HDTV

Joost as good as the content it has

5 April 2007 - 9:09pm | Laura Scott

I suppose I should feel like the cool insider for being a Joost beta tester. All I did was fill out a form some time ago.

Joost has a pretty logo, and their website is full of Flashy color. However, the actual Joost application experience is much more monochrome.

I find the GUI a bit clunky, but that's to be expected in beta. It's better than the ridiculously bad Comcast digital cable UI, a little. Personally I found the placement of navigation buttons to be awkward.

I spent only 15 minutes or so in my first try of Joost. Most of the time I was trying to scroll through channels to find something that actually interested me. This is where the navigation proved a bit challenging. I think my experience was hampered by the fact that I was trying it out at peak hours -- prime time. Maybe in the morning it would be better.

My first impression was that there wasn't all that much on Joost. I can spend hours surfing through what, 500 channels of television on Comcast, and find nothing on. Same with Joost, I fear. In the end, Joost can be only as good as the content it presents.

The low resolution of video is to be expected. You're not going to get high-quality video through the puny ISP bandwidths available today in the US. That puts an imperative on Joost to offer something different, something somehow better -- or at least other -- than what we find on the three-digit cable channels.

Maybe I'm the wrong customer because I'm watching TV on a 42" plasma HDTV. (Hey, it was a deal and it was cheaper than the smaller LCD.) I look at upconverted DVDs and HDTV programs and see something new: details. High resolution is nice.

I'll try Joost again and perhaps share some more thoughts. I hate to leave this post on such a down note, so I'll give it another shot. I want it to be great. I'll settle for okay.

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Say what you meme: My media consumption diet

3 March 2007 - 2:58pm | Laura Scott

So Jeremiah Owyang has started a media consumption diet meme, and Marianne Richmond has tagged us BlogHers, so here goes....

Web: I used to use NetNewsWire Lite for RSS, but I tried Shrook and found it to me easier to use, with some of the features NetNewsWire makes you pay for. Shrook is easy enough, so I'll stick with it for now. Do I need to mention Firefox? For search, I use Google pretty exclusively (I find myself wondering how Yahoo! gets by, what with all the barriers they put up for people to get listed in their index) and if I'm blog-hunting, I go to Technorati. I blog using Drupal for platform and either Performancing or ecto for blogging client (though neither is optimal -- Performancing repeatedly loses my drafts and ecto keeps embedding cruft into my html, even when I define the tags myself). For online video, I find YouTube too useful to ignore. It can be a bit hard to take, though, just browsing at random.

Music: I've started trying out Pandora, but in some stations they keep trying to push the strangest things -- sorry but how do you get Foreigner or Journey from Led Zeppelin? -- and they limit how many songs I can reject in a given time. (Am I just too persnickety?) I have several of my old CDs burned to mp3 files, which I play on my desktop iTunes, but as I've moved from my nearly-dead PowerBook to two iMacs to my current MacBook Pro, it's been a challenge carrying those 20GB of files along for the migration ride. (It doesn't help that some of the discs were defective bulk coasters.) I haven't signed up for the iTunes Store, though, because the DRM restrictions and poor audio quality make downloads there less than appealing, no matter how appealing and easy-to-use the GUI is. Stop treating me like a criminal guilty until proven innocent, Apple and RIAA, and you'll have my business. Meanwhile, as CD music continues to fade away at the big box stores, I'm finding my music horizons diminishing, and that's a terrible place to be. My whole live is defined by soundtrack.

TV: I don't have much time to watch television, especially the commercial variety -- I think I'm more and more intolerant of commercials. I will watch the NewsHour if I'm home early enough, the Daily Show if I'm up late enough (and thank goodness for the 9pm rerun of last night's show), Frontline if I stumble across it and (of course) Battlestar Galactica. I don't do cable news -- it strikes me as an entire industry getting excited about the lint in their own navels. However, since getting HDTV on Comcast, I've found that I'm more likely to just watch anything as long as it's high-def. Well, not anything at all, but it's amazing how much more interesting Nova or Discovery (or reruns of Battlestar Galactica and Firefly) are when you can see so much detail on the screen. (Ironic that local news is in high-def, but most network shows are not; the Rose Parade was in high def, but the Macy's parade was not; sports are in high def but arts typically are not; and all HBO seems to play on their single high-def channel is Rome [though it could be worse].)

Communication: My cell is a Palm Treo 700p, but I hardly ever use it. It comes in handy when I need to keep up on email or check something on the web, but I'm realizing the touchscreen I so wanted (and thus the reason I rejected alternatives like Blackberry or Q) is pretty over-rated. Ah well, live and learn. The phone part is actually great for clarity and reception, but I don't use it as a PDA at all, as the 320x320 screen is just too damned small. Other phonage is Vonage. I haven't had a land-line phone in quite a few years now. --Not that any of this matters, because I really really hate talking on the phone unless it's necessary. For IM, I use Jabber (via Adium), which we have set up on one of our domains, and the sadly unavoidable Skype, which as a relay is an absolute bandwidth hog even when it's just sitting there.
I don't use Skype much for voice, since so many people seem to have so many problems configuring it to work well. We thought it'd be great for talking to clients overseas to save a few pennies a minute, but all too often it was too much like the Cone of Silence. I use Apple Mail for email, mainly because Thunderbird on Mac is too slooowwwwww (I wish it weren't).

Movies: Once upon a time, I saw several movies a week, sometimes several in one day, but now that they blast commercials in your face before showing generally sucky movies -- not to mention the overpriced junk food, sticky floors and noisy patrons -- it's just not worth it. It's not fun any more. So I watch movies on DVD, where I'm not limited by the, excuse me, crap selection of the week, and which on an HDTV plasma is an entirely new experience. I tend to buy, not rent, because rented discs always seem to have scratches that make the flick skip or freeze.

Magazines: I subscribe to Post, HOW, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Macworld and occasionally Wired. I rarely buy a magazine off the rack. It amazes me how many magazines are in print. Do people actually read all these things? Somebody must. I have to say, however, that the supermarket tabloids do keep me informed. I mean, I could've gone for weeks or even months without knowing that Brittney Spears shaved her head or that Brad sent a note to Jen! Eeep!

Books: I live for novels, but it's hard for me to find writers I like, so I'm stuck with the five or six authors who could write just about anything and I'd read it. Maybe if my life weren't so fast-paced, I'd be able to relax enough to get into a new writer's style, but usually I can't get past the first paragraph, so I do without. Meanwhile I'm reading more non-fiction than any time since I was in college. How She Does It, Blink and Designing Interactions are three of the most recent delights.

Newspapers: I love reading off paper, but unlike magazines I don't hold the same love of newspapers. I like the print design of the New York Times, but I hate getting newsprint all over my fingers, and at a buck a pop for something I may not even have time to read that day, it becomes a dead-tree guilt and a recycling burden more than a source of news. 15 years ago that wasn't the case -- I loved getting the paper! How life changes in these times! I still read the "newspapers" online, including the NY Times, the Mercury News and the odd site that happens to have the AP wire story I want to read.

So there's my consumption in a nutshell. Now in the tradition of tagging, and because they are such an eclectic group of geeks and artists, I'd like to tag everyone on Planet Drupal.

Technorati Tags: media consumption diet

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Special effects: The Final Frontier

5 September 2006 - 7:54am | Laura Scott

Why is it that the studios cannot leave enough alone? Apparently, Star Trek: The Original Series (ST:TOS to Trekkers and Trekkies out there [I'm of the latter, thank you very much]) is getting a makeover, not only being remastered for HDTV but also getting all the effects shots redone.

There's no direct link to the email update I received, so I will simply quote from the SciFi news page the entire PR blurb:

The original 1960s Star Trek series will receive a high-tech makeover and return to broadcast syndication for the first time in 16 years, with digitally remastered episodes, Paramount announced. In honor of the show's 40th anniversary, CBS Domestic Television is releasing all 79 episodes with new special effects and music on 200 stations, beginning Sept. 16. The first batch of episodes will be chosen from a list of fan favorites.

The original special effects will be replaced with computer-generated images, including the exterior of the Starship Enterprise, based on the exact measurements of the original model, now resting in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The main title sequence will also be redone with new effects and a new digital stereo soundtrack re-recorded by an orchestra and a female singer. William Shatner's classic original recording of the 38-word "Space, the final frontier ..." monologue has been remastered and continues to open each episode.

All of the space scenes, alien landscapes and ships—including the Romulan Bird of Prey and Klingon Battle Cruisers—will be updated as well. The remastered episodes have been converted from the original film into a high-definition format, which gives viewers a clearer, crisper, more vibrant picture, even when viewed in standard definition.

Will the Star Trek series ever be the same?

Looking at the revisionist releases of Star Wars and its sequels, with not only "new" effects but entirely new (boring) scenes added and even replacement of the actor playing the Emperor (though the new Emperor was good), I worry that the original Original Series will be lost to the dustbin of history.

It's really a shame, since part of the real charm of ST:TOS is how it's so much a product of its time -- the miniskirts, the overt paternalism and chauvinism, the actors so young and vivid ... and, yes, the dated special effects, which really aren't all that bad, when it comes down to it.

Will "updating" the Romulan ships add anything to Star Trek? Will making our dear, beloved Enterprise NCC-1701 fly more like Picard's Enterprise and fire photon torpedoes with new CG subtlety seem like a modern show?

Will re-recording the title music help, or make the show seem alien to fans?

Maybe I'm just too much the geek. After reading Herb Solow and Robert Justman's book on how Star Trek was made totally on the cheap, I can appreciate the vigor and charm of the show even more. This decision by the tassled loafer set in Paramount to "update" Trek leaves me feeling uneasy....

...and wanting to rush to Best Buy and snap up those current box sets of the series before they're lost to the Orwellian world of special effects updates.

For a more sarcastic take: Blowing Smoke.

For TOS prequel movie casting news: The Houston Chronicle.

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The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of how HDTV might change movies

4 September 2006 - 10:26am | Laura Scott

They don't make movies like this anymore. Like many kids my age, I saw it may times on Saturday afternoon television, full frame with lots of cuts and lots of car commercials (which somehow weren't so obnoxious back then). It was fun enough just because of the characters. For a western, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly didn't take itself so seriously -- mainly because Eli Wallach's weasely Tuco was so compelling.

But what I saw wasn't the real movie. Sergio Leone made widescreen movies, and he used the entire frame. What I saw, with pan-and-scan and interstitial advertising, was a Cliff's Notes version of the film.

Having recently watched on my 20" iMac the DVD of the restored version of the film, I can say it is a different movie. The iMac is not HDTV, and standard DVDs, though they have much more resolution than televisions can provide, are not HD DVD -- but even so, the movie offered what a lot of more recent movies do not:

Cinema.

Recent flicks like Batman Begins and even the well-done Good Night and Good Luck seem to lack the cinematic sense. Perhaps they're too much products of the TV age, shot for pan-and-scan and edited to keep things moving, rather than to give the next piece of the visual story.

And it really shows on high-resolution widescreen presentations. Last year's talk was the purportedly incredible effects of King Kong. I had problems with the commercials, where Kong is batting cars around like Tonka trucks, when really, if you think about it, it should have been more like batting around Christmas ornaments. (How is a car that shatters upon 60mph impact with a wall going to not shatter when a wall-like hand smacks it at 60mph?). No, I was not impressed. It looked like The Incredible Hulk with fur.

Even so, I was pretty shocked when I saw how fake Peter Jackson's film looks on HDTV. Perhaps it's the contrast compression or the flicker effect, but really, Kong looked like a cartoon. (Oh, the ideas, like the dinosaur stampede down the ravine, seemed interesting. But realitic?)

By contrast, in another example of the power of cinema trumping the power of special effects, a much lower-budget movie that plays well on high resolution screens is the cult classic actioner Mad Max (which without the appalling American dubbing actually had some indie movie charm). George Miller's sequel, The Road Warrior, also holds up -- as do much older, cinematic, visual films like Lawrence of Arabia, The Searchers, and even the staid 2001: A Space Odyssey (whose special effects amounted to clear plexiglas, some inventive stage construction and old-fashioned matte photography.

How well will today's special-effects epics be regarded in 2 or 3 decades, as the technology gets better?

As HDTV catches on, and more and more people watch movies on screens that recapture a bit of the cinematic aesthetic, it's my sincere hope that we'll see more movies that use visual language to tell the story. The overwrought, overscored, over-effected hyperviolence of today's epics (which are always made with an eye directed at the almost-square 19" television set) already leave me tired. Maybe that's why, rather than see the latest effects fantasy from the boy-executives in Hollywood, it's The Devil Wears Prada that gets me out of the house for the first time since Master and Commander.

If the Hollywood movie distribution system ever grows up and gets back to making cinema, I'll celebrate with trips to the movie theatre. Until then, I'll stick to my DVDs and wait for the convergence. And remember not to hold my breath.

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