Category: Tech

Hastings’ pudding

I never used Blockbuster Video. In fact, 1999 was the only year I rented VHS. Before then I bought and rented LaserDiscs from a great store in Waltham, Mass., called Sight & Sound, that also did a big mail-order business. When talking to Dennis I referred to it simply as “the store.”

Note: Somebody out there will see my name, Douglas Pratt, and think I am the LD/DVD Newsletter Douglas Pratt. I’m not. He’s in New York, I’m in Boston. I met Doug once at Sight & Sound, and I still get his newsletter.

After patronizing the store for quite a few years, the assistant manager of Sight & Sound, a guy named John, told me I was one of their top customers. I asked John who was a better customer than me, and he said, only half-joking, “Roger Ebert,” who really was a customer. Between that shock, and knowing that the DVD format was on the horizon, I knew I had a problem and it was time to stop spending money on LD’s. Breaking my habit was made easier when we moved, and Sight & Sound was no longer on the way home from work.

There was a small, independent business called Video Paradise that rented VHS and, later, DVD. It was a 4-mile drive, but the owner was smart, because not only did he also rent video games — a big plus for Eric — he had drop-off boxes for returns. There was one a mile from home, so we only had to make the longer drive once per week. He was also good about hiring good help and waiving late fees for good customers.

I don’t recall exactly when Netflix flickered into my consciousness, but it was before 2003, when the owner of Video Paradise sold the store. He got out of the business while the getting was good. By then Sight & Sound was gone, swept away by DVD, that had made high quality home video a consumer commodity, instead of the specialty item for a small number of enthusiasts that LD had been.

The new owner of Video Paradise was a problem from the start. He had an attitude and seemed to enjoy displaying it. He didn’t rent video games because he wasn’t interested in them, he ended the drop boxes, and then he hired some obnoxious kids for clerks and instituted truly onerous late fees. We continued going there for another six months, but when a kid behind the counter was being too much of a jerk, I decided the owner wasn’t interested in staying in business, and in January 2004 I signed up for Netflix. Bloomberg has this half-hour profile of Netflix founder Reed Hastings.

The Soul of ‘The Soul a New Machine’

Computer engineer Tom West died a few days ago. He occasionally made an appearance at the office, and although I never met West, he had a significant influence on me, through his work at Data General.

https://www.gruner.com/professional/TomWest/TomWest_1.htm?page=full

In 1999 DG was acquired by EMC, located just a few exits down Route 495 in Massachusetts. What made DG worth buying was CLARiiON, a mid-range storage system that I know quite well.

The development of the CLARiiON was led by Tom West, marking the second time he postponed scrappy DG’s inevitable extinction. West’s first great success was the MV-series of 32-bit minicomputers, as detailed in the Pulitzer Prize winning book The Soul of a New Machine, by Tracy Kidder.

Tracy Kidder and Tom West
West didn’t smoke cigarettes while he was at work. Away from Westborough, between sunset and bed, he might smoke a pack or more. Once he muttered that smoking wasn’t harmful if you didn’t do it at work. Of course, West knew it was silly in any literal sense, and he uttered it barely loud enough to be heard. Some nights he would go away from Eagle [the project name for the MV] and play music, with friends and acquaintances, sometimes all night long, and then, fingers raw from his guitar strings, he would drive right in to work and become once again the tough, grim-looking manager. One evening that winter I said to him that I didn’t think it was really possible to be a businessman and a dropout all at once. West said, “But I do it.”

During the dot com boom of the 90’s, the unthinkable happened — DEC failed. Despite having a new, cutting-edge 64-bit system called Alpha that put Data General’s AViiON servers to shame.

Prime and Wang were the first Massachusetts minicomputer companies to fall, and the assumption was they’d next be followed by DG. The idea that mighty DEC would be split up and disappear, let alone be survived for a time by its much smaller competitor, was ludicrous, and yet it happened.

EMC retained the CLARiiON name after acquiring DG and it’s only now being retired, in favor of the VNX label. To this day, when you do a SCSI inquiry on a CLARiiON logical drive it returns “DGC,” for Data General Corporation.

Bought and sold

I’m sold on the Logitech Revue with Google TV. When it was introduced I doubted the concept of putting a full keyboard in the lap of a TV watcher, and I was unsure about integrating cable TV, but it all works and works well. But it’s complicated, and doesn’t really sing until you customize it. Once I realized it could do IR remote control throughout the room, and not just the RF for the keyboard, my last reservation gave way, because now the volume controls work with my ancient (8-year-old) Kenwood THX Dolby Digital receiver. Logitech’s hardware is great, as always, and only a few software improvements are needed:

  • Add an app for Amazon Instant Video similar to the Netflix player
  • Fix surround sound for Netflix and Amazon
  • Rework the UI

That’s pretty much it for me. For most people, internet TV is the killer app, and the Roku HD for $60 is all they need for hardware. But if you’re accustomed to sitting with a netbook or laptop with the TV on, the Logitech Revue is a good deal for $200.

Web TV returns

I have a couple of posts that are almost done, but I have to sit at my desktop computer to finish them. For one there’s audio work to do, for the other there’s scanning. But right now I’m neither there nor in my usual 11-12 weeknight spot on the porch, I’m downstairs in front of the projector screen. The Daily Show is playing in the corner while I type this. I never had a use for picture-in-picture, the most oversold feature in TV’s of a bygone age, but being able to browse the web while having TV in the corner, while sitting on the couch ten feet from a 65-inch image, is surprisingly better than having a netbook in my lap and having to look up at a regular TV. For a web TV player I prefer the Roku, but it is neat having the Logitech Revue combine online video with cable TV and web browsing.

Tempting

Logitech Revue now only $200? No! Must… remain… loyal… to… Roku!

Follow-up: I’m typing this on a Logitech Revue with Google TV. As many others have said, it’s an interesting but problematical product. For example, Amazon Instant Video requires getting into the Amazon site with Chrome, instead of having a custom player. At first it thought I had a bad Internet connection and video quality was horrible, but I seem to have fixed that by going to an SD source then back to HD. Neither Amazon Instant Video nor Netflix have surround sound. The Roku player does this fine, extracting the center and surround channels for Dolby Pro Logic from the stereo channels. I’m not hung up on having true 5.1 Dolby Digital for streaming video, Pro Logic is good enough, but knowing it can be done, and very nicely, and not having it work is annoying. Another complaint is that it doesn’t seem to be able to find the Logitech Squeezebox Server that’s in the house. This is ridiculous, being a Logitech product! The Squeezebox Radio and Squeezeplay programs do this, so why no MySqueezebox support for the Revue?

Further follow-up: I’m still not sure if Squeezebox support is built-in, but if it is the server needs to be on the same IP subnet as the Revue, which is silly. There should be an option to enter the address. Much more consistency is needed between the various video players. Having to use Amazon’s web interface is particularly annoying. I’d like the option of using either that or one like the Netflix app has. It should also be easier to edit the home menu. But still, now that I’ve been using it for a few hours, I’m seeing more of what Google was thinking, integrating with cable TV instead of cutting the cable.

There’s a big Android update coming supposedly in a couple of months, and if I keep Logitech Revue I would expect it to fix the lack of surround sound on Amazon and Netflix. At the moment I’m on the fence about keeping the Revue, whereas I never had any doubts about its audio cousin the Squeezebox Radio, or the Roku player. But now that I see it’s working well with the FiOS DVR, and I am, after all, blogging with it right now, I’ll probably hang onto it in the hopes the software improves.