Category: TV & Movies

A weekend of endings

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’ll beg your pardon while I ramble. This has been a strange weekend for me, full of things ending.

My EQ2 subscription ends this week. Realistically I do most of my gaming on weekends, so it feels like EQ2 is done for me, for now. I do hope to come back to it soon, though.

I was reading the last issue of EGM this weekend. There’s nothing really special about it, but knowing its the last one, reading the articles and knowing the writer had no idea he was about to be jobless, lends a sad sheen to the mag.

Angela and I have been watching an old Irish TV series, Ballykissangel, for the past few weeks. I’d seen the first couple seasons before, years ago when it played on PBS. There are six seasons in all, and yesteraday we finished the 6th. It’s a very good-hearted show. Ballykissangel is the name of a village, and even though characters come and go from season to season, the village remains and feels like the main character. Anyway, its done now, and the last season was filmed in 2001 (I believe) so not much chance of any more of it. What added to the sadness there was knowing that some characters left the show because the actors playing them passed away (Birdie Sweeny – Eamon, and Tony Doyle – Brian Quigley). Tony Doyle’s daughter actually played a part in the last season, and you can see a lot of her dad in her face, which in some ways added to the melancholy of it being the last we’ll see of this little village and the characters that hang out in Fitzgerald’s pub.

And today I watched the series finale of Stargate: Atlantis. I *loved* that show. Which is a totally separate issue from saying it’s a great show, because it isn’t. It was just a fun, entertaining sci-fi series with a cast of characters that felt like a family in a lot of ways. I’d *guess* that behind the scenes, the actors got along pretty well because there was always a feeling of  camaraderie when you watched. I love sci-fi and have since I was a kid. And I’ve noted in myself that I’m drawn to these shows that have a ‘family’ of characters that get along and don’t have a lot of interpersonal conflict. My own family life was pretty “lite” and I think in some small way I make these tv-show families my own. (I’m sure that’s not healthy, but oh well.) There’s no “bad guy” in the core cast of Atlantis, and very little friction between Atlantis team members. Every crew member is more or less a sci-fi cliche, but I’m just not bothered by that.

As to the finale itself, it was overly ambitious. It felt like they’d planned for a two-hour finale and had to whittle it down to an hour, because they stuffed a *lot* of stuff into that hour, to the point where it felt kind of disjointed and rushed. Not one of their best episodes, but I do enjoy when the writers of a series know they’re writing a finale (remember the last scene of Joss Whedon’s Angel? “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m going to slay a dragon.”) and can leave us with a poignant moment to remember the cast by.

So farewell EQ2 and Ballyk and EGM and Stargate: Atlantis.  Thanks for all the enjoyment you’ve brought me over the years. And in the case of EQ2…hope to see you again soon!

Tonight it’ll be the season finale of Sanctuary (hoping that one gets renewed) and then the conclusion of Tess of the D’Urbervilles on Masterpiece. More endings!

Just not feeling like gaming today, for some reason… this upcoming work week is going to be kind of brutal and I think I’m just recharging by watching lots of tv…

PS3, XBox360 gets Hulu, Netflix, via addon

Posted on by Nimgimli

PS3Fanboy has a post up about PlayOn, software that you run on a Windows XP or Vista machine (no Mac OS X or Linux support, at least for now) that allows you to stream Hulu content to your PS3 or XBox360. The software is in beta and PS3F reports some clunkiness, but that’s what betas are for, right?

Netflix support is planned for later on down the road, which is probably of more interest to PS3 owners, since the 360 will be getting Netflix integration on the dashboard this fall. Me, I’ll stick to my Roku box for Netflix, which rocks.

Sign up and download the PlayOn software, and let me know how it works for you!

Use your PS2 to stream media to the living room

Posted on by Nimgimli

The Industry Standard brings us an article about QTV:

QTV by BroadQ uses a $30 piece of software to repurpose a PS2 as a digital media set-top for a TV or home theater. All users have to do is pop the DVD into their PS2, turn it on, and they are ready to either stream local network content or Internet shows like Revision3’s Digg Reel without leaving their sofas.

Brilliant idea. I’m going to be on the lookout for a copy of this software, and in the meanwhile I’ll dig out and dust off my old PS2.

Eureka!

Posted on by Nimgimli

I can’t in all honesty say that Eureka (Tuesday nights, Sci-Fi Channel) is a great show. But it’s just silly and geeky enough that I really enjoy it.

Running up to last Tuesday’s season opener, there was a campaign sponsored by Degree For Men, promoting Eureka via a bunch of crazy “new inventions” that might have been created by the denizens of the show. They were actually pretty amusing and had strong branding from both show and deodorant.

Now, in the past I’ve griped loudly about product placements in television shows. Smallville, for instance, is notorious for this, with some really cringe-worthy placements over the years. But a lot of shows do it. So when I was watching the first new Eureka of the new season, and the crew was walking through a room filled with boxes with “Degree for Men” labels plastered on the outside, I was drawing breath for a total, full-on rant about how horrible it was. And at that moment, main character Sheriff Carter pointed at the boxes and said “What’s all this?” and the new head of the research lab said brightly “Oh! It’s our first sponsor. It’s very exciting!!” and all the rant went out of me and I found myself laughing out loud. I mean, if you’re going to do a product placement, that seemed like the way to do it. It was funny, and broke the ‘4th wall’ enough to offer viewers a wink and a nod. Yeah, they know we hate this stuff, but they gotta pay the bills.

One other neat Eureka note. They had a banner advertising the Twitter account: http://www.twitter.com/_S_A_R_A_H_. What’s fun is that whomever is monitoring that account is answering in the personal of the show’s “Smart House” SARAH. Pretty funny stuff, and another nice nod to us geeks who enjoy the show.

Get Horrible while you can

Posted on by Nimgimli

So Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog has launched at http://www.drhorrible.com/

Thus far, 2 out of 3 parts are posted, with the third going live Saturday the 19th. They’ll only be online for free until the 20th, after which you’ll be able to buy them from iTunes or order a DVD (details to be released at Comiccon).

So far, absolutely hysterical. I’ll definitely be getting the DVD version.

Amazon and Sony in streaming media deal?

Posted on by Nimgimli

The New York Times has a piece on Amazon’s new TV & movie streaming service (to replace Amazon Unbox): Amazon Plans an Online Store for Movies and TV Shows.

Of note is this quote: It has struck a deal with Sony Electronics to place its Internet video store on the Sony Bravia line of high-definition TVs..

So two days after Sony announces their TV & Movie download service for the Playstation 3, Amazon announces a partnership of sorts with Sony Consumer Electronics for a competing service.

Granted the audience for Bravia TVs is much broader than that of the PS3, but you can access the PSN store from a computer. Why not stream that content to a Bravia TV?

It just seems like Sony is working against itself yet again.

Netflix eliminating Profiles

Posted on by Nimgimli

Netflix users, just in case it got caught in a spam filter or something, Netflix sent out an email saying that it would be eliminating the “Profile” feature. This feature allowed you to have several queues per account. So if you have kids, you might have 1 queue with kid’s movies and another with stuff for the parents. Each queue worked individually, and you’d assign a number of disks to each queue. In my case, I had a “Series” queue where I put all the TV shows I rent, in sequence, and then a Movie queue for movies. I tend to watch movies only on weekends, but watch TV on DVD every day.

Anyway, it was a great organizational tool, and now its going away. Netflix isn’t saying why. Maybe they’re just trying to convince us to re-evaluate our memberships?

Here’s the email in full:

Important News Regarding Netflix Profiles

Dear Peter,

We wanted to let you know we will be eliminating Profiles, the feature that allowed you to set up separate DVD Queues under one account, effective September 1, 2008.

Each additional Profile Queue will be unavailable after September 1, 2008. Before then, we recommend you consolidate any of your Profile Queues to your main account Queue or print them out.

While it may be disappointing to see Profiles go away, this change will help us continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.

If you have any questions, please go to http://www.netflix.com/Help?p_faqid=3962 or call us anytime at 1 (888) 638-3549. We apologize for any inconvenience.

– The Netflix Team

Vudu

Posted on by Nimgimli

I was reading Paul Stamatiou’s site for TechDispenser yesterday and he posted a review of the Vudu online movie rental service. Something about this gadget has gotten under my skin and I’m on a quest to slay it…enough so that I went back today and posted comments with my concerns.

This isn’t the first time I’ve commented about the unit. I posted this at Jaded’s Pub earlier this month:

——
Following up on the discussion we were having in the hi-def movie thread, there’s a new product called Vudu hitting the market soon. It’s a $400 box that has 5000 ‘movie stubs’ pre-loaded onto it. You hook it to the net and and pay per movie to watch. The ‘stub’ will start playing immediately with the rest of the movie downloading in the background, hopefully faster than you’re watching.

The movies aren’t high def, but the unit is supposed to upscale if you have an HDTV. It is capable of high def movies but they’re still negotiating the rights. You need a cable modem or better to use it. DSL isn’t fast enough, they say.

NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/technology/circuits/06pogue.html

You *can* buy the movie for “$15-$20” or rent it from $2-$4 (after which you have 24 hours to watch it).

The rig uses peer-to-peer with other Vudu users. NY Times seems to consider this to be a “cool feature” but to me it’s a drawback. I don’t need my ISP barking at me because I’m uploading huge files to random strangers. And I know when I use bittorrent (at least) it sucks down every byte of bandwidth. Heaven forbid the (internet) phone should ring because I can’t use Vonage and do a P2P bittorrent transfer at the same time.

NY Times seems really bullish on this product. Me, I’m not seeing it. $400 to pay full price for movies that I could play on any of my existing DVD players?
—–
[source]

I still don’t get it. People think shelling out $400 to buy a piece of hardware that lets you buy more things from the people you bought the hardware from is a good deal? I mean, I get the whole ‘razors and razorblades’ thing, but $400 doesn’t feel like a bargain price for this piece of hardware. They aren’t subsidizing the cost of the thing to get it into your living room. And they’re using the bandwidth you pay for in order to service their other customers!

I really hope this gadget/service flames out, because it sets all sorts of bad precedents.