I'm peeking out from under my aluminium foil hat here, but there are folks trying to take over my TV!

The Motion Picture Association of American (MPAA) wants to stream movies on demand to people very soon after release. In fact, they'd like to get movies into people's homes not long after they are in the cinema, probably before the DVD and Blu Ray release. Sounds good. The problem, as always, stems from the worry about piracy.

The solution? Turn off parts of the consumer's TV..

They want to introduce "Selectable Output Control" into new TVs. The idea is that one can get a movie from your streaming device into your TV via a digital input (like HDMI) but then can't record it from the analogue outputs of the TV (or streaming device).

It seems reasonable, but when combined with the High bandwidth Digital Copy Protection (HDCP) integral to HDMI that already restricts what we can do, it feels like an alarming dose of Big Brother deciding what we do with our electronic goods. So the consumer gets punished in what is probably a futile attempt to stop movies from being copied. Sure the studios need to protect their income and rights, but if it gets to a point where it's more of a hassle to watch a movie through the right and legal pathway, people will resort to piracy as a matter of convenience.

Of course, not that it matters in Australia. No one seems to realise that we are an internet savvy market dieing to give some one our money to let us stream movies conveniently.