6 posts tagged “television”
I've had a great time working with The House Theatre of Chicago and it's been exciting to wtch the company grow and evolve. I just wanted to point out that the House's first television commercial for their Broadway on Chicago production of "The Sparrow" is now online. Give it a peek.
(Credit for the video work goes to Lucas Merino and the music is composed by Kevin O'Donnell. You can get the Sparrow album on iTunes or your favorite online digital music store.)
Early last year, at the encouragement of a buddy of mine, I decided that I would watch from start to finish the entire series of "Stargate SG-1". I had seen the movie, but thought that it was a bit mediocre, but before new episodes of "Battlestar Galactica", I would catch the occasional SG-1 or Atlantis episode. Before I began watching the show, my primary question was, "How does the U.S. Air Force go from contemporary technology like the F-22 Raptor to faster-than-light space carriers sporting shields and transporters and other sci-fi goodies?" The first episode of SG-1 begins with the Air Force beginning to use the Stargate once more. The final episode ten seasons later has that same Air Force traveling between galaxies and defending the Milky Way from beings a smidgen less powerful than gods.
Make no mistake, "Stargate SG-1" may be my favorite science fiction series of all time. The strength of the series is the mythology and incremental history built episode by episode that explains puny Earthlings end up being the fifth race of beings devoted to protecting and defending countless worlds. My favorite episode that illustrates the incremental construction of this history is "Prometheus". In this episode, a journalist begins confronting members of SG-1 about a top-secret government project and Stargate Command has to deal with the situation. The show writers very cleverly manipulate the viewer into believing that the project in question is the Stargate program, but in a surprise twist, we find out for the first time that US gov't has been building the first generation interstellar warship built upon technology and knowledge gained by the Stargate teams during their various journeys to other worlds. This episode is the point where the fictitious world sharply diverged from the non-fictitious world. It was an abrupt revelation, but one that made sense when considered. Richard Dean Anderson and team weren't mixing it up with otherworlders for kicks and giggles.
The second strength of the show was it's cast and how well the ensemble worked. In the first eight seasons, Richard Dean Anderson was the core of the group in his role as Colonel Jack O'Neill. He played the role with the right mixture of seriousness and levity. As a friend of mine remarked, he was never without an appropriate smart-ass remark when needed. After eight seasons, his character was promoted and he left the show. The first few episodes following his departure felt a bit rudderless, but the new additions of Ben Browder and Claudia Black playing the roles of Cameron Mitchell and Vala Mal Doran. In some respects, these characters both embodied parts of what made Anderson's character so interesting, but they also grew into respectable characters in their own right. If I were forced to choose my favorite incarnation of SG-1, the O'Neill team would only narrowly edge out the Mitchell team that finished this last season.
In the end, I managed to extract a lot of enjoyment out of this show. I've picked up most of the DVDs and they are now a central part of my video collection. I often joke that I'm looking forward senility - that way, I can watch all of my DVDs again as if it were the first time. I'd better make a note for my future self to check out "SG-1" first. In the meantime, there's going to be a big hole that's tough to fill.
Since the Stargate series came off of hiatus, I've been enjoying the last season of "SG-1" and the third season of "Atlantis". Because of my cable woes, I haven't had access to the SciFi Channel for a while and I would regularly purchase "Galactica" episodes via iTunes. My plan was to do the same with the Stargate series.
Unfortunately, the iTunes Store has been very slow in uploading the new episodes and it got to the point where the store was falling behind as new episodes came out. In order to stay caught up, I began looking for other sources.
Some months ago, Amazon Unbox advertised their integration with Tivo devices. The gist is that you can buy the digital downloads on Amazon and they are automatically downloaded to the Tivo. It isn't an instant process, but it happens within a few hours.
Last week, I went ahead and purchased the shows on Amazon instead of iTunes. I arrived home and found that the episodes were on my Tivo and in pretty good quality. I didn't need to put them on the iPod and hook that up - everything worked well out of the box with my existing setup. I was very pleased and over the weekend, I ordered the latest episodes from Amazon.
I've been very satisfied with my experience and I'll probably continue using Amazon to watch the rest of the Stargate episodes. The only downside to the service is that the episodes cannot be transferred to other Tivos or to other devices. However, Amazon keeps track of the episodes seen and I believe that you can download them again, if need be. Since I plan on getting the Stargate episodes on DVD (to complete my collection), this isn't the worst thing in the world.
So, consider this post a hearty endorsement of Amazon's service.
(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.
If I have any discipline, I'll be hitting the sack in about an hour, around nine o'clock. I finished my second day of resumed classes and I'm still getting everything in order. I've been very busy getting ready for classes and other work and I was happy to see myself finish up a bit of code a few days ahead of schedule. There's still more to do, but having something out where others can play with it is a good feeling.
I'm looking forward toward a busy quarter. I'm taking three courses - Machine Learning (CS), Applied Statistics, and a computer-based methods course. In addition to these classes, I've gotten myself involved with a local research project and the code I've been working on hopefully will enable a new way to survey and collect data about what people do throughout the day. Serious testing of the code begins next week.
I've also had a few moments to fix some Books bugs. I'm pretty proud of the fact that I finally found a way to replicate a months-old crashing bug and squash it. I'm waiting for some translations from the people doing the translating, and then I'll ship the next beta version.
This weekend, I have plans to take Willie to see some new films - Eragon and Night at the Museum - and on Sunday, I'll be working with the fine folks at the House Theatre of Chicago to get some podcasts online for their newest production, The Sparrow.
So, in summary, I'm pretty busy. I've been feeling stretched really thin lately, so earlier this week I gave up my spot on the Chicagoist roster. It was the right decision to make, given that I was having less and less time for contributions, and the site really deserves more than I am able to give at the present. I really enjoyed working with those guys and I'm really going to miss doing the interviews. Where else could I have gotten the opportunity to speak with people making movies, putting on parades, and Mr. T? It was a great thing while it lasted and I hope that they find someone new who appreciates what a great thing gig is.
Oh, and I have I mentioned yet this week what a great television show Friday Night Lights is? I was surprised to find a new episode on my Tivo when I got home, and I wasn't disappointed. I've been very impressed with this season's new programming. If I were giving out awards for the best show on the air right now, it would be Friday Night Lights because of the solid writing, great characters, and how it so thoroughly thrashed the expectations I had for it. I honestly expected the show to live two weeks tops on my weekly TV queue.
