Medialoper

We're Not Who You Think We Are

Jim Connelly

The Weekly ‘Loper – March 26, 2006

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While you were trying to figure out what exactly the deals were with Tony Soprano and Chef, here’s what we were talking about:

  • LaLa Love You You can’t swap digital musical files that you have legally purchased, nor can you swap digital musical files ripped from physical CDs that you have legally purchased. But you can swap physical CDs that you have legally purchased. For now.
  • The New Music Model: DIY – Let’s all give a big amount of applesauce applause for Clap Your Hands, Say Yeah, and other bands are totally doing it their way.
  • Press Room? I Said Rest Room! – A hard-hitting investigation into the need for a Press Room at SXSW. Never underestimate the importance of comfortable chairs.
  • Radio Killed The Radio Star, Part One – A deep long look at a SXSW panel called “The Future of Radio,” and how the music industry and the government continue to find ways to make that future seem bleak, at best.
  • Radio Killed The Radio Star, Part Two – Who needs radio, when we have become our own musical gatekeepers. And: Signs of life, but are those exceptions or precursors to a new way?
  • TV Shows on DVD I’d Like To See – And why, sadly, we might never see any of them. As usual, rights issues (read: the need to squeeze every last penny from something) get in the way of consumer desires.
  • Television Without Potty – Finally got to use that headline!! And for exactly the type of post I knew it would accompany: the FCC continuing to run roughshod over free speech.

Monkeynews: Downloading Kong in Europe

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King Kong is coming out on DVD on April 10th. In and of itself, that isn’t extraordinary — it’s been a few months since it hit the theatre, and now those interested in Peter Jackson’s take on the tale, but didn’t want to be bothered with sticky floors, ringing cellphones, commercials and overpriced vats of food can watch it in the privacy of their own homes. (Why they even had wait a few months is another discussion for another time).

That week, millions of people will trundle off to their local Best Buy or Blockbuster or rip open a package from Amazon, and pop King Kong into their DVD player. Unless they live in Europe, where instead, they can download it.

For the first time ever, a major Hollywood movie will be available for downloading on the same day as the DVD release. A non-self-destructing file, unlike other downloads in the past; and while it is more expensive than just purchasing the DVD, they will also send a physical copy of the DVD. Right. A physical backup copy for the downloaded digital file. And also, to give the consumer more choices on when and where to play the movie.

If successful in Europe, it’s only a matter of time before they try it here: and that will be long after shared copies of those downloads have already made it here. Given the time difference between here and Europe, it’s possible that a shared download of Kong will be played on some college kids laptop before his local DVD store even opens.

But maybe, just maybe, the movie studios will look at what they call “piracy” as indicators of demand — what people are willing to pay for if it was only available — as opposed to indicators of just how contemptible their audience actually is. If so, it’s another major step to anything, anytime, anywhere.

Television Without Potty

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A couple of Time-Warner companies are going to great lengths trying appease the FCC, who — running scared from (or worse, in cahoots with) anti-free speech groups like the American Family Association and the Parents Television Council — continue to levy unprecedented and quite possibly unconstitutional fines at the drop of a skirt.

First of all, Time-Warner Cable is bundling a bunch of hopefully non-offensive channels into a “Family Tier,” which they also hope will stave off the call for a la carte programming.  No problems here with a “Family Family” tier, though the skeptic in me figures that the tiers are a way to end up charging more for those channels.  Also, one of the “family-friendly” channels is the Food Network, which is 100% about stimulating the senses in every way possible. Watch it with the sound down and it’s a whole different experience.

[Read more…] about Television Without Potty

My TV, Anywhere

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The Slingbox — that cool little device that allows you to watch your TV anywhere that has a computer with a broadband connection — has just taken a huge leap forward into the world of anything, anytime, anywhere.

They’ve created a version that will send the contents of your TV to Windows Mobile palmtops and cellphones.

That’s all. 

And yet that’s everything. This trumps all other TV content made for mobile devices for one simple reason: it’s your own TV.  It’s “your own” content. It’s content that you’ve chosen to record.  

So cool that it almost makes me wish I had a use for it in my real life.

La Polémique De Apple

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While I love my Nano, and I enjoy using iTunes, the one thing that cheeses me off are the hoops I have to jump through to play iTunes music I’ve legally purchased on non-Apple products. For example, I recently purchased the entire first season of “The Ricky Gervais Show” podcasts from Audible (cos I’m a latecomer, which is defined in weeks anymore), and I had to waste 6 CDs converting it to .mp3. WTF? That ain’t right.

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TV Shows on DVD I’d Like To See

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One of my favorite niche sites out there is Gord Lacey’s TV Shows on DVD, which is exactly what it claims to be: a place where you can learn about TV Shows on DVD. It’s essentially a compendium of news/rumours/release dates (Battlestar Galactica 2.5 is coming out in early September?!?), reviews, and a place where you can vote for shows that haven’t quite made it to DVD.

Anyways, just for the hell of it, here’s my list of shows that I’m still waiting to see on DVD (or On-Demand) (or even downloadable):

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The Weekly ‘Loper – March 19, 2006

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While you were figuring out ways of getting around your Network Admin policy of cutting you off from March Madness, we were dissecting the panels we attended at this year’s SXSW:

  • Librarians vs. The Search Giants – Sure, that sounds like a particularly bad Monty Python skit, instead, it’s a spot-on recap of a SXSWi panel about the issues surrounding the digitialization of books.
  • My Sony Settlement, Part 1 – Is there anything more disheartening than being part of the winning side of a class-action settlement against a evil multinational?

LaLa Love You

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Sometimes new media media ideas get retrofitted into older media. A perfect example of this is a start-up called LaLa, which takes distinctly new media concept — using the Net to share files — and applies it to an older technology, the Compact Disc.

Part MySpace, Netflix, eBay and iTunes, La la incorporates pieces of each: Users list online the CDs they both want and have. In the process, they find others who share the same taste in music. Then, when one user requests a CD that another person owns, the owner drops it in the mail in a pre-paid envelope. The receiver is billed $1, plus 49 cents for shipping; the shipper pays nothing.

It’s devilishly simple, of course, and 100% legal.

[Read more…] about LaLa Love You

What The Office Will Do on its Summer Vacation

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While other TV shows will be taking their summer vacations, much of the cast of The Office will  be participating in a series of webisodes that will be available from NBC.com this summer.  According to an NBCU press release, there will ten eps: a story arc centering on a missing $3000, and the attempt to locate it. 

And in keeping with this season’s emphasis on the secondary and tertiary characters, the webisodes won’t have most of the big names: Steve Carrell, John Krasinski, Jenna Fischer and B.J. Novak.  Those people will be getting to take actual full vacations.  Sounds more and more like a real office, doesn’t it?

Conspicious by his presence is Rainn Wilson, which causes us to make a prediction: Dwight done it.  No doubt to finance the purchase of a of a brand-new Prism DuroSport 6000.

 

AOL Launches In2TV

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AOL launched their In2TV service today, featuring an eclectic mix of 30 Warner Bros. TV shows from the past half-century. Some good, some bad, some on DVD, some not — and all available for high-quality streaming in their entirety with “minimal commercial interruption.” 1 to 2 minutes, for now. Though if it’s successful, that will no doubt sneak up a bit: the whole point, of course, is another revenue stream.

We haven’t yet had a chance for a test-drive of the service through the Medialoper Review Labs — the pilot ep of Welcome Back Kotter, prior to Travolta becoming a superstar, will be just the ticket — but here are a couple of random initial impressions:

  • The home page is clean and well-organized: less clutter than iTunes, and easier to find stuff than Google video or YouTube.
  • Don’t come here looking for full seasons. Looks like they’ve launched with about 10 eps of each show.
  • They’ve also launched with features and interactive games.
  • There is more than one way to find an individual show: they’ve categorized them, have a search feature, broken out clips; and have a “show all feature” that actually lists more than a few at a time.
  • One of the best ideas: “Pilot Theatre,” which is exactly what you would think.

All in all, a nice auspicious start for IN2TV: one can only hope that they add more shows, and more episodes for each show.