Author: DOuG pRATt

Phil Shepardson, R.I.P.

I owe Phil Shepardson a lot. When I was a senior in college he lined up an internship for me at the local radio station. I must have done all right, because it turned into a paying job before I graduated. By happy accident, that was how I met Bismo, who called the station when I asked a Star Wars trivia question. “What color is Darth Vader’s light saber?” Bismo said “blue” and I’ll never let him live that down. 😉

Tonight I learned that Phil Shepardson passed away a few months ago. Here’s an obituary. Five years ago, I wrote a bit about Dr. Phil, as we called him at Westfield State College, before there was Dr. Phil.

You know the tirelessly upbeat, fun, and engaging personalities of Cousin Brucie and Stan Lee? That’s what knowing Phil Shepardson was like. He was a true multi-media man and a kindred spirit. Phil loved cartooning, and he would challenge me on my definitions of art vs. illustration, and films vs. movies.

When The Empire Strikes Back came out, I happened to run into Shepardson at a supermarket, and he wanted to know what I thought of the movie. We had a lively discussion about the phenomenon of blockbuster movies merging with fandom, which he didn’t particularly welcome, and he wanted me to explain it to him. Was it a generational thing, or a commercial response to the excellent films of the early 70’s? That was the sort of discussion that Shepardson loved to have. Here’s to you, and farewell, Dr. Phil.

Avoid Precision Garage Door!

One of the garage door torsion springs broke. Yesterday I called the local office of the Precision Garage Door franchise. The technician is here now, and he seems like a good guy, but the price he quoted was outrageous. The whole job should cost about $250, taking into account that we live in an expensive area, but they wanted $350 just for the springs! None of the cars are in the garage, so the work doesn’t have to be done immediately. I told him I’d pay the $75 service charge and he could leave. He called his boss and I got a better price, and it’s still way too much, but I can live with it to get the work done on a Saturday. Anyway, watch out for this outfit. I’ll never use them again.

Don’t worry, be happy

Mr. Trololo says, in his own unique way, “life is good!” In his case, it was good despite chafing under the yoke of Soviet-era Russia.

This video went viral about 18 months ago. At first I didn’t recognize it when it was pointed out to me today, but then I remembered watching this segment of The Colbert Report.

Which Right one is the right one?

Last night Jon Stewart had another good opening monologue.

Mitt Romney will be the GOP Presidential candidate, and I’m betting he’ll win the White House. The Tea Party won’t want him because he’s a Mormon and he enacted Romneycare, but he’s OK with the money guys, so he’s in. Romney should make fellow Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown his running mate, and then Democrat Elizabeth Warren will go to the United States Senate. I bumped into Romney once, literally, when he was Governor of Massachusetts, and as I pointed out a long time ago, Romney has a Pratt in his past.

Hastings’ hasty retreat from DVD

Reed Hastings says he wants to take home video into the future, but he actually seems determined to take home video back to the 1980’s and 90’s, when there was LaserDisc for the enthusiasts like me, and VHS for everybody else. Except now it’s DVD/Blu-ray and online video.

I keep waiting for something that explains the method behind Reed Hastings’ recent madness, and the announcement that Netflix will carry Dreamworks movies that HBO doesn’t want anyway, and not for another eighteen months, isn’t it. How the heck does Reed Hastings think his tactics will serve his strategy of getting customers to stay loyal to him, but without DVD?

Last week, Hastings said that he had “slid into arrogance based upon past success.” He then promptly proceeded to display even more arrogance by announcing a split and re-branding of the DVD side of the business that is truly annoying to his customers, adding insult to injury by calling it the lame and ironic name “Qwikster.”

Obviously, Hastings is Hell-bent on dumping DVD. Maybe it’s the vision thing that’s blinding him, or perhaps he was driven mad by the cost of red envelopes, postage, warehouses, and labor, versus delivering a movie over the Internet for a nickel. But in the process of creating separate balance sheets for physical vs. virtual video, Netflix stock has lost half its value, so what has Hastings saved?

As I have said before, I became a Netflix subscriber way back in January, 2004…

… and for a long time I had the 4-disc plan for $22/month. I was as big a booster of Reed Hastings as any amateur blogger, but I feel that we are all now, as customers, seeing the other side of the man. The side that movie studios and the California Board of Education saw long ago.

I love the idea of streaming video. I couldn’t wait to give Netflix Instant Watching, as it was originally called, a try as soon as I could, in February, 2007. Two years later I bought the first of my two Roku players, so I’m all for a future of online video — but not exclusively, not yet.

Ignoring the lack of title selection compared to DVD’s, due to legal/business reasons, streaming as it exists today has technical and feature limitations compared to discs. There continue to be no extras online, so it’s like a return to the days of VHS, when you could only play, pause, scan, and stop, but without the inconvenience of rewinding the tape. I realize that commentary tracks and “making of” videos aren’t usually worthy of more than a single playing, but to eliminate them completely is a step backwards. Second, for the Japanese Toho studio movies and the anime that my son watches, the few titles that are offered on Netflix Watch Instantly are dubbed. Eric insists on the original Japanese dialogue with subtitles, and I doubt Red Box kiosks carry these titles. Finally, although the picture quality can be quite good with streaming video, streaming 1.5 Mbps SD can’t compare to DVD MPEG-2 at up to 10 Mbps, and 3.0 Mbps HD is no match for Blu-ray with MPEG-4 or VC-1 at 35 Mbps, especially when shown on a video projector screen.

What this adds up to is a large number of streaming video customers who are perfectly happy watching mainstream movies and TV shows on a 42-inch flat panel TV, assuming their Internet service is good and there isn’t a too-restrictive service cap. (I’m spoiled, because I’m on Verizon FiOS.) The home theater enthusiasts who want the best quality and the extra features that first appeared with LaserDiscs, are headed back to being like we were in the LD years, buying discs. Having spent way too much money on the LD format, I’m not interested in building another movie library.

The porch Roku is play a Tekzilla installment as I type this. Netflix is a Tekzilla sponsor, and host Patrick Norton, who’s usually up-front and fearless in his outrage, is soft-peddling the increase in price and loss of service. Everybody would like to fall in love with Netflix again, but right now I’m looking at Amazon Instant Video, wishing it had a queue feature. If Reed Hastings has been talking to Jeff Bezos about a possible sale to Amazon, or if he’s even been thinking of it, he’s certainly made Netflix a lot more affordable for acquisition.