Andrew Busey: My Musings

I rented No Country for Old Men this weekend on Apple TV. It was my first attempt at renting. It wasn’t ideal. I let it download for a bit before I started watching it and it still stopped midway through. So I watched some other DVRed stuff before returning and watching the rest. This wasn’t a great experience - it definitely broke the pacing and immersion of the movie.

So I tried again, this time I bought Revolver (a Guy Ritchie movie with Jason Stratham that I’d never heard of before). I let it start downloading. Found 28 Weeks (or maybe Days) Later and left that on while I watched some work. Then I watched Revolver. No issues. (Maybe it wasn’t true HD, the “buy” option is a little ambiguous about what you get - “iTunes Widescreen Format”, what the hell is that?). The quality was pretty good, the movie was reasonably good - although really weird.

I’m not sure it’s ready for primetime, but it is pretty cool. I’m getting ready to move so I haven’t spent much time setting up the configuration I want. I really want to have all this media on my Windows Home Server, but I have heard it is corrupting iTunes stuff in some cases so I’m waiting for a patch to mess with that. Until then I’ll just mess around with the Apple TV directly.

So I like the Sopranos… I don’t worship it though.  It’s a pretty good show and I’ve watched it on and off.  I’ve been a little bit more of an avid spectator for the last season because, well, it is the last season.  Now it’s over.  And let me say:  the finale kind of sucked.  I mean last week was pretty good and built up to what could have been a compelling end.  But really nothing got wrapped up.  I guess that’s ok but (vague spoiler) when a show ends in such a way that you think your DVR screwed up and cut off…. well that is just dumb.  I mean it wasn’t even a fade to black.  It was just black.  WTF.  Oh well, I guess it’s different.  But I hope it’s not a trend, shows that end with a straight cut to black after years - that’s a cop out in my opinion. 

Well I went back to the site, went to watch The Unit again and it offered to play from the beginning or resume.  I resumed.  It seemed to work.  Then right at the exciting conclusion - when the shooting starts - it plays a FREAKING PROMO REEL for THE SAME EPISODE I am trying to watch.  

PLEASE SOMEONE AT INNERTUBE - FIX THIS CRAP!

I don’t watch much TV, maybe 4-5 different series.  Two of them, The Unit and Criminal Minds are on CBS.  In the last two weeks my CRAPPY POS Scientific Atlanta DVR has failed to record the last 10-20 minutes of the most recent The Unit and the last two Criminal Minds.  I suspect this is because it didn’t have enough space and it was two stupid to make space by deleting old crap.  So I went to the web in hopes of finding these episodes (legally).

Neither are available on iTunes, which if you’ve been reading I have recently been testing with AppleTV.  That would have been cool.  Becuase then I could have watched them.

So while Criminal Minds is strangely unavailable, CBS does offer the most recent episode of The Unit online through their video service, called Innertube.

I’ve now watched the “full episode” of last nights The Unit twice.  Except that the ENDING IS NOT FREAKING THERE.  WTF!  I mean making me watch it twice - well the commercial at least, you can fast foward through segments of the show, but not the commercials - is really annoying.  But how can they not have the ending?  If it is intentional it is the must consumer unfriendly, crappy thing ever.  I mean its not like I have some other way to see what happened.  If it is unintentional, which I hope is the case, someone is really idiotic.  FIX IT!  These guys wonder why YouTube is killing them.

This is not making me a fan of innertube or CBS.  Not that they care, but gah. 

Well I got my AppleTV.  Hooked it up, synched up, and turned it on.  I would say its interesting, but probably not ready for primetime.   If you just want to listen to iTunes stuff on your home theater… and maybe put pictures on your flatscreen, it’s probably good for that.

It would be much cooler if you could buy TV shows right from the couch, but you can’t.  You have to buy them on iTunes, wait for them to download (not much Apple can do about that I suppose), and then watch them. 

So I bought the pilot of a new show called Supernatural.  It had good reviews on iTunes and seemed interesting.  It took a while to download, it was 464mb, but I watched it eventually.  It seemed to be the right aspect ratio, but not HD.  So it was a little dark, but not too bad.  All-in-all a reasonable experience.

But not really a wow experience.  It wasn’t so cool that I’ve downloaded 10 more shows.  I did try to buy 1 or 2 other shows because my crappy Scientific Atlanta DVR (PIECE OF SHIT) decided to only recorded 53 minutes of several shows rather than the whole show.  I still can’t get over how bad that thing is.

Anyway, my recommendation on the AppleTV is to wait until version 2.

Unless you have an addiction to shiny new technology gadgets… but in that case you probably already bought one.

i got an e-mail from Apple today telling me my Apple TV was delayed. 

Wrapping up Apple TV is taking a few weeks longer than we projected, and we now expect to begin shipments in mid-March, not in February as originally anticipated.

Oh well.  You can read more here:  Apple TV Slips to March.   (C|Net’s Crave Blog is pretty cool.)

My bet is the delay is caused by compatibility issues with Vista.  If that’s true I’m sure it’s gotta piss them off.  But you can’t really release a broad consumer media product that doesn’t work with Windows.  And given all the marketing Vista compatibility is probably a requirement.  (Although I’m not sure what the actual Vista installed base is.) 

Anyway, I know I’ll be really angry if my fancy Apple TV doesn’t work with Vista… when it finally shows up.

How will we know?  My prediction is we also get an iTunes / Quicktime update in mid-March that fixes all these Vista issues.  (Fingers crossed.)

I like this hsow a lot.  For a long time I thought Showtime’s attempts at original programming well, sucked.  But I was sick at home one day and I stumbled across Sleeper Cell.  It’s a show about an FBI agent who infiltrates a terrorist cell in Los Angeles.  That show was pretty amazing, definitely not some HBO wannabe, so I gave a few other shows a chance.  (BTW a new season of Sleeper Cell starts soon, it’s definitely worth checking out.)  I’m not a big fan of Weeds, but I think it’s production values are strong. 

But, I’m here to talk about Dexter.  Dexter Morgan is a blood spatter expert (which is basically a CSI type of thing) and a serial killer.  But his father, a police detective, discovered his sociopathic tendencies early and channeled him.  So he kills only bad people.  He investigates them, verifies they are guilty, then kills them.  In the location where he kills them he puts up exhibits showing their guilt.  It’s all-in-all pretty clever.  What makes it more interesting is the interwoven tail of another serial killer, whom Dexter is tracking.  I can’t really say any more without a major spoiler, but suffice it to say it is well done.  Watch this series.  There are only two episodes left, but you can watch the old ones on Showtime-on-Demand.  (Or at least I can on Time-Warner.)

HBO still made (makes) the two best series of all time though:  Entourage and the Sopranos.  I’m really looking forward to the next Entourage season.  Of course if there is no triumphant return of Ari, I’ll be pissed.