We got rid of DISH Network over a year ago since we were mostly watching about four channels and DVRing the same sitcom episodes to watch over and over. $60+ a month to do that? Preposterous. And that was just for television.
Fast forward to summer 2010. So, the kids are using their laptops to stream TV shows from Hulu, nbc.com and cbs.com (among other sites), and I bought a few Roku HD players for $60 each to stream quite a bit of content from Netflix (thanks for adding newer TV series!) and hopefully Hulu Plus sometime in the next month. These units are located in the master bedroom and the formal living room.
Is this ala-carte programming? Pretty close. Combined with OTA HD programming, the Roku boxes and a Blu-ray player that streams HD movies, YouTube and Pandora, we've covered a lot of ground for programming without any need for cable TV, satellite or u-verse -- all of which are $60+ a month, mostly for content we never would watch.
So, here goes (and this is why the face of TV is changing):
Netflix: $8.99/month for unlimited streaming of movies, TV shows, children's programming and a ton more -- and a single DVD rental out at a time to boot. A lot of the content is HD as well, for free.
Hulu Plus: $9.99/month for unlimited streaming of just about any TV show from any major network, even though we have to wait a day after it airs originally. Oh, and it's in HD. Again, for free.
Over-the-air broadcast HD programs: $0.00/month
High-speed internet: $44.99 to Cox for their 20Mbps service that feeds all this: four laptop PCs, an iPhone, and iPod Touch, two Roku HD boxes, an LG Blu-ray connected player, a Sony PS3, a Nintendo Wii and an IP camera to monitor a room in our house. That's a lotta WiFi goin' on.
So, for $63.97 a month, we get really fast high-speed internet (the "dumb pipe" by all accounts) and pay less than $20 per month as part of that total to consume as much television, movie, music and other content -- on any device throughout the house from game consoles to smartphones to STBs for the bedroom -- as we wish. There are some limits, yes. But, it's the content the family wants, when they want it, on any device they want it on, with no "appointment television" or goofy DVR fees and HD fees that the cable and telecom companies want to "fee us to death" with -- for 98% of the content we would never watch anyway.
Netflix seems ubiquitous everywhere (on all the Roku boxes, the PS3, the LG Blu-ray player and the iPhone/iPod Touch apps), and Hulu Plus is on the Roku boxes and on the iPhone and iPod Touch (via apps). The WiFi router in our house, amazingly, has not melted yet.
Just three years ago I would have not imagined we would be watching TV and movies this way (we rarely rent DVDs or Blu-ray discs). And, for so little money all things considered. Sound complicated? It isn't. Seriously.
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
Battery technology - or lack thereof
You know, I wanted to love Android. That is, Google's mobile operating system. I owned an HTC Hero from day one and bought the HTV EVO on day one. The Hero was laggy, crash-prone but a decent phone. The EVO, while absolutely cutting edge, was great for a while, then went south once I upgraded to the 2.2 software over-the-air. The "Froyo" version of Google's operating system killed my enthusiasm for Android. How? 1) The 2.2 software made all my streaming audio apps sound like AM radio (Pandora, last.fm and Slacker to name a few). 2) The HTC Sense system crashed more often (no, I didn't have any task killers installed). 3) The built-in Exchange client provided by HTC was far from useful - no real-time email push (even set to "as items arrive") and when it did work, it was reallllly slow. 4) the final nail in the coffin: battery life. The EVO has had pretty crappy battery life from the day I bought it, but with 2.2 I could not make it through a workday with light usage before the thing went dead. I was a slave to chargers everywhere: by the bed at home, in the kitchen at home (near the living room), on my desk at work and in the car. I had to keep this thing plugged in *constantly* to ensure I would not be holding a fully discharged phone every day, even with light usage.
So, the deal: while there were some world-class features on the EVO (and in Android in general), what is the point of having a smartphone if you're not mobile? That is, having to be charging all the time (making you "wired" instead of "wireless"). There were more apps I installed that I never used (they seemed cool at the time), like Fring, Ustream, Google gesture search, Chrome to phone and others. If I thought of even using some of these features, the battery would laugh at me and die instantly. Google: you've created a state-of-the-art mobile OS here (not flawless, but excellent). If you could test things before releasing them in a wide distribution, I'd be happier. How Froyo 2.2 got out of testing while being able to destroy the sound quality of the largest streaming audio app in the Android Market (Pandora) is quite unfathomable. But even worse (and this will continue to stymie most smartphones): battery technology. It HAS to catch up to the phone hardware and software. If folks are going to carry pocket computers all day, they can't have them going dead after half a 24-hour day (or in a quarter of a day if used). There are different expectations from consumers here: folks don't consider Android smartphones as equitable as laptop computers. They expect all-day performance, not five hours or less. It may not be fair, but it is what it is.
So, after a two-month love affair, I am going back to BlackBerry, and specifically the 8530. Before I started this Android experiment with the Hero last October, the aging Curve 8330 was a tank of a machine. Yes, the screen was ancient insofar as resolution and the features looked paltry compared to all the new touchscreen smartphones everywhere, but it worked perfectly at its core competencies. They are: email, texting, MMS, twitter, facebook, ebay, sprint TV, bank of america and on and on. Yeah, the browser stunk a bit -- and it still does in the 8530 compared to the WebKit offerings in the iPhone 4 and EVO. But, I'm prepared to step down from a mobile supercomputer to a functional smartphone if it can get me through the day (or a few days) with moderate usage and gives me the core functions I need (not the dozens of flashy apps that are svelte, but that don't get used). If Verizon gets the iPhone 4, I could honestly step into Jobsland; locked-down, totalitarian mobile atmosphere and all. I can't stand AT&T so the iPhone 4, for now, is not an option for me. It could be early next year. Maybe.
Or, if RIM decides to roll out newer phones with the BlackBerry OS6 onboard (like the new Torch has), I could stay with BlackBerry. A few things have proven true: the BlackBerry App World has all the apps I used frequently and the battery life on the newer units (like the Curve 8530 I bought this weekend after getting fed up with the EVO) is stellar. Or maybe it's just marginally better since my battery life expectations have gone true south ever since I've been on the Android bandwagon.
So, welcome back, physical keyboard and smaller screen. It's been a while. And the EVO? Fetched $420 on eBay within 24 hours of posting the auction. It seems they are sold out online and in most Sprint stores. I am assuming home and car charger sales are also spiking as folks realize they must have the EVO plugged in everywhere they are.
Maybe later, Google. For now, some serious engineering is in order with your platform and/or the Android smartphone manufacturers in terms of shoehorning basic core competencies into your smartphones.
So, the deal: while there were some world-class features on the EVO (and in Android in general), what is the point of having a smartphone if you're not mobile? That is, having to be charging all the time (making you "wired" instead of "wireless"). There were more apps I installed that I never used (they seemed cool at the time), like Fring, Ustream, Google gesture search, Chrome to phone and others. If I thought of even using some of these features, the battery would laugh at me and die instantly. Google: you've created a state-of-the-art mobile OS here (not flawless, but excellent). If you could test things before releasing them in a wide distribution, I'd be happier. How Froyo 2.2 got out of testing while being able to destroy the sound quality of the largest streaming audio app in the Android Market (Pandora) is quite unfathomable. But even worse (and this will continue to stymie most smartphones): battery technology. It HAS to catch up to the phone hardware and software. If folks are going to carry pocket computers all day, they can't have them going dead after half a 24-hour day (or in a quarter of a day if used). There are different expectations from consumers here: folks don't consider Android smartphones as equitable as laptop computers. They expect all-day performance, not five hours or less. It may not be fair, but it is what it is.
So, after a two-month love affair, I am going back to BlackBerry, and specifically the 8530. Before I started this Android experiment with the Hero last October, the aging Curve 8330 was a tank of a machine. Yes, the screen was ancient insofar as resolution and the features looked paltry compared to all the new touchscreen smartphones everywhere, but it worked perfectly at its core competencies. They are: email, texting, MMS, twitter, facebook, ebay, sprint TV, bank of america and on and on. Yeah, the browser stunk a bit -- and it still does in the 8530 compared to the WebKit offerings in the iPhone 4 and EVO. But, I'm prepared to step down from a mobile supercomputer to a functional smartphone if it can get me through the day (or a few days) with moderate usage and gives me the core functions I need (not the dozens of flashy apps that are svelte, but that don't get used). If Verizon gets the iPhone 4, I could honestly step into Jobsland; locked-down, totalitarian mobile atmosphere and all. I can't stand AT&T so the iPhone 4, for now, is not an option for me. It could be early next year. Maybe.
Or, if RIM decides to roll out newer phones with the BlackBerry OS6 onboard (like the new Torch has), I could stay with BlackBerry. A few things have proven true: the BlackBerry App World has all the apps I used frequently and the battery life on the newer units (like the Curve 8530 I bought this weekend after getting fed up with the EVO) is stellar. Or maybe it's just marginally better since my battery life expectations have gone true south ever since I've been on the Android bandwagon.
So, welcome back, physical keyboard and smaller screen. It's been a while. And the EVO? Fetched $420 on eBay within 24 hours of posting the auction. It seems they are sold out online and in most Sprint stores. I am assuming home and car charger sales are also spiking as folks realize they must have the EVO plugged in everywhere they are.
Maybe later, Google. For now, some serious engineering is in order with your platform and/or the Android smartphone manufacturers in terms of shoehorning basic core competencies into your smartphones.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos on choices we make
Delivered to the 2010 graduating class at Princeton University....
Friday, June 18, 2010
Great James Cameron interview
He really knows what he is talking about here. If he ran a business (oh wait...he does), it would be larger than what Apple has accomplished in the last five years.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Ajami: The Obama Spell Is Broken - WSJ.com
Ajami: The Obama Spell Is Broken - WSJ.com
Follow this link and read after watching the below video -- do you agree?
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Samsung HMX-U10 pocket 1080p HD camcorder
Just got this little bugger from Buy.com for $90 since it is four months into the market and is so incredibly outdated already (heh) -- it's amazing for such a small device. Who knew -- 1080p HD video recording in your shirt pocket! I wouldn't pay $180 for this, but at half that, it's a steal.
Google's smokescreen when it came to Google Buzz's rollout
Great analysis here of Google's ineptness when it came to rolling out Google Buzz. What a misfire.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Minority Report is here - astounding
Can you imagine buying a computer in 5 to 10 years that has this kind of interface instead of a keyboard and a mouse? This demo is by Oblong Systems, who created the faux-tech in the movie Minority Report. The tech is actually here now. Wow!
Thursday, February 04, 2010
Op-Ed Contributor - Microsoft’s Creative Destruction - NYTimes.com
Op-Ed Contributor - Microsoft’s Creative Destruction - NYTimes.com
Wow -- is Microsoft doomed in the next decade? Hard to fathom right now....but perhaps so.
Skynet is upon us
I've asked several friends over the years this question: are we, as a human race (not a colored race, regardless of color) better off now than we were 150 years ago? Has technology really made humans better? Sure, we do things every day that seemed like science fiction in 1980. We live longer (not sure that's a good thing). We marvel at all the advancements we've made in just the last 25 years. But then again, things are much worse than in 1860.
Many of us don't get outside to enjoy the thrills of nature as much as we need to. We don't have jobs or activities that get us moving, get us exercising. We live in secular little worlds with too much self-centeredness, too many pharmaceuticals clogging up a brilliant human design (note: not really alluding to anything religious there), and so much advanced technology -- designed by imperfect human beings -- that things are bound to screw up more and more and more as time goes by. I'm not on a James Cameron-esque crusade about the evils of advancing technology (and de-evolving humans in a way as a result), but maybe I am. Toyota's "car-thinks-for-itself" automobile computer programming glitches are just the first sign (okay, maybe the 123rd sign).
What's next? Designer computer viruses that can infect humans like biological viruses? Perhaps 1860 was not so bad after all. Plenty of sunshine, lots of exercise, great food (not the processed junk we all eat today) and a great all-around lifetime all things considered. Things are too complicated for the average IQ in 2010. We're becoming dumber. Food for thought (that is, organic, non-GMO food).
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