I’ll just go back to pirating my content: That was the response some of our readers had after hearing about Fox’s plans to restrict online access to full episodes of its shows to viewers that can either authenticate themselves as Dish Network subscribers or pay for Hulu Plus. The question is: How many users will authenticate, how many will wait eight days for content to become freely available and how many will go back to BitTorrent once the changes go into effect in mid-August?

We’ll have to wait for the actual switch-over to the authentication system for any hard data, but here’s a clue to how much is at stake for Fox: The official launch of Hulu in early 2008 reduced the number of US-based viewers who got their Fox shows from BitTorrent by up to a third for some of the more popular shows on the network, according to data from TorrentFreak.

TorrentFreak has been tracking weekly BitTorrent file sharing trends for years, and its editor Ernesto told me today via IM that the number of U.S.-based downloaders of the Fox show Prison Break decreased by 36 percent from October 2007 to October 2008. The Simpsons saw a slightly less dramatic decrease of 23 percent, and the number of people downloading Family Guy from the U.S. was only down 10 percent in the same time period.

Why’s there such a discrepancy between shows? Ernesto explained that the amount of piracy between shows can be influenced by a number of different factors, including the genre, viewership demographics and the time slot they air during.

However, few doubt that there will be a direct impact on piracy. “It’s like flipping a switch,” said Eric Garland from the Los Angeles-based media measurement company BigChampagne during a phone call today, adding that he has seen “immediate and direct correlations” between the availability of online content on sites like Hulu and piracy.

Of course,  the world of television has changed a lot since 2008. Content is now available through a wider variety of sources, with people using more DVRs and cable VOD systems offering more content than in the past. TV Everywhere could just be seen as another alternative, and its proponents might argue that Fox viewers will still be able to access the content as long as they’re authenticating themselves as a subscriber of a participating pay TV provider.

However, Garland thinks that piracy is still a viable alternative for many, just because it’s easier that jumping through authentication hoops. “We have still not made the process effortless enough,” he told me, comparing authentication to issues the music industry faced with DRM a few years ago and arguing that DRM eventually ended up punishing honest customers the most while not really preventing piracy. “People don’t like to be inconvenienced when they are playing by the rules.” In other words: People might just go for BitTorrent or unlicensed streaming sites and watch content ad-free if they feel like they’re forced to jump through unnecessary hoops to watch an ad-supported episode of a TV show online.

Pirate picture courtesy of Flickr user Juliana Coutinho.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Connected Consumer Tuned In to TVs in Q4
• Connected Consumer Q2: Digital music meets the cloud; e-book growth explodes
• Connected Consumer 2011: What Not to Expect

alt=''
border='0'
/>

GigaOM — Tech News, Analysis and Trends

An ink cartridge usually known as inkjet is a section of inkjet printer which is used to write down on paper during printing. These cartridges have ink compartment which are filled with different colored inks in a colored ink cartridge and only black ink in the cartridge for black and white printer.

Here we will be talk about the advantages of laser cartridges produced by Brother.

• Image balance – The brother laser cartridges is the result of the brands exhaustive efforts to improve its products to meet the needs the customer in a proper way. These laser cartridges can aid you take out print outs which are in brighter colours, have sharp detailing and are resistant to declining.

• Brother laser cartridges has the ideal combination when it comes to quantity and agreement of elements which gives rise to a correctly balanced image.

• Irrespective of the type of the laser ink cartridges formed by the brand, it matches and blends the colours in such a means so that the printout has colours which look real and normal.

• normally spread Printer ink – The thickness of the printer ink must be exact as it is vital that the ink flows smoothly from the printer head. discrepancy in the composition of ink can lead to blobs on the printout. Not only will the ragged allocation of ink produce bad quality print outs but it will also injure the printer in the longer run.

• No smearing and clogging – Smearing and clogging of the ink cartridges create permanent damages to the printer. The impurities in the ink spoil both the cartridge as well as the printer head. This brand makes sure that there are no dirt in the ink thereby stopping the printer as well as the printout from getting damaged .

• There are several online companies selling these ink cartridges. So all you have to do is seek the net for websites who sell these cartridges.

So try brother laser cartridges once for smooth and clear printout experience.

In the US we have a somewhat myopic view of cell phones. We have iPhones and Blackberrys and now Androids and Nexuses for smartphones, and a whole bunch of feature phones from manufacturers like LG and Motorola and Samsung. Notably absent from most wireless stores in the U.S. are Nokia, which is odd since Nokia owns more of the global cell phone market than its next three competitors combined. Part of this discrepancy is no doubt due to the market differences between U.S. carriers and wireless carriers in the rest of the world. But a large part of this can be explained by Nokia’s sheer arrogance.

When I was at Nokia World in late 2008, I had a very nice chat at a party with a Nokia employee. I asked him about Nokia’s relative scarcity in the U.S., and he said quite frankly that the problem was Nokia’s management’s opinion of their company. Being the world’s largest cell phone maker can give you some strong opinions about yourself: if you’re doing so well in the rest of the world, why should you change your tactics to get traction in the U.S., of all places? According to this slightly inebriated man, Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo opened his negotiations with Verizon by stating “We don’t need you.” Not a lot of wiggle room in that position, and there’s really no where to go but backwards. Well, the carriers feel they don’t need Nokia. I guess both opinions are technically correct, since no one is going out of business. But Nokia is losing out on a tremendous market opportunity, and U.S. carriers are losing out on some great handsets.

Whether this anecdote is accurate or not, the fact remains that Nokia is the odd man out in the U.S. I think we can all forgive Apple’s walled garden approach with its iPhone and associated app store because Apple has been a computer and software maker for a long time: this is what they do, and they have the track record to prove that they do it well. I don’t know many people who really take Nokia’s Ovi initiatives very seriously, because it’s not a core strength of Nokia’s. They’re seen as a handset manufacturer, and the expertise therein does not prima facie allow them to build and maintain a kick ass software suite.

There’s a bit over at VentureBeat that digs into this a bit more. The basic premise is consistent with what the Nokia guy at the party told me.

Jimin-with-the-big-FLAC-collection and I met with one of the SteelSeries guys today. It’s funny: you think you understand where a company’s coming from, but then you sit down and actually talk to them and it’s like, “Wow, OK, you guys are pretty cool.” So to the people who will walk out of Sunday’s Grammy Awards with one of those fancy gift bags you always hear about, I can say this: you’ll probably enjoy the SteelSeries headphones you find in there.

Yup, SteelSeries’ Siberia V2 headphones will be part of the super-fancy gift bag that Grammy Awards presenters receive on their way out the door. (The gift bag for the average tech press party? A t-shirt and USB thumb drive. So there’s a bit of a discrepancy there.) I guess it’s a way to bring attention to the fact that SteelSeries headphones, while designed for crazy professional gamers (and I mean that in a good way, of course), they’re also not too shabby when it comes to listening to your music collection.

In other SteelSeries news, we got a sneak peak at some of their upcoming gear. Hot stuff all around.

Jimin-with-the-big-FLAC-collection and I met with one of the SteelSeries guys today. It’s funny: you think you understand where a company’s coming from, but then you sit down and actually talk to them and it’s like, “Wow, OK, you guys are pretty cool.” So to the people who will walk out of Sunday’s Grammy Awards with one of those fancy gift bags you always hear about, I can say this: you’ll probably enjoy the SteelSeries headphones you find in there.

Yup, SteelSeries’ Siberia V2 headphones will be part of the super-fancy gift bag that Grammy Awards presenters receive on their way out the door. (The gift bag for the average tech press party? A t-shirt and USB thumb drive. So there’s a bit of a discrepancy there.) I guess it’s a way to bring attention to the fact that SteelSeries headphones, while designed for crazy professional gamers (and I mean that in a good way, of course), they’re also not too shabby when it comes to listening to your music collection.

In other SteelSeries news, we got a sneak peak at some of their upcoming gear. Hot stuff all around.

Everything is always better in surround sound. Most 5.1 or 7.1 headphones are a convoluted mess of speaker drivers, usually resulting in massive ear cups. But these headphones from Psyko Audio Labs have a rather innovative way to trick you into thinking sounds are coming from all directions.

First, the science. The primary method your brain places sounds is based on the time discrepancy of the sound arriving to your ears. If you hear a sound off to your right, the sound waves from that source will hit your right ear milliseconds before your left one. Based on the length of time it takes for your brain to register the sound in the “far” ear, you can place where the sound is coming from.

The 5 drivers are located on the headband, aimed upwards. They feed the sound into hollow channels, which lead to the ear cups. There are two such sound channels, one for the front and one for the back. It truly is a brilliant, innovative system. A sound that is supposed to be coming from your left, will be emitted from the driver closer to your left ear. It has a shorter path to travel, meaning the sound will reach your left ear first, creating the directional illusion. Since there are no speakers around your ears, the acrylic shield on the cup can fold open, letting your ears breathe. Even though you already have other organs for that.

The unit proved its worth in our hands-on demo. A quick run through Crysis showed the technology really does work. These headphones seamlessly deliver surround sound, and with much less hassle / setup of a traditional 5.1 speaker system. Since its completely physics based, there’s no digital processing to slow the signal down. I give these a thumbs-up, and if you have $300 to spend, I highly recommend it.

[Psyko Audio Labs]