Funkybside: The following discussion was moved from BadukTV.
jfc: I just took a look; Thanks for the cool link!
BTV was showing a Goban, bowls and stones from directly above with grass underneath these items. Hands were placing stones on the board while discussion was going on. Now I see two guys in front of a magnetic display discussing the same game.
I'm not exactly sure how the "grass underneath the Go set" enhances the viewer's experience but who am I to complain! At least Korea has BadukTV 24x7!
Tim Brent: I love it!! By the way, I think it's a green felt background under the goban, bowls and stones.
PatrickB: This is very cool! Thanks for posting it.
Malweth: Awesome! Now if only I could watch it at work (not allowed streaming media); but guess what's going to be on at home all the time, now! :D
Alex Weldon: My daily after-work ritual while I was living in Korea was to come home, crack open a big bottle of beer, and sit down in front of Baduk TV for an hour. I've been lamenting the fact that we don't have a Go TV station in Canada ever since I've been back. Thanks for the link!
Jan van Rongen: Hope this link will last some time, the previous one I had was dead after a couple of days. The Baduk TV site is a site that needs registration for most area's and certainly for the VOD's and the Life feed. It is now on:
http://game1.hangame.com/game/baduk/baduk.htm?special=baduktv
There is a broadcasting schedule. The direct link is:
http://game1.hangame.com/game/baduk/tv_chart.htm
This link is IMHO easier to understand than the link above if you do not know Korean. The names of the persons (usually professionals) that give the comments are also given here.
Some of the game are broadcast live -- usually in the evening (Korean time), but others are not even replayed by the original players. When you see the grass under the board, there are some people replaying an old game.
Velirun: Chris Ball, you are my hero! Then again, you may cause the death of my social life.
Does anyone happen to know if there is a higher-quality live video feed? Sometimes it gets a bit difficult to read the text on this one.
ilan: I don't now about the games, but the Carpenters song on the Whisen commercial was the best! Makes sense, their first hit single was the theme for a bank commercial. The other highlight for me was the Korean national anthem played at sign off (4 am Korea time). You shouldn't miss this, it's like an animated version of a National Geographic magazine article, lots of shipyards, factories, the 2002 football world cup, and the final obligatory military review, though the Korean army ski regiment still needs a little more practice, I think. Check it out!
Scartol: Any chance of getting a little help for those of us who don't speak Korean? What am I supposed to click on to see TV shows?
Juan: I was just wondering the same thing :-(
Patrickb: Open Windows Media Player and enter the link above (mms://baduktv.nefficient.co.kr/baduktv203) into it. This URL also works with the most up-to-date versions on mplayer. Note that you need a relatively new version of Media Player for this to work; I had to upgrade from v8 to v9 on my mac for this to work.
Juan: Awesome! Thanks Patrickb!
Tim Brent: If you have Real Player 10, it also works.
Anonymous: It works very well with mplayer on Linux.
Juan: This is great. Now, not to be too greedy but, is there a way to store the video in the hard drive? I figure, I can keep it running during work hours, and then come home and watch anything that I may miss :-)
Anon: If you use mplayer, you can run the program mencoder: mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy URL_HERE -o file.wmv.
Jan van Rongen: If you are, like myself, one of those people using the OS that 90% of the world is using, use this tip. I record Baduk TV with a freeware program called SDP ( http://get.to/SDP ). SDP has a pre-view so you can watch while recording. The result is a .asf file. Unfortunately, because of the quality of the broadcast, at least 50% of my recordings have glitches that I have been unable to solve with any asf-tool.
Juan: Excellent. Thanks!!
BramGo: I am also downloading them. If you want more info about how I do it click Here.
Taylor?: What exactly is KGB? I'd like to see Baduk TV translated, please!
Collin?: Is this still working for anyone? I'm getting a non-existent link.
chuckleb: I've had no luck all day.
JanvanRongen: For me it stopped working on July 20 -- indeed the link no longer exists.
Collin?: Rats. I'd just gotten hooked on it, too. If someone who's Korean language skills are better than mine can tell from the web page whether this is temporary or permanent I'd like to know.
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Jake?: Reading the bulletin board under Help menu, I found out that this live streaming service was originally for members only. The other day, someone, not a member, asked to the webmaster on the bulletin board how come he could see the service for free so the webmaster may have blocked it in my opinion. If you have some ability to understand Korean, you will find you can still see some recorded games free of charge.
Anon: Someone asked the webmaster? How stupid can this someone be, unbelievable.
Anon2: Even so, if the link was not legitimate then it is good that they corrected the problem. It seems there were quite a number of people using it, and it had a fairly high bitrate, and connectivity from Korea to North America is not cheap.
Arno: so if it is only for "members" what has one to do to become a member and get access? How expensive is it?
jake?: it's only $6(USD)/month or $1/day. But if you want to be a member, you should be a Korean. They support only Korean credit card. It seems they don't even think some foreigners may want to watch it.
Joshual000: I found the content _very_ useful without understanding any korean. Admittedly, understanding korean would help justify the cost, but I think there still is a niche for people who just like watching tv coverage of Go.
Nando: I emailed them 2 days ago without hoping too much for an answer. But it just arrived:
Maybe they can be motivated by more emails, so send a note to badooktv at onmedia dot co dot kr if you'd like to see it happening.
Collin? Thanks, that's terrific! I've sent my pleading email.
Velirun Sent mine too. Hope more will join in - a lot of Koreans just can't comprehend that Americans know what baduk is.
Jake? Nando, you emailed ahead of me. Nice job!!!. Actually yesterday I posted a similar suggestion to bulletin board and a similar answer is replied. Good luck to us all!!
Calvin This was cute while it lasted. But honestly, you have to concede that the target audience is Koreans not just because it's in Korean (there are Korean channels in the US, too) but also because it's clearly subsidized by advertisements for products and services mainly available in Korea. So unless you were planning to buy that super-stretchy underwear or whatever it is for 2000 won plus shipping, you're not really the target customer for those ads! If they do a program for foreigners, it should probably be in English and sponsored by advertisers for Korean tourism, or something like that.
Notochord: I was sort of under the impression that the majority of costs for a television webcast are fixed to just getting the programs and broadcast up: it doesn't really cost anything to let someone pay for their bitrate (whatever that is to the states), then provide pure profit after that. It would be interesting to see in-English baduk tv, but I think that the would at least have to have a trial period (to confirm that viewership in English won't be nil) before they even think about the investment needed to launch subtitling. I was under the impression that advertisers would decide to subsidize (and for how much) on the basis of the number of people who match their demographic, so just letting additional wierdos tag on should have no effect but a slight increase in profits, should it?
Anon?: 2,000 South-Korean Won = 1.71792 US Dollar. So I guess it was 20,000 Won. 1 South-Korean Won equals 0.0008590 US Dollar as of 07/25/2004. If it is really 2,000 won, I guess I will order some of this underwear :)
ilan: In fact, my wife was going to order the whole line of Zelos underwear for me.
Anon?: I have just checked the ad again and the price. It's 39,800 won. I don't know for how many pieces. Ilan, please post a picture of you in this underwear - my girlfriend really would like to see that :)
ilan: OK, here goes (view at your own risk!!):
http://www.lix.polytechnique.fr/Labo/Ilan.Vardi/tan.html
Anon?: Well this is not the original underwear from the ad, but still.....nice penguin in the background :)
Serious comment now: The Baduk TV feed is still available for free elsewhere on the internet. Because accessing it from here may be not exactly legal I will not post the link. If you stumble across the correct link please do not post it here or in another public forum. This will guarantee that it goes away pretty quick.
weev: eh? new Baduk TV feed? If anyone has this, please email the location to gluttony@gmail.com ... thanks in advance.
Hikaru79: I would also be GREATLY indebted to anyone who emailed me that link... I only got to enjoy BadukTV for a few days before it was shut down, but I still got quite a taste for it and would appreciate having it back. Thanks in advance, should you decide to help out! (Please email to hikaru79@gmail.com or adrianp@cogeco.ca )
Nando: Geez, that's really pathetic. Are people that stupid ? My email exchange has continued with that nice guy. A quote:
(...) and our service is Not free service. our subcripters pay 7000 won(at least $6) per month. The fee is essential to operating internet TV service. Your watching internet TV makes us lose the money. -_-;
Great job, guys...
Later, he wrote:
So we are looking for the way, which is good for you and us. I have a question.
1. how much do you pay? 2. how many people use our service in your area?
Thank you for your help in advance.
I think, he meant "how much would you be ready to pay ?" and "how many people do you think would be wanting to use the service ?". While I'd gladly pay those $6/month, I've got no clue how many of us, non-Asian players, could be interested and be willing to pay. Does anyone know references or statistics about this topic ?
maruseru: $6 per month is nothing, even if most of us are only interested in one channel (I presume they have several channels available). Maybe we should get a list of potential subscribers to send to these guys so they are willing to speed up their search for a way of enabling us to get accounts.
Collin?: $6/month seems to me to be about right. Nando, perhaps you could keep your contact going and suggest that price and note that, as far as the US is concerned, there are 6000 subscribers to the American Go Association EJournal who might well be interested. It seems like a good deal for everyone, because I imagine US subscribers wouldn't add to peak usage because of the time differential -- it shouldn't affect the service to current Korean subscribers. I wonder why foreign subscriptions are a problem in any case? I can buy things on web sites all over the world with my credit card.
Nando: Thanks a lot Collin for those informations (good point about the time differential, hadn't thought of it), I'll relay them tomorrow. About the problem of foreign subscriptions, you must be forgetting that the political situation in South Korea (still) is ... kind of ... special. I won't enter into details here, there are lots of places on the Internet, which are much better informed than I am (try to google "south korea" and "ANSP", or maybe "national security syndrom"). Point is, it's certainly possible, but probably more complicated for them than for other countries.
On another topic, I was trying to get a figure of how many non-Asian amateur shodans there is. I consulted the EGF and AGA sites and found a total of a mere 2000 on the rating lists. Even if not all shodans are listed (some possibly don't participate to tournaments, although it's a bit doubtful), can it be that there are so few ?
rubilia: The above sounds promising. Anyway, since there seem to be some very keen on baduk tv people here around: the site at http://game1.hangame.com/game/baduk/baduk.htm?special=baduktv might be interesting.
Moah: I'd be willing to go up to 10$/months if they add subtitles.
thefox?: I don't really understand what the commotion is about baduk tv. You can get the records of the games on baduk tv from websites. go4go & gobase provide these resources. Plus, you don't have to watch the 30 minutes of underwear commercials. ^^' I know it's nice to see Lee Chang Ho's hand on the tv feed; however, isn't it more practical to just play it out yourself?
maruseru: In our media-influenced times, it just seems to be a more complete experience to have video as well as records and game software. I guess I'd like to see TV programmes of people playing Go, just as I like to watch Hikaru No Go. Each of those episodes tells you something more about how the Go world works (starting with the game rules, then tournaments, the Nihon Ki-in and so on). Maybe it's a culture/community building thing.
Funkybside: That may be true, but please don't forget the best part- game analysis. The 1 time I saw this channel, a huge amount of variations were explored by the commentators (on a very large board). That kind of display cannot be had from examining game records. A glimpse into the thoughts of higher ranked players is invaluable! It didn't matter that there were no subtitles, seeing the ideas was plenty. I would happily pay for this service, and encourage everyone not to use any existing feed until we find something ledgit.
Koosh: 6000 people!?? Yes, there are that many subscribed to the Ejournal, but I cannot see more than 500 of those people paying to watch a program that they cannot understand because of the language barrier, despite how helpful it can still be.
Pel?: Well, let me just chime in as a Europoean (you know, the piece of land just to the east of you) - there probably is quite a bit of interest for a similar service over here. So just the number (6000) is probably a fair estimate if you include us (not being an optimist). I'm pretty sure that amount of possible subscribers could be enough of an incentive for them - perhaps enough to do subtitles in english (wich won't be a problem for most europeans).
Funkybside: Agreed. For only a few $$, Euros, GBP, or whatever, I would not be suprised in the least bit if there were 6000 potential subscribers. (Pointing at my comments above: Subtitles or not! I'd almost prefer no subtitles- it was plenty helpful in Korean and it made me 'think' differently since i wasn't wasting processor cycles on listening :0)
regarding the comment:
It is, of course, illegal to do this. Nor is it ethical to consume a non-free resource (BadukTV's bandwidth) without compensation.
I agree with the unethical comment but I have serious doubts about the illegality. Such a sweeping comment is unlikely to be true in all places or even most places.
ZeroKun: It's quite illegal, just like fansubs. If you aren't paying for something that is a paid service, that is stealing. It's just like scrambling cable back in the day. Last time I checked the Koreans do pay for this service, so then it is illegal. What are your doubts about stealing a paided service if it is over the internet, it's all the same :)
nachtrabe: Except for one big thing. Fansubs are not a service being provided over the internet with nothing but an unknown URI protecting them. Distributing fansubs is a copyright violation, this is something ENTIRELY different--they are the ones distributing it, even if they don't intend non-paying customers to see it. I am not a lawyer, but there are some very tricky legalities here, particularly considering those watching are in a different country from the one providing the service.
Unethical, sure, but I have serious doubts that it is "illegal."
ZeroKun: Some good points, but even if you are in a country other than the originator, it is still illegal, and legal action can be taken, this is happened several times in fansubbing. Let's talk about online movies, if you were to take some without paying, in which they are in a paid service. Is that illegal? Most probably. It comes down to "stealing is stealing" no matter where you are or what it is, if you didn't pay for it and you should have it's stealing.
nachtrabe That may be the ethical definition of stealing, that is not the legal definition of "stealing." Copyright infringement is not theft in a legal sense, and this isn't even that. You can't compare it to distributed movies or fansubs, because--to my knowledge--the legal code doesn't handle anything like this under the same statutes.
It might qualify for "theft of services," but that's not copyright infringement and I'm not even sure that you could be prosecuted for it in the US when a Korean company is involved that is not taking "industry standard" measures to protect their content.
Again, IANAL and would welcome a case citation either way, but you can't just say "it is stealing because you get something they don't want you to have, therefore it is illegal"--the legal code is substantially more complicated than that.
kmh?: Quite. The key here is that they had not taken any sufficient measures to stop people from watching. As any developer worth his salt will tell you, securing video streams isn't exactly rocket science.