shaking off the rust

its been quite awhile since i’ve had a good Micro$oft Sucks rant. but i’ve finally found a good one to latch onto.

and amazingly, it doesn’t involve the brain-dead stupid Laptop Hunters ads of “regular people” going to buy an HP or a Dell or Sony laptop. my biggest reaction to that, thus far, has been a big ol’ look down my nose and a shrug.

no, this one involves the Zune vs. the iPod.

yeah. its dumb.

and so completely far fetched and misleading that it screams for someone to tear it limb-for-limb.

i’ll do it.

———

• “at a buck a song…”- ok, seriously? $30,000? this, of course, presumes, you’ve never purchased any music before. at all. ever. that if you were to go out and buy an iPod today and came home, you suddenly realized that you’ve never purchased a CD. this completely misses the mark that has been one of the beauties of the iTunes/iPod revolution: the ability to take whatever music you already own and dump it into iTunes for syncing with your iPod. not to mention that with the new tiered pricing scheme, there is actually a good chunk of good music available for $.69.
• “to fill the latest iPod…”- (BZZZZZT) wrong. the iPod Classic, which has the ability to store up to 120GB of info (music, video, photos, notes, etc.) hasn’t been updated in ages. its sat at that number for quite awhile. the latest iPod, the Shuffle, holds a whopping 4GB of music. yes, its a small point, but a valid one. let’s face it: no one is buying the Classic anymore. everyone is shifting to the Nano and/or Shuffle and/or iPhone/iPod Touch.
• “i don’t have 30 grand layin’ around for music…”- no, of course you don’t. no one does (well, almost on one). no one buys $30k worth of music in one sitting. no one goes to the music store and buys $30k worth of CDs. over your lifetime… maybe. and you know what? since iTunes is now DRM-free, you own the music after you purchase it. its like… magic! leading to the next point…
• “consider… ZunePass”- this is just laughable. at first blush, a subscription service sounds nice, but in the end, you get your ass bitten. ZunePass is especially chuckle-worthy: at the end of every month (wherein you pay M$ $14.99), you get to keep 10 tracks, DRM-free (errrr, if available that is) forever. after that, like every other retard, manipulative subscription service endorsed by M$, if you quit paying, all those other tracks you got your hands on suddenly switch off and are unplayable.

might i show you the door, Microsoft? oh, and please: don’t let it hit you on the arse on the way out.

guinea pig

 

full of win

yesterday, Mrs. H posted about the recent purchase of an AppleTV for their home. along with the general awesomeness they will discover with their new toy, Mr. H also seems to be chomping at the bit to ditch their Comcast cable service. that little bit of potential magnificence is possible through the magic of a few things…

• Boxee
• BitTorrent
• iTunes

there is a nation wide hatred towards the practices and pricings of all the varied cable providers. in general, they are awful. its incredulous that we pay what we do to Knology for the ability to watch maybe five channels on a regular basis. don’t get me wrong; i love Knology, and they’re universes better than Charter could ever hope to be… but their prices are still out of control.

there’s a steady movement in the online community towards completely cutting the cables of Cable Providers. and now, with the inspiration of Mr. H, i feel confident we’ll be able to go the same route.

but lets discuss some things, both pro & con…

———

Pro

• if we completely drop our Knology cable TV service, we’ll cut our bill by more than half. we’ll keep our internet and phone (for obvious reason) and lose our “unlimited long distance,” but i think we’d be able to live without that.
• BitTorrenting is free. i’m not entirely certain of the legal ramifications of BT, but my logic is as follows: most of the shows we watch are Network shows anyways (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX). outside of a one-time payment for an OTA HD antenna, these shows are already freely available to watch without the help of BT’ing. so what’s the difference between purchasing a cheap HD antenna and downloading them? the result is the same. right?
• iTunes is an amazing thing (for those of us who use it; i know Charlie hates it [wink!]). there are a few shows (read: one) that i am willing to pay a Season Pass for. its a one-time thing, and once done, every new episode of that show is automagically downloaded from iTunes and available to watch. not only is the picture quality brilliant (most major shows are now available in HD), but they are also true 5.1 surround sound ready.
• Boxee is an amazing creation, and if you haven’t heard of it yet, you should check it out. yes, its still in the very early release stages, and yes, there are bugs. but once its installed onto an AppleTV (or your Mac or your PC), you have instant, brilliant access to Hulu, CBS streams, MTV Music, etc etc. and all those wonderful BT’ed shows we’ve got? they play flawlessly through Boxee.
• it’ll get us off our asses. too many days around here, we both waste watching some sort of retarded drivel solely because its there.
• we never had movie channels in the first place, but Netflix + MacTheRipper + Handbrake + AppleTV = endless amounts of movies.

so all of our pieces are in place. if we wanted to, i could call Knology right now and cancel our cable TV service right now. but we’re still debating for a few reasons…

———

Cons

• waiting is a hard thing to do. the biggest, hugest drawback of both BitTorrent and iTunes is that shows are not immediately available for download or streaming when they air on the networks. now, for most shows, this is fine, and honestly we’ve been trained by TiVo to know that its ok if we don’t catch something immediately. but waiting for LOST? that’s a bit scary.
• speaking of BT, you are always locked into waiting for the good torrent to show up. thankfully, most shows have folks who are consistent and regular with getting stuff online so there isn’t much of a crapshoot to worry about. but you’re still relying on someone else to provide your entertainment in a timely manner, and hey, i imagine those folks have lives, too.
• Boxee, as brilliant as it is, is still an Alpha release, and still a bit buggy. plus, streaming some stuff can be a bit… jumpy. as in, there can be picture stuttering and lock-ups. this isn’t huge, but still an annoyance.
• we can forget about having folks over for TV Parties anymore. that’s fairly self-evident. so if we do this, no more LOST premiere or ending parties. this one, to me, is the one that stings the most.
• i’ve yet to find BT downloads that are of reasonable size that include 5.1 surround sound. for the most part, this isn’t a problem as our receiver has a couple of truly neat features to take a stereo signal, break it down, and send it to the proper speakers. and as i’m certainly not going to buy Season Passes for all our shows (goodbye, wallet), this means we’ll be relegated to most of our stuff in non-5.1 sound.
• Jackie’s nightmares. i’m not picking on the girl, because i’m sure she would readily admit it: learning a whole new way and system of watching TV isn’t in her to-do list. it could be a breaking point, but i’m working on assuring her that there’s nothing to worry about. we’ll see.

———

so there are 6 Pros and 6 Cons. i feel that numbers aside, the Pros still far outweigh the Cons, especially in the cost-effectiveness. we all need to save a little more than we’re spending, and this is a great way to cut a significant monthly cost.

thoughts? opinions?

latest, and possibly greatest, application yet

 

the sweetness

 

 

I held off reporting on this app until someone, somewhere shared their discovery with me and now the time has come.

Simplify Media is this incredible music sharing tool that came to iPhone existence earlier this week. It’s not a file trading program: you can’t swap or download, you can’t click and drag, and you can’t steal.

What it does do, and does so brilliantly, is allow you to stream other folk’s iTunes libraries to your computer.

My friend Jonathan McCarthy emailed me today that he too had installed it and now that we’re SM friends, we can listen to each other’s full iTunes libraries so long as the other keeps their computer on. His library shows up in my iTunes sidebar as a source. It takes a little bit for libraries to load completely, bit it doesn’t take long to get a couple thousand songs to load up on queue.

The neat (and groundbreaking) part of this is the iPhone app that is also available. If I leave the house and want to listen to something I don’t have on my iPhone library (usually due to space constraints), I tap the Simplify Media app and I’ve got instant access to my (almost) entire iTunes library. It works best on WiFi, and also works pretty darned good over 3G as well. I haven’t even tried out EDGE because, well… it almost wouldn’t be worth it. The developers assure that it works on that end too.

There’s little to no configuratin invoked, so unlike some other streaming apps, you don’t have to be a whiz at unblocking ports or configuring your router. Easy, easy, easy. The one caveat is that (I think) you can’t listen to a friend’s iTunes Music Store protected files. It’s a minor complaint, mainly because most of our libraries are NOT completely iTMS protected.

It’s really quite spectacular. I’m listening to some Damien Rice streaming straight from Mr. McCarthy’s computer and it sounds perfect.

Have at it, folks!

 

p.s.- our username is jacandluke

point. click. shoot.

so the unthinkable happened last night: Charter’s DVR decided to crap out on us.

this was a problem, you see. last night was the season four premiere of The Office, one of our top three favorite shows on television right now.

when jackie got home last night, there was the show, in all its HD glory, on the TV. except there was a big, gray box stating, “Your DVR Hard Drive is 100% full, so the program you are attempting to record will not be recorded.”

(blink)

without making too long of a sentence, there was no way, no way, our DVR was full at that point. there was just a glitch or something that caused the lil’ computer (or gnome, or elf, or whatever it is that makes it work) to think things were wrong when they weren’t.

so this was the last straw. we’ve been contemplating satellite service since we moved here, but never completely seriously. but this was awful, this was it. but after doing some research… sadly, it would cost us more (much more) to switch to satellite. so that sucked. then after some financial digging, i pulled up specific money numbers to compare Knology to Charter for “the phone call.”

all told, i spent 45 minutes on the phone with Charter this morning, figuring out what they could do to compensate me for the following: $58 more a month for the exact same service we had with another cable company, flaky internet, and a DVR that plays more like Patton Oswalt’s TiVo service on a very bad day (only some of you will get that, sorry).

here’s what i got: for $20 less per month (grr), for the next twelve months (ok…), we’ll now be receiving every single stinkin’ channel Charter has to offer (!). all of ‘em. minus, of course, PPV. but anything else is ours for the taking. we’ll also get our internet and stuff. so that works. i guess. every little bit helps.

as always, they wanted to sell us more stuff, but this time, they added a new twist. not only did they want to sell me a landline, they also wanted to sell me their in-home networking solution package.

they should really look into noting my account with the following: “DO NOT TRY AND SELL MORE CRAP TO THEM THAT THEY DON’T NEED. THEY DON’T WANT IT.”

urgh. anywho, some Quick Hits, and i’m out:

• speaking of God’s Gift to TV Comedy, this is where NBC really screwed the pooch. missed The Office on TV? used to be no problem. i could just pay my $1.99 and get it from the iTunes Store. not anymore, though. and i’m sure i’m not the only one in the world who missed the premiere and would willingly pay a pittance to view it on my own terms. and viewing a streaming version on nbc.com does not the problem fix. the video quality is spotty and the stream craps out about five minutes in. my solution? bittorrent.
• the gumbo went over nicely. which is good. i’ll have something to eat when jac leaves town for her meeting on Sunday.
• oi vei, saturday. i really want to say i don’t know how Auburn will fare in The Swamp. my head says that they’ll get run over and spat on well before half time rolls around. but my gut tells me there’s some kinda’ fight in these boys, and it’ll be a tough one, and maybe, just maybe, they can pull it out. its happened before, and as we’ve seen already this season, stranger things have happened (i’m looking at you, Michigan).
• good lord, this weather is gorgeous.
• as a note to anyone who cares, the iTunes WiFi Music store is absolutely brilliant. really it is. and as simple as one could hope to imagine.
• i watched 28 Days Later the other day. i’d forgotten how incredible it was. i cannot wait for 28 Weeks Later to make its way to DVD later this month.

and… i’m… spent.