In-Home Music/Photos Might Make a Return…
Written by Paulmichael 
Hopefully you can have frames in your own place soon...
Anyone remember the first few presentations given by Phil Harrison for Home? In a rather memorable one, he took a picture of the crowd using what was probably a Sony Ericsson phone, sent it to a certain address, and the picture magically showed up a few moments later in one of his in-Home picture frames. Now that the open beta is here, that feature, along with the ability to play your own music, has vanished. Well Home Community Manager TedTheDog has dropped a few hints that these much sought-after features could make a welcome return to Home, though most likely with some limitations…
Said TedTheDog in regards to these features:
We’re looking at just this. A means of allowing you to play your own music to just yourself within Home. If nothing else I guess the in-Game XMB music player would be better than nothing at all. However, we know music would be a very good thing.
…playing music to others is broadcasting and a licensing minefield and will take far longer if its at all possible.
Picture frames were more a moderation concern but I believe we’ll be better able to deal with this issue in the future once certain tools are available to the moderators. Therefore that policy can be reviewed then.
In-Home XMB would be welcome, but not ideal. Moderating picture content would be necessary, but let’s hope these tools and changes come sooner rather than later.
[Source]
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I think in Home music could work if the ran it like i-Tunes or other online music store. If you pay a fee you could play it in your apartment only with a limited number of others listening or a per play fee inside your apartment/clubhouse. But it is the American “Music Mafia” (RIAA) that is making streaming music the hardest thing to do, there close cousins the “Video Mafia” do the same thing with streaming video, but with the video rental store that Sony has they could make that work inside your apartment as a rental stream.
As far as photos I think the biggest fear is the lack of personal restraint in putting up questionable content ie adults only stuff and forget that Home is not just for Adults and there is no way to make sure that those things don’t happen.
Its all about not feeding the sharks/lawyers…
See this I DO NOT UNDERSTAND
If I can BUY the NEW METALLICA ALBUM, and HAVE FRIENDS OVER TO HEAR IT, THAT IS OK
IF I HAVE FRIENDS OVER TO WATCH SOME MOVIES, THAT’S OK..
BUT IF I PLAY MY MUSIC, FROM MY HARD DRIVE FOR MY FRIENDS TO LISTEN TOO, THEN NOW THATS BROADCASTING?
ARE FRIGGAN KIDDING ME??
THIS IS BECOMING MORE N MORE BS..
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wait wait wait, they took away the photo thing.
I didn’t notice that when it went public (but I did notice them reset my apartment, so I haven’t redecorated it)
I don’t get the legal issue with photos intended for your personal use. Forget the online photo connection. Just program Home so that users transfer photos to their local hard drives. Then make picture frames (or TVs… whatever) available for Home users to add to their personal spaces. Those frames then can display the images the user has stored locally. Sony doesn’t have to host the images on their servers, Sony doesn’t have to process the images (no online functionality), and people without access to an individual’s personal spaces won’t see inappropriate images.
Problem solved.
Sure, the online transfer is a nice feature but if it completely derails the concept because of the legal exposure for Sony, why not just cut that loose and keep the rest of the feature?
I think ultimately Sony is going to have to strike up a deal with major record labels and film corporations if it hopes to allow users to stream what they want. Even then there’s bound to be some complications with stubbornly annoying musicians who refuse to have their stuff online…
As for pictures, they would only appear in your Home Space and so you’d choose who would see them…But then that’d leave some room for creepy people to show inappropriate pictures to minors, so you definitely need moderation, if not automatic scanning of photos for obscene content.
Having friends over physically to watch a movie or listen to music and having people over to a virtual location to do the same thing is different.
I mean, TV stations have to get an agreement to BROADCAST a movie or television show. Radio stations have to have agreements to BROADCAST most music. It comes down to the fact that when you play music/videos in Home, your essentially freely broadcasting them to whomever is in your apartment.
Don’t blame Sony, as they initially intended to allow us pretty much freedom. But with how people will bring a lawsuit for any reason, Sony has to protect their own butts.
what they need to do is encode video protection in video files (which I believe they do) if it’s encoded, you can’t stream it on Home. If it’s on you HDD and it isn’t encoded, it should be free to stream.
“why not just cut that loose and keep the rest of the feature?”
And work from there to improve it? I would liek that.