Cleaning up my downloads folder

Earlier today I downloaded a QuickTime video from Tekzilla, a Revision3 video podcast on technology. I watched the 30 some odd minute HD video talking about MacWorld and some of the fun things that were introduced.

After watching it I went to my downloads folder to delete it, finding a folder filled with nearly a gig of PDF files, wallpaper, unused shareware and a few other video files. Generally speaking, the majority of the files fell squarely in the “I don’t need or use these” category.

There were of course a few gems in the rough, which I moved to a more permanent “documents” or “pictures” folder, but for the most part the files that served no real purpose ended up in the trash.

Some of the files dated back to over 6 months ago, many duplicates of HDTV manuals I downloaded looking at feature sets before selecting my Vizio.

It’s an interesting metaphor for life I think, we often accumulate stuff we don’t need and every so often we need to purge ourselves of some unneeded stuff.

That said I backed up all the files, even the unneeded ones, onto a DVD-R. So no, I won’t be getting rid of that second copy of Dogma anytime soon. I’m too much of a pack-rat.

Gizmodo seeks attention, gets it?

The Consumer Electronics Show seems to draw more and more attention from main stream media each year. With the popularity of HDTVs exploding and every other person owning an MP3 player, technology is no longer relegated the the geeks and nerds in the AV room.

With more media outlets and the growth in the tech blogging community, the competition to be “your source” for news at CES has never been more fervent. Some source did live blogging, others did creative videos, while at least one blog made a complete fool of itself.

This year, Gizmodo did a stunt at CES. Using a gadget advertised on late night TV that turns off all televisions within a certain radius. Said blogger took the device and shut off dozens of flashy new HDTVs throughout the show and interrupted a press conference. This of course annoyed vender’s, organizers and generally everybody with any sense of common decency.

The individuals responsible for the stunt over at said tech blog have made claims of civil disobedience to prove their independence and not being part of the establishment. The problem comes in that this particular blog is part of a major corporation that is seeking as much traffic as possible – note advertisers paid the bills that allowed the bloggers to do this prank.

Any claims of civil disobedience as a reasoning behind the stunt is pure posturing. This was all about page views, click throughs and visibility. This particular blog has a history of such antics drawing both curious attention and negative attention. As time goes on the site has lost a great deal of credibility. While their competition (Engadget) has almost always taken a journalistic high road, avoiding such stunts and recognizing what credibility is really about.

I have to be honest, I have never been a fan of Gizmodo. Its always felt a little less tasteful or honest in comparison to its competitors. This incident just serves to prove the point. While its competition have run into controversy – including one reported rumor that likely caused a serious, all be it short lived, dip in Apple’s stock price on Wall Street – Engadget has generally felt more trust worthy.

As a professional journalist I question the tactics and explanations from the perpetrator. From posting a “comedy” video of the clips to their “response” to the criticism that flooded the tech community in recent days.

In the end, if they wanted to get attention, they’ve obviously made their point. As for their journalistic credibility – I’d argue they never really had it.

Give me Sling or give me something

I’ve been out of commission for the last few days with headaches and colds but that hasn’t stopped me from keeping an eye on things at the Consumer Electronics Show. The big CES event this year showed off a couple things that caught my eye.

SlingBox has been a product I’ve been interested in for a while. I intend on picking one up in the near future to hook up to my TiVo for viewing when I’m traveling. The SlingBox connects to your television or DVD player or TiVo and lets you watch and control it through your computer.

This year the fine SlingMedia folks came through with their long discussed SlingCatcher. This new product will let users send from the SlingBox to another television – taking the computer out of the equation. Interesting idea. I plan on using this to watch TiVo’d shows in another room. Good times.

Then there was the death of HD DVD. I saw it coming before it happened but I am disappointed it happened the way it did. I have some thoughts I’ll expand on it later, but I have to say – Warner Bros. doesn’t have the consumer in mind. It’s a money thing, and that’s a shame. Oh well. I still have a nice upconverting DVD player at least.

Roswell on Hulu

I recently received a beta invite from Hulu.com, an online service with full length TV shows on from NBC, Fox and a few other locations. When I first logged on I was presented with a big screen for Roswell, one of my all time favorite shows.

When you get a chance, check out there service, until then – here is the FULL first episode of Roswell.

They have the full first season of Roswell on there by the way.

HD DVD vs. BluRay: the real numbers

The following is an e-mail I wrote to a friend regarding some numbers I looked up on the whole HD DVD vs. BluRay battle. I felt like sharing:

The real numbers on BluRay vs. HD DVD
To: Derek
From: Me

I’ve been doing some research on the whole BluRay selling 2.7 million players (cough including PS3s).

Right, well here is what I’ve found.

PlayStation 3, since launch, which as we know all have BluRay players have sold nearly 2.1 million units alone. Umm, that means about 600,000 dedicated bluray players have been sold. Lets say that 20 percent of those PS3s are being used as BluRay players – a number I think is too high, but I’ll be optimistic for them, that would put them at about 200,000 meaning there is ABOUT 1 million BluRay players out there REALLY. And that is OPTIMISTIC!

Now for the HD DVD side of things, about 1.5 plus the 90,000 plus residual HD-A3s that were sold following the Walmart sale fall out. In my mind – that means there are more active HD DVD players than BluRay. That number is supported by the sales figures of software on Amazon and subscriptions on Netflix for HD DVD over BluRay.

I will admit, more BluRay discs have been sold – I will say this is due to the Disney and Sony movie factors – there are more big name titles on that format – for now. I think you are going to see an influx of HD DVD tiles that are going to be “MUST HAVES” because there are more active HD DVD viewers than Sony wants to admit.

I bet by mid 2008 we’ll have a $100 HD DVD player as the standard entry price. BluRay will hit the $100 sale by next Christmas and will stabilize at $250 for entry. If they can’t keep a $100 model on the floor by the start of 2009 – I think BluRay will be in some real trouble.

If I had a little more motivation, I would cite my research, I’m giving this to you as is. I encourage everyone to look into the numbers for yourself. Things to keep in mind – BluRay still has the studio support – an important factor, but HD DVD has the lower price tag – an undeniable factor.

Thoughts?

Remote over-load

As a home theater/technology geek, I find myself with a little bit of remote control over-load these days. In a basket sitting next to me on my couch I have no less than five remotes controlling things ranging from my television to my TiVo and a few other components. Of course I need all the remotes because no cheap universal remote would do the job right.

That’s why I’m drolling over the Harmony remotes by Logitech. The nice thing about the Harmony line is they are customizable and have tasks. Want to watch a movie? The remote can turn your TV on, turn it to the correct input, turn on the receiver, turn on the DVD player and all the buttons work for what you want them to do without punching anything else in.

The problem is – they run around $100 or more. So at the moment, I’m going to continue drolling over the prospect of buying one in the new year when I have some more spending money. Until then, I continue to play the remote control shuffle.

I've picked a side, sort of

I was going to wait to write on this a few more days to let things sink in, and to let me test out a few more things to make a final impression on it, but I’ve just read a few things that make me want to address the whole thing.

On Friday, I plunged into the Hi-Def disc format war. I purchased an HD DVD player. The HD A2 by Toshiba to be precise. Walmart hosted a special secret sale on a few items on Friday and the highlight around the country was the HD A2. I actually didn’t know about the sale when I happened to walk by the display. Stacked on a shelf hidden in the electronics department was four of the A2s with a price tag of under $100.

All I could say after I saw the price was “that’s insane, there is no way that’s real.” Again, not knowing the sale was a one off deal I walked away believing this was the beginning of the end of the hi-def disc battle. I later found out it was a one day only sale.

Let me clear up a few things about the player. The A2 is one of a handful of Toshiba branded players (there are a small number of companies make the HD DVD players these days). Normally the price of the A2 was around $200+, while other HD DVD units can run upwards of $500, if not more.

HD DVD is one of two major high definition video disc formats battling to claim the thrown of the mature and aging DVD. It is rivaled by BluRay, a format championed by Sony and a number of other technology companies and movie studios.

I’ve been planning on staying out of this battle, allowing the two camps to fight it out, but the price of $100 hit me in a special place.

For the last few months I’ve been looking into picking up an upconverting DVD player, that would increase the resolution of my DVD collection and make them look a lot better on my HDTV. Prices for reasonable units was around $150, a price that made me gulp knowing there was a world of ture high definition video coming around the corner.

The HD DVD player serves as an excellent upconverting DVD player. Through the HDMI cable the visuals look stunning. Even DVDs that traditionally looked poor on my television, actually looked pretty sharp and popped like never before.

BluRay players are still really pricey. Coming in over $400, the format is still out of the reach of the average person (meaning me). Until they can come in with a sub-$100 player, they’re phoning in the competition. HD DVD seems to be more aggressive at the hard ware side of things.

Netflix, the online rental place, has backed both formats, allowing users to rent out DVD, HD DVD and BluRay if they so chose. So I have a good flow of HD movies that I want to see.

Two major movie fan Web sites have taken vastly different stances on the format war. Ain’t It Cool News’ head haunco has vocally put his hat in the HD DVD ring. The editors of The Digital Bits, a major DVD site in its own right, are taking a stand behind BluRay – calling it a superior format.

While I have invested in the HD DVD format, I am not sold that it will be the final winner in this war. I can see why BluRay might win. It has more studio support and on paper seems to be selling media at a faster pace than HD DVD. But the price of hard ware, in my opinion the ultimate deciding factor in this war, is leaning towards HD DVD. As more average consumers begin to buy players (whichever ones they do) the winner will become much more clear.

At the moment though, calling either a winner is premature. Both are selling mildly well – a few thousand here and there. Each have around 300 titles to date, with many movies on both formats.

In the end, while I have invested in HD DVD, I’m not calling it the winner. I just wanted a good upconverting DVD player. It just happens to play HD DVDs too. Who could complain about that?

I’ve only had the chance to watch one title in HD DVD, that being the amazing “300.” I have three titles coming from Netflix on Wednesday that I plan on watching rather quickly. After I’ve had some time to take in the true HD experience, I’ll come back with more impressions on the format.

I’m interested in hearing from BluRay owners, how do you like that format? How does it compare to HD DVD.

TiVo Season Pass List (as of now)

Well the new Fall season is a few episodes in by now so I thought I would throw out there my list of shows TiVo is recording for me (all in basic quality).

• The Office
• Heroes
• My Name is Earl
• House
• Bones
• Life
• Bionic Woman
• Pushing Daisies
• How I Met Your Mother
• The Big Bang Theory
• Journeyman
• 30 Rock
• Scrubs
• The Simpsons
• Family Guy
• South Park
• Mythbusters
• Digging for the Truth

I also happen to tape Grey’s Anatomy and Chuck on VHS because my TiVo can only record one thing at a time (will I get the new TiVo HD soon? Only time will tell). At any rate I realize I watch way too much television. I also let it record random stuff throughout the week. But that’s why I have TiVo right?

Steve Jobs to iPhone owners. . .

Apple head honcho Steve Jobs has addressed those upset about the $200 early adopter tax imposed on early iPhone owners. While it took less than 70 days for the price drop to hit, Jobs basically says tough noogies. I kind of don’t blame him, sure the price drop is significant and it comes only a few weeks after the phones actually release, but the success of the phone depends on its continued sales and the price putting it out of reach of 99 percent of consumers, Apple had to do something.

By dropping the price now it does a few things. It keeps the momentum of sales going, those who were holding off for a price drop have no reason not to go for it now. It also opens the market up for a 16 gig model to come in the near future, move as many 8 gigs as possible and expand the line. Finally, it keeps people talking about iPhone. As hard as it is to believe, discussion on the iPhone has gone down in recent days. Now the discussion starts at the beginning all over again.

In the end, Apple is smart. People sitting in a diner in the middle of South Dakota were discussing the iPhone price drop at 10 p.m. on a Saturday night. You can’t even get AT&T service there, but the discussion went on.

Read Jobs letter.

I can feel the music

For the last few months, since the iPhone came out, I’ve been saying that Apple would be insane to release an iPod with the form factor and user interface of the iPhone. It would obviously cannibalize sales of the phone and confuse the market.

Of course I’m wrong. Steve Jobs took the stage this week and introduced the world to a new product called iPod Touch. The new iPod works much like the iPhone, with the touch interface, WiFi Internet access and a few other goodies.

With 16 gigs on the high end model hitting retailers at $399 (8 gigs will set you back $299). The iPod touch is slightly shorter than the iPhone and a lot thiner. It’s not the only high end iPod either. iPod Classic, a product that is nothing more than a beefed up G5.5 iPod (new interface and bigger capacity for the same price levels), it’s an interesting time for Apple.

The iPod Touch, like the iPhone, is flash based. No moving parts. This cuts down on battery life, the hard drives can suck the battery pretty quickly, but it also means smaller capacity. Not easy to fit all those widescreen movies on there.

Oh, and they dropped the price of the 8 gig iPhone to $399. The 4 gig is currently on clearance for $299. That loud noise you heard on Wednesday was the sound of iPhone owners saying really bad words at the top of their lungs.

iPod Touch image from Apple.com.