Useful Concept - TV

2317-616: I Want to Believe ... I'm Not the First

Tue, 06 May 2008 16:42:00 -0400

A Guest Blog Post: Liberty Hardy is a part-time book slinger and writer living with her evil, evil cat in lovely Portsmouth, N.H. She's going for her "Amazing Screw-On Head" tattoo next week.

The past couple years, I have been seeking to improve my geek rating. I don't just want to be a geek, I want to be a well-educated geek. I want to be able to appoint myself a science fiction vixen.

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Wife Swap TV Show Looking for Warcraft Players

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:35:00 -0400

I got a note from someone related to the Wife Swap show. They are looking for a family where the parents play World of Warcraft or other online RPG type games. My wife and I dont' qualify as we have no children.

If you are interested, are married and have at least one kid 7 or older living at home you could be on the show. Details below. OH, if you submit, let em know I sent you as I could get a referral fee.

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Movie Review: Jumper - Don't bother

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 11:41:00 -0400

Short Review:

It isn't worth your time. Don't go.

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Superbowl Thoughts

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:33:00 -0400

I don't watch football. I am not really a big fan, though I do enjoy having friends over for the Superbowl. Its a good excuse to get together, talk about the commercials and such. Since I live in New Hampshire, I pretty much need to support the local team. It would have been great to have them finish the year undefeated. So I was of course disappointed in the game last night. I have to say though, that the Giants deserved their win. The Pats just couldn't protect Brady. Defense couldn't sack Manning.

What I am REALLY disappointed in though, is the crappy round of commercials. My friends and I rated each commercial with a 1-5 rating. Hoping in the end to report on the best commercials and worst. However there were soooo many commercials and they were really sub par.

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So you think you can dance final

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 00:57:00 -0400

Spoiler Alert:

I just want to say, I was skeptical of this season based on the first 5 episodes. They voted off people they shouldn't in my opinion. However, the final winner was the person I loved from the start. Sabra deserves it no doubt and I am quite pleased she won.

Reno 911 Movie Review

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 23:06:00 -0400

Just got done watching Reno 911 the movie. If you haven't seen the TV show it may not make much sense. If you have seen the TV show then you already understand that they are stupid people and shouldn't carry a gun. It is their personalities and how they interact that makes it funny. Nothing is realistic and that is more than ok because it is a spoof of the Cops TV show. The writing can be very funny at times but it isn't consistent. There are a lot of guest appearances. You will see people from 40 Year Old Virgin and Anchor Man. The Rock. Pee Wee Hermen (I think). Etc. The story is a bit better / more interesting than I expected (as a whole idea). The execution is about what I expected. That is to say it is a TV episode but longer, in Miami and not bleeped/blurred. The ending should have been erased. I think they put it in for filler because it would be too short otherwise. Seriously it dropped from a 5.5 out of 10 to a 4 out of 10 because of the crap ending. Bottom line: If the movie is shown on Comedy Central and you like the TV show then watch it. Don't watch it in the theater. Probably shouldn't rent it unless you have nothing better available. High notes include: Boobs Whale parts Simultaneous Masturbation scene The Scarface character Low points include: Ending Intro Entire lines from the tv show in the movie ('moving like a cheetah') Stealing exploding whale real life event

Possible New Notebook: HP dv9000t

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 16:46:00 -0400

Update: Just got it! So to read that review click this link Read my review. Jen and I are looking to get a notebook computer. We really enjoy our media center desktops and want to be able use the notebook for tv, movies, games and work. We don't travel a lot, so bigger is ok with us. We just want the flexibility of a notebook. Right now I am seriously looking at the HP Pavilion dv9000t. They have models at bestbuy and circuit city to check out. They are beautiful. The specs are also pretty snappy. They kick my desktop's butt, and I am really happy with the desktop. You can pick one up with a nice config of options for about $1500 (after rebate). Note that you need to get the TV tuner as an ad-on. It isn't standard, though HDMI out is (which you can make into DVI out). It can play movies/audio without booting to windows which is also handy. There are two screen types to choose from really: 1680x1050 resolution BrightView Widscreen vs 1440x900 Ultra BrightView Widescreen. From what I have read the ultra brightview is significantly more dramatic and impressive. Aparently a second lamp helps with brightness and to combat ambient light. It makes the screen colors improved to a point where people say it is worth the $75. There is also the new Dell 20" monster of a notebook. It comes in at 18 lbs! Though it really looks sweet I can't see paying about twice as much for the larger screen. So, if anyone has feedback on the HP please send it my way. I may try to drag jen to Circuit City or Best Buy so she can see it first hand.

mahna mahna song

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 11:56:00 -0400

This just makes me happy. Its the Mahna mahna video/song.

renee zellweger - still hasn't contacted me

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 15:15:00 -0400

As some will remember, I have an ongoing goal to get to the bottom of Renee Zellweger's small role in the movie My Boyfriends Back. She is credited for having a cameo, but nobody can figure out where in the movie.

Just an update that as of today at 1:15pm she has still not contacted me, nor has her publicist or manager. Surely someone will read my blog who knows her, and I beseech you to then have her do the right thing and put this issue to bed.

Renée Zellweger

Wed, 22 Feb 2006 23:01:00 -0400

Renée Zellweger has not yet read my blog. I am sure if she did she would be kind enough to tell me what role she played in My Boyfriend's Back.

Hello? Where are you? Surely you google yourself every now and then. I mean, we ll gogle ourselves right?

My Boyfriend's Back - Renée Zellweger

Thu, 16 Feb 2006 22:42:00 -0400

Ok, just watched My Boyfriend's Back. Funny zombie flick. Turns out Renée Zellweger has a very small role in it. But I can't find it. And NOBODY seems to know where she is in the film. Please help. Find it - and post your comment here. Do it soon, as it is driving us crazy. Google. You have failed us.

Vongo

Tue, 03 Jan 2006 15:10:00 -0400

My Vongo Review: (updated 51/2/2006)

Edit: I have decided this will be my last month with Vongo. Their movie selection did not get better. It is an interesting idea, but much like the others in the market, the limited selection renders it useless after a month or two. I haven't used it in 2 months, and basically forgot about it. No reason to keep paying for something I wont use. Maybe when they are able to expand their library.

----

At long last a Internet based movie/TV service that may actually get it! Starz has created Vongo. A movie download and real time streaming service. All for $9.99 a month. Thats right, for $9.99 a month you can download as many movies as you like to your notebook, PC, or other portable device. You can also just watch the Starz channel in real time. If you have the tech on your computer you can output that to a TV or other display screen, as appropriate.

In the past I have used Movielink to download movies. Usually around 4-5 $ a pop. Not a bad deal, but I don't find their movie selection that fantastic. The other big difference is that it is per movie, and not a flat fee. It did integrate with Windows Media Center though, so I could do the whole thing with my remote control.

If all goes well I am going to drop my digital comcast, go back to basic cable, and do vongo for my movies.

My top concerns:

It is a separate application. What holes am I opening up in my machine? What information are they tracking? Etc. - There is an option in the account settings to use it anonymously. Apparently they do track your use to recommend items, etc. But at least you can have them not track everything. BTW, by default anonymous is turned off. It still isn't entirely clear to me what is being tracked.
How is the display. Is it High Dev? Is the streaming of the movie channel choppy or does it buffer a lot first? - The display is pretty good. Not HD from what I can tell, but looks just fine on my 21" LCD monitor full screen. There is some buffering when watching the live TV portion and no pause, etc.
Is there a good enough selection to really warrant the $10 a month? The selection is ok. they have many crappy movies, and a few good ones. I am still able to find movies to watch, but I can't say at the moment I am excited about the selection. The good news is that the selection seems to be growing. maybe a half dozen movies a week, perhaps more are added. Then again, do I really want to watch 'The Caren Carpenter Story'?
Can it be integrated with Windows Media Center? - Not at this time. I talked to a tech support person last night and he thought the technicians were working on that. Your media center remote will not work, nor will your play/pause buttons on your keyboard (if you have them).

Further thoughts:

There are no ads, except the Starz intro before the movie.
One account can be used on up to 3 machines. And you can change which machines once a month. So if you have two media center pc's and a notebook, $9.99 is still all you need to pay. You can't move a movie you downloaded on one machine to another over the network it seems. Though you can move to a portable device. I don't have any portable things, so I couldn't test that.
They have plans for 800 movies, and 200 PPV movie options at any given time with 35 new movies rotating each week. I didn't see rhyme or reason for why some were PPV and some were not.
Their full-screen mode doesn't allow you to pause from what I can tell. You have to click escape on your keyboard, then the pause button. That needs to be fixed right away.
Speed varries for downloads. Last night it was peaked at 90k, at lunch I downloaded Elf in about 15 minutes. At about 670k/s. I was able to start watching the movie in just a couple minutes of starting the download. In fact, I was watching live Starz tv, a trailer for Treasure Hunter, and downloading elf at the same time. No stuttering. Though the download slowed down to about 300k for that period.
Only big error I had was signing up. It didn't like my credit card. Probably bad billing address, but the error didn't give me anything specific. I was able to get by though. Otherwise a few search quirkiness, but all important functionality worked well.
Clicking on a movie title brings up a quick trailer and details about the movie to the left side. Looks like a flash interface. The trailer starts playing almost instantly and rarely stutters. Below the trailer is a list of the main actors/actresses and directors, etc. Click on one of their names and up comes all the movies available that have the same person.
They carry rated R, and NR. No adult titles. They also have parental controls so someone can't watch or download the R title without a code (should you enable it in the settings).
While they have a number of new and old movies it isn't as good a selection as going to blockbuster. This is no different than movielink or the other online systems. I am sure it is part of the agreement worked out with the movie industry, etc. Lets hope that changes once the concept is 'proven' and more people are doing this sort of thing.
I like their interface. I wish they had more filtering and searching control. I think their search is a bit broken at the moment. It would be great to search on 'Oscars' and get all movies that won something, or search for 5 stars, and get only top rated movies, etc. Their advanced search offered a bit more filtering options, but some didn't make sense. For example you can filter by rating. But one option was NC-17. They don't have any NC-17 movies in the system. At least not now. I tried doing a search on just NC-17, and it came up with a half dozen movies that ranged from G to R. Not sure why.

Overall I would recommend giving it a try. $9.99 makes it worth it for at least a month. On each of my machines at the house have a half dozen movies downloaded, ready to watch when I am ready.

It isn't useful if you don't want to watch TV on your computer. There are ways to direct to TV from PC, but if your not up to figuring it out and don't want to use the computer monitor, maybe it isn't for you.

If you have a notebook and can bring it to bed to watch TV, that would work. I happen to have my media center set up to watch TV from the PC (a few PCs actually) so it works well. My big wish is that they expand their library, offer more than one live channel and integrate into Windows Media Center so I can use my remote. And that other companies follow suit. Lets have some real competition and a significant improvement over our existing cable/statalite tv options.

google video

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 12:17:00 -0400

This ties in with my last post quite nicely. FastCompany has a little blog entry about google video. It appears that they will be looking to charge for content, and that price point is set by the content owner. IE Trevor makes a zombie short movie. He posts it at google for $.50 a download. people download it and he gets cash. I am sure google gets some of it as well. They also appear to be looking into ads before video's. This would possibly help offset the price of the download or make it free.

Not quite the streaming channels I was looking for, but if the content I want is inexpensive enough, and can be all downloaded / operated through my remote (IE I don't have to go to 15 different sites and use 15 different mechanisms to view/purchase).

http://video.google.com/ - search for dumb dog good flick

CNN Pipeline

Tue, 06 Dec 2005 22:51:00 -0400

It has begun. Online news in the US is now available from CNN. They call it CNN Pipeline. Poor name in my opinion.

What it is? Not just news clips, but live continuous news. Much of the content is supposed to be unique to the online broadcast with news personalities that are dedicated to the online medium. I hope this is just the start from the big media players (and the small ones). About freaking time too.

There are four streams to choose from, or other select focus topics that are prerecorded. The quality is pretty good, but I am still disappointed at the resolution available. It would be really nice to get good online video feeds at full resolution (at least 1024x768). Of course, the resolution needed for a crappy little TV is different, but hey, this is the world of windows media center and other integrating technologies.

Speaking of which, can I have an option in my windows media center to stream the CNN content directly without going to the web first? Need to research that.

Here is a review by PC Magazine. It is an ok review, very excited and perhaps a little biased because of it?

Here is the downside. You have to pay. $0.99 a day, or about $3 a month. $25 for the year. Not a bad price really, especially since it is commercial free. However, free is always good in my book. Still, I wish I could choose all of my channels at $3 a month. I get more channels for the money now through comcast, but really only watch 7 of them. So basically I am paying more for less at the moment, plus the quality of it is poor. On a side note I am moving to a new house next month, so all new cabe lines, boxes, etc. I am hoping that improves things.

The other option that has come to market is paying per episode. Which is fine for some vintage shows maybe, but really I don't want to pay Apple $1.99 for an episode of Law and Order. I want to pay $3 a month and have a few shows I like on there. I will have my PC record the shows from the channel offerings. Otherwise I will stick with cable and use the Media Center to record stuff as it is.

Bottom line. This will only work well for me when there is a common format/player to choose from not only CNN but my other favorite media outlets. Get me the simpsons, law and order CI, Reno 911, etc. as content from available channels and I would be interested. Make it a monthly unlimited fee OR per show to give me options. Make it work through my Windows Media Center and I would be very very happy. Until then it is a good step in the right direction, but not enough to get me to pay.

I should note that NBC Nightly News Netcast actually broadcasts online as well, but only AFTER the days news is done so far as I can tell. Their archive is pretty nice, and there is pleanty of focus on the recap, with blogs, etc to back it up. Still, it isn't live. Again, it is made to only be seen on a small portion of my PC screen. Not geared for a media home with PC, TV, etc all connected.

Soon.... soon.

good bye comcast?

Wed, 02 Nov 2005 20:10:00 -0400

Please oh please why can't we have actual competition when it comes to cable TV? Satellite is out for me and really they are not that much better. There is one cable company where I live. Their internet service fails once every other day (15 minutes, 2 hours, who knows).

I can find other sources for broadband internet (we are lucky here for that) but for good TV options. Nada. There is surprisingly little advice available on-line for other options. Perhaps a new site is in the works for me. At any rate, google seems to do good work, and they may be getting into the TV world. They could easily change the world of commercial advertising.

I welcome them with open arms. For now.

Please comment if you have good (legal) resources for on-line TV, movies, etc.

Right now I use movielink for downloading movies. If I could find a good legal source for Law and Order, CSI, and the Simpsons (on demand) I would be all set. Oh, and various reality TV shows for my girlfriend.