Streaming Media - December 2007/January 2008 - (Page 18) Unplugged s everal months ago, I decided to unplug from the cable company. I’m not talking about switching to satellite or anything like that—I’m talking about fully disconnecting from broadcast television. A few years ago I put a Mac mini on our TV and put about 500GB of DVDs on the home server. Since then, we’ve been using the delightfully simple Apple Front Row interface with the nice six-button Apple Remote that comes with every Mac. But even with all that content, my wife begged me not to unplug. Not because she watches that many shows— in fact, our Time Warner DVR was mostly filled with Nick Jr. and Food Network shows. Since most of the shows we watch were on heavy rotation, we had literally hundreds of episodes. But she just didn’t want to give up the option of browsing through the channels to see what was on. I argued thusly: We were paying more than $60 a month for basic cable, money that could be better spent buying DVDs or other content or subscribing to Netflix and watching all the episodes for a lower monthly rate. There were other factors in my urge to unplug. I had finally “upgraded” (?) our family from our beautiful 36” CRT monitor to a 50” high-definition rear-projection TV. And oh, what a sad upgrade that was. For one, the CRT had done such a beautiful job (with its slow refreshing phosphors) of making even highly compressed cartoons look fantastic. Watching the high-definition TV was just like seeing TV on a PC for the first time—grainy, pixelated, and jagged. I tried watching other content. But all of the channels suddenly looked worse, washed out compared to the ultra-bright CRT; compression artifacts on almost every channel grated at my soul. And I don’t even want to talk about having to constantly hit the “aspect” button to try to make the video look right. It was like a horrible karmic nightmare where I was being punished for all the low-resolution video I streamed online in the ’90s. My television looked like full-screen internet video, only without the buffering. Seeing that even my HD receiver was going to punish me with full-screen squares of video, I cut the cord. With only our 8Mbps cable modem left and our Vonage phone, we dropped to a single-play subscriber, the cable company’s worst nightmare: Customers of the $40 per month “dumb pipe.” I figured I’d just buy the shows I needed from iTunes. All last season I heard people raving about NBC’s Heroes. On several visits to my parents’ house, I had noticed that they had the first season DVD, still wrapped in the box and gathering dust. So I borrowed it to catch up on the show for the coming season. Several red-eye, 18 STREAMING MEDIA December2007/January 2008 weekend-night marathons later, I was fully up-to-date. Needing the fix of the next few seasons, I went to the iTunes music store. Well, you probably already know what happened. This all occurred right after NBC said “Later, iTunes.” I was about to pay for what I guess would have been about $6 worth of episodes, of which NBC probably would have gotten $3, but NBC wouldn’t have it. So I went to NBC.com. I watched the first episode (season 2) of Heroes. For some reason, I was able to watch it with no commercials. Later, I watched the next episode. This time, I was shown three different “talk to Chuck” Charles Schwab commercials, which seemed very optimized to my demographic, customized to the demographic they thought I belonged to. Apparently, people who watch Heroes have trouble with their stockbrokers not caring about the paltry sums they can invest, or they have their own half-baked ideas about how to invest their money. “Chuck” suggested I talk to him to resolve any conflict. I already use the family broker and have for years, but thanks. I heard that ABC.com streams in “high-definition” (looks like a 2Mbps stream; pretty thin for HD, but I won’t quibble), so I tried watching Pushing Daisies. Gorgeous interface— beautiful, engrossing, interactive telescoping ads I couldn’t skip for a product I would never buy. Well, what can I say? I tried to give NBC a few dollars, but they opted to advertise to me instead. I hope Schwab and NBC’s other advertisers pay them enough to make up for the episodes I couldn’t buy. I even tried walking out of the room while the commercial is playing, a strategy that works equally well with TV and computer. So I’m $60 a month richer, I absolutely love Heroes, and I haven’t paid a dime to watch it. The quality is lower than it was on my cable. I might buy the second season boxed set; I might not. I own six computers and one television. I own an iPhone. I don’t own a Blu-ray player. Is this really the future? Damien Stolarz (www.damienstolarz.com) is an emerging technology and media consultant and the author of several books including Hands-On Guide to Video Blogging and Podcasting (Focal Press). Comments? Email us at letters@streamingmedia.com, or check the masthead for other ways to contact us. Emerging Media By Damien Stolarz http://NBC.com http://ABC.com http://www.damienstolarz.com
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