Weblog of a “Switcher”

Don't get me wrong here, I am really excited that Apple has worked out a deal to allow us to rent movies. I have already used it and am pretty much pleased with it. I'll explain my disappointment in a little bit...

Renting movies from Apple is a real boon for me. I've tried Netflix and Blockbuster's DVD rental via snail-mail and have been nothing but angered with both. After less than a month with each service, I started getting movies that were on DVD's that looked like they had sandpaper rubbed on them. They were completely unreadable. I would return the DVD and let them know that the disc was destroyed. However, the next disc they would send was either just as bad or they had simply sent me the save DVD.

For the longest time, I have resorted to BitTorrent for a way to "rent" movies. I would watch them, then delete them off the computer. This worked pretty well for me, but takes a long time to download and there is an element of danger with using BitTorrent to "rent" movies.

I do buy movies and television shows on DVD. I own all 10 seasons of Stargate: SG1 and the first 3 seasons of Stargate Atlantis (we are currently on season 4). I own over 100 movie DVD's. I have even bought a few movies from Apple. I don't do this often though since you don't get any of the extra's that are on the DVD's when buying from Apple. If I don't care about any of the DVD extra's, I'll buy from iTunes.

Now that Apple is renting movies, I waited till the first movie I wanted to rent was available, The Simpson's Movie, and tagged it for rental. I was pleased to see it start downloading immediately. I was surprised to find that I couldn't move/copy the downloaded rented movie to a different Mac. I'll have to make sure that when I rent movies, that I use my MacBook so that it's on the computer that is attached to my home entertainment system. Otherwise, I won't be able to watch it in comfort.

My "disappointment" came when I was ready to start watching it. I wasn't able to use Front Row to watch the movie. I am able to watch movies I have purchased via Front Row, movies I have "rented" via BitTorrent via Front Row and Perian. Yet, I'm not able to watch rented movies via Front Row. Why is this Apple? What could possibly be done that would break your precious DRM with Front Row?

Also, when playing the movie I rented, I was rewarded with a full screen display that not only had black bars on top and bottom of the video, but on the left and right! For some reason, the full screen experience for the movie was "less" than full screen. Fortunately, my Sharp Aquos HD television has the ability to "zoom" a picture so that I didn't have any black bars. It clipped a few pixels around the image, but was fine for watching the movie. Doing so made the movie a bit pixelated, but I guess that's expected considering the "full screen" they chose to give me.

Oh, I know. They would be competing with TV! Really? TV is $229, a MacBook is $1099 and a MacMini is $599. How could that be competing with TV? Seriously Apple, let us use Front Row with Movie Rentals. Why else would you have opened up Front Row on all Macintosh computers in Leopard if not so that we can get the full multimedia experience with Front Row?

Another disappointment is the lack of ability to rent TV Shows. If I am going to pay over $30 for the ability to watch a season of a TV show, I'm going to just go out and buy the DVD box set. I want to be able to watch the series for a fairly minimal cost. Say $4-$5 for 4-5 episodes. Pretty much a DVD's worth of episodes. I hope they are just testing the waters with movie rentals and will be adding TV shows later.

Now, another possible disappointment is the lack of HD quality movies using iTunes instead of TV. Now, its possible that there just isn't any HD quality movies out yet since the TV software update isn't out yet. I do hope that this is the case. My MacBook is more than capable of displaying 1920x1080 interlaced (1080i), so why not allow me to watch HD content? Now the "Steve" told us that HD content is coming. So I can only hope that it's coming to all rentals and not just TV rentals.

Overall, I'm still pumped about the idea of renting movies via my Macintosh. I just wish they would do a better job of it. If they don't deal with some of these issues soon, I'll have to go back to the "best" way to do it. Via BitTorrent. It's slow, but it works and gives me true HD quality.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Apple, Bittorrent, Blockbuster, Boon, Disappointment, Element, Few Movies, Home Entertainment System, iTunes, Little Bit, Long Time, Longest Time, Mac, Macbook, Netflix, Sandpaper, Sg1, Snail Mail, Stargate Atlantis, Television Shows On Dvd

Gizmoron Runs Amok At CES | ripten: "According to Webware, the CEA (which runs CES) had this to say about the situation:

‘We have been informed of inappropriate behavior on the show floor by a credentialed media attendee from the Web site Gizmodo, owned by Gawker Media. Specifically, the Gizmodo staffer interfered with the exhibitor booth operations of numerous companies, including disrupting at least one press event. The Gizmodo staffer violated the terms of CES media credentials and caused harm to CES exhibitors. This Gizmodo staffer has been identified and will be barred from attending any future CES events. Additional sanctions against Gizmodo and Gawker Media are under discussion.’

So it looks like the guy is banned for life. A fitting punishment, if you ask me."

(Via ripten: Gizmoron runs amok at CES.)

Wow, what in the hell is up with Gizmodo? I knew I didn't like the site a long time ago (before the Apple stock debacle), but now, I have to wonder if there isn't legal actions that Motorola or CEA can't pursue.

What was going through the Gizmodo staffer's mind when he was pulling this stunt? Was he thinking that they would get a bunch of publicity for what he did?

Banning Gizmodo is one action, but I really think that they should be banned from all shows and any company still advertising with Gizmodo should be boycotted. We need to send a very strong message here that this kind of behavior from a blog is simply not to be taken.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Apple Stock, Attendee, Cea, Ces, Ces Exhibitors, Debacle, Exhibitor Booth, Fitting Punishment, Gawker Media, Gizmodo, Hell, Inappropriate Behavior, Legal Actions, Long Time, Media Credentials, Motorola, Publicity, Sanctions, Staffer, True Colors

This has to be the best thing I have seen in a long time. If the person who made this could sell them...

For those who have been living under a rock for a few weeks... This is the special Weighted Companion Cube that you have to carry around with you in one of the levels in Portal. The new game from VALVe, the makers of Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and Team Fortress 2 as well as many other great games available on Steam.

(Via Portal: Soft, Cuddly Companion Cube.)

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Cuddly Companion, Half Life, Half Life 2, Long Time, Many Other Great Games, New Game, Portal, Steam, Team Fortress 2

I don't normally crosspost anything, but this article needs as much exposure as I can give it.

I'm deviating from my normal posts here to “bitch” about Bloglines.

It’s been a really long time since I started using Bloglines. I can’t even remember. I know it was less than 6 months after they opened their doors. I was in love. A feed reader that basically followed you where ever you went.

I used it at home and work. I also used it when on the road when we went on vacations. I could always stay up-to-date with what was going on and not have to worry about reading a story more than once! This held true for quite some time.

In the last year, something has started happening with Bloglines. It wasn’t long after they were bought by AskJeeves (now Ask.com) that things started to go down hill. Now this could be a coincidence, or it could be due to the purchase.

A feature I used ever since it was released to the public: Keep New, started acting up. Keep New is a checkbox in the article that allowed the Bloglines user to keep the article new no matter what. Every time you opened the feed, the article would be there along with other really new articles.

In the last year, the feature started acting strange. I would see I had some Keep New articles due to a second number in parenthesis after the number of new articles which is also in parenthesis. I would open the feed to see them, and not find them. Even after reading all the new articles, I would try opening the feed and get nothing. Sometimes I could tell Bloglines to show me posts from a month ago, and the Keep New articles would be buried in with the other articles it would bring up.

So I stopped using Keep New.

I sent several bug reports to Bloglines in hopes that this problem would get fixed. I did get responses from the Bloglines crew, but alas, the problem was never fixed. Or at least so I thought.

Then I noticed I had a Keep New that I had set and I was still able to get to it even after a few days. I first thought that Bloglines had finally fixed the bug. But other feeds still didn’t show. I noticed a difference in the way the feeds properties were set. The one that was working had “Updated Items” in the feed properties set to “Display as New”. The one that wasn’t working was set to “Ignore”. I changed a few that were set to Ignore to Display as New and found I was able to keep my Keep New articles findable again.

I thought I had the problem licked until I realized what that setting really did. Every article that was updated by the writer, even if a single character was changed, would appear again in the feed as new. At first I didn’t mind too much, but over time it got so bad that I though I was using a desktop client for a feed reader. Reading posts I had read days if not weeks ago.

So I turned the feature off and decided to live without Keep New again. Except I found that the Keep New posts were still staying visible even after switching back to Ignore for Updated Items. That was a surprise and a pleasant one at that.

Now we come to present time, and once again, the Keep New posts are fading into the sunset. I really don’t understand this. Am I the only person using Bloglines that uses this feature? I find that hard to believe.

I’m tired of waiting for this feature to be fixed, if they even acknowledge that there is a problem with it at all. So I’ve decided to give up on Bloglines finally.

I’m currently in the process of finding a new reader. Alas it will wind up being a desktop client since the “other” web based readers all suck big time! I have looked at all of them. Including FeedLounge, a non-free web based feed reader.

I’m looking at NewsNetWire for the Mac and NewsGator for Windows only because there is a chance that they can keep each other up-to-date as to which posts I have read and which I haven’t.

But that isn’t the reason for this “Freedbacking” post. It’s to let Bloglines know how I feel about this whole Keep New thing and how it has chased a long time user away from your tool.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Bitch, Bug Reports, Checkbox, Coincidence, Doors, Feed Reader, Few Days, Long Time, Love, New Articles, Parenthesis, Quite Some Time, Tho, Vacations