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.
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.
Sorry to keep going on about this show, but its so good I’d hate for any of my readers to miss it.
The third and final part is now posted, and the whole shebang is only up until sometime Sunday (tomorrow).
Joss Whedon fans, don’t miss it!
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.
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.
Quick post for now, since I’m at work, but the first trailer for Joss Whedon’s new web-show, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is up:
Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.
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
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:
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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.
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 (a wired connection is suggested) and, pick your movie and either rent ($2-$4) or buy ($15-20) it. The ‘stub’ will start playing immediately with the rest of the movie downloading in the background, hopefully faster than you’re watching. If you choose the rental option you have 24 hours to watch your film after you’ve paid.
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 and expect to ‘turn on’ this feature in the near future. However, the unit has a puny 250 gig hard drive. How many high def movies are going to fit on that? There’s a USB port that’ll eventually let you add an external drive, but that’s going to add to the cost of ownership.
You need a cable modem or better to use it. DSL isn’t fast enough, they say. And remember, they suggest a wired connection, so get ready to run ethernet to the living room…
NY Times article with all the details
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? Granted you don’t have to go to the store…but that’s not enough of a boon to offset the drawbacks, at least to me.
How about for you?
When I saw the first episode of The Guild I was tickled but wary… it was very, very funny and I’m scared to say I could relate to it almost too well. But was it a flash in the pan? Well Episode 2 is out, and it’s just as funny.
You can go to YouTube to watch them but I’m going to tempt you here and now…
Episode 1
Episode 2