Year: 2007

The Good, The Bad, FiOS TV 2.0

FiOS TV 2.0 has added the ability to DVR the Music Choice channels like any other station. Yay! As I said yesterday, the functional enhancements are nice. Two more I would like to see are enabling the A/V inputs — I want to route my LD player through the DVR — and turning on the USB ports so users can add storage.

I continue to be down on the new user interface. I much prefer the old one. Especially annoying is the Favorites function. It always starts at the same spot in the channel list, instead of the station you’re on, and it no longer wraps around from the end to the beginning. Extremely annoying!

Fun Loving Video

I am using a new method to create FLV video for embedding. Side-by-side comparisons show that the results are better than the method I was using, but I honestly don’t think you’ll see the difference.

FiOS TV 2.0 Interactive Media Guide

A couple of weeks ago Verizon sent a flyer promoting the long-anticipated update to the FiOS TV 2.0 Interactive Media Guide. Sometime between last night and this evening the update was installed on my DVR.

I like having the ability to program the duration of the skip-ahead button on the DVR, and having a 60 minute playback buffer, but I prefer the old user interface. It was clear and bright with easy to read lettering. The characters are too small on the new display, with a color scheme that’s too gray, and a few layers deep into the menus the screen looks rather cluttered. Here’s a video sample of what it looks like.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/AUG07/NewFiOSGUI.flv 400 300]

(Note to my friend Sam: Watch this and you will see a bit of your crazy cousin making a guest appearance.)

Cinéma la Morte

Film students from the 60’s and 70’s got a real one-two punch recently with the deaths of Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni. The latter directed L’Avventura (1960), a movie that I must confess nearly put me to sleep back in college. If I want to see a boy and a girl on an island, I’ll watch Gilligan and Mary Ann.

A much more interesting Antonioni film is Blowup (1966). It’s notable for a number of things, including some nude scenes that were daring for the time. I won’t be posting those — sorry! — but towards the end the Yardbirds, with Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck in the line-up, make an appearance.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/AUG07/BlowUp.flv 400 300]