(For those of you new to this topic, I'm a big fan of analog cable because I can hook up devices like Tivo and the cable company can't do a damn thing about it. In the picture to the right, I have two Tivos hooked up so that I can record two shows at the same time. In the digital cable world, the video signals are encrypted and I'm at the whim of the cable company with respect to what I can hook up to the cable signal. Given the DRM and similar "inconveniences", I'd prefer to stay with analog as long as possible.)
At the moment, the foundation of my home entertainment center is built around networked Series 2 Tivos. We have three Tivos in the house hooked up to cable and through Tivo's multi-room viewing, shows we record on one device can be watched on another. This translates into one Tivo for myself, one for Holly, and a spare to handle the rare cases when three things that we would like to watch are on at the same time (Thursday nights). If I were to keep with the status quo as much as possible, I'd rent three digital converters from Comcast and pray that they give me ones with serial ports so that I won't have to hook up IR blasters. I anticipate that this will result in an approximate $15 per month price increase above the present situation. Given that cable is included as part of my rent, my monthly $0 payment to Comcast would rise to $15.
However, given all of the recent disruptions in the video space lately (AppleTV, video podcasts, iTunes videos, HDTV, etc.), I'm using this as an opportunity to explore options for creating a bigger and better home video setup. Another driver for looking for a new architecture is the simple fact that while I love my Tivos, the company's interests are not aligned with my own anymore. The main indicator is that they dropped the multi-room viewing in the latest Series 3 iterations. If my three Tivos were to drop dead tomorrow, I would have absolutely no interest in moving to the Series 3 platform. I want a nice platform that I control and works for me - not one tailored around how the cable companies think I should watch TV.
At the moment, my current thinking has been revolving around the idea of a network of Mac Minis that share iTunes video libraries and use Front Row as the primary video interface. I've been using Front Row since last summer and it's proven itself as being an acceptable DVD player and a decent way to watch television. The fundamental idea in this architecture is that I would purchase shows a la carte and pay on a per-show basis instead of a per-service basis.
Is this economically feasible? Let's look at the recurring costs (ignoring the cost of the Mac Minis - I'll get back to those later). At the moment, I'm spending approximately $240 per year on television expenses. This $20 monthly goes toward paying for the Tivo service for two boxes. The first box is $13 per month, the second is $6, and the third Tivo has a lifetime subscription. If I were to hook these up to Comcast digital cable boxes, the cost would increase to $420 per year ($240 + [$15 x $12]).
If I ditched the Tivos, I would be able to buy $420 worth of TV shows on the iTunes store. iTunes lists "Heroes" for $43 per season, "Battlestar Galactica" for $35, and "Friday Night Lights" for $40. For the sake of simplifying calculations, let's say that iTunes television seasons are $40 on average. Given $420, I could purchase 10-11 seasons per year for what I will be paying when Comcast flips the digital switch.
In reality, how many new shows are watched regularly in this household:
Me: The Apprentice, Friday Night Lights, Shark, Stargate (SG-1 & Atlantis), and Smallville
Holly: Grey's Anatomy, Ugly Betty, VH1's Best Week Ever
Both of us: The Class, How I Met Your Mother, South Park, Supernatural, Hell's Kitchen, The Office, Everybody Hates Chris, My Name is Earl, Battlestar Galactica
(Italicized shows are sold on iTunes.)
So, the total number of shows purchased each year on iTunes would be 4 (me) + 2 (Holly - BWE is podcast in full) + 7 (both of us) = 13. This is more than the future status quo, but not enough to be a problem. The main problem with the scheme above is that key shows (Shark, Smallville, How I Met Your Mother) are not on iTunes and I don't know if/when they will show up.
Now, let's look at the initial outlay to put an iTunes-centric scheme into place. Presently, we have two televisions that would need Front Row. We also need disks to store the downloaded shows. Using a recent "Galactica" as a metric, an hour-long show consumes approximately 475 megabytes. In the list of 13 above, 8 shows are an hour long and 5 are half that length. As a rough estimate, let's say that we need room for 15 hour-length television shows with 20 episodes per season. This results in a little less than 150 gigabytes per season. I'm a fan of the Western Digital My Book external drives and a 500GB one can be purchased online for less than $200 and this is more than sufficient for our purposes. Ideally, I would like to hook this up to a Mac Mini dedicated to home entertainment purposes and that is approximately $600. That leaves only one television without a Front Row interface. Personally, I would be inclined to pay the extra money for the Mac Mini. It offers another option for expanding the storage of the network and is more versatile than the AppleTV. (It also runs much cooler.)
So, the initial outlay would be probably just shy of $1500 (after buying cables) with an expected annual expenditure of $520 in iTunes purchases. In return, both televisions are capable of playing all of the shows (as are all the computers in the household). However, some shows remain missing.
We can get around the missing shows problem by attaching a USB ATSC tuner courtesy of elgato. The device retails for $150 and can tune over the air high definition signals. This allows us to not only capture the missing shows, but also allows us to capture other shows that we would otherwise purchase on iTunes, bringing our iTMS show count from 13 to 5, resulting in a savings of $320 (assuming two tuners are used).
Proposal cost: $1800 initial, $200 annually recurring
Status quo: $0 initial, $420 annually recurring
Pros of the proposed system:
1. Lower recurring costs
2. HDTV-ready
3. Every iTunes-equipped computer in the household (desktops, laptops) has access to the media library(s)
4. Internet-video friendly - plays video podcasts, and other video formats
5. Easily extendable and extensible
6. Simplifies home entertainment system by combining DVR and DVD player
7. Integrates with portable players (iPod)
Cons
1. Significant initial outlay
2. Delay in watching new episodes as they are uploaded to iTunes
3. Abandons existing equipment
The new system would be a no-brainer if I were paying for cable were not included in my rent. I'm not sold on the iTunes-centric idea yet (mainly due to the initial cost) but it does seem very attractive.
Thoughts?
"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief,
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."
"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."
All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.
Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.
As for my theories about what's going on, let me throw out some Wikipedia links and let readers put together the puzzle: eternal recurrence, guardian angels, ascension, and Pern (Historical Synopsis). If any of the prior links seem related or similar to your own predictions, please let me know in the comments.
In the past, I've been a bit hard on Web 2.0 types of sites and companies. For the most part, I've been of the opinion that the applications and sites were more sizzle than steak. I think that it's been a while since I posted on this topic, so I figured an update was in order.
First of all, I think that my attitude has softened a bit. Previously, I was actively annoyed by the likes of AJAX sites posing as "real applications" and I bemoaned the downside of these applications including no offline use, questions about data security, and so on.
However, I've continued to play with them (exhibit A: this site) and I've began to notice that I'm accumulating a collection of Web 2.0 apps that I use regularly.
Twitter: I've been enjoying Twitter simply because it does something that I've always wanted, a universal status message. I'm a regular instant messenger client user (Adium is my client of choice), and I always liked the idea that you could put a message in your buddy list that specified what you were up to, whether you were available or away. I disliked the fact that these status messages remained within the walled gardens of the individual IM networks.
I like Twitter because it fills that gap. I have my IM clients configured to set my statuses using my latest Twitters. When I have a change in state, I simply post the update in Twitterific and the status is propagated to my website, IM clients, and other points of contact within minutes. My "tweets" are not conversations with other Twitter users, and I'm bearish on the potential for the social aspects of the service to remain relevant into the next cycle of Internet fads. However, given my use, that doesn't really bother me.
And Twittervision is really cool.
Last.FM: Last.FM caught my attention when it was mentioned as an integrated service with some desktop application that looked interesting to me. I forgot the name of the application, but I did end up looking into Last.FM and becoming a user. The main need that the service addresses is my desire to keep and share the last few songs that I've heard and to serve as a place where I can get recommendations for new music when I get tired of my current library. I managed to locate some great client-side software (iScrobbler) that can monitor both iTunes and my iPod for new "last played" updates.
I spend relatively little time on the website, but it seems to be well-designed and sensibly constructed. Like Twitter, Last.FM's killer feature for me is its ability to capture state information about myself in a way that allows me to reuse it elsewhere (such as the most recent track played on my homepage). I'd be interested in getting friends signed up and taking advantage of the social aspects of the service, but it's been a hard slog getting people to make an account and recording their listening habits. Since I've ony successfully managed to sign up one friend, this will have to wait. In the meantime, I'll continue building a listening history and using the solo features.
Flickr: Flickr did such a great job creating a site for cataloging and sharing photos that I have never looked back to apps like iPhoto or *shudder* manually managing photos on my hard disk. I've been interested in studying software applications that do something so well that it impacts users' actions away from the app. In the case of Flickr, everything about how I think of digital photography changed when I became a user. Flickr has encouraged me to take more photos and to improve how I take pictures. Continuing with the theme of small desktop applications that enhance the online application, I'd be lost without the standard Flickr Uploadr upload client.
The new mapping functionality is pretty snazzy, too.
LibraryThing: This is the next best thing for me to use to catalog and keep track of my books until I figure out if/how Books should work online. I like that I can check my collection anywhere and that the site has made it easy for me to categorize items on the basis of whether they are read or not. I'll write the occasional review, but my primary use of the site is figuring out what to read next.
Facebook, MySpace, Ning, etc.: I primarily use Facebook to keep up with college friends (past and present) while MySpace allows me to keep track of all of the silly things my younger siblings do. I joined Ning to try out the service's targeted Battlestar Galactica groups to see how well they worked. For the most part, Facebook is my primary social network, with MySpace being a distant second. I still have a LinkedIn account, but I rarely check it anymore.
I began thinking about this topic (Web 2.0) when I was looking into some of the course content for the online communities course that I'm taking this quarter. Part of the work in the course involves looking at existing online communities and the Web 2.0 crowd seem to be the standard bearer for online communities these days. Thinking about this led me to realize that I've been using more "Web 2.0" applications lately, but I really haven't been using them in any manner consistent with the ethos of participating in an online community. I tend to be a selfish user because I think that in most cases, if the sites' communities disappeared tomorrow, I wouldn't experience a significant hit in utility. I don't know if I'm an edge case or a typical user, but I would be interested in figuring that out.
Saturday's big event was the monthly Game Night. For the uninitiated, Holly and I try to have a monthly event where we invite people to hang out, drink, and play some games. Last night's turn out was pretty big, and people split between playing board games at the table (Balderdash, Password) and Steve's Nintendo Wii in the living room. I drank my fair share, but not enough to make today miserable.
Today was exceptionally busy and physically challenging. Early in the morning, I decided to "feed the bomb"* to several "This American Life" podcasts that have been festering unplayed in my iTunes library. I managed to knock out two, which translates into about an hour and forty-five minutes of walking. I managed to take a few photos, which can be seen on Flickr. My legs were worn out by the time I made it home.
However, my day wasn't over, as I had previously told Willie that we'd do something today. Since the weather was accommodating, we decided to fix the brakes on his bike and to do some general bike maintainence. This involved bringing the bikes to the sundeck on the condo, getting the tools and soapy water and lots of disassembly and cleaning. By 3:00 PM, the bikes were all put back together (though I need to check a loose cable on mine) and we gave them a test run by heading up to the Lincoln Park Zoo and them McDonalds for a bite to eat.
After I dropped Willie off, I headed home to resume watching "Dagon", a Stuart Gordon adaptation of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", one of Lovecraft's more well-known stories. The film was a decent adaptation (in my humble opinion), but Gordon's signature gore and cruelty were certainly on display. The film was very similar in many aspects to "Dreams in the Witch House", a more recent Gordon Lovecraft adaptation. (Both films shared the same actor playing the lead male characters.)
I'm deciding what to do with the rest of the day. I could play some "World of Warcraft" or I might give "Farcry" an install. I'll be up bright and early tomorrow, so I'm planning on spending these last few hours taking it easy.
* feed the bomb - To complete or finish some game, book, or film. Example: "I finally fed the bomb to Gone With the Wind last night."
After my post yesterday, I ended up cooking grilled ham and cheese sandwiches and sitting down for some World of Warcraft action while listening to the latest "Battlestar Galactica" podcast. (Take that, weather gods!) Of course, my adventures in Azeroth did not conclude at the end of the podcast, but instead lasted well into the afternoon.
After Holly came home, we threw into the DVD player "Stand By Me". Apparently everyone else on Earth had sen the film, and I was hoping to renew my local film credibility by finally seeing it. It was a nice film and full of heart, but I was almost certain throughout the film that it was going to turn into an accidental shooting parable. Fortunately, it wasn't, and that film will be making its quick trip back to NetFlix as soon as I throw it in the mailbox.
(Lemme add that to the to-do list...)
Unfortunately, the Chicago weather gods didn't get that memo.
As I look out the window, there's intermittent raining that really makes for an unfun walking environment. I guess I'll have to save Ron Moore's latest "Battlestar Galactica" podcast for another time.
However, not all's been lost. Earlier this week, Holly picked up the World of Warcraft Burining Crusade expansion pack and I've slowly been inching my way back into the WoW universe. Quite a bit has changed since I stopped playing, and I'm relearning all of the ropes. My next WoW to-do is to find the profession trainers so that I can bump my herbalism and alchemy past the pre-BC caps.
I've spent some of my time this week working on school-related projects. Yesterday, I ended up getting over the latest SMS hurdles and I'm ready for another cycle of software testing. I've been able to devote some time towards fixing Books bugs and I'm hoping to release a new version later this week. Monday was spent watching "Closer" and "Raiders of the Last Ark". Last night's movie was "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom". Tonight, I'll probably finish off the Indiana Jones movies by watching "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade".
If it isn't painfully obvious by now, I'm stalling and procrastinating. If the rain isn't going to let up, I might as well do something productive around here...
Some local flavor:
The sixteen-inch resin Gort statue that you can see on the left is the latest addition to my desk. Gort was the giant robot from 1951 film "The Day the Earth Stood Still". For those unfamiliar with the film, Gort was the robot guardian of Klaatu who had it in its power to destroy the Earth.
These days, Gort only unleashes his power on people messing with my Macs.
End of the quarter update: sometime between my last post and this one, the concept of there being an "end to the quarter" has moved from the abstract to concrete classification in my mind. I have a statistics final in my hand that I'll complete this weekend, and I've done all the tests for my machine learning project. What's needed now is to do some statistical analyses of my results and to write them up. I'm at a similar state in my methods course. It'll be nice to move on.
I have a list of other things to do over the break (including resuming work on the SMS system), but it'll be nice to kick back in the tea cafe and pump out some code.
I just arrived on campus, convinced that I did not turn in the correct answers for my homework. Given the Markov models mentioned below, I had to come up with the most likely sequence of six states given six observations. On my way to the train, I remembered that I had only numbered up to five, not six as expected. I fretted about this on the trip up and had a plan to dash off a mad addendum to my assignment (due at 1:00) that included the final states and probabilities.
I get in and retrieve the assignment. I look at it, and sure enough, my last state was numbered "5". I look up a bit and notice that my starting state had been numbered "0", as is typical in computer science. All six states were there and the work I submitted was what I intended, but it didn't stop me from worrying about it the whole way here...
:-P
Well, it looks like February came and went and I only managed two blog posts the entire month. Last month was a tough month for me because I was really sick for most of it and I had a ton of work to do.
March has started out with me feeling much better, but still with a lot of work. I spent most of yesterday doing my Machine Learning homework on Hidden Markov Models. Despite the time it sometimes takes, I really enjoy the Machine Learning homework because I can feel myself learning something as I do it. It's well designed and really bridges the gulf between theory and practice. I still need to do one last review pass before sending it off, but I think it's in decent shape.
There are approximately two weeks left in this quarter. That means that I need to finish up some last homework sets, complete two projects, and wrap everything up. This weekend will be focused on the last statistics problem set (one-way ANOVA) and finishing up some work for the next step of my research methods course. I've been unable to do much with Willie this month on account of my illness, but I’m taking him bowling tomorrow with the rest of the Friends First contingent.
In neighborhood news, I'm sad to learn that my local CompUSA is closing down. The Chicago store is a couple of blocks away from me and it was one of the few "Magnificent Mile" stores that I would regularly browse. The store was pretty ghetto, but I liked going in to see what was new and to look at the PC games they sold. I purchased the occasional hard drive or USB peripheral there, but I mostly bought games there. Last month's deadly purchase was a "best of" collection of Star Wars games for the PC. For forty bucks, the package included five games, including Battlefront and Empire at War. I added a to-do list item for checking out the store before it closes in the next ninety days to see if I might find any good deals there. I'm not hoping for too much other than a cheaper version of the World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade expansion. (I will play Burning Crusade, but not until the summer.)
The thing that makes me sad about the store closing is that it was one of my stores in the area. I'm not a big shopper, so there are a handful of places where I browse and shop in the local area. Of the top of my head, some other my stores are
Apple Store
CompUSA
Borders
Gamer's Paradise in Water Tower Place
Virgin Megastore (maybe)
Walgreens
I would probably feel similar if any of the above went belly-up.
The net effect of this store closing will be that I'll become a more frequent customer of Best Buy (either the store near Clark and Diversey or the one near North and Clyborne). Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Best Buy as much as the next gadget junkiee, but it doesn't have the same aura as the local CompUSA. Where else would I look to find things like IDE cables or goofy pre-modded biohazard ATX cases?
Maybe I'll get lucky and a Fry's Electronics will open up in that space…
