Category: Tech

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.

Five years

I haven’t written anything for a week, which is a rather sorry lead-in to today, being five years since I started this weblog. Five years was the time between the Beatles coming to America and the Let It Be rooftop concert. This past week I’ve been reading and running and thinking and ripping CD’s in WMA lossless format, to be played on the super-sounding Logitech Touch. This screenshot is from the free Windows application that works with the free Logitech music server software.

Here’s a photo Rolling Stone magazine posted that really knocks me out, man.

There’s George Harrison, in his Beatle suit, September 1963 (possibly early October), at the height of Beatlemania in England, but he was in New York, unknown and anonymous! I wonder if anybody who saw George that day at the Empire State Building recognized him 4-5 months later when the Beatles arrived in New York?

Garage garbage

Spent most of the day with Eric, cleaning out the garage. It should have been a Spring job, but it’s done. We took everything out, including from the always interesting loft (looks like a mouse and/or a squirrel was up there), gave the place a thorough sweeping and shop-vac, threw out a lot of stuff, and got everything back in, nice and neat.

In the loft I found the kiddie-sized resin chair Eric used when he was little. He sat in it for a moment as a joke and said we could throw it out, but I said keep it, in case a family with small children wants it. A few minutes later, a new family in the neighborhood with two small children walked by, and I offered the chair to them. They were happy to take it, and the father put in it the wagon he was pulling. It was one of those moments, that Eric doesn’t always appreciate, when I was able to say, “See? I told you.”

Back inside, I’m playing with the Squeezebox Touch I got for half price on a special deal from Logitech. The software still needs a few fixes, but that’s always the way with Logitech, and I have no buyer remorse with this purchase.

Logitech 50% off

Hot on the heels of Logitech Squeezeboxing their CEO out the door, I got this e-mail offer for half-off any single Logitech product.

I suspected it might be a phish, so rather than click on the link in the ad that went to logitech-newsletter2.com, I went to logitech.com to look at the Squeezebox Touch, an item that I’ve been very interested in, but not for $300.

I doubted the discount code in the e-mail ad would work, but whatta ya know… it did.

So I ordered it and will hook it up to the living room stereo, where it will sit next to a 25-year-old turntable. Slacker is one of the music services Logitech has, and lately I’ve been listening to their BBC Radiophonic Workshop station. It has all sorts of stuff, from classic British movie and TV themes to avant-garde jazz to sound effects.

Stupid !@@!$@#$##$%^ idiots!

Verizon FiOS workers are on strike. I don’t know if one of them screwed up the TV schedule, or if TCM’s information was wrong, but I set the DVR to record an old, rare movie for somebody — something that isn’t available on video — and it recorded only the first hour of it! AAUGH!! I am so sick and fu*king tired of damned stupid mistakes like this. If we are now supposed to be recording based on program data and not time, THEN THE DATA HAS TO BE !@#$%^&* CORRECT!!!!!! Or, if the running time is in doubt, as was the case here apparently, at least record too much, and not too little. I am REALLY PIS*ED OFF about this!

Follow-up: Tonight, the FiOS DVR listed G-Men from 1935 as the movie at 8, but the original 1932 Scarface was shown. The entry on TCM’s web site was correct. Somebody, somewhere, is screwing up.

In living color

RCA CEO David Sarnoff was a ruthless businessman. His great insight and accomplishment was seeing the potential of broadcasting as an entertainment medium and making network radio and television a reality. But Sarnoff didn’t hesitate to steal technology, as he did from Philo T. Farnsworth, and he crushed the great inventor Edwin Armstrong, who had been a close friend.

Having said that, RCA’s engineers did an exemplary job of creating the all-electronic NTSC color television system that was backwards-compatible with existing black & white sets. It was Ampex, however, that introduced b&w video tape recording in 1956. Two years later, RCA modified an Ampex deck so it could record in color, and the amazing results are in this video. If only this technology had been available during WWII, we would have an entirely different historical perception of the era.

Information on the restoration of this historic recording is at this link.