Cable television that has enjoyed being fairly regulation-free compared to over the air TV is in the crosshairs of the FCC regarding lowering the price of what they cable operators charge smaller television programmers for leasing space on spare cable channels. Also, the FCC wants a limit placed on overall ownership to no more than 30 percent of total cable subscribers.

Predictably the cable companies are crying foul, saying this will “cripple the industry” according the WSJ article below. The FCC points to history which says otherwise.

“In every other industry regulated by the FCC, there have been significant decreases in the price of services, such as in long-distance rates and wireless rates,” [FCC Chairman Kevin J.] Martin said in an interview last night. “But the one exception to that is cable rates, which have gone up almost 100 percent” over the past decade.

510 days ago, our family of five dropped TV, so I don’t have a dog in this fight, but that doesn’t stop me for rooting for the little guys. I’d rather the government wasn’t involved and the cable companies did this freely.

While we’re at it, let’s see a la carte pricing for channels. Instead of jamming hundreds of channels in packages at people, most of which have nothing worth watching, let people pick and choose the ones they want. Or has TV changed in the last 510 days that there is now a bunch of stuff worth watching on these package channels?

In 1998 a university professor from North Carolina created a site that focused on providing exhaustive descriptions of how stuff works.

Nine years later, Discovery, the folks behind Animal Planet and Discovery Channel are paying $250 million for all those juicy Google search results.

Acquiring HowStuffWorks will give Discovery the online firepower it has been lacking, Mr. Zaslav says. He wants to make the site, which draws about 3.8 million unique U.S. users a month, according to comScore Media Metrix, the foundation of Discovery’s digital push. HowStuffWorks says it has 11 million users globally.

A search query at this blog for ‘howstuffworks.com’ results in two links, the most recent link in February on how beer goggles work (pictured) and the first link in August 2003 showing how mood rings work. HowStuffWorks is a good site with solid content. It’s nice to see a payday for a site with good content.

IP Democracy digs deeper into Discovery’s plans, which will focus on video specifically:

HowStuffWorks is planning to embed videos from Discovery’s various channels as well as serve as an oulet for the display of new short-form videos that could very well turn into long-form series for Discovery’s cable networks if they prove to be popular or sticky enough.

I think the relationship will work better using HowStuffWorks content on the TV shows than trying to focus on video content from the TV show. Here’s an even better idea: take user submitted how stuff works like content and put it on TV — now that would be good for both. At the least Discovery needs to make it easy to embed in websites a la YouTube rather than forcing people to view only at HowStuffWorks. The ironic thing is Google and other search engines still don’t provide good search of the content inside videos.

Mathew Ingram points out that Discovery also purchased Treehugger for $10 million. The $250 million is Discovery’s biggest purchase to date.

Some believe Gene Simmons has over-marketed Kiss, others think he’s a genius and the rest are somewhere between.

When Simmons followed in The Osbournes footsteps producing a reality TV show I thought it would be really weak, but I caught a couple episodes through the Xbox Marketplace of the show Family Jewels and it was better than expected.

Gene Simmons isn’t playing the tongue-wagging Demon of Kiss, he’s makefup and marriage free with his former Playmate girlfriend, Shannon Tweed, and mother of their two kids Nick and Sophie. It’s a different side of the demon.

PVR The Family Jewels this weekend
Just heard about this from Long Paul on Sirius 19 Buzzsaw.

For those who have A&E on cable or satellite, this coming weekend they are running a 14 hour Family Jewels marathon starting Sunday September 30 at 5pm (EST, I think, see A&E TV schedule). Get your PVRs ready.

Ever buy something only to stop back a week or two later and see the price has dropped or the store across the street is running out the same thing cheaper? Good way to invoke instant buyer’s remorse.

Fortunately many retailers offer refunds for sale pricing, subject to a few rules like it can’t be a close-out price, internet-only deal, etc.

PriceProtectr.com is one of the more potentially useful sites/services I’ve looked at in awhile. Machines were made for work like Price Protectr (PP) is doing. Their service, free as of this writing and zero third party ads spotted (just how are they making money anyway?), will keep checking to see if the price for something you just bought went down and then email you when a lower price is detected so you can take action and manually request a refund.

For example, two of our recent bigger purchases are the Samsung HDTV 1080p which we paid $1,799 and the Sony Handycam for $999. After registering for PP, I went to Best Buy’s website and copied the sales URL page into Price Protectr.

PP showed me that our TV was on sale for $1,699 and the Handycam for $899. We printed the sales offer out and will be heading back to Best Buy later tonight to get our $200 refund. I’ll update this post if they give us any problems when we try to get the money back.

Those thinking about buying the new line of iPods announced today might want to bookmark Price Protectr now. Check out that iPod Touch model which seems typically Apple expensive at $399 for 16GB when you can now get the classic iPod with 160GB drive for $50 less ($349). 16GB might seem like a lot, but isn’t the minute you start building a good-sized music collection. A smaller 8GB iPod Touch is available for $299.

Apple slashed the price of its 4GB iPhone, which seemed to negatively impact stock price today (disclaimer: I own Apple stock) so if you just bought one of those, PP should be lighting up with good news soon (unless this is considered a close-out deal). If you’re buying any consumer electronics or TVs, this site could definitely help make sure you get the best deal.

Hmmcast #151 mp4

Passionate Star Trek fans, armed with Paramount Pictures blessing as long as no money is made, are continuing the adventures of Star Trek the Original Series (STOS).

Episode #3 of Star Trek New Voyages will debut on the internet August 23, 2007. For a limited time US residents can register for the contest (official sweepstakes rules) for a chance to watch the premiere and dine with Sulu, George Takei, the writers and director of the episode at the FINE ARTS THEATER in Beverly Hill.

You can find mirrors for the pilot, the first two episodes and some other goodies at the special downloads and episode downloads. A registered members only forum is also available to discuss Star Trek New Voyages which requires admin approval to access (mine took an hour or so to be approved).

As for the quality of the episodes, today’s Hmmcast gives a very brief teaser, so go download and check them out. It’s clear they’ve worked hard to preserve the feel of STOS. The acting is not really pro-quality but the sets and special effects are pretty faithful to STOS.

Update 9/29/07 9:24am PST: In the 2+ months since publishing these lists, I’ve learned that the game boxes don’t tell the complete truth about native 1080p games, thus prompting me to update and correct certain parts of the original post below in the interest of accuracy. I’ve tried to strike the original text that was wrong rather than replace. I’ve also updated both 1080p lists, and continue to update the lists since this was published, in case you, like I, remain interested in what games are available in native 1080p, and what games are advertised on game boxes “supporting” 1080p. Big difference, read on.

When the Playstation 3 first came out remember the huge Sony emphasis on 1080p games?

Since I didn’t have a 1080p capable television at the time and didn’t plan on buying one before getting the PS3, I didn’t pay that much attention to the scene nor how many titles actually supported the higher resolution (1920×1080).

It’s been some 8 months since the PS3 launched in America and now that we own a TV capable of viewing 1080p games and movies and have an Xbox 360 Elite and PS3 hooked up via HDMI cable, I decided to research what games are available for each system that output up to 1080p resolution natively. On the movie format front, if you check out EproductWars, Blu-Ray is stomping all over HD-DVD in nearly every category, but how does the 1080p games landscape appear?

The coverage from gaming sites on 1080p supported titles is a bit anemic out there, at least through my Google searches (maybe there are better queries?). Add to that, too many game reviews that don’t clearly profile whether or not games are capable of 1080p. And where is a sortable or chronological list of available now 1080p games from heavy hitter gaming sites like 1up.com? I’m not interested in games that are coming out in the future with 1080p support, what games can we go out and buy right now that support 1080p?

Seems like all that emphasis by Sony to stamp 1080p in our brains hasn’t translated very well to the gaming web yet. Perhaps because getting into a 1080p capable TV still costs over $1,000? I’m sure some good gaming resources exist out there for 1080p owners somewhere but my research so far hasn’t borne much fruit. In fact, I found at least one list that showed games that were 1080p that actually aren’t like Resistance Fall of Man which is 720p.

And the winner of the most available native 1080p games goes to … Xbox 360 PS3
As of this writing to my surprise I learned that the Xbox 360 actually has advertises on game boxes more 1080p games (34) available than the PS3 (17). Twice as many as the PS3, wow. Surprising considering that there is a smaller number of Xbox 360 Elite systems sold with HDMI cable output than traditional Xbox 360.

It’s important to note the use of the word “native” in the bolded text above. I realize that back on May 24 of this year with PS3 firmware upgrade 1.8 the PS3 upscales DVDs, PS1 and PS2 games to 1080p:

The capability to upscale DVDs to HD quality is a feature normally only associated with top range DVD players, and its inclusion in the latest firmware upgrade now allows PS3 owners with an existing DVD collection to dramatically enhance the viewing pleasure of their DVD collection when viewed through a compatible HD TV set1. Not only can DVD movies be enhanced to full 1080p HD quality but so too will PlayStation 2 and PlayStation games be upscaled to provide much improved gaming pleasure.

Those aren’t native 1080p games and not what I’m tracking. I’m looking for games that were specifically made to support 1080p resolution. Most games produced in the last few years have targeted 720p.

You’d think with all the push to buy these big, fancy LCD and plasma televisions that there would be a lot more than 50 games that actually support 1080p resolution natively released, wouldn’t you? Or do you think that’s a good number at this time? It does appear that more and more new game titles support 1080p, so the developers are ramping up. Chances are very good if you buy a movie to game title, it supports 1080p like The Transformers, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

Also, I found it interesting that some cross platform titles are 1080p on one system but not on the other like Icon (advertises 1080p on Xbox 360, but not on PS3). This happens more often with the Xbox 360 than the PS3, so one shouldn’t assume that because one title on the Xbox 360 is 1080p the same title on the PS3 will be or vice versa.

It would be interesting to see a comparison of the number of PS3 sold to Xbox 360 Elite as I’m guessing there are more PS3 sold than Xbox 360 Elite. Is anybody reading aware of a published comparison (link) somewhere? While it is possible to receive 1080p output through a component cable using a limited number of LCD/Plasma TVs, most non-Xbox 360 Elite owners aren’t getting 1080p through component cable. This is something else I learned in my research. I wasn’t aware you could get 1080p in another way besides using an HDMI cable. Also learned that you can only watch Blu-ray at 1080p through an HDMI cable, not using component cables, which is something Sony chose to enforce through their Blu-Ray specs.

The following lists of 1080p games should give other new 1080p capable TV owners the ability to print the list and go to the store straight to the game titles of interest. Or, if you have a mobile device capable of surfing the web, just bookmark the pages below and recall whenever you need them.

The 1080p lists
You can view each 1080p games list at the following pages which will continue to be updated as more games are verified:

Xbox 360 1080p games (update 9/29/07 to include separate list for game box advertised 1080p)
PS3 1080p games

Corrections, additions and updates
I’m certain these compiled lists are incomplete, so please help by suggesting games for Xbox 360 / PS3 that support 1080p in the comments below that you have personally verified are 1080p compatible. Also if you have a correction for something listed that’s not 1080p that is listed as supported, please leave that comment below.

In every case on the 1080p game lists I’ve personally confirmed 1080p support either by the print on the back of the game box or buying/renting/playing the game at 1080p myself. Please only suggest games for the lists that are available in stores now as these lists are intended to be useful to others wanting to be able to shop/rent/play confirmed 1080p titles.

I’m also considering taking screenshots of some of these games to go with the lists and/or categorizing them further (genre, rating, review, etc). It really depends on the interest level from others how far these lists are taken in the future.

After spending some more one on one time with a new 1080p TV, I’m impressed with how much better the picture is than 1080i. Didn’t think it could be that big a difference and boy was I wrong.

This coming weekend Best Buy is running a Reward Zone member promotion for 10-12% off TVs and other goodies. I’ve had my eye on several different 1080p LCDs since buying a PS3 but the price has always been too high for the ones that looked the best. I’ve been tracking this 42″ Westinghouse from $1,800+ down to $1,100 but the picture quality doesn’t seem to compare to other 1080p LCD TVs that were in the $2,000-4,000+ range (formerly in the $3,000-6,000+ range).

Never say never, but I can’t see us spending over $2,000 on a television. In all but one case of television purchases over the year in our family, we’ve spent less than $750. I haven’t seen a 1080p HDTV for under $750 but there might be some really low-end model out there somewhere. As the prices continue to fall within a year we should see 1080p HDTVs for around $750 or less — our household TV buying hotzone.

But I couldn’t wait another year.

Last night we purchased the Samsung 40″ 1080p Flat-Panel LCD HDTV Model: LN-T4066F (see Best Buy online listing here) which regularly sells for $2,299 and was on sale for $1,999. The manager approved the promotional 10% discount a few days early and thus we came home with this black beauty early for $500 off the regular price ($1,799). Nice. This makes the list as the second most expensive TV we’ve ever purchased. Our 61″ Panasonic projection TV which we bought at Sears over 10 years ago — and has since gone to TV heaven — cost just under $2,000.

We also purchased the four year extended warranty ($250) for the TV and a 900 watt UPS tower with surge protector ($179). The total bill with tax ran just under $2,500. None of this went on credit since we’re still in the midst of our no credit cards experiment.

Here’s some additional details and pictures which with compressing for web and my subpar photography don’t really do justice to the actual Samsung LCD TV.

There is a special “game mode” that enhances the TV for videogaming. I have the PS3 and Xbox 360 Elite both hooked up via 1080p. In the case of the Xbox 360, it automatically detected 1080p on boot, but with the PS3 I needed to go into settings and make the adjustment manually.

I noticed right away that the Xbox 360 blade menu at 1080p doesn’t look as good as the Sony PS3 menu. Something about the blade is cloudier looking and I like how whatever game you have highlighed in the games menu automatically changes the background. The Xbox Live content still far surpasses the mostly empty locker of the Playstation Store, but Sony is working on it. Every Thursday you can pretty much count on something new showing up in the Playstation store and I’m guessing, though I didn’t add it up, that for under $200 you can buy everything in the Playstation Store, including the PS1 games.

Compare the Playstation Store text readability at 1080i resolution on our older Samsung TV from a past post:

To this:

Some other picture quality things I’ve noticed thus far include:

- some of our DVDs have noticeable artifacts being played at 1080p.
- the detail on the actor’s faces in the Blu-Ray Mission Impossible is stunning. You can see cracks in the actor’s faces that I never noticed seeing before. Better than seeing it in the theater

The owner’s manual offered in both English and Spanish is a stout 87 pages and I’m still working my way through it. Worth noting are the USB ports that allow use of a function called Wiselink which allows easily inserting any USB storage device with photos and mp3 to play through the TV. Since the PS3 and Xbox 360 can both do that, it’s kind of redundant.

There is a good selection of inputs including: 3 HDMI ports, 1 PC, 2 S-VIDEO, 2 Component, 1 DVI (shared with HDMI port 1), 2 antennae (air and cable). As mentioned above, room to hook up both PS3 and Xbox 360 Elite via HDMI as well as a PC, DVD and older game systems. Below is a picture of the free demo Grand Turismo HD concept v1.2 sporting those realistic looking mountains.

Nope, still no cable, satellite or even over the air channels
Seems almost criminal not having cable, satellite or even over the air reception with the new LCD TV. This now runs up the television total in our home to six total television sets with a 50/50 split between HDTV and non-HDTV:

(1) HDTV 1080p - Samsung - 3 HDMI inputs. Location: Mom & Dad bedroom
(2) HDTV 1080i / 720p - with 2 HDMI inputs.
HDTV 1080i / 720p - only composite inputs. Location (both): Family room
(3) Other non-HDTV - Location: Kids bedroom, one in family room (yes, there are three TVs in the family room)

I’m thinking it will still take another few years to become 100% HDTV in our home. The non-HDTVs will be replaced as necessary with HDTVs.

With this new purchase our family’s streak of being without television is approaching 400 days and could be in jeopardy as NFL preseason starts in less than a month. Then again, it might just be used as a really nice game monitor and to play DVDs and Blu-Ray movies.

I’m curious how many readers have 1080p televisions? For those who don’t, are you waiting for the prices to come down like we have for awhile? For those with one or more 1080p TVs, are you able to go back to buying non-1080p sets now? As I type this, I’m realizing our last three TV purchases have all been progressively better HDTV sets. There was only $100 difference in the two other HDTV sets, but this one is well over three times the cost which is unusual using our historic buying patterns.

Some people like to gleefully annoint YouTube as the bastion of original content. It is. And isn’t.

It could be the place to display where the next technological version of Hollywood emerges. While I’m in favor of amateur created videos, watch and share my fair share as well as have been producing my own videos (Hmmcast) regularly since the start of this year, I don’t see any live video sites that TechCrunch mentions in this post making a YouTube-like splash. Why not?

YouTube emerged as a breeding ground for copyright infringement
Miraculously YouTube had enough attention focused on original videos and away from infringing content to persuade Google to buy them instead of meeting the original Napster’s fate. I don’t care how popular YouTube is today, and despite being a shareholder, still strongly believe that the YouTube acquisition has been Google’s biggest strategic blunder to date. If they lose the lawsuit to Viacom and it’s conceivable to believe they might if it makes it to court, this could cost them a lot more than the billion plus they overpaid for YouTube. Courts won’t throw copyright out the window and it’s very difficult for any unbiased third party to objectively analyze the level of copyright infringement at YouTube and say Google is doing everything they can to clear this up.

I know, I know, they are working on it. They are supposed to have some amazing technology that will filter and identify copyright infringing content that rushes in and saves the day and I hope it works. My guess is that it will work about as well as current anti-spam filtering technology.

Back to why there will be no live YouTube video breakthrough site: live video sites aren’t anything new. Historically the only amateur produced live video people have been willing to pay for en masse is adult content and that has been happening at sites like iFriends.com since the late nineties. It’s worth noting that iFriends is more mainstream-focused on their homepage today than they were nearly 10 years ago when they were primarily adult focused. Compare this to Zinio which I wrote about in the last post which has gone the opposite way by being almost anti-adult to creating an entire separate website dedicated to adult magazines.

Popular geeks like Robert Scoble and Chris Pirillo and newcomer Justin.TV might be able to garner a few followers to be casually interested, but the whole Ed TV thing has nowhere close to the legs of sharing clips of copyrighted content or low-quality bootlegged camera phone concert videos. People are looking for the good stuff, you know, the stuff you usually have to pay to see.

Napster, anyone?

Besides, there is the issue of what it takes to produce great live video. Takes a lot more than just a camera and a subject. There are some great reasonably priced tools out there that can produce studio-like live effects like Visual Communicator now owned by Adobe, but the vast majority of live video content is going to be as boring as hell. It’s going to be people saying and doing mundane activities with fixed camera shots and backgrounds. Pet rock video.

What will happen with live video in the future?
I think we’ll see the NFL, MLB and NBA directly or with a big name partner — wouldn’t it be ironic if that was YouTube? — offer live sports through the web everywhere (not only outside the United States). They have already begun to experiment and the first one to pull the trigger worldwide will be their own mini YouTube of live video more than any of the sites TechCrunch mentioned. I’m kind of surprised that the three major professional sports haven’t seen the potential here yet.

And when the US Government gets around to legalizing online gambling — and they will, mark my words — we’ll see live internet broadcast sports with the ability to wager. We’ll see interactive commercials that people can experience while watching the event instead of being forced to skip through at some predefined intervals.

Hollywood will finally wise up and start using the internet as a secondary or perhaps even primary distribution channel. A lot of the networks offer TV shows legally on their websites. The decentralization of TV, bring it. People like our family who can and would like to receive the content through the internet legally are ready.

Finally, a third party aggregation site like YouTube isn’t going to have — or likely be given — the rights to make money off the backs of the people producing compelling live content that people are willing to pay for any time soon. The whole notion of ad-supported everything is flawed.

Rob from 2Dolphins was curious how our family has been doing without television. We’ve now been without TV for 365+ days (you can follow along with a counter on the left sidebar on the homepage).

Let’s start with the kids.

The American Academy of Pediatrics estimates that children in the United States watch about four hours of television every day. They recommend that children under age 2 should not watch any and older children should watch no more than 2 hours a day of quality programming.

Our children are older than that, but thought it was worth shoehorning that into this piece. I’ve broken this up by each member of the family and asked the following questions:

1. What do you miss about television?
2. What have you been doing with your TV watching time the last year?
3. How much would you watch TV if we got it back?

14 year old son
1. Nothing.
2. Watching DVDs and playing Xbox 360.
3. Not as much as I used to (couple hours a day before).

15 year old son
1. Nothing.
2. Video games.
3. An hour a day while eating.

17 year old son
1. No. I don’t care.
2. Playing WoW.
3. Not much. I don’t know maybe a couple hours a week.

Mother
1. Lifetime and background noise late at night.
2. Reading more books.
3. Not sure.

Me
1. Being able to follow some TV series that aren’t yet available online.
2. Watched more videos online. Started creating more of my own videos.
3. A couple hours a week, maybe.

There are a few shows I’ve missed. We tried to catch the FOX show 24 on the official Fox Myspace site but it was clumsy. 24 has been renewed for two years.

VoIP + internet + TV = $99/month deal
You’ve probably seen or heard about the deal Comcast is running. While nobody in our family is that interested or excited in getting TV back we are considering getting VoIP in our home again instead of using Skype as our residence line. The Skype experiment has gone poorly. When we asked Comcast about adding only VoIP to our account they told us the cost would be about $6 a month less than having all three using the triple play deal.

Downside of the triple play deal? TV would only be hooked up to one room. Even though the cabling is there for all rooms, the would only connect to one TV. It would be an additional charge to hook up to all our TVs. This is what annoys me about the cable company. They are kind of like the phone company in that they nickel and dime you over stupid little things. Look, the cabling is there, it’s a matter of screwing in a cable at one location versus another outside, it’s not like running all new cabling around the house which I’d fully understand being charged additional.

It’s the little things like these that remind me why I don’t want to increase our monthly bill and get TV again. Yeah, maybe it’s only another 6 bones, but those extra bones start to add up. Will we make it another year without TV? Maybe.

What will be our family’s next “going without” conquest? We’re thinking about axing credit cards next — all of them. Stay tuned as the going without days continue …

People camped out for Bob Barker’s last day hosting The Price is Right game show taped Wednesday June 6, 2007. Barker hosted the show for 35 years. I watched the few times throughout the years and it was good as far as game shows go. Barker is a legendary game show host and if he’s not the longest running game show host ever, he’s got to be among them. He wasn’t as creepy as Gene Rayburn or kissing all the women like Richard Dawson on Family Feud. Classy, funny at the right times and amazingly patient with contestants.

Die-hard fans from across the country huddled in sleeping bags for days to say goodbye to Barker and be a part of his last show. CBS sends out more tickets than its 325-seat studio can accommodate, so fans who want a seat need to get in line early.

Watch Barker skillfully handle a contestant that is a little dense in the following classic scene:

In this video a woman comes down and her shirt comes off. The announcer says: “Bob, they have given their all for you!”

And then there is the stoner whose bids all contain the number 420:

Can’t forget the guy with the backflip reaction when he wins a patio set complete with Jimmy Kimmel commentary:

No replacement for Barker has been announced yet. They probably should just shut it down in Barker’s honor. It’s the game show equivalent of following Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. Any readers watch game shows? Your favorite ever?