Entries Tagged 'Television' ↓
February 27th, 2008 — Television
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is a fantastic new show set in between T2 and T3. It’s really starting to grow on me, especially after the T2 circle-jerk that was tonight’s episode.
The opening quote annoys me though, mainly through the use of the word “programmed”.
In the future, my son will lead mankind in the war against Skynet - the computer system programmed to destroy the world.
The thing is, Skynet wasn’t(*) programmed to destroy the world! The very point of Skynet was that it was self-aware, thinking for itself and making it’s own decisions. Saying it was programmed implies human intent, a programmer that made Skynet what it is.
I know it’s nit-picking, but how hard would it be to change the opening quote to a variation of the following?
In the future, my son will lead mankind in the war against Skynet - the self-aware computer system intent on destroying the world.
Much better.
* Or should that be isn’t? Stupid time-travel tense.
March 1st, 2007 — Technology, Television
Seeing as I’m one of the more technically-inclined folk (read: nerdier) folks amongst my circle of friends, I thought I’d share something that I get got a big kick out of when I discovered. I know most of us are fans of Lost, Heroes, Prison Break and so on - so much so that many of us resort to the wonders of BitTorrent to get our fix. However, watching it on the computer can be a pain in the ass - especially if you all have to crowd into someone’s room to watch it.
So, what options exist for watching our beloved .avi’s on the television in the lounge room?
There are a few, and a lot of them can be expensive, but luckily I’m also a bit tight with my cash as well as nerdy. With that in mind, I’d like to introduce on the most impressive open-source applications I’ve seen:
X-Box Media Centre
That’s X-Box as in the normal, now somewhat old-school, X-Box. Combine one of those, which you can easily pick up (with DVD remote) for under $200, with completely free software and a network cable and you can be watching all the episodes of Lost you want from your couch!
In days of old, to run software like XBMC (that’s a nerdy acronym, everything in IT has one) you had to install a modchip. Well, those days are long behind us - you can mod your X-Box without even opening it’s case! It’s not even hard to do - plug an X-Box controller to USB converter into your PC, copy a hacked save game over to the X-Box, then load that save game. It then gives you a menu where you can install any software you like. Seriously, this is genius.
As a side bonus, you can also install play your (probably not) legally acquired backup X-Box games, emulators (Galaga, bitches!) and listen to music over the network.
In a later post, I’ll link to a few tutorials that I found useful when working how to set this all up.
February 22nd, 2007 — Australia, Television
Just after I cite Channel 10’s showing of Jericho straight after the US airing as an example of a network doing things right for once, I find out they’ve decided not to pick up the second half of the season. Gee, thanks for showing half a season of another show, 10.
There’s also a bit of discussion about yesterday’s article over at SMH’s “Mashup” blog. Check it out here.
February 21st, 2007 — Australia, Television
Alex Malick, the researcher previously interviewed on Triple J’s Hack program, has a new study showing the average broadcast delay for new TV shows in Australia has increased from 7.6 to 16.7 months over the past two years.
Malik also studied comments by TV viewers on various internet forums, and concluded: “These delays are one of the major factors driving Australians to use BitTorrent and other internet-based peer-to-peer programs to download programs illegally from overseas, prior to their local broadcast.”
I completely agree. When shows like Heroes debut in the US (25 September 2006) then take over 4 months to air in Australia (31 January 2007), it has to be expected that people are going to download it. Lost isn’t much better either, with the show being up to episode 8 in the US (including a two month hiatus) but only just starting in Australia.
There are exceptions, however. 24 is being aired on Channel 7 with only a few weeks delay, and Jericho was airing within a DAY of the US.
From SMH, source here.
