Tech – Page 115 – Prattling before the Pratfall

Coming This Fall! Less Blogging?

It was back in January when I last mentioned the rumor that Netflix’s online movies would be available through the Xbox 360. The rumor is officially reality. No HD yet, and for that matter Netflix has one tenth the movies online that it has on DVD — 10,000 vs. 100,000, according to their Q&A page.

How many choices are available to watch via a Netflix ready device?

There are over 10,000 instant watching choices, but very few are new releases. So instant watching is a great supplement to our DVD catalog of 100,000 titles, but it is not a replacement. You will want to use both. Instant movies and TV episodes give you maximum spontaneity and DVDs give you maximum choice.

This is nevertheless a welcome development. It’s the direction that home video should and must take. How it will all shake out competing with video on demand from the cable operators will be interesting to see.

With all of these options maybe I should watch more movies and do less blogging? I can’t quit running, or I’d turn into a blubby hubby, sitting on the couch!

Firefox 3 Not Ready Yet

I’m entering this with Firefox 3. It’s been crashing a lot, going to sites like ZDNet and Computerworld. I’m sending all of the crash reports to Mozilla, but if you’re using Firefox 2 and are considering updating, for now I would suggest holding off.

VMnoware

Diane Greene kicked out of VMWare! This is big news. I’d known about the tension between her and Tucci, CEO of EMC, majority owner of VMware, but this came out of nowhere. It will be interesting to find out what’s really been going on behind the scenes.

Lights in the Sky, TV in the Mirror

The fireworks show in Boston last night was like a 1964 Beatles concert — short and loud. It was a big 20-minute display, which seemed like the right length. We were watching from the Cambridge side of the Charles River, on Memorial Drive in front of M.I.T. The blimp belongs to Hood, one of the bigger dairies in the Boston area. For a minute it looked like the blimp was flying into the fireworks, but as you can see it was a safe distance away.

[flv:/Video/2008/JUL/Fireworks2008.flv 440 330]

Another interesting sight awaited us at the hotel, down the road near Harvard, where the bathroom mirror had a built-in LCD TV.

[flv:/Video/2008/JUL/TVMirror.flv 440 330]

Another Video Test

Well, kiddies, let’s see if this works. If not, I’ll delete this and in my despair eat tapioca pudding.

[MEDIA=13]

Hey, there we go. MPEG-4 (H.264) compression. Here’s how it looks using FLV compression.

[flv:/Video/2008/JUN/GraveOfTheFireflies.flv 440 248]

Hmm… ya know what? I’m not seeing enough of a difference here to make it worth the effort to go with MPEG-4. If anything, FLV looks crisper. Also, it seems the entire MPEG-4 video has to buffer before it starts playing, and that’s a definite disadvantage.

H.264 Test

If you see this, please ignore…
[MEDIA=12]

OK… so don’t ignore. Because the test works.

This is sort of an important post. First, I’m seriously considering getting an iPhone 3G, after the initial rush has passed. But I was going to get a full-featured FiOS TV set top box for the porch, and instead I went for the free digital converter, so maybe I won’t get an iPhone.

The point to this 10-minute video about the new iPhone is that it’s in an entirely different format than what I’ve used up to now. This is just the proof of concept, and the next thing to do will be converting one of my own video transfers into the new format. If this works, from now on the videos should be watchable in full screen mode.