Hacker Cinema
White Collar
2009 · TV series · 6 seasons
Created by Jeff Eastin
In exchange for his freedom, charming con artist Neal Caffrey provides his expertise to help straight-man FBI agent Peter Burke catch elusive white-collar criminals.
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15 comments on Hacker News
Also some TV shows had ads written in. USA network was pretty bad with this with ("White Collar" comes to mind - there are some pretty obvious Ford advertisements in a few eps, "Burn Notice" had very obvious alcohol placements.)
That is not product placement, per my working definition. Product placement is inserting the advertising into the art, where it is not clearly labeled or discernible as advertising.
On the TV show White Collar, the main character is never, shown driving a car, or talking about them, or having any interest in cars whatsoever. He walks around New York City, or is driven in a government employee's car. Yet, in one of the later seasons, he compliments on specific features of a car he is being driven, and has a dialogue about it with another character.
Extremely jarring for anyone paying attention, and obviously advertising. Product placement is sacrificing some portion of the art in exchange for money (or products/services which otherwise reduces production cost).
> 1) checked out White Collar tv seasons but library only had seasons 1 to 3. Library didn't have last 3 seasons at all.
It's the same problem with streaming services. There are several shows at Netflix and other services that doesn't have the latest seasons (at least in my EU country).
> 3) then checked out another series that has 8 discs but only got 6 because 2 of them are already checked out by another patron. Now this means repeatedly checking the library if the other 2 finally got returned so she can borrow them.
There's no guarantee that a season will be available in a streaming service either. They sometimes only have shows for a limited time, so you could start watching a series but then it is removed before you finish, often without warning.
>Or check out a DVD for free from a public library.
Major downsides to that alternative. My 80-year old friend started borrowing DVDs from the local library 6 months ago as a personal protest against Amazon Prime adding ads to their streaming.
So far, made 3 trips to borrow DVDs and all had various issues:
1) checked out White Collar tv seasons but library only had seasons 1 to 3. Library didn't have last 3 seasons at all.
2) then checked out a British tv series with 10 seasons. The 10th season had 3 discs and the middle disc was so scratched up by a previous borrower that it was unplayable. (The library doesn't have a bunch of duplicate DVDs like Blockbuster Video rentals.)
3) then checked out another series that has 8 discs but only got 6 because 2 of them are already checked out by another patron. Now this means repeatedly checking the library if the other 2 finally got returned so she can borrow them.
On top of those problems, the library has a very small selection in comparison to streaming. She estimates she'll exhaust the DVDs sitting on the library's shelves in a few months and have nothing to watch.
Another huge negative to DVDs is that she can't play them (directly) on her iPad. Her exercise bike had a mount for an iPad and she used it to watch video streams from Amazon Prime.
She was spoiled by the conveniences of streaming and does not look back on DVDs with any romantic nostalgia at all. The only reason she doesn't just subscribe to Netflix or HBO streaming to get back that convenience was she didn't think she could afford it on her Social Security income. On the other hand, the Amazon Prime Video streaming (without ads) was already part of her Amazon subscription.
I just heard about chicken sexing in an episode of _White Collar_.
Since it's something the con man told us I'm not sure how much truth there is in it.
Erm I was referring to the White Collar TV series which featured endless awkward product placements for a car.
If you haven't seen the TV show _White Collar_, you might enjoy it.
But I somehow doubt that's the way things actually go. Given the quantities of dollars at stake, I imagine people tend to die in the process, and some of them are innocent bystanders.
Just yesterday I read something about the show "White Collar" and checked it out on Amazon Prime Germany. In German language it is available for free. I like to watch shows in their original language though. English costs 4€ per episode. Alright then, torrent it is.
Reminds me of "White Collar" (TV series). It was probably based on this true story. I wonder if they really burned art.
On the TV show White Collar, there's an episode where a fake (paper) case file is put together and adding coffee mug stains is part of the process.
My wife and I like to watch shows like Blacklist and White Collar. There are casual 4th amendment violations several times per episode. It's infuriating.
Oops, I thought the Pink Panthers were an invention by the TV show "White Collar" :-)
Mr. Robot is an absolutely fantastic show -- my only worry is that USA isn't really a network known for this sort of quality, and I feat it'll end up going the route of their other shows like White Collar, Suits, or Burn Notice and become an episodic heist/case/espionage-of-the-day type show.
Mr. Robot (generally) gets tech right. There are a few weird parts and some overwrought moments, but they for the most part get tech/hacking/code better than any other show. Also, it's just shot very well, reminds me a lot of House of Cards first season.
Highly recommended if you have not already started watching.
A magstripe is literally just a flat strip of magnetic tape, like an audio cassette. Devices like Square Reader just encode the magstripe as audio into an iPhone's mic input. You could save that to a Voice Memo, stick the playhead from a RadioShack 3.5mm/cassette adapter in a reader, and press play. Can't find it, but I've seen a demonstration on YouTube of someone doing this to enter their apartment building.
The TV show White Collar's pilot has a cool depiction of Neil Caffrey copying a guard's magnetic stripe badge using a tape deck by recording it to tape, then playing it back through the record (write) head on the other side of the tape player while he slid a new card through. It would be hard to get the timing right, but there's no reason this shouldn't work.
It's incredibly primitive technology, as is simple RFID - the cloning process isn't much more difficult. Fortunately my university uses HID iCLASS contactless smart cards - there is actually a cryptographic handshake between the reader and my student ID which is resistant to replay attacks. If implemented correctly, it's impossible to copy the electronic access control portion of a student ID without the university's private keys. (The same access control infrastructure that's on my dorm's main entrance also guards healthcare information, nuclear and virology labs, etc. so that makes sense.)
Yeah, I've long thought it's a great idea that circumvents a lot of the weaknesses of tightly-constrained TV storytelling.
The problem is the economics. It seems people tend to respond negatively to production values below a certain standard. Cable productions run about $2M/episode, which translates to roughly $3M/hour or $50K/minute. Even if you can cut that by 20%, you still need to make a serious amount of money, and that's a lot of $2.10 iTunes purchases or $0.xy (I don't know what that number is, but it's got to be smaller than a dollar) Netflix streams that you've got to get in order to break even. And that's for the production values of "White Collar" or "Leverage", not "LOST" or "Rome"
On top of that, you have the business costs. You've got to pay the overhead costs, and you've got to pay development costs. Half the new shows that get a slot on TV fail, and getting one slot filled requires shooting 2-3 pilot episodes at a couple million a pop. In addition to expansion, you've got to replace your shows every few years, since (a) even the best shows get stale after a while and (b) costs go up every year.