Recent Comments:
Paramount and Kingston team up for movies on flash memory {Engadget}
Nov 2nd 2009 9:11PM "4GB of H.264 or equiv can produce a much better picture than 8GB of MPEG-2 used in a DL DVD."
Even if it was the same quality of DVD, you still have to go to the store to buy these things so there goes the convenience factor. What's the difference between hauling a packet of USB drives around these things and a box of DVD's? At least DVD copy protection is easily broken which makes it more flexible as a digital file. And Flash RAM isn't nearly as cheap as optical media so someone going to have to eat the extra cost and my guess is it won't be Paramount. I just don't see how any sane business person could give this the green light.
Any new format that is going to stand a chance in the marketplace has to have a compelling advantage over the status quo: either quality, convenience, or price. And it has to have CE industry wide agreement and all the studios on board. This has none of those things. Its just a slightly different form factor... a novelty and a gimmick. A few studios might agree to put a limited selection of titles out little things like this every so often to dip their toes in the water but I doubt any of them think these formats will ever gain any traction. Over the years micro-cassettes, Minidisc, DVD Audio, SACD, UMD have all come and gone without any real impact in the US market even though they all had tiny little sections devoted to them in stores for a while (and I mean tiny, like 3 feet or so).
Apple pitching $30 a month TV service for iTunes to the networks? {Engadget}
Nov 2nd 2009 8:51PM If this included HBO and Showtime shows I'd bite. For that, 30
dollars seems reasonable, especially if it gave me access to back
catalogs of show seasons and could be put on any iTunes capable
device.
Hulu may be a great idea but its achilles heel is stingy viewing
windows (one minute its there, next its gone). And the quality sucks
on anything larger than a 20" computer monitor. Netflix has much
better quality but again the selection is a problem. Very little new content that people actually want. And streaming,
while nice as an option, is just not always possible. The content
companies aren't stupid. They know that first run content is their
golden egg. They aren't going to let people access unlimited amounts
of their premium content be [i]anytime, anywhere for free[/i]. You
might get it for free with viewing window restrictions (hulu) or you
might get it anytime and anyplace but not get the newest content
(Netflix). But to get all three of these things you are going to
have to pay more.
Paramount and Kingston team up for movies on flash memory {Engadget}
Nov 2nd 2009 7:32PM No way in hell will they not have DRM.
But what does it really matter anyway? Since they are 4GB they won't even be DVD quality. And since DVD's DRM is easy to remove why not just buy the cheap DVD and rip your own digital copy at whatever quality you like?
This is just stupid. Its got all the inconvenience of physical media with none of the quality. Either give me instant access and convenience or give me the best available quality. If you can do neither you'll never make it.
Wall of Sound is loud, prohibitively expensive, and somewhat defeats the purpose {Engadget}
Nov 2nd 2009 7:20PM I pretty sure that for 4500 dollars you can buy a kick ass sound system that would have a little something neither this big ass box nor any of of those crappy 100 dollar iPod docks have... stereo separation.
This is like buying a 4500 dollar monaural speaker. If you've got the space for a 4 foot x 3 foot monolith you've probably got the space for a real amp and a real set of speakers.
Microsoft: 'We have no plans for Blu-ray on Xbox 360' {Engadget HD}
Oct 25th 2009 10:50AM Microsoft is just leaving money on the table then.
Not everybody wants to play in their sleazy "Microsoft Points" ecosystem. You are always left with some soft of unusable balance which means you to buy more points to use up the the remainder and so on and so on. I may rent a digital movie on occasion but it wont be through my Xbox360 because of this very fact.
In spite of what the marketing departments at Microsoft and Apple say, iTunes and XBLM are NOT "the only solution you really need". 5 and 6 dollars a pop for digital streaming is not a substitute for Netflix when you rent more than one or two discs a month. Its not even close.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Blu-ray review roundup {Engadget HD}
Oct 22nd 2009 6:56PM I rented the Blu-ray from Netflix last night. Amazing sound, beautiful picture. And I love a good eye candy movie as much as the next guy but this movie was painfully bad. At least the first Transformers had some moments. This movie makes Star Wars Episode 1 look good.
An well polished turd may be shiny and sparkle... but it is still a turd.
VUDU goes live on the LG BD390 {Engadget HD}
Oct 13th 2009 7:58PM I will indeed contact customer service. Maybe they can use the data as Ben suggested was collected during streaming and help troubleshoot the issue. Other than the three instances of buffering about 15 minutes into the film, the experience was flawless. Picture and sound were pretty amazing.
Edward, Its good to know that the money would be refunded to members should they cancel their membership but its a shame it has to be deducted in the first place. A 20 dollar draft is a pretty big commitment from someone who might just use the service every once in a while. It just seems like a bad idea to give anybody a reason to hesitate before trying an otherwise impressive service. I have to admit that whenever my credits get low I'd hesitate before pulling the trigger again and hitting the credit card for another 20 bucks. I regularly choose Apple TV's rentals over XBLM for precisely this reason.
VUDU throwing Rotten Tomatoes reviews on every movie it sells {Engadget}
Oct 13th 2009 1:05PM IMDB is like Yelp! restaurant reviews. Rotten Tomatoes is more like Zagat reviews. The fact that a real person has to look at the data and make some value judgments about what the data says makes all the difference in the world. You get enough 15-year old boys who think boobs, explosions and fast cars make a good movie and you can game the system. Curation makes all the difference in the reliability of crowdsourcing.
VUDU goes live on the LG BD390 {Engadget HD}
Oct 12th 2009 11:40PM I'm getting 14-17 Mbps whenever I check the speed at the Speakeasy site:
http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/
I'm not sure how accurate or consistent the results are from that site. The buffering happened 3 times in a row during the first 15 minutes. So far the rest of the movie has played without incident (about another hour). It is indeed quite impressive. Especially the surround mix.
I understand the credit card transaction fee issue but its just bad business to pass off that problem to your customers, especially if you are struggling to get people to use your service. All it does is raise the barrier to entry. They could tack on an extra 50 cents per rental and I'd be fine with it.
VUDU goes live on the LG BD390 {Engadget HD}
Oct 12th 2009 10:23PM Downloaded it and rented my free HDX movie (Fifth Element). Really nice picture and surround audio. Got several instances of annoying buffering though even with 17 Mbps down on a completely hardwired system (no wifi).
The Vudu selection is a bit thin and the payment system is a joke. They draft out 20 plus dollars at a time from your credit card. So its like Microsoft's sleazy points system... designed to make sure you always have a remaining balance. I expected more of Vudu.
