TV

When I was a young lad, on New Year’s Eve I would watch cartoons on Cartoon Network. The whole family would be over. The kids were in the basement watching TV and the parents upstairs enjoying some tasty beverages. It was a blast, especially the cartoon part.

The one year that comes to mind, Cartoon Network was previewing a number of shows that were being considered for full time. Among them were (if my memory serves) Power Puff Girls, Johnny Bravo, and Dexter’s Lab. Throughout the night you could call in and vote for the one that you thought was the best. I never called, mostly because I thought it was silly and didn’t make a difference. In hindsight I was most likely right.

That year as I sat and watched these shows I started to get a little down. You see, I didn’t have the knowledge I do now and had some interesting thoughts about the TV studios. In my mind there was a single man in the studio who had to put in the tape (this was back when my family owned a VCR) to start the next show. He would manually load all the shows and commercials and take all the calls. I started to feel bad for this person and wonder why I was so lucky. I imagined that he was sitting there in this dark room all sad that he had to do this while his family was having a party at home. I wondered what he did to pass the time. He must have already seen these new shows since he worked for Cartoon Network. I could only guess that he sat there staring into space with a bottle of juice. I really wished we could invent a robot to switch the tapes so he can go home with his family.

I now know that it is mostly automated and there is no one manually changing tapes in a VCR. There probably is someone who is working there during New Year’s Eve, but I don’t think it is anything like the scenario I imagined. Looking back, I find it interesting that I never felt this way on Christmas.

I realized something when watching this weeks episode of Heroes (Season 3 Episode 5). I get really frustrated that the characters never ask what powers someone has. It will get mentioned in a conversation that (insert character name) had powers and everyone just kind of leaves it at that. If I were in the room, I would want to know what the powers were before I let the conversation continue.

I understand that discovering the powers is part of the suspense and I wouldn’t expect the writers to reveal it at that time. It just feels like it is the elephant in the room that no one addresses. I think it would be just as effective to have someone ask and then cut to the others face, which could possibly have a look of horror, and then cut to another scene.

This is just one of the things that frustrates me about the storytelling in this show. There is a bag full of others, but that is for another time.

A couple months ago I bought a new 26″ Westinghouse LCD TV. My main reason for the purchase was the size. Its sleek form made it easier to transport back and forth between school.

The TV had a great picture and overall I loved it. That was until I noticed the audio started becoming out of sync. At first I thought I was crazy and it wasn’t really going on, but it got progressively worse the longer the TV was on. The audio would happen half a second after the video.

I then started doing some research to fix the problem and came up with nothing. I started to make up excuses for the problem, like it was the power source or the DVD I was playing. So I learned to live with it, until last night. After watching 30 minutes of Silverado I got fed up with the issue and decided to look up a solution yet again.

This time I had a ton more luck. I found my solution in a review at Buy.com. Apparently, some Westinghouse TVs had a firmware issue that would cause this problem. Lucky for me, the firmware on my TV is user upgradeable. All I had to do was download the newest firmware from the manufacturer’s site and load it onto a portable USB drive*. That then plugged into the side of my TV and the update started. It was really easy and the whole process has renewed my faith in the company. The audio/video sync issue is completely fixed.

The whole process was so simple that I wish it was on more devices. This is the first TV that I have owned that allows the user to update the firmware with minimal frustration. Although it was a pain to deal with the audio issues, now that it is fixed I can easily recommend this TV.

*There are more detailed instructions with a few more easy steps located on the firmware page.

About a month ago, there was news that NBC and Apple were having trouble agreeing on terms for the renewal of their contract to distribute NBC shows on the iTunes Store. It seemed that the one main snag had to do with pricing. Apple wanted to keep it the same, NBC wanted variable pricing.

Currently, TV shows on the iTunes store cost $1.99 across the board. They can be half an hour or an hour, popular or obscure, comedy or drama. Either way, they cost $1.99. Variable pricing would allow the TV network to set the price how they see fit.

Shortly after rumors leaked that the contract would not be renewed, Apple issued a press release stating that the reason for not renewing the contract was:

“Apple declined to pay more than double the wholesale price for each NBC TV episode, which would have resulted in the retail price to consumers increasing to $4.99 per episode from the current $1.99.”

NBC came back to say that the reason was that they wanted more flexibility with pricing and the ability to have variable pricing. (Couldn’t find the press release)

From this perspective, NBC clearly looks like the bad guy to consumers. How dare they raise prices, don’t they know we can get this stuff for free over the air (cable) and on the internet (torrents). Apple clearly loves us little guys (although the consumer base can by no means be considered little) and is willing to fight for us. Right?

Let me paint you another picture. Apple is hurting us as consumers. They are taking away our power and at the same time making it look good. If Apple were to allow NBC use variable pricing, the consumers could then have an influence on setting the price. Will NBC set crazy high prices like $5 per episode of Heroes, you bet. At the same time they will lower the price of some less popular shows to $1.

If consumers are really so upset about the price at $5, hopefully they won’t buy, and at the same time they might check out that mediocre show for $1. By using variable pricing, NBC can judge the market to see what people are willing to pay for the TV shows. Their results could show that people are willing to pay $4 for an episode, but they could also show that sales will triple if they cut the price to $1. If NBC were able to judge this correctly, it could greatly benefit us consumers. As it currently stands, NBC has no way to tell if they could make more money by lowering prices because Apple wields the power. Sure consumers could get hurt by this, but I would rather have the power to influence price then have no power or choice at all.

My idea would work great, except there is one glaring problem. The media distribution agencies (MPAA, RIAA, TV Networks) are very cautious when it comes to internet distribution. They assume that all of their customers are thieves and thus interpret any bad result as a failure of the distribution channel rather than high prices. This means that they might price the episode at $5 and justify the declining sales as the falut of the internet. This is one major problem with the industry, if they could get over this and realize the benefits of internet distribution they could rake in the cash. Until then, Apple may end up being the good guy that sticks up for the consumer. As good as that sounds, it is unlikely. Remember that Apple is in business to make a profit, not help out everyone.

In the end, would you rather have a chance to influence prices or have no shows on iTunes. I vote for variable pricing.