanks also, Wobag, for the additional detail. I thought it had to be something like that--people with advance "copies" putting them onto the Internet. But I just wasn't sure how--or where the copies would come from. Now the mystery is solved.

It is really amazing though. You don't really need to watch TV or go to the movies anymore if you don't want to. Sooner or later, it seems that everything ends up on the Internet anyway. And if you're willing to wait, it'll be on DVD.

Thanks again!

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by Sandia
It is really amazing though. You don't really need to watch TV or go to the movies anymore if you don't want to. Sooner or later, it seems that everything ends up on the Internet anyway. And if you're willing to wait, it'll be on DVD.

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Very true but that's also what is killing many of the more niche shows, like for example a scifi based show. Sure there are going to be more than enough people to watch reality shows like Big Brother. But the people that watch scifi (or other more niche) shows are also the people that have gadgets like tivo, pvr, "insert tv provider"+, or can get their shows online. Due to the old fashioned way the performance of a tv show is rated these shows tend to do relatively bad in the ratings as many people don't have to watch these shows "live".

Thats also why these types of shows get canned but do get released on dvd eventually and come an enormous success as although the ratings were crap lots of people watched it anyways without it getting "officially" measured and a year or 2-3 later they are back on the air. Fox is particularly bad that way.

Although the music industry has finally decided to take digital sales (and downloads) into account whe making their charts I don't see this happening anytime soon with TV But it would be really nice if they would finally realise that pvr's etc are going to greatly distort their figures and hits the niche shows hardest.

Actually I believe BARB who calculate UK TV ratings now do include PVRs and the like, I wonder if Nielsen have also made the change?