Archive for the “Home Video” Category

Over my cable modem It took about 20 minutes to update to NXE, the New XBox Experience, then another 20 minutes to explore all of the avatar options and create mine. I expect that there’s more to it than what I was able to ‘experience’, but so far it just looks like a new (3D) way to presenting basically the same information.

Avatars

I’m conflicted on the the new Xbox avatars. They are a blatant rip off of the Wii’s Mii’s with the obvious improvement that these guys have arms and legs. Side note: Every time we break out the Wii to do some bowling, someone asks why their character has “boobs” – but those round things are HANDS!  Xbox avatars do look much better than a Mii, however, they are not nearly as cool as, say, a Second Life avatar – which can look like anything. In some ways the Xbox customization options feel more limited than even the Wii. In the Wii your Mii might look a bit like a Lego mini-fig, but at least there you can do more with each feature, like raising or lowering eyebrows or making eyes bigger or smaller. In the Xbox you simply pick through a list of features (like hair styles) and a then choose a color. I think this will lead to seeing a lot of avatars that look almost the same – but time will tell.  I was impressed that they actually had my receding hairline style and my yellow “vacation” hair color. From the picture you might say that it looks sort of like me, but I didn’t feel like the nose and mouth options did much to get that convincing look.

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Has anyone else noticed lately that the industry hasn’t quite figured out the whole 4:3 vs 16:9 thing? This is one of many ads I saw last night during Chuck that completely ignored the fact that the majority of american televisions are still 4:3.  I have an original HD DirecTV Tivo and an HD projector. I don’t get local channels in HD yet and was watching the 4:3 NTSC feed of Chuck.  I don’t know if DirecTV is just taking the HD feed and cropping the sides off or what.  But either way, it is the responsibility of the people making the ads to protect any important information inside of 4:3 title safe.  (By that I mean the Editor or the Producer or the Ad Agency or the dude at Microsoft who said “sure that looks awesome”)  In this case (see photo) the Windows ad “Life Without Walls” the “S” is completely cut off and on most TV’s the word “WALL” would also be cut off due to the 10% action safe. In another major ad last night the on the screen talent was half outside of 4:3 safe – literally one eye on screen and one off.  Again on an older TV that probably means you can only see his arm flapping around.

Here’s a message to the dude (or chick) at Microsoft who paid millions of dollars for that mess… if the majority of people watching the ad can’t see the last half of your tag line, how is your message getting across?  Surely the tag line “Windows – LIFE WITHOUT” is not what you were hoping to communicate.  But that is the message that 80% of viewers saw Monday night.  Maybe you need a new editor/producer/ad agency to give millions of dollars to. Call my people and we’ll talk.

My HD TiVo now hasn’t made a daily call in 950 days.  Only 50 days remain until it either rolls over to 1000 or dies in a fiery blaze of unhandled exceptions.

Oh and yes that’s me taking a picture of me casting a shadow from my projector onto my wall.

Funny I was chatting with a buddy yesterday who said that his HD TiVo was at around 900 days when he finally hooked it up to a phone line.  Apparently there’s a huge software revision number jump to be made and it will speed it up.  But at this point we have to wait it out and see what happens.

I believe that despite the current economic troubles this holiday season will mark a huge jump for BluRay traction – especially if this deal is any indication of what’s coming. If you’re in the market to upgrade to BluRay NOW is the time to jump on it. MacMall has the Sony S350 for $199.99, which is half the original retail price and $100 less than the current sale price at the Sony store. This player is fully BD 2.0 capable and has an ethernet port on the back for all those useless BD-Live features and firmware updates. This is THE player to get unless you’re going to opt for the PS3.  And 199.99 is the price we’ve all been waiting for.

Wasn’t sure what I was going to post about today – and then look what someone gave me this morning…

I’ve got so many other things planned for my spare time over the next few months. This was the last thing I needed (even though I did ask for it).  I’ve been joking about this blog being like AA – today I get my 3 week chip – posted every weekday for 3 weeks.  But a new game could suck up my time like an uber-sponge and kill my posting streak.  What are my options here?

• Keep it shrink wrapped, like a procrastination time bomb waiting to explode. I’ll be turning on my Xbox around November 19th anyway.
• Loan it to someone and try to get it back at a later date.  Yeah that’ll work.
• Start playing, allowing it to consume my being, staying up until 3am every night trying to kill all my old friends.  That one sounds kind of good.  And if I don’t start now I’ll be way behind everyone else.
• or I could play just a little here and there, keep working on all my projects, and try to have some balance. ooohhhh, that’s how it starts…

My HD DirecTV TiVo has not made a daily call in 940 days. We’re counting down the next 60 days until it reaches 1000. Will it roll over to 1000 or is there some sort of Y2K programming bug that makes it blow up?

Two years ago I tried to make a daily call but it could never connect.  I’m not sure it has ever connected to the TiVo Service. Of course that hasn’t stopped DirecTV from charging me a DVR service fee every month.  You’d think after paying about $700 for the box they’d include service. Since it is a DirecTV TiVo it gets programming information from the Satellite, so I’ve never been without show information.  However when this latest television season started all my season passes showed “no upcoming episodes” and it was weeks before we figured out that we were missing the new shows.  This was when we coined the term “TeVil” which is what we call it when your TiVo screws you by not recording something or by cutting off the final critical moment of a show.

This is by far the slowest TiVo I’ve ever had. When the system is cold it takes about a full minute to pull up the main menu. I suspect that the sluggishness could be from all the messages.  Each day it stores a new message telling me that it didn’t connect.  Every 4 months or so I’ll delete a bunch of them, but it’s a very time consuming task and there are probably hundreds of messages in there now.

I’ll post update photos every few weeks as we count down the next 60 days. It should be about as interesting as waiting to see if Archer Quinn ever makes a perpetual motion machine.

My wife is gone all week and when she’s out of town I quickly turn into an sad echo of me in my bachelor days, staying up super late every night and eating like crap. Well, that’s also probably a valid description of what I’m like when she is home. But there’s a difference in scale. For example, last night I found myself laying in bed watching TV until I couldn’t keep my eyes open, drinking tea and devouring a bag of veggie chips coating each one with spay-on easy cheese.

What made last night relevant to this post is that I wasn’t really watching TV on TV, I was watching hulu.com. Now, it’s important to point out that I have very strong feelings about the separation of the computer screen and the home video screen. I DO NOT believe that the two should intertwine. Here’s why: First off, my home video setup is a projection system with a 13-foot screen while my computer screen is a 17″ mac book. Second, and actually more important, is that I want TV/Movie viewing to be a relaxing “experience” and therefore it should take place on my cozy couch. I also want it to be focused and typically don’t allow discourage laptop use during TV time. (The exception being my wife’s couch computer which I’ll cover a different day) ANYWAYS – Watching TV on a computer screen typically ruins my viewing experience either by forcing me into a different room (the one that I WORK in) and/or by forcing me into an uncomfortable position. Last night I basically just wanted to vegg out (with veggie chips!) and watch TV. But my TiVo is a little TiVoid of good shows right now, so I decided to give in and give hulu a try.

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