We jumped on the FIOS bandwagon for our last move in hopes of super-fast internet speeds. While cable was long-touted as an outstanding alternative over DSL, our Comcast connection wasn’t perfect, and the 12MB advertised speeds were hardly that. So when we moved to a location previously wired for FIOS, we thought we’d be in for smooth sailing, since the only major complaints about FIOS we encountered were regarding a fresh install. Supposedly, once everything was in, people experienced Internet ecstasy.

Making the order.

The process we went through just to get FIOS activated was nothing short of a monstrous affair, however, at least as far as activating utilities go. While we already scouted out the information we needed for the plans we wanted, we were ambushed by our electric company when we activated power at our new residence. They claimed to be a FIOS partner, and could go ahead and take out FIOS order, thus not necessitating a call directly to FIOS. If anyone ever tells you this, tell them they are liars, and immediately hang up.

We told them no such thing, and though the convenience worth it. Little did we know that our power company could only offer us plans that were not the lowest advertised, nor were the packages very customizable. Of course, we didn’t know this until the basic order had already gone through, so by the time we hung up the phone, we had to call Verizon anyway to sort things out. And so began our phone call march, because getting through to a human being at Verizon is no easy process, especially when Verizon bounces you from operator to operator, oftentimes dropping the call midway through. Complicating the calling chain was the fact that our mobile phone number, representing the only phone we own, was not bound to a local area code, which meant that we were routinely routed to a Verizon office hundreds of miles away, instead of dealing with someone who could handle local orders.

Hours later, we finally got our order fixed. Not fixed per se, because we basically had to start a new order, and the rep we spoke to promised to delete the original order once it entered their system (apparently there’s lag in this). It’s worth noting that when we explained that our power company took our FIOS order, the immediate response was, “Yeah, don’t do that.” This was a common thought among Verizon reps we spoke to, which begs the question as to why Verizon has affiliates like power companies in the first place, since even Verizon employees think it’s a bad idea. (Apparently, numerous calls are fielded every day in which Verizon employees need to fix issues with customer orders thanks to affiliates screwing them up.)

Of course, the original order didn’t get cleared when it should have been even after we lined up our correct order. This required even more phone calls to the local office after we received e-mails and phone messages concerning the first order.

Using TiVo.

There were two non-standard requests with our order, both of which caused us pain in getting things set up. The first was that we had a TiVo HD unit that we previously used with Comcast, which we were told would work with FIOS. When the FIOS installer showed up (mind you, they provide a window of four or eight hours, effectively making you take the day off of work), he didn’t know much about TiVo at all. He fumbled through the TiVo menus and eventually got a signal to show up, and was thus content with this part of the setup. He did not, however, make sure that the on-screen guide worked, so when he was done, none of the channels matched up with their descriptions. We would later find out that fixing this was a simple matter of re-running the TiVo setup process, but Verizon was useless in providing this information. Their response to my concerns that things weren’t working as intended was, “We don’t support non-Verizon supplied hardware.” Yet they do, actually, because they bothered going so far as to install the Cable Card we’re leasing from them. In other words, they did a half-ass job; either support setting up the TiVo in full, or don’t do it at all and just hand customers their Cable Card.

Verizon’s shitty router.

The second FIOS install obstacle was that we didn’t want to use their supplied router, because we already had an Apple Time Capsule which handled our routing needs. This was a non-issue with a cable modem, but as our brief time using DSL showed us, things would be more complicated if the supplied modem had a built-in router. We addressed this in advance with the FIOS installer, and he said it wouldn’t be a problem – he wasn’t authorized to make changes to the provided router, but the included manual had all the instructions necessary to disable the routing capabilities of the Verizon device, such that we could just hook our Time Capsule up to it. Liar.

First off, no manual was supplied with the router. There was a quick setup guide, but no in-depth instructions. Naturally, he took off before we could go through the supplied guides in depth, so we were left hanging. We explored the firmware options via the router’s web interface, searched the web, and came up empty-handed: the supplied device did not have a way to disable the router. Sure, we could have just sucked it up and used our Time Capsule for backup purposes only, but we liked Back to My Mac working as intended, didn’t want redundant DHCP, and are, quite simply, stubborn. So, back to the phone, being transferred from person to person, and ultimately coming upon a solution.

Originally, we thought we needed a networking interface module (NIM) to use as a basic modem, which we could then plug our Time Capsule into. It turns out that NIMs weren’t being distributed by Verizon anymore, however, despite the fact that not every rep we spoke to knew about this, so we were transferred to their business department twice because they could supposedly provide us with such a mythical NIM. The real solution, however, is simply to have Verizon deactivate the internet-over-coax signal, and enable the internet-over-ethernet signal on the main FIOS box (installed in our basement). This meant that we’d still have a coax cable running from the FIOS box to our television (not first through their router), and we’d have an ethernet cable running from the FIOS box to our Time Capsule. Figuring this out wasn’t easy, because one Verizon rep was insistent that the ethernet port on the FIOS box was for technician troubleshooting purposes only (this despite the fact that we pointed to internet resources saying otherwise).

Sadly, when the signal switching was eventually done, another Verizon rep refused to stay on the line to verify that things were then working as intended. Of course, they weren’t, so we were now back to having no internet. Calling back, and explaining the changes made to our setup, a new rep insisted that we needed to reattach the router such that they could try to query it, even though we explained that internet-over-coax was disabled. She was insistent that they could still query the router, though we knew she was wrong. Eventually, she agreed to send over a technician again to sort things out.

Of course, by then we were back on the internet searching for solutions, and we finally found one. It turns out that once the signal-switching occurred, the internet-over-ethernet worked so long as the Verizon supplied router was attache to the FIOS box over ethernet. This then required us to login to the router’s web interface and ask for the IP to be released and reassigned. Once we pressed the “release” button, we needed to swap out the Verizon router for the Time Capsule. The IP was reassigned to our own router, and we were up and running. Up and running about 10 hours after the original technician showed up.

Conclusions?

The biggest conclusion here is that Verizon employees who handle FIOS tech support (on and off-site both) have no consistency ins training. Some are positively clueless about Verizon-supplied hardware, while a few have either been around long enough, or taken the time to research the equipment, and thus know enough to properly inform Verizon customers. Either way, the installation process is long and painstaking even without a fresh install.

Of course, if we had simply ordered a regular package, complete with Verizon’s comparatively poor DVR and configuration-limited router, perhaps the entire installation for us would have taken no more than two hours. But this isn’t 1999, and installing broadband internet in homes where many people have their own routers and DVRs shouldn’t be a troublesome experience for the customers or the on-site technicians.

Of course, now that everything’s installed, our service has been rock-solid over the last month, so at least there’s that. Speeds are much faster than via Comcast (and for less money), which is certainly nice. But we knew to expect that going in, so while the end-service may get an “A,” the customer service during install gets a “D” a best. Not exactly what we expected considering all the AT&T slamming in favor of Verizon. Even Comcast, which as a comparatively poor reputation, has never caused us as much pain when we had a problem, and in most cases were responsive and better informed than the many Verizon folks we spoke to. Something worth keeping in mind if you ever make a similar leap over to FIOS.
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Some dude, Michael Pachter, a gaming analyst, claims that the Apple TV will soon be hooked up to the AppStore and magically transform into a gaming machine, albeit one that does more than simply play games. This isn’t a particularly original thought, but neither are most thoughts from these so-called analysts, who seem to be more regularly incorrect than anything else. So too may Pachter find himself, as transitioning the Apple TV into a gaming machine is easier said than done, since the AppStore is backed by the venerable iPhone version of OS X. It’s not a stretch to think that Apple TV may adopt this OS in some form, in lieu of its current interface, but let’s be clear: Apple TV won’t sport multitouch, and that means any gaming initiative that Apple might fathom with the Apple TV will be outside today’s AppStore.

Apple already has a gaming platform, and that platform simply doesn’t work with the Apple TV. To invest time and money into something that’s not bound to the mobile space, or more accurately, not bound to the new rules of the mobile space (read: multitouch) would be wasteful of resources. That’s not to say that Apple couldn’t somehow wrangle a multitouch interface into the Apple TV by way of a new remote/controller, but the effort would seem forced, especially when gaming comes so natural to the iPhone and iPod Touch. Artificially pushing gaming into a product that its target market isn’t after is almost ludicrous, particularly when Apple’s primary focus is on the mobile marketplace.Similar Posts:

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We’ve ruminated at length about the rumoured Apple tablet computer, from the iPhone “dock” that is our Apple Annex, to the Macbook sibling that is our iTablet Excelsior. And with recent clues shoved down our digital throat across the blogosphere suggesting that an Apple tablet will indeed be announced sometime next year, we find ourselves once again justifying its impending existence.

The truth’s in the Air.

It began with the MacBook Air and may indeed end with it. Almost two years ago, we complained that the MacBook Air was overpriced for a poorly performing machine with so little to offer other than a reduced physical footprint. To be fair, that same complaint holds even truer today, with even the basic 13″ MacBook Pro beating the MacBook Air out on all specs to include price, with the Air merely coming in at 1.5 lbs lighter. How many real-world applications is that 1.5 lbs going to make a real difference for?

But the Air, as we stated back in January, 2008, is a great proof-of-concept. And that proof-of-concept has gotten slight buffs during its two generational updates. One could almost say that the Air is Apple’s notebook AppleTV, in the sense that it’s more of a hobby to set the future stage than to sell based purely on its present merits. That’s not to say that the Air isn’t decent; we’re even considering picking up a used Air if the price is right, just so we have a very portable, no-frills writing device that runs OS X (we’ve seen first-gen models go for what amounts to the price of a netbook hackintosh). But if money is indeed a consideration, the Air today is a poor purchase when the 13″ MacBook Pro offers so much more for less money.

Back to the Air as a proof-of-concept, the makings of an Apple tablet were all thrown in front of us in 2007. The iPhone had the touch technology, and the Air had an ultra-portable form factor. Apple explored SSD hard drives with the Air, and in a sense, teased the niche market for expensive-but-polished notebooks. The unibody design was touted as an end to user-replaceable batteries, offering solid battery life that trickled into the MacBook Pro lineup. And with all that, Apple proved that there was a market for the Air, and one that could likely grow with cheaper hardware costs.

So what’s left? Take the Air, throw away the keyboard, and tablet nirvana is just around the corner. While we wouldn’t expect Apple to revive the Newton or Air names for a future tablet, one has to admit that the latter name is catchy and far more apt for a tablet than for what the Air is today.

Apple Tablet as the new king of media.

Looking at iTunes LP and iTunes Extra content, we see a pretty exciting, open technology for developers to exploit. These technologies add even more reason to go all-digital, as consumers won’t have to feel like they’re missing out on bonus content if they don’t buy a CD with art and lyrics on the pull-out jewel case pamphlet, or the extra content on DVD menus. The best thing about iTunes Extra, though, is that it’s flexible enough to be used with other media, like print. That is to say, books, newspapers, and magazines, in digital format, could have a degree of interaction that typical e-publications don’t. Instead of simply reading a PDF or ePub document, consumers will be able to interact with their digital downloads in a way we expect one to interact with web sites, only in this case, an online connection would only be leveraged sporadically.

For example, newspapers could have polls. When a user submits their response to the poll, the information is transmitted the next time the Tablet has an internet connection. Thereafter, the newspaper poll will show results to date, without the user having to manually reload the poll data. Local weather information could be dynamically generated upon purchase, while old issues of the publication would have static records based on the actual weather histories. Users could enable/disable audible readings of articles, and magazines could include video clips of product reviews, better leverage advertising, and generally include more media that would otherwise have been cut in a print magazine because of limited space. And books could leverage interactive media in another way: imagine reading through Lord of the Rings, and having an easy-to-access map of Middle-earth, where the Fellowship’s location is marked, and corresponds to where you are in the book’s reading. With enough foresight, one could even cross-reference terms from Lord of the Rings to Tolkien’s other works, assuming they too were purchased. In other words, digital publications could link to one another in a sort of quasi-wiki method.

Ultimately, these are things that will add value to a digital download, thereby making them more attractive for consumers. Considering Apple’s success with music, and to a more limited degree television and film, it would not be surprising if Apple took on the e-publishing mission with a zest yet unseen by the eBook industry. And why shouldn’t Apple carve out this rather important niche, especially since it won’t be competing head-on with today’s eBooks: the type of interaction we’re talking about isn’t suitable for an e-ink display. Apple will want colour (lots of colour!), and the quick, reactive display that one would expect to see on the iPhone or, in this case, an Apple tablet. Sure, the battery life won’t be as good as an eBook reader, but the experience will be better.

There have already been plenty of rumours suggesting that Apple has met with print-industry big-wigs, and other rumours indicating that print-industry execs are meeting with one another to address their future digital distribution plans. (Supposedly, Apple has even offered a 30/70 split to publishing houses as financial incentive.) It should be obvious to anyone that standardizing this distribution, to a firm degree, will be beneficial to all companies involved. And with Apple leading the charge, would it really surprise anyone if iTunes was rebranded as something more like “iMedia?”

The Apple Tablet as a MacBook.

With the type of interactive content we’re talking about, Apple won’t release a dedicated device. Anyone with iTunes will be able to download the latest music, movies, and magazines, and be able to sync them across all their iTunes-capable devices. What better way to showcase the multimedia prowess of the music/movie/magazine conglomeration flipping through virtual pages of the latest New York Times bestseller with an actual flick of one’s finger, using similar gestures to control music and movie playback? The processing power we’re talking about, particularly for the multimedia elements, will be greater than what most eBook readers have today.

Apple is about totality of experience. That’s where the iPhone trumps every other smartphone on the market, and why Apple was able to beat out competitors in 2007 when the iPhone, to much initial criticism, was unleashed upon the masses. Apple’s only going to duplicate this effort with a tablet: a perfect machine to showcase its multimedia initiative, but still capable of tackling most average computing needs. So yes, the tablet will support a wireless keyboard/mouse, and run the regular version of OS X. Its specs will likely be similar to that of the MacBook, or maybe even the 13″ MacBook Pro. But the market for a tablet is clearly different than the market for these more traditional laptops, so it won’t cannibalize sales of other Apple products any more than the Mac Mini cannibalizes sales of the iMac. Users who need a traditional notebook experience for class or work will still get a MacBook: it’s the desktop baseline for getting work done with mobility in mind. But those who can spare not having a physical keyboard will love the tablet, because it offers extra mobility at the expense of easy desktop integration. Some tablet owners may cart around a wireless keyboard in their tote bags, but they will likely be the exception. Everyone else will treat their tablets like an eReader that can do so much more; the tablet will be the perfect, portable entertainment tool aimed at those who consume information rather than games. It won’t be a one-trick pony like the CrunchPad Joo Joo, because as Steve Jobs said, an Apple tablet will be expected to do more than simply serve as a web-reading tool for toilet-surfers.

The assumed $1,000 price-point seems entirely realistic at this point, especially when one realizes that the tablet will be little more than a MacBook Air whose keyboard was replaced with a capacitive touchscreen. That price doesn’t make us gawk at all. In fact, we’re ready to jump at a tablet purchase under these conditions, and we wouldn’t be surprised if the device is ready in time for CES 2010.Similar Posts:

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It’s foolish to deny that the cloud will dominate PC use in the future; dumb terminals made sense when raw computing power was unnecessary, and we’ll come full-circle as soon as broadband is ubiquitous. For nearly all applications, all an end-user needs is a browser with an internet connection; there’s an easy case to be made that a majority of computer users could boot straight to a browser, relying entirely on Google applications to fulfill their computing needs. This minimization of digital clutter is intensely attractive to us, because realistically, most of our own computer use is bounded to the internet, which is a proven medium for presenting information.

And that’s why OnLive is so fascinating. It’s a gaming service that will likely leverage core web technologies to present a list of demos and full-on games for consumer consumption. And these games will not be typical Flash-based titles, but high-end games that are typically played on current-gen consoles or state-of-the-art gaming PCs. And it all works on a low-end system because the games will actually be played remotely, on an OnLive server. Rather than a monitor connected to this server, however, the visual output is streamed to the end-user over the internet through a browser plugin, so it’s like playing a console game where the console’s hardware is many miles away, but the TV is right in one’s own living room. The idea is so simple, we wonder why no one’s come up with it before.

Technically speaking, OnLive’s video streaming should be cake – high-resolution streaming isn’t new, and judging from typical HD streams available from Hulu and the major networks, there shouldn’t be any serious doubt as to OnLive’s success in this area. Unfortunately, this is only half the puzzle, because unlike typical streaming video offerings, OnLive is all about an exchange of data. That is to say, a user doesn’t just click “play” and sit back, but rather inputs data through a controller over the course of the streaming. When these inputs are received by the OnLive server, they’re processed, and the resulting video is now sent back to the user. In other words, lag is less of an issue as latency, because the video sent to the user needs to match up with what the user just pressed on his controller. The further from an OnLive server the user is, the greater concern latency becomes.

Admittedly, we don’t know much about OnLive’s server distribution yet. If OnLive takes the route of legacy dial-up companies like AOL and Prodigy, we can expect OnLive to piggyback the infrastructure at the local ISP level, and in this manner, slowly build a network of servers based on the demand for OnLive’s service. The clear advantage here is that servers will be distributed nationally, so as to alleviate latency concerns in the best way possible.

But let’s say that the latency issue is overcome with reasonable ease, and that graphics will down-sample when lag comes into play. We’re still not convinced that consumers will tolerate the hiccups that video streaming occasionally produces, but even with that sorted out, we’re now left with balancing OnLive’s subscription costs with the initial expenses of a typical console purchase. In short, end-users will have to grapple with the idea that they can shell out $300 or so dollars plus game costs, else some small amount for OnLive hardware plus a recurring monthly expense. At what point does the average user go with the monthly subscription to stay cost-effective? For a fresh XBox 360 purchase, plus a year of XBox Live!, and a game purchase once a month for the life of that Live! subscription, we’re looking at a rough cost of $950. Assuming a hardware cost of $100 and a reasonable $20/month subscription, that $950 gives us unlimited game time for about 3.5 years using OnLive. Best part is that the XBox will ultimately be replaced by the next big thing (requiring another hardware purchase), while OnLive’s hardware upgrades should be transparent to the user. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Yeah, it sounds great initially, but that’s before the realization that a $240 annual investment by the end-user ($340 for the first year, assuming the $100 hardware cost) arguably won’t cover the hardware costs and maintenance fees for the OnLive service. An XBox 360 is designed to run one copy of a game, and while one could argue that an OnLive server’s configuration will be able to serve up quite a few more people, we’re still likely talking one dedicated graphics card per customer, and those don’t come cheap. This isn’t even taking into account the licenses per game that OnLive will be running, and with this comes another initial obstacle for OnLive: the success of a console at launch is all about the game library. If OnLive ships with a small library that doesn’t expand steadily, then OnLive won’t attract a large enough audience to build up the needed momentum.

And with game libraries, we’re talking clear limitations on what OnLive can offer on account of their setup. Many folks are enamored with the idea that OnLive will be a stand-in for PC gaming, because OnLive’s servers will be upgraded automagically over time. That’s a faux pas, however, because PC gaming’s strengths are in add-ons, conversions, and other customizations. OnLive severely limits PC gaming because all software, including any add-ons, are controlled entirely by OnLive. This means no playing MMORPGs with custom UI enhancements, limited flexibility in controller options, no beta conversions/mods, et al. That’s why OnLive, for all intents and purposes, is a more likely console replacement than a gaming PC replacement. It simply happens that OnLive works with PCs and Macs, but this is just a cheap way to get out of using a TV, not at cheaply proving a PC gaming experience.

OnLive’s gaming library pretty much acknowledges the notion that the service is aimed to compete against consoles and not PCs. Burnout, Tomb Raider, World of Goo, Crysis, LEGO Batman… we’ve seen these before. Where’s the die-hard PC games that don’t have great console ports, like RTS games, MMORPGs, etc? We’re looking at rehashed console games here, which OnLive wants to use as a springboard before developers start looking at OnLive as a serious competitor. That means that OnLive users shouldn’t expect any worthwhile exclusives for some time. And a second question begs our attention: since these titles are all available already in the console battlescape, why not just get them for the consoles we already own?

The math we mused over before changes some when we’re looking at the current state of console gaming. Assuming a gamer even buys 12 titles in a year, they spent about $600. An OnLive subscriber, on the other hand, will spend $240 that same year. But at only six titles per year, the numbers are already looking more similar, which means that casual gamers will see less benefits from OnLive, especially since their purchases are more likely to be blockbuster titles that OnLive won’t even see for at least a year. When all is said and done, OnLive looks to sport a formula that would be great for hardcore gamers, if only OnLive was mature enough to offer a larger gaming library of blockbuster titles. Asking a gamer to invest in OnLive’s offerings at release, however, is about as bad as proposing someone buy the Wii but stay away from first-party titles.

What it comes down to is this: early adapter aren’t going to get anything from OnLive that they can’t already get on current-gen consoles, but it’s these early adapters that will be necessary to grow OnLive’s offerings to a point where the average gamer will be attracted to the service. For PC gamers, OnLive is a complete bust, because the closest thing to playing PC games on the cheap that we’ll see anytime soon is in something like NVidia’s ION, not OnLive. If OnLive actually manages to survive such that it’s around when the next console refresh happens, then it may be a worthwhile investment for gamers so as to avoid expensive hardware costs.

That all said, OnLive could have a couple tricks up its sleeve, like licensing copies of popular MMORPGs, and figuring out a secure way to let customers upload, or activate via OnLive’s web interface, popular add-ons. Realistically, though, we’re not holding our breathe.
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After slowly making our way through the available episodes of Showtimes’s Tudors, and nearing the end of the second season, we decided to take a brief break and watch The Other Boleyn Girl. How could a movie starring both Natalie Portman and Scarlet Johansson fail? Well, epically.

At least compared to the story told in Tudors. While the movie has some great, arguably more historically accurate costumes, that’s about where the movie’s merits end. Casting in Tudors is much better, and the story itself is far more historically accurate than what we see in the The Other Boleyn Girl. Hell, even the Natalie in Tudors plays the role of Anne Boleyn better than Portman, as Dormer comes across as not only more conniving, but is sexier to boot (and that’s saying a lot, since we’re Portman fans).

While the near soft-porn from Tudors’ first season may not be expected by new viewers, it certainly depicts King Henry in the proper light. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers may look younger, but he seems to fit the role of the King much better than the almost-too-creepy King played by Eric Bana in The Other Boleyn Girl. Maybe that’s because Rhys-Meyers is great at playing somewhat twisted characters, and the real King Henry was no doubt somewhat twisted.

Sure, Tudors presents itself in a way that is more appealing to a television audience: the actors are generally good-looking by today’s standards, and the costumes are more minimalist, but the script is solid, accurate, and really makes one wonder how the Tudor dynasty wasn’t torn apart by critical observers. In the end, Tudors is an exemplary television series that should make Hollywood embarrassed. And, thankfully it’s on Showtime, because god knows HBO would have cancelled it by now seeing as it’s just so damn good.

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At the end of an article at TUAW talking about the possibility of the Mac Mini and AppleTV both transitioning over to Nvidia’s Ion platform, Robert Palmer asks the same question we’ve been musing over:

But what if the next-generation Apple TV and Mac mini were one in the same?

Since the AppleTV is considered an Apple “hobby” product, without Apple’s full weight behind it, it stands to reason that the product is little more than a proof-of-concept with the need for forward movement. Effectively, the AppleTV is little more than a cheap, headless Mac running a quick-to-boot version of OS X. Beyond that, the AppleTV is pretty software on an otherwise normal foundation.

That said, there’s little reason Apple couldn’t simply refresh the Mac Mini and include on it the AppleTV software. Imagine a product that, once booted, loads the AppleTV interface, and includes a way to quickly jump to a the OS X desktop if one wants to use the device’s computing functions. With wireless HDMI and a bluetooth keyboard/mouse, this new Mac Mini could leverage a modern television as a monitor, thus becoming an incredibly cost-effective, family computing solution.

With other entertainment products sporting integrated Netflix and YouTube streaming, and packages like Boxee already available for the AppleTV, there’s little reason that Apple couldn’t gain third-party support to beautifully integrate additional video delivery systems into the AppleTV framework. With a commanding video delivery system and the opportunity to transform ones living room into their office, a new Mac Mini could become a perfect alternative to a secluded office environment, especially for students and young professionals.

With TiVo software already out in the wild for use on PCs, the Mac Mini could further be refined with an integrated version of the TiVo software. This would solidify the Mac Mini’s hold in one’s entertainment center, being a viable alternative to stand-alone units. The only problem here is royalties, which Apple may not be prepared to pay. Of course, knowing Apple, a home-grown TiVo competitor could also materialize, and is exactly what AppleTV users have been asking for since day one.

In any case, here’s hoping the merger of the AppleTV and Mac Mini products actually materializes. Combined with a cheap Apple notebook netbook Annex, our computing needs would pretty much be met entirely.

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It’s bloody amazing that though TiVo has been around for almost a decade, no one else has managed to duplicate TiVo’s experience. This leads us to many more questions, such as how, not long ago, was TiVo considered a company that almost went under? Let’s ignore that historical anecdote, however, and instead focus on the crux of the matter: TiVo is not only better than competing DVR products, but is light-years ahead of them. In fact, we’re not scared to say that TiVo is to other DVRs what the iPod is to compact discs.

We didn’t entirely realize this until recently, though we should have seen it coming from all the talk around us. In short, we previously subscribed to DirecTV when TiVo was the norm there, but then cancelled our service because we had better things to do than watch TV. While we’d like to argue that we still have better things to do, the point is that we were recently back in the market for premium programming, and given our past experiences with DirecTV, we decided to go back to cable.

“How bad could Comcast’s DVR really be,” we mused. Since we don’t know where we’ll be living in a year and a half, we figured that shelling out for a cable-based TiVo would be a waste of money, since we feasibly could end up wanting to go back to satellite programming in the future, or even something else. So, we figured we’d just rent Comcast’s basic HD DVR box.

That’s when we realized that not only is Comcast’s DVR interface horribly cumbersome and laggy, but it’s outright frustrating to do anything that TiVo handled with ease. There’s not even a search function on the dumb service. Never mind that we still don’t have working On Demand, which is one of the supposed perks of sticking to Comcast’s DVR (as the service isn’t fully supported when using a TiVo box). Even recording a show doesn’t work well.

We discovered this latter Comcast blunder when we tried recording two back-to-back episodes of Scrubs. For the first episode, we chose to record for three extra minutes, since we realized that previous recordings were cut off due to time differences in the service vis a vis the network. We did this via TiVo all the time. The difference is that while both TiVo and Comcast’s DVR automatically set themselves to record the second episode of the show (we chose the “record all first-run episodes”) feature, our Comcast DVR decided to only record three minutes of the second episode. Ridiculous.

One would think that since TiVo is a supported service, there’d be plenty competition for Comcast and other providers to get their shit together and refine their DVR interfaces. Apparently, they simply don’t care that TiVo is out there, and are even going to certain lengths to bury the fact that TiVo is a supported service. That’s why there’s barely any word about TiVo on Comcast’s web site. In fact, when we used a Comcast web form to see if TiVo service was available in our area, we were told that it was not, and yet when we talked to a Comcast representative on the phone, they admitted that this was false.

So Comcast puts out a sub-par product that is broken in multiple respects, and they seek to prevent dissemination of information that a better, working product is available, only not purchaseable from them directly. The whole experience has put us off to Comcast service, but now that we’re re-vested in TiVo, we’re pretty much stuck with cable for the near future. At least once TiVo is again sitting in our entertainment center, we can shirk off all annoyance at Comcast’s incredibly stupid attitude.

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X-Play’s co-host Adam Sessler’s success is clearly linked to Morgan Webb’s assets, and though that magical power, the little nerd-who’s-not managed to develop some sort of strange nerd-mutant following. Well, Sessler’s now editor-in-chief at X-Play, and gets to call the shots regarding all gaming-related content at the respective network. To us, this simply reaffirms that Morgan Webb is nothing more than a pretty girl to stare at, and though Sessler may have proven himself as a content manager, we’re still of the mind that the whole program is relatively worthless, much like gaming rags are worthless thanks to the internet bringing us real-time gaming news. The President of G4 TV, Neal Tiles, disagrees with us:

Adam is an incredible resource and has helped position G4 and “X-Play” as the center of the gaming universe.

What gaming universe is Tiles living in? Does any self-respecting gamer really consider X-Play their primary gaming news resource? That’s worse than calling the average gaming rag the center of the gaming universe. Maybe in 2009, Tiles will discover the Internet.

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In what can only be blamed on the retardation that is FOX, King of the Hill somehow managed to last 13 seasons. The sad little animated comedy about a sad little Texan family did little for us aside from point out how ridiculous the country we live in is. And if that’s the point of the show, we certainly didn’t need 13 seasons to realize it.

Now that the show will finally be canceled, we can only sigh with relief, as it was among the most retarded things on television, and took up an otherwise valuable time slot that could have been filled with many of the good shows that FOX did decide to cancel. In any case, this cancellation is 13 years late, as far as we’re concerned. Good riddance.

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We’re not sure why people love Buffy so much, but it’s somehow made Josh Whedon a cult superstar. Whether it’s Sarah Michelle Gellar’s magical broken nose, or her bouncing ta-tas pursuing evil vampires, the show was clearly a financial success, even though we maintain it did little for the vampire genre, and was little more than a typical teen pop drama infused with horror fantasy. This distaste we have for the show is in stark contrast to the Buffy movie that we actually liked, perhaps because it didn’t take itself seriously (and because Buffy was hotter, despite the lack of magical broken nose).

Nonetheless, the Buffy franchise has spawned a ton of derivative products, like figures, comic books, and apparently now, an MMOG. In some weird twist of idiotic fate, this announcement comes at us in conjunction with the announcement that the previously proposed Firefly MMOG won’t be finished after all.

Don’t get us wrong, we found plenty of faults with Whedon’s Firefly too, but at least the concept of the IP was intriguing. That is to say, we find no fault with space cowboys, merely with the casting/execution of the short-lived show, which portrayed what should have been a gritty science fiction world with dirty rapscallions, with rather pretty, overly-polished characters. Nonetheless, the theme and setting for the show is perfect for an MMOG, whereas a Buffy MMOG is, well, dumb.

Supposedly, the Buffy MMOG will follow where the show left off, but as others have already pointed out, Whedon’s worlds are generally “light” settings developed purely for his characters to live in, while the brunt of his efforts are put into the development of those same characters. In other words, an MMOG based on the Buffy fluff wouldn’t necessarily be attractive to thousands of people somehow interacting directly with the storylines of the core Buffy characters. Does anyone really find the idea of a Buffy MMOG attractive, when the IP is much better suited to a single-player game?

While the concept of IP built around a small group of characters could support the structure of an MMOG, as in the case of Tolkien’s well-developed Middle Earth, Whedon’s worlds simply don’t show the same level of promise, especially when it comes to Buffy. Ironically, the one Whedon experiment that might have been a solid foundation for an MMOG (and a science-fiction MMOG at that), is now not going to be.

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