lot of sports stuff lately... i have some picks & pans...
jeff and rick came over to watch the world series game 1 tonight, which got me wondering: what are the best sports to watch for any type of social gathering?
baseball would actually probably be pretty far down on the list, as the game tends to drag a bit and not enough big events really happen. football may be a little better, since touchdowns, sacks and interceptions tend to often more often than baseball home runs, pick-offs and plays at the plate. hockey and basketball are probably a little better, since they have more constant scoring. basketball might be the best since points are always being scored, although the start-and-stop nature of basketball kind of hurts it a little. sports like golf and soccer have got to be the worst, where highlight-type moments occur very seldomly.
i'm actually more the type of viewer to enjoy surfing the dial more when it comes to sports. most of the time it can be a bit tough to stick to one 3 hour sporting event and not start to get bored. since i got the NHL center ice package this season, it's sweet when like half a dozen games are on and you can just flip around, finding the one with the best pace or a heated rivalry.
quite often the bulk of my sunday is spent just lounging around and watching whatever major sports are on. on average, between national satellite coverage and local antenna, i seem to be able to get about 5 HD NFL games each week, and have yet to be forced to watch dallas in standard definition. the sunday night ESPN game looks great, although the commentators are just awful. i can't pull in ABC in high-def yet, but hopefully that'll change in the next few months.
now that i mention ESPN, that reminds me how much they're starting to suck. they threw out their NHL deal, which given that i've got access to all the local feeds of the games anyway i don't really care that much about, plus OLN's national coverage so far isn't that bad. ESPN just seemed to get too big for their own britches, or something. some of their "oringal programming" has been pretty good, such as playmakers and some sports movies here and there. but their facination with milking the crap out of poker has gotten so absurd. honestly, i'd rather see a couple unranked college football teams play than to see poker. almost anything is better than poker in my opinion, how bout racquetball instead? lacrosse? and should i really feel all that bad for absolutely hating stuart scott at this point? his street slang bullshit is completely annoying and i'm tired of pretending that lazy eye or whatever doesn't completely freak me out. i'm completely fine with ESPN losing some baseball games to OLN and basketball to TNT, assuming HD versions of both channels are available to directv soon.
--j
Saturday, October 15, 2005
i feel obligated to comment on the latest news from apple concerning video in iTunes, cuz it seems like a pretty big deal.
steve jobs has long said that he didn't really believe in the concept of a video-playing iPod. i don't think this is a case of selling out, moreso being a bit pressured by the swiftly moving tech market. personally, i just don't see it really catching on well. forget whatever content is available for download, it's kind of irrelevant. just the nature of what an iPod is useful for, doesn't really involve holding it steady and watching a video on it. sure, an occasional cross-country traveler or daily train commuters may be able to take advantage, but i have difficulty believing that's a large portion of the iPod userbase. people may love the iPod's interface, but they sure as hell don't gawk at it the whole time they're listening to music.
apple's serving 320x240 resolution video for $1.99, which includes music videos and hour long tv shows. i'm trying to look at that price and resolution and really spin it in a positive light, but it's tough. i know this is just kind of the tip of the iceberg in this whole apple video scheme, but that resolution for that price is frankly quite poor. plus it's 4:3, not even widescreen. the $1.99 makes sense compared to $.99 for music, but i've never really agreed with their music prices either.
i think on the surface, $1.99 per TV episode (decidedly much worse for a music video) isn't too bad for people now and then catching up on missed episodes. but as far as bang-for-your-buck, it's a relatively awful price point. at least with music, you can justify that you plan to keep the music as long as you have the ability to hear, with TV eps... not all that many shows have a lot of repeat watchability, particularly dramas. so now it's $2 just to watch something once and then not really care about owning it? i saw that the first seasons of lost and desperate housewives were about $35 each, compare that with roughly $39 per season from amazon for the respective DVDs. when you look at it that way, iTunes videos are terrible ideas.
going even further, the aforementioned DVDs have a resolution of 720x480 and multi-channel audio. the iTunes video will look terrible if you scale it to 2-3 times its size to fill a computer screen. it's just simply a no brainer that buying the DVD is much more economically sound.
don't get me wrong, apple is sort of opening the door to a terrific idea. i've relied on newsgroup/bittorrent sources for archiving and catching up on episodes for the past year. at this point i even avoid tivo'ing certain shows because i can get them in better quality online, commercial-free. so to people like me, what apple's doing doesn't really mean quite as much. but i guess to all those people who request VHS taped shows on TV forums, they'd be interested in paying $2 to avoid missing a favorite show.
apple's always been against offering a subscription renting-your-music plan for iTunes music, which i think is wise. but for video, i think a subscription service actually makes more sense, given that 95% of the content out there most people are satisfied with watching once. currently we follow like roughly a dozen shows, it's just a terrible deal if you have to pay per episode to catch up on those. seems like it makes more sense to pay $10/mo or something to always have access to episodes.
all in all, i see the good in what they're doing, just that the resolution and cost seem relatively terrible to me. but who knows, i say the same thing about podcasting and that's still a bit of a buzzword lately. it'll be interesting to see the success or failure of iTunes video in the next six months.
--j
steve jobs has long said that he didn't really believe in the concept of a video-playing iPod. i don't think this is a case of selling out, moreso being a bit pressured by the swiftly moving tech market. personally, i just don't see it really catching on well. forget whatever content is available for download, it's kind of irrelevant. just the nature of what an iPod is useful for, doesn't really involve holding it steady and watching a video on it. sure, an occasional cross-country traveler or daily train commuters may be able to take advantage, but i have difficulty believing that's a large portion of the iPod userbase. people may love the iPod's interface, but they sure as hell don't gawk at it the whole time they're listening to music.
apple's serving 320x240 resolution video for $1.99, which includes music videos and hour long tv shows. i'm trying to look at that price and resolution and really spin it in a positive light, but it's tough. i know this is just kind of the tip of the iceberg in this whole apple video scheme, but that resolution for that price is frankly quite poor. plus it's 4:3, not even widescreen. the $1.99 makes sense compared to $.99 for music, but i've never really agreed with their music prices either.
i think on the surface, $1.99 per TV episode (decidedly much worse for a music video) isn't too bad for people now and then catching up on missed episodes. but as far as bang-for-your-buck, it's a relatively awful price point. at least with music, you can justify that you plan to keep the music as long as you have the ability to hear, with TV eps... not all that many shows have a lot of repeat watchability, particularly dramas. so now it's $2 just to watch something once and then not really care about owning it? i saw that the first seasons of lost and desperate housewives were about $35 each, compare that with roughly $39 per season from amazon for the respective DVDs. when you look at it that way, iTunes videos are terrible ideas.
going even further, the aforementioned DVDs have a resolution of 720x480 and multi-channel audio. the iTunes video will look terrible if you scale it to 2-3 times its size to fill a computer screen. it's just simply a no brainer that buying the DVD is much more economically sound.
don't get me wrong, apple is sort of opening the door to a terrific idea. i've relied on newsgroup/bittorrent sources for archiving and catching up on episodes for the past year. at this point i even avoid tivo'ing certain shows because i can get them in better quality online, commercial-free. so to people like me, what apple's doing doesn't really mean quite as much. but i guess to all those people who request VHS taped shows on TV forums, they'd be interested in paying $2 to avoid missing a favorite show.
apple's always been against offering a subscription renting-your-music plan for iTunes music, which i think is wise. but for video, i think a subscription service actually makes more sense, given that 95% of the content out there most people are satisfied with watching once. currently we follow like roughly a dozen shows, it's just a terrible deal if you have to pay per episode to catch up on those. seems like it makes more sense to pay $10/mo or something to always have access to episodes.
all in all, i see the good in what they're doing, just that the resolution and cost seem relatively terrible to me. but who knows, i say the same thing about podcasting and that's still a bit of a buzzword lately. it'll be interesting to see the success or failure of iTunes video in the next six months.
--j
Friday, October 07, 2005
what if i at least say that i've thought about posting? does that at least somewhat justify my drought lately?
we haven't done all that much lately, haven't felt overly social. we rounded up some friends from each of our workplaces and ended up having a total of 15 people go to the final rangers game of the season, using some tickets my dad scored for free. and last night we hit up the first post-lockout stars game, which we both loved.
i think i say it in every post, but really all i've come to do with my free time is catch up on tv shows. i hardly ever watch any dvd's or play any games lately. kind of a full-time task just keeping up with current shows. plus i still spend a lot of time downloading/sampling music, which i guess i should technically just list as a hobby now. for some reason it gives me a thrill to just suddenly find a great album (like fall out boy's "from under the cork tree" or the postal services "give up") out of nowhere.
...and let's kill it there.
--j
we haven't done all that much lately, haven't felt overly social. we rounded up some friends from each of our workplaces and ended up having a total of 15 people go to the final rangers game of the season, using some tickets my dad scored for free. and last night we hit up the first post-lockout stars game, which we both loved.
i think i say it in every post, but really all i've come to do with my free time is catch up on tv shows. i hardly ever watch any dvd's or play any games lately. kind of a full-time task just keeping up with current shows. plus i still spend a lot of time downloading/sampling music, which i guess i should technically just list as a hobby now. for some reason it gives me a thrill to just suddenly find a great album (like fall out boy's "from under the cork tree" or the postal services "give up") out of nowhere.
...and let's kill it there.
--j
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