Tonight while grocery shopping we stopped in the movie section and picked out a new complete TV season to watch. We were thinking about Boston Legal but then there it was: Ironside! I’m a fan of Raymond Burr’s work, including the classic Perry Mason. Would it be hyperbolic to say that’s the best trial television series ever? Is there a better TV mystery show with trial suspense moments like Perry Mason?
As for Ironside, any readers that are fans of the show that made it’s world premiere on March 28, 1966 a few years before I was even born.
It’s after 9pm and we just arrived home. Whew, what a day! We came home with a car loaded with groceries and I’m looking to laugh all over again at WKRP in Cincinnati - The Complete First Season ($32.99 affiliate). One of the things that is cool about buying the complete first seasons on DVD is seeing how different shows started out. In syndication it seemed to me like I kept seeing some of the same shows repeated. I don’t remember how WKRP got started so I’m looking forward to find out this evening, assuming I don’t fall asleep.
One negative: I noticed on the back of the WKRP DVD box it says:
“Some of the original musical content has been edited for this DVD release”
Bummer! Is this another example of the RIAA ripping their claws into what myself and I’m sure others would deem Fair Use (do you?)?
Because of pesky music rights, the songs don’t remain the same. “Hot Blooded” is not playing when mild-mannered newsman Les Nessman (Richard Sanders) puts on a toupee in anticipation of an awards-dinner date with bombshell station receptionist Jennifer (Loni Anderson). It’s “Beautiful Dreamer” and not “Fly Me to the Moon” that chimes when Jennifer’s doorbell is sounded. Any number of generic songs have replaced the contemporary and classic rock so vital to WKRP, which is, after all, set at a radio station, albeit one that is best known for its farm reports
Say it with me now: Fair Use! The playing of a small snippet of music on a sitcom about a fictional radio station and it’s zany characters should be Fair Use. If I was in a band I’d want snippets of my music played on shows like WKRP — yes, even on the DVD that’s being sold — and I’m curious if musical artists feel that way too. It’s not like they were playing a significant portion of the songs and sadly we the fans get generic tunes in place of what historically was there.
The DVD contains all 22 episodes from the first season (Loni Anderson, mmm, ahhh, ohhh!), audio commentary by creator and cast as well as exclusive DVD featurettes including all new cast interviews. Wonder if they share any anti-RIAA sentiments about the changing of the music too? Maybe if/when all four WKRP seasons are released, we’ll be able to get the versions with the RIAA music in them.
Near the top of my favorite Scotty lines in Star Trek The Original Series is: “Check the language banks and find out what … a ‘heater’ is?”
That comes from episode #49 from the second season: A Piece of Action where an alien world is evolving around a book from the roaring twenties. The ‘heater’ in question is a weapon.
Scotty died in 2005 and his ashes were flew into space. Amazon Web Services evangelist and Syndic8 guru Jeff Barr’s wife Carmen is a real estate agent here locally and was negotiating the sale of Scotty’s house. How did that work out, Jeff?
I had assumed Scotty’s ashes would be floating around space for a long, long time exploring the galaxy but that was not the case.
The payload was found in its designated recovery zone 20 days after Farmington, Conn.-based UP Aerospace sent it up in a 20-foot rocket on April 28.
The rocket, the first to be successfully launched into space from the fledgling Spaceport America in southern New Mexico, made a 4-minute suborbital flight before drifting back to Earth.
From this are we to assume there is no way to tack along our ashes when we exit this life on a probe visiting other galaxies?
In case you weren’t paying attention to negative Apple rumors and news this week, there was plenty. AppleTV finally launched overpriced and under gunned — 40GB hard drive, what are they smoking? They doubled the hard disk space of the Xbox 360 which launched in November 2005. Head’s up people, we can walk into any Best Buy and pick up a 500GB hard drive for $250 or less, why can’t we get a device for $300 that includes at least half the storage space? I realize that it streams from your Mac or PC and you can have tons of storage there, but why only 40GB on the device itself?
For those falling for the Macs are more secure spiel (I never was in that camp), a Symantec report found Microsoft Windows more secure than the Mac. Finally, the “have a nice weekend” kicker: Leopard which was supposed to be released in April could be delayed until October because:
If Leopard supports only Windows XP, then the chances of the new OS attracting Windows users to buy an Apple computer decreases, stated industry observers.
Apple only ever said they would release Leopard in “Spring,” which technically ends June 21 - just in time for Apple to release Leopard at WWDC this year should they choose to.
Pick your spin cycle. After all, industry observers are often wrong. It’s possible the study that found Microsoft more secure was biased and flawed, although the report cites the following numbers:
More than 35 Windows vulnerabilities were found, each taking an average of 21 days to fix … OS X - the cool, chilled out entertainer of operating systems - had 43 vulnerabilities and a whopping 66-day turnaround on fixes.
Ouch.
As for AppleTV which could eventually be coined LemonTV arriving at a typically (Apple) overpriced $299. Earlier this week I spent a good 20 minutes chatting with the confused online Apple help. My test question seemed fairly straightforward, but clearly puzzled the person helping me. See if you can figure this out in less than 20 minutes.
I have the 1.25 Ghz PowerPC G4 eMac that is connected via ethernet. It does not have a WiFi card built-in. We have a LinkSYS wireless router. My question for support was would AppleTV work without needing me to deal with an Airport base station? Could I just connect through the same wireless network?
The answer is yes, but took 20 minutes to get there.
Not an impressive week for Apple but their stock (disclaimer: I’m a shareholder) wasn’t really impacted. I remain semi-anxious to buy an Intel Mac and replace my aging eMac. Yeah, I’ll be among the last on the Mac block to upgrade but I don’t have this burning desire to keep up with every new Apple product. My preference is to buy a Mac with Leopard preinstalled and if that’s October or beyond so be it.
We’ve been without TV for 274 days and I’m still curious over the American Idol vote hacking to keep Sanjaya alive. This interests me for a couple reasons. One because Sanjaya is a local teen the same age as our oldest son (17) from Federal Way, Washington. Two because I think it’s funny that it took this long for organized attempts to manipulate Idol voting to hit a fever pitch.
Votefortheworst.com, Howard Stern and others are fueling a movement for Sanjaya. Stern’s crew has been producing some very funny spoofed endorsements saying “vote for Sanjaya.” Conversely, “J” on MySpace has gone on a hunger strike as long as Sanjaya is not voted off. Either that’s an effective weight plan, a compelling way to boost your myspace traffic, stupidity or some combination thereof.
The crotchety judge Simon Cowell reportedly has vowed to quit if Sanjaya wins, but his contract says otherwise.
How long will Sanjaya last? I’ve never heard Sanjaya sing so I don’t know what his pipes are like, but something tells me he’s got to be more talented than William Hung if he made it into the part where the audience votes.
The Xbox 360 looks good in black and according to Game Informer magazine, we’ll have a chance in April to buy one Microsoft is investigating reports that some users are having their Xbox Live accounts hacked with credits cards used to buy Microsoft Points:
While some users believe the security of Xbox Live was breached, others suggest that users were tricked into giving up enough information while in a game so fraudsters could call Microsoft to change the account information. Users may also have been duped into giving up their account information through phishing scams.
One thing I really don’t like about Xbox Live is that you can’t remove credit cards. So you end up with one or more credit cards attached to the account. The PS3 system of handling credit cards isn’t much better, but at least you can change the credit card. The Nintendo Wii system requires putting in new credit card info each time.
We already have two Xbox 360 and will probably buy a third one. Hopefully this new black version will be ready for the IPTV option that is supposed to be released later this year.
Over the weekend we came very close to buying an over the air indoor amplified antenna. Best Buy had one 60% off but when questioned the salesman admitted that it didn’t work that well in the valley because the signal was 60 miles away. The back of the box for the antenna indicated that 45 miles or less was the optimal range. We also saw a portable USB HDTV antenna with tiny remote for $100.
Clearly the draw of getting at least over the air antenna TV coverage is starting to wear on us. As of this writing we’ve made it by choice 258 days without TV service: no cable, no satellite, not even an antenna for the free over the air channels. I’m wondering if we do at least buy an antenna, and that seems very possible, does that mean our counter should be brought to an end? I guess we could change it slight to “paid” TV service. I don’t see us buying cable or satellite service any time soon. I’m not about to say never, but we should be able to go a year at least. We really aren’t missing that much.
There are many places on the web to find local TV listings, but Couchville (pictured above) offers a one page quick, clean, ad-free experience. They also have a separate buzz page that covers the top recorded shows and top future recorded shows. Here are the current top five:
1. Heroes - Company Man
2. Lost - Tricia Tanaka Is Dead
3. 24 - Day 6: 4:00PM - 5:00PM
4. Family Guy - Airport `07
5. The Simpsons - Yokel Chords
The data comes from BeyondTV users. You can buy a BeyondTV PCI directly from Snapstream for $69 ($99 if you need the PCI card too) and they offer a compatibility chart vs. Vista. Nice, it works with satellite radio too.
On the computer we watch 24 using FOX MySpace and also watch some shows via CBS Innertube and that’s about it for our network TV watching, but it would be handy having DVR functionality on the computer.
Sling Media is developing a new service called “Clip ‘n Sling” where you can take snippets of a TV program, put it up on a server managed by Sling Media, and then send an email to a friend or business colleague that includes a link to the “Clip”.
- information at kill the calls.com on stopping relentless telemarketers who don’t stop calling when you are on the do not call list
- Gates vs. Jobs video. Funniest video I’ve seen all week from the Current folks. My favorite part is where the old timer Commodore 64 walks in with cane!
- Skype v3.1 beta adds SkypeFind search and rating service
This morning at VTOR I wrote about one of two DVDs I bought last night. The other DVD was Sliders (pictured) which was a good deal for $19.99 at the local Fred Meyer for both season 1 & 2. Sliders was in a partially translucent package with creatively spaced in foam holding the DVDs.
Not only does this come with the complete series on DVD which I’m looking forward to watching, it also contains:
the official Dungeons & Dragons Animated Series Handbook Game Supplement which is 30 pages of character profiles from the series, stats, magic items and an adventure that is a prelude the animated episode “The Dragon’s Graveyard.” This bridges the gap between the game and the animated TV series.
This package is among the best DVD packages we’ve ever bought.
That’s saying something since we’ve now bought over 500 DVDs (see me standing in front of our DVD collection). Who says creative packaging doesn’t sell DVDs? Collectors eat up cool packaging and should fuel Hollywood’s hopes in their relentless fight against piracy. The media itself isn’t the only thing of value and hopefully they continue to use that to their marketing advantage.
Here are some of my other favorite DVD packages with special content we’ve bought over the years (not an all-inclusive list, just a few that stick out):
clear packaging with mock-up ice pick for Basic Instinct
Grease leather jacket cover edition as well as My Earl T-Shirt edition [see creative DVD packaging]
Forbidden Planet 50th Anniversary Collector’s Tin
The various Simpsons collector’s editions shaped like different characters
Star Trek The Original Series and Animated Series packaging
Seinfeld box set Season 1-3 (40 episodes) with playing cards, salt and pepper shaker and mini napkin holder
Alien Quadrilogy containing 9 different Alien movies. Great for Alien fans
Possibly of related interest: the site eeggs.com covers hidden goodies inside DVDs, games and more.
Do you have any favorite collector’s edition DVD packages to add to the list that I’ve missed worth hunting around on eBay or elsewhere?
The Sonics days are numbered in Seattle and I haven’t cared about the NBA very much the last five years. Seems like too many thugs and too few stars in the sport for my liking. The whole King (Lebron) James thing is mildly interesting. So what does the NBA do to get people interested?
Start toying with 3D.
A select group of sports fans will watch the National Basketball Association All-Star game on Sunday in the first-ever live high-definition 3D sports telecast that NBA officials hope will create a buzz about profiting from the new technology.
I would like to see this expanded to all professional sports. Imagine going to a movie theater and watching a 3D game. The ball coming at you as it goes out of bounds? I like it. Speaking of theaters, we’re heading out shortly to check out Ghost Rider. Motorcycles and fire, vrrrrrrroooom. That would be cool in 3D too, come to think of it.
I’m a sucker for 3D and wish it was used even more. Are you a 3D fan?
Clearly the draw of getting at least over the air antenna TV coverage is starting to wear on us. As of this writing we’ve made it by choice 
This morning at VTOR I wrote about 
