My Egg

New iMac ads

Apple has posted some new ads for the iMac.  They’re definitely…. cute.

The price of Replay

In reading more about Replay I came across their pricing.  A 40 hour model is $699.  Not a bad price, it is close to the equivilant of TiVo with a lifetime subscription (Replay doesn’t have a monthly subscription fee).  The thing I don’t get is the price jump from a 40 hour Replay to 80 hour to 160 hour to 320 hour.

Anyone out there have a Replay? Is the difference between all these models just more disc?  If so, $1000 to go from an 80 hour to a 320 hour just seems obscene.  Disk is obscenely cheap these days.  You can get an IBM 60 gig drive for probably around $140 retail.  And I’m sure they aren’t putting like 4 or 5 60 gig drives.

So why so expensive?  Is it worth THAT much?

The PVR battle

The Shifted Librarian had a link to an article about the battle between sudios and ReplayTV.  While online last night I was talking about it with some friends and some interesting points were brought up.

First off. I love my TiVo and never ever want to give it up.  It has completely changed how I watch TV.  But in talking last night, we went to extremes a bit. One difference between ReplayTV and TiVo is that Replay gives options to completely skip commercials.  You basicly don’t even know they are there.  Quite handy from a user perspective. TiVo lets you fast forward through them.  From an advertiser perspective, neither is that great, but TiVo is less threatening,  it’s the same as what people have been doing with VCRs for years.

Now, let’s say Replay and similar devices were able to get significant market penetration.  And then in response, advertisers become less willing to pay the huge fees for advertising (since more and more people don’t even see even see them. How much would you be willing to pay for your normal television watching?  How much would you be willing to spend a month for your TV to be completely ad free? For the record, I don’t think this will happen anytime soon. Replay is still too expensive for Joe Q Public.

This is probably my biggest concern with all this.  Networks do make tons of cash through advertising.  Look at the cost of some of these shows to the networks. 

On the other side, I think the arguments that are being made by the studios are lame.  They are attacking it on the basis of people being able to record their own digital copy of shows like X-Files to archive, saying that this will hurt sales of these shows on DVD.  IMHO, not really.  In many cases the quality of recording provided on DVD surpases the quality of stuff broadcasted (even over digital cable or satellite).

I think we’re in for quite the interesting trip, one that it makes sense to watch very closely.

(Damn, I ended up rambling a lot on that)

Clock outside Fleet
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The Other Side
<%radio.macros.imageref ("images/digiblog/021102-otherside-th.jpg", "This was taken at The Other Side Cafe in low light. I dug the look of the purple light up on the second level.", vspace:5)%>

Recent Music Purchases

I picked up a few cool CDs over the last few days.  I’m still working my way through all of them, but I’ve sampled a bit of each of them.

• John Acquaviva – From Saturday to Sunday (2 CDs)

• Noir – OST 1 (This one is amazing.  I listen to it and can just picture the show while listening.  They music really is beautiful.)

• My Bloody Valentine – Loveless (This one’s been around for a bit, but I finally picked up a copy for myself).

• FLCL – OST1 (Another one I had to get after seeing the show.)

Chocolate?!?!

Heinz, the ketchup company, is planning releasing a line of ‘frozen potato products’ called Funky Fries. Flavors include Sour Cream and Chives (doesn’t sound too bad) and Cocoa Crispers (I think I may be ill), which are chocolate french fries.  There’s also one that is colored sky blue.

What is this big thing with oddly colored food?

QOTD

Henry J. Tillman. “The world is my lobster.”

[Quotes of the Day]

We are now archived

Over the weekend instructions were posted on how to import old blogger posts into Radio.  I have to say I’m quite impressed with how well this tool worked.  The only big issue is that all my old comments are lost.  I may try and come up with some kind of way to transfer them over, but it isn’t easy since the blogids have changed.  Anyway, if you are interested, here is my very first blog post.