One of my favorite parts of Saturday Night Live over the years has been the repeatable skits like the classic Mr. Bill, the Coneheads, Da Bears with Chris Farley (anything with Chris Farley), Eddie Murphy as Mr. Rogers and most recently MacGruber.
I’m not a big fan of any of the current SNL cast, but these MacGruber skits are a riot. Thanks to NBC and Hulu you can watch a bunch of them. Hilarious.net has collected all of them to date as well.
MacGruber is a spoof on the 80s show Macgyver, the guy who could get out of jams using normal household objects. I can’t get the MacGruber theme song out of my head.
Over the weekend I hung my first interior door which at times was equally comical. Was able to bust up the tense moments by singing the MacGruber song.
I’m sure some might disagree but I think MacGruber is an SNL classic skit and worthy of tuning in each week to check out – or DVR through to see if there are new episodes. Or just wait for Hulu to have them. What do you like, if anything, about the current SNL?
Submitted for your approval, the Savannah College of Art and Design (aka SKAD) along with Walker & Company are working on 8 graphic novels from the Twilight Zone!!! (just had to go exclamation crazy on this one)
They will be adapting these stories from the original Rod Serling scripts and releasing the first two in Fall 2008: "Walking Distance" and "The After Hours." My favorite Twilight Zone episode, "To Serve Man" will not be in the lineup, but can be seen on CBS. This one wasn’t penned by Serling but the timing of the ending is classic Twilight Zone twist.
Thanks to natashawescoat for the post alerting me to this. The only thing her post was missing was a link. Went to SCAD, typed "Twilight Zone" into the query and the story was the topmost link.
Rod Serling’s widow, Carol, had this to say about the graphic novels:
"I suspect that my husband, Rod Serling, the ‘father’ of ‘The Twilight Zone,’ would wholeheartedly approve of this ‘new dimension’ of his stories. The adaptations and fine graphic pictures have truly caught the feeling and climate of that wondrous world of imagination,"
Where these books can be bought — not in … The Twilight Zone
Walker Books for Young Readers (walkeryoungreaders.com) is making them and they will be for sale through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders and Waldenbooks as well as a bunch of independent booksellers.
Here are links for the Amazon listings I found along with the price as of this writing (very subject to change) and the release date, where applicable:
One of these days being it is my favorite show ever on TV I should do some sort of episodic tribute here at Hmm to The Twilight Zone. Perhaps go season by season, favorite episode by episode through the list. If you have never seen an episode of the original Twilight Zone series than put at least one of the definitive season DVDs for the first three seasons (when it was best) on your holiday shopping list. Season four and five were still good, but the first three seasons were incredible.
These graphic novels are not the only adaptions created. There are some audio dramas out there that were playing on Sirius at one time and also available via Amazon on CD. I caught parts of a few of these radio dramas when I had Sirius (don’t any more) and they seemed pretty well done. I need to buy one of these radio drama packages and give them a thorough Hmm review.
Turbo is considered to be one of the worst Judas Priest albums, so let’s hope the turbo theme works better for DISH TV. Got this email today:
Did I read that right? We’re getting full on 1080p action through DISH? No, not exactly, they will only be offering 1080p video on demand movies (pay per view). Will this cost extra? It doesn’t say if the 1080p pay per view movies will cost more than the standard definition like Xbox and the PS3 are currently doing through their networks.
All DISH Network HD customers have been Turbo-charged! In the early morning hours of 8/1 DISH Network reinvented high definition! Current HD customers had the next generation of HD downloaded right to their receivers!
It sucks that this is for pay per view and not for all of their HD channels. Sort of a non announcement. Turbo … what?
Add to that today seeing the release of Starship Troopers 1-3 trilogy Blu-ray (2008) for $56.95 at Amazon or $59.99 at Best Buy (where we bought it). Oh yeah it’s a beautiful day to be at 1080p!
The trilogy offers the first Starship Troopers movie (a classic!), Starship Troopers 2 which was kind of lame and the newest straight to DVD Starship Troopers 3 Marauders. This is BD-live enabled which means extras and goodies through a separate menu including the ability to "join the fight" against the bugs by uploading a headshot of yourself. Just click on the "BD-Live" option in the main menu screen and wait for BD-live to load.
Expect to be staring at this for an awkward amount of time, even if you have a fast connection:
Waiting. Man, why does the loading take so long for BD-live? And it’s every me too. I have a PS3, use the hard drive already, cache some content, buy some faster servers, whatever it takes. Once you get into the BD-live menu, you still need to register for an account before you can "join the fight." That only takes a little bit of time, but then you are sent to your email to find a link to upload a head shot.
It’s a clumsy, laborious process. Will save you some hassle, make sure your headshot is 640×480, anything larger or that much smaller and your face will not fit in the matte. Once you’ve done that you can watch scenes with your face super-imposed on a Starship Trooper solider. Would have preferred a networked game blasting bugs with a fellow Starship Troopers fan.
As for the Starship Troopers 3 movie? It’s better than the second movie, but not as good as the first. Good to see Casper Van Dien back but I miss Denise Richards. Her absence isn’t explained in the movie at all. The Marauders part doesn’t come until the last act of the film and feels kind of Robocop to me. Grade: C
I can’t do what with my own name until I earn 40 Karma points?
This has to be among the most idiotic uses of karma point motivation I’ve seen on the internet, but I’ll get back to that.
If you’ve been Rip Van Winkle the last year, let me update you on the status of the tech web: the Attack of the Clone Wars are still upon us. And trust me it’s about as interesting as the Star Wars flick sharing the same name. I’ve been looking into and spending more time in other areas looking for, and at times finding, inspiration and excitement. More on that by separate post.
On the chat/conversation/social front, Pownce and to a much lesser extent Jaiku (acquired by Google last year) used to be the hip, cool services to visit when Twitter was down. Both those services are getting a lot less buzz, at least from the people I’m following. FriendFeed is continuing to gain traction as it offers something a little different than the others: a master aggregator of your activity stream. At least the activity you are exposing through FriendFeed, anyway. FriendFeed has added more features to share new content and create conversations around links like their quasi-chatroom called simply, rooms. I haven’t dipped a toe in there yet, but am open to suggestions for good rooms to join.
I’ve also been reading some praise being left at the welcome mat of Plurk. This morning I went and registered and what’s the first thing I see when I hit the form submit button?
The expression on Mr. T’s face is priceless. I couldn’t help but smile. Resisted the urge to add the caption: “Hey suckah, if you think Plurk is going to beat out Twitter I’ll bust you up.”
I’m a fan of the A-Team and all but how is this any positive sign of the future for Plurk when with a pinprick amount of the traffic and users that Twitter has currently they are having downtime and error screens during registration? I know, it’s a new service and we’re supposed to be patient, give the new kids a break. Label this premature extrapolation but I’m weary of cutting any of these wannabe clone services slack.
I should point out that despite the error screen above, it appears like my registration actually worked. I was using Firefox 2.0.0.14 in case any of the Plurk devs are lurking and curious. No matter, I doubt seriously it was a browser issue.
To me this illustrates the biggest problem with too many Web 2.0 services these days. Are we truly analyzing if using these clones are a lateral or downward move over more popular, similar services? My excitement level for a lot of these ‘new’ services has waned considerably in 2008 because I don’t see much in frequently writing posts like this one asking what is new here? What’s different, what’s fresh? Plurk has a somewhat interesting post that shows messages on a different style timeline. Woohoo, somebody get Murdock out of the mental ward. And karma points to encourage more activity at a site are a breakthrough? Not.
No loyalty for web services
I haven’t seen anything that exciting and different with Pownce and Jaiku versus Twitter. Sure, there are a few features that differ between them but by far the most useful component of the three is the number of people using the service (Twitter). Whatever service has the crowd in a service geared around social interaction, has the lion’s share of eyeballs and mindshare. Wrong or right, like it or lump it, that’s the way it is. Due to sheer numbers MySpace and Facebook remain leaders in their field, despite the attempts to nip their ankles by clones.
Today, what’s the #1 complaint about Twitter? It goes down too much. Any service — new, old, experienced, inexperienced, in beta, etc — has no breaks in this department. I don’t care if it’s FREE now, or ad-supported or whatever, because we all know it won’t be free forever. It’s surprising Twitter hasn’t busted out a monetization strategy by now, maybe the reality is what they keep saying: they don’t have one. The Twitter crew doesn’t strike me as being the most organized team. They just got a $15 million cash infusion, so maybe they’ll be able upgrade the backend. They say they’re trying.
I’m in Plurk now (lol, big deal) as of June 6, 2008. Feel free to add me as your friend/follower/fellow virtual drifter and I’ll try and return in kind. Name squatter more likely, as I was in Twitter originally.
Forgive me for going Lemming on this one because I’m not seeing what makes Plurk special. And the whole karma points motivation thing I started this post with is lame when somebody — including a freaking bot — can setup a competing Twitter account (assuming it’s not down) and have access to all that services benefits instantly. No hoop jumping. No spamming your friends “in real time” to sign up.
You have the comment space below, your own blog (trackback in), or use another service to show me the way; I’m not only listening here. If a miracle happens and Plurk somehow becomes more popular and stable than Twitter, I’ll use the service more. Ain’t web loyalty a peach?
Although I’d put your money on Mr. T making a comeback with a ‘new’ version of the A-Team happening first.
This morning’s news that Toshiba is officially ceasing support of HD DVD and will shut down production in March signals a (small) victory for Blu-ray as many publications are touting, but also means the price of existing HD DVD inventory will plummet soon:
"We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called ‘next-generation format war’ and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop," said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation
The writing was already on the wall with Wal-mart and Netflix saying they would only carry Blu-ray following the CES 2008 bombshell that Warner Bros. was going only Blu-ray. Now watch those PS3 sales soar even further.
Where does this leave the Xbox 360 which has the HD DVD as an add-on drive? Making a standalone Blu-ray Xbox 360 drive, possibly available in a few months, if you believe what alleged insiders told SmartHouse:
Insiders at Microsoft in the USA have told SmartHouse that Microsoft has already configured a standalone Blu-ray player that can be connected into an Xbox 360 and that subject to internal marketing and sales approvals the model could be on sale within 3 months
There is further speculation that Microsoft is working on a newer version of an Xbox 360 with a built-in Blu-ray drive, but I don’t think that will happen, at least in 2008. Microsoft would be wiser to continue to promote their Xbox Live Marketplace as a viable next generation movie download platform. They have the best online gaming and video area but Sony has HOME up its sleeve.
One big problem that Microsoft has is that their downloads are all wrapped in a DRM scheme on a proprietary drive while the PS3 supports using any hard drive. You can easily copy downloaded content on the PS3 to an external drive and can even run Linux. The Xbox 360 even with their 120GB hard drive is outclassed by the PS3 storage architecture.
Back to HD DVD, set your bargain bin sensor on high alert. In particular, watch for goodies like the Star Trek Original Series HD DVD sets. Star Trek Original Series Season One HD DVD (affiliate) I’ve seen the first season at the local Fred Meyer and hope the other two will be released. It’s possible all three will be available on Blu-ray.
More TV Seasons, please I’ve been saying for some time that one major weakness in both nextgen HD formats is the lack of TV seasons. A few TV seasons are trickling in on both HD DVD and Blu-ray, but not nearly the amount that are available in DVD. When/if this changes, Blu-ray might have a fighting chance for a little while staving off downloads.
It remains important when looking at the future of movies to remember collectors. People like buying and owning physical media. You can touch, display, there’s artwork and inserts and creative packaging. You can’t do any of that with downloadable media.
My wife only asked for one thing on Valentine’s Day: TV. I spent a little too much time on V-Day in the negotiation phase with the three primary TV providers: DirecTV, the satellite service who we’d been with years ago and enjoyed, Comcast cable who provides our internet and DishNetwork. The picture below gives up which one we went with and where I’ve been the last few days.
As far as pricing goes, all three with the programming we wanted were about the same. With Dish we could get the most channels in HD (1080i) through their HD Ultra plan including HDNet and HDNet movies, which I’ve been curious to check out. My wife wanted Showtime, which all three offered. Only cable offered Showtime On Demand which we were interested in.
I think what put Dish over the top was that we hadn’t been customers with them before and they agreed to waive the 24 month contract provision (I hate contracts!). They also were willing to come out the next day and complete the installation and setup. With the impending three day weekend, this scored additional points. And true to their word, their friendly and helpful technician was at our door the next day nearly an hour earlier than the range of times they said he’d show up (noon-5). Nice.
We received their newest model HD DVR which allows for up to 350 hours of standard programming or 50 hours in HD.
Two not better than one dish Something I did not like about the Dish install experience was the placement of not one, but two satellite dishes on our roof. The salesman never said we’d have to have two dishes or that this might even be a possibility. Although the installation was professional, it looks a bit cheesy on the corner of the front of our house. Almost like we are advertising to the neighborhood: hey look, we don’t have just one satellite, we have two, neener, neener.
Wrong programming package and pricing Dish also screwed up the programming order and pricing they promised. The salesman promised us $74.99/month with no contract and fees, Showtime, local channels (yes, you have to pay more for those with satellite), HD DVR receiver, an additional standard receiver, the America 100 package and HD Ultra ($20/mo). Our first bill was supposed to be $104.99 on March 4. When I registered online with our account number I saw a bill over $200 and that they’d already charged us $49.99. They also didn’t list Showtime.
Off to customer support to call them while the install guy continued to work outside. We got it straightened out but I had to eat half the $49.99 "no contract" charge, despite the salesman assurance that we would not be charged anything until March 4. I was tempted to tell him to pack up his equipment and take the two dishes back with him, but decided to let this one go.
I removed the no TV counter from the home page since it no longer applies. Now tell me, friendly readers, what is all this great live TV programming we’ve been missing? What are your favorite shows? Our DVR is waiting to be programmed.
Update 11:50am PST: After posting this, I’ve received some questions elsewhere about why we went 605 days without it? I didn’t link to the original post when we dumped TV and reviewed Vongo, or the follow-up post after one year where we still didn’t have it. Here are both those posts so you can go back through the history:
I was also asked why we went back after being away for so long? We got a month to month contract. We can be back for a couple months and leave again if the value isn’t there. Although it was my wife that was the primary reason we went back, I don’t think she wants to pay $75/month for something we don’t use enough. Time will tell on this one.
While we have TV again, I’d like to see all there is to offer and see if the value is there these days. With the writer’s strike over and the Mariners season about to kick off, I’m not complaining that we have TV again. None of this is to say we have it for a few months and then get rid of it again though.
3:41pm PST: Andrew asked in the comments below what the Dish satellite shape was like:
For a limited time only, iTunes is offering the pilot episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is being offered free at iTunes (will launch iTunes).
The series focuses on Sara Connor protecting her son John in Los Angeles from the threats of the future and rise of the machines. Despite my F review of T3 Rise of the Machines this is one of the few TV shows I’ve been looking forward to watching.
If you miss the free download window from iTunes, it’s also available for 160 Microsoft Points per episode on Xbox Live. Available on Hulu? Not yet. Hat tip to Free iTunes Store Downloads that tracks freebies at iTunes.
Remember the wall that switches from TV to scenery in the science fiction movie Total Recall? The scene where Sharon Stone’s character tries to district Arnold Schwarzenegger from paying attention to the TV playing on the wall.
Panasonic, who is responsible for the 150 inch plasma TV at CES shared a concept that sounds similar to that movie scene:
… concept called LifeWall, and something called “You Know Me TV,” which involves having full wall adjustable video screens. This a lot like a concept of full-wall HD screens that Microsoft’s Bill Gates mentioned in his keynote.
Still in search of that “must be there [at CES 2008] to see this” moment. With the cool media advancements of Podtech’s Bloghaus with live video through Mogulus (see mogulus.com/podtech_ces_live), it’s like you are almost in the room talking to the people beating their feet (literally) up and down the show floor.
Update 1/8/08 2:03pm PST: Gizmodo has pictures of the 150-inch TV showing an elephant next to a man. Gives perspective of the size.
Last night my Hulu.com beta invite arrived. Hulu is a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp’s online video. Immediately I logged in and created a new password and started poking around. You mean I can use Hulu to legally watch full episodes of shows like The Simpsons? Right on!
As I write this post, I’m watching Treehouse of Horror XVIII from this year’s season, something I can’t do anywhere else online (legally). Offline we don’t have cable, satellite or even an over the air antenna setup, so even the free channels aren’t an option in our household. For the last 500+ days, our only form of television has been through DVDs purchased of seasons. We just finished watching the first seasons of Benson and Silver Spoons, for example.
The two major problems with Joost I have is that the content doesn’t appeal to me and it’s P2P based. I’ve tried a couple different times to get into Joost but it’s like watching most of the channels on TV: there’s a lot of channels but very little of interest to me. Maybe some others reading love all the Joost content and can tell me what I’m missing? Shortly after launching Joost I’m already ready to shut it down.
Not the case for Hulu where I could instantly scan the available choices and start watching.
Hulu offers professional content from: Bravo, E! Entertainment, FOX, IGN, NBC Universal, Sci Fi, FX, Sundance Channel, Sony, USA, Universal Pictures, Comedy Time, MGM, Fight Networks, Ford Models, Fuel TV, G4, GameSpot, Golf Channel, Movieola, WWE, National Geographic, Oxygen, Speed Channel, TVG, TV.com, TV Guide, Versus, X17, LX.TV, Rehearsals, Reveille, Style Network and TVG Horse Racing.
This includes some of our newer favorite shows like: 24, Cops, Las Vegas, Prison Break, My Name is Earl and The Simpsons as well as some classics like The A-Team, Night Gallery and WKRP in Cincinatti. Also there are some new shows we haven’t seen like: Bionic Woman. Some of the shows listed are only clips like Saturday Night Live, which is kind of lame.
The first thing I tried to do was run Hulu on the PS3 through our 1080p HDTV. No dice in the Playstation browser, so my next test will be to see if I can pipe the Hulu video experience through the Xbox 360 and Vista version of Media Center. I’d much prefer to watch this on the TV, even if it’s still in a browser type setup.
Confined by the browser (F11 still doesn’t cut it)
One strength Joost has over Hulu is not being confined to the browser. If there’s a workaround for this, please let me know in the comments. TV and movies are best enjoyed on a television or decent-sized monitor, not in a browser.
I know the F11 trick in Firefox, but it still leaves remnants of the browser on screen. When you go full screen through Hulu you get large black blocky space around the frame, not truly stretched full screen video as shown in the video screenshot to the right below. In Joost you can get a better true full screen experience than Hulu.
Hulu options available include: a small popout window, full screen (with browser remnants), lower lights which dims frame colors around the viewing area and the ability to rate the shows from 1-5 stars. I’d trade all these options for a single fully stretched, high quality picture. Let me pay a few bucks and get HD and I’ll be reaching for my wallet.
With the new shows you can watch the four most recent episodes which is a bit of a bummer if you’re just now getting invited and the episodes start at #3 or #4. With WKRP in Cincinatti the entire first season was available. Wow, that’s quite a value considering we paid $20 for the DVD! Night Gallery, however only had four episodes from the first season, so not every series is complete. Still, there’s enough content to watch at Hulu to keep one busy for weeks, if not months.
The quality of the video is merely OK. It’s equal to or better than the quality of other TV in browser implementations but it’s not DVD-quality and a far cry from HD quality. When you resize the windows, the video will resize. At full screen you’ll see some pixelation and artifacts.
No, not commercial free like DVDs
At Hulu you will have to endure 30 second commercial breaks that you can’t fast forward through, but these seem less intrusive than commercials on television. In the Simpsons episode I counted three 30 second commercial breaks. No problem.
Summary and grade
With the wide variety and quality content offered through Hulu for free (there are commercials, again), this is easily my favorite TV video site available on the web. Sadly, it’s not available outside the United States at this time but according to a post on the Hulu blog:
Today, the service is a U.S. service only. That said, our intention is to make Hulu’s growing content lineup available worldwide. Given that this requires clearing the rights for each show or film in each specific geography, it will take time. In no uncertain terms, the Hulu team is committed to making great programming available across the globe. I’ve been very encouraged by how many content providers have already been working along these lines so that their programs can be available over the internet to a much larger, global audience.
Hulu doesn’t really compare to user-generated sites like YouTube. You can’t upload your own videos to Hulu and you are kind of an island as far as an individual user (no social features that I can see yet), but you can embed clips from your favorite shows in your site/blog like say Opera Man from Saturday Night Live:
All in all, I’m very impressed and surprised by how much I liked Hulu on a first look. We’ll be spending a good amount of time at Hulu over the next few weeks. If/when they expand this to a global audience and add some more features like videoblogs and user-created content, work on higher quality (yes, even it’s for a fee), they’ll have a serious competitor in the online video sector. They already do with the content alone. Grade: B
I’ve waited to weigh in on the writer’s strike mainly because I hoped it would be settled right away, that both parties would reach an acceptable deal and that it would be a minor entertainment speed bump. It’s dragging into week four now, the holidays are looming and TV shows already shot from completed scripts are running out. If something good is going to happen, the next couple weeks of negotiations are critical.
Readers already know I’m pro-writer and if they don’t, they’ll learn quickly from past posts like Another Sweatshop Blog Emerges. Those who have been writing in the blog format for any length of time and consistency fully realize it’s work. And for any kind of legal work, I strongly support fair, reasonable pay.
Writers, by and large, are not paid fairly. Sure, there are exceptions and please spare naming them in the comments. Stephen King is more than fairly compensated. Dean Koontz makes good money. Danielle Steele isn’t suffering. Once you break through like these writers have, and huge kudos to them for doing so, being compensated fairly for each project is no longer an issue.
To better understand the disequity the star on the silver screen (think Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston) making millions for what essentially is a few months work versus a writer making significantly less who spent at a minimum the same amount of time and probably much more. Actors aren’t brain surgeons and writers aren’t the also largely underpaid nurses. Once you factor in disparity in residual income from creative works and the current dispute: web income, one can better comprehend why writers are striking.
Joss Whedon, the man behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Serenity and other fine works writes eloquently:
It’s always hard. Not just dealing with obtuse, intrusive studio execs, temperamental stars and family-prohibiting hours. Those are producer issues as much as anything else. Not just trying to get your first script sold, or seen, or finished, when nobody around believes you can/will/should… the ACT of writing is hard. When Buffy was flowing at its flowingest, David Greenwalt used to turn to me at some point during every torturous story-breaking session and say “Why is it still hard? When do we just get to be good at it?” I’ll only bore you with one theory: because every good story needs to be completely personal (so there are no guidelines) and completely universal (so it’s all been done). It’s just never simple.
It’s always been like this, right down to the producers’ rhetoric and the suggestions that they can live well without us. That’s what they were saying back in 1933 when ten top crafters of movie scripts agreed to organize. Immediately and predictably, the studios resisted … In 1951, the Guild began to represent the writers of that newfangled thing called television … The strike of 1960 - which lasted 151 days, making it the longest strike in Hollywood until the Writers Guild later bettered its own record - was the one that secured a pension plan as well as residual payments when a movie was run on television … It wasn’t until a threatened strike in ‘77 that we began receiving [TV residuals] in perpetuity … In 1981, there was a three-month WGA strike to establish compensation in the then-new markets of “pay TV” and home video … The strike of [1988] year lasted 22 weeks - one day longer than the strike of ‘60. [In 2007] the burgeoning import of Internet delivery and other new technologies meant that we had to take a stand. There are too many dollars at stake for us not to establish our place at the table.
I’m hoping this gets settled much sooner than the 151 day strike of 1960. When it comes to episodic television, even though we haven’t had TV in our home for over 500 days, we eventually watch TV as it trickles down to DVD format and/or appears (legally) on the web. This situation could suck worse for those who pay to have cable or satellite and need to endure a steady diet of unscripted TV and game shows.
To play devil’s advocate, this could have more people making the move like our family: canceling TV altogether. As big a fan of internet video as I am, the general population isn’t ready for crappy, pixelated web video to replace episodic television.
When will the strike end?
A deal will get done. I think it most likely happens in the next couple weeks before Christmas. If not, then this could drag on like 1960 because the sense of urgency and compassion for writers will begin to deteriorate when the holidays pass. Not from me, I’m with the writers all the way. Give them a fair, reasonable deal.
I’ve seen the first season at the local Fred Meyer and hope the other two will be released. It’s possible all three will be available on Blu-ray.
Hulu options available include: a small popout window, full screen (with browser remnants), lower lights which dims frame colors around the viewing area and the ability to rate the shows from 1-5 stars. I’d trade all these options for a single fully stretched, high quality picture. Let me pay a few bucks and get HD and I’ll be reaching for my wallet.
