Category: Tech

Watching a Little Beaver

Whah hah! Leave It To Beaver is back on Netflix Watch Instantly! But it’s in high definition, despite the lack of the HD symbol. Why is this not good? Because on my Sony 32XBR100 TV it puts a small 24-inch image on the big 32-inch screen. Why, Roku, don’t you provide a feature to disable HD on SD outputs?

(By the way, the title of this post is a reference to a character in the Red Ryder comic strip.)

Follow-up: 42-inch Panasonic 1080p plasma, with a free Blu-ray player deal, is on the way from Amazon, with free shipping. Total cost is $470, thanks to Amex points.

Upgrade!

I pulled the trigger, or bit the bullet, or whatever gun-related metaphor you prefer, on the Bluehost Pro Plan. It took longer than I thought it would to complete the transfer to a less busy host, but now that it’s done the improvement is anything but subtle. The site should be a lot faster now, and if it isn’t, let me know.

Don’t Click That Mouse, Hand Me the Keyboard

A Mr. D.F. Rogers of Massachusetts writes:

Check out the pricing on this very essential and cool mp3 item. I think there is still a logic problem with digital/mp3 pricing… 😉

http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Crush-That-Dwarf-Pliers/dp/B00138KN6O/

You can buy each side of “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers” for only 99 cents each — since each side technically has only one “track” — but if you want the whole album (both tracks!), well then it is $9.99!

The same goes for “All Hail Marx and Lennon” (How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All) — it’s cheaper to buy the cuts than the whole album, though only by a buck or so. BUT you can get “Nick Danger” — all 28:00 mins of it — for just 99 cents! I think I’ll do it!!! Just $2.97 for three sides of mp3 side-splitting fun, and you didn’t even know that an mp3 had sides!

I think Firesign Theater would appreciate the absurdity of this, although they are getting very little monetary gain from it.

Denro has since reported that he has indeed taken advantage of this big boggin — two tracks for two dollars, instead of the same two tracks as one album for ten dollars, and the Nick Danger track, too. I already have both albums on CD, but come to think of it I haven’t seen Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers in a long time. I’ll invest two dollars worth of time looking for it before buying the MP3, which should make the CD magically appear.

Their Googly eyes upon us

You probably know from all of the pop-ups that Google threw at us in February that their privacy policy has changed. My take on this is that the consolidation of all of their services under a single policy is an excuse to get better marketing information on us as consumers, voters, etc.

Amazon and, to much lesser an extent, Facebook already have a marketing profile on me, and I accept that, but what Google is doing strikes as going against their claimed ethos of “don’t be evil.” So I’ve decided that I will delete my personal Google account, including YouTube. Most of the playlists I set up in there haven’t worked in a while anyway. My Gmail address is used only for Google Alerts, and I don’t count on them much anymore. I’ll continue to use Google’s search engine, but I won’t be signed in, and I won’t use the Chrome browser, because I’m going back to Firefox.

A knight without armor in a savage land

I’m having a Have Gun – Will Travel marathon on the Roku. Netflix has HG-WT through its deal with Starz — a deal that expires on Wednesday, so I’m going through as many episodes as I can before then.

Most of what I’ve read about the Netflix-Starz contract focuses on the loss of recent hit movies, but my preference for casual viewing is for TV shows from the late 50’s and the early 60’s, like Have Gun – Will Travel, and Leave It To Beaver. (I like The Dick Van Dyke Show, but don’t revere it as others do.) How much money can there be left in owning the distribution rights to a 50-year-old TV series, anyway? It doesn’t appear that any restoration work was done on Have Gun – Will Travel, so any money it makes now must be pure profit.

This is my entertainment center, in the corner of the 4-season porch, where I do most of my TV viewing.

I’ve been considering replacing my 13-year-old Sony 32XBR100, but being the best conventional NTSC TV ever made for consumers it’s perfect for SD 4:3 material. If too much of the good, old stuff disappears from Netflix, and/or Turner Classic Movies goes HD, I’ll see about re-purposing the venerable, and extremely heavy, Sony as a setup for classic video gaming and getting a flat panel TV for the porch.