Oct

1

unwrapping Unbox

Filed under technical, movies, tv at 10:19 pm | Leave a Comment

Amazon has a service called Unbox, which gives you the ability to purchase or rent TV shows and movies in a downloadable format (e.g., on a computer). Earlier this spring they partnered with TiVo to allow the downloading of those purchases directly to your TiVo unit. They offered a $15 credit to everyone that registered their TiVo by a certain date, so I gave it a try.

We’ve used it close to a dozen times, both for TV shows and movies. Here are my thoughts on the service so far:

  • All in all, I’m really impressed, and am enjoying the service, mostly because of its convenience and ease of use. I can browse Amazon’s site, use their 1 click purchase to buy or rent the movie or show, and within a couple minutes it’s already downloading to my TiVo.
  • More recently, they’ve added the ability to browse and purchase from Unbox directly through the TiVo. It’s a slimmed down version of what’s online, but that’s probably necessary to make the interface usable on the TV with a remote.
  • For some reason, closed captioning is not available with any of the downloads. There have been a couple movies where the audio didn’t seem quite balanced (voices are soft, but music and sound effects are loud), and closed captioning would have been nice.
  • Unfortunately you have to wait until the movie or TV show is completely downloaded to your TiVo before you can begin watching. I wish you could begin watching once a sufficient amount had been buffered, but knowing that ahead of time it’s easy enough to plan ahead.
  • Download speeds have been about real time (e.g., 2 hours for a 2 hour movie), from what I’ve seen. That’s acceptable to me, given the fact my TiVo is connected to our home network wirelessly.
  • Once the movie or TV show has downloaded, you have 30 days to watch it before it’s automatically deleted. However, once you start playing it, you then have only 24 hours before it’s deleted. During that 24 hour period, you can treat it like any other show you’ve recorded, watching it as many times as you want, fast-forwarding, rewinding, etc. I can live with these DRM measures, but I would like to see something like 36 hours rather than 24. Frequently we start a movie one night (after the little guy’s in bed), and don’t quite finish it. The next available time to watch the rest is the following evening, starting at the same time. With only 24 hours, that’s too late to go back to it. If the window were bumped out to 36 hours, that would allow two evenings to get it all in, while still making the DRM folks happy.

Even though we’ve used up all of our $15 credit, we continue using the service. On weekends they always have a handful of new movies for $0.99, and with the TV season ramping up, they’ve been offering series pilots from NBC and FOX for free– even before they’ve aired. I’ll admit that’s the first time I remember ever watching the pilot for a show, and wouldn’t be surprised if we give one of the shows a try this season.

If you’ve got a real TiVo (not those DirecTV look-a-likes), I recommend trying out the Unbox service. I’ve certainly gotten good use of it so far.

Jun

25

changing seasons

Filed under sports, soccer, tv at 9:31 pm | 5 Comments

Another season of TV shows has passed without too much fanfare, while the NHL and the NBA have crowned their champions for another year.

While my favorite teams had good seasons by most measures, they once again disappointed all of us spoiled Detroit fans that have come to expect nothing but winning it all. (Then again, isn’t that the point of professional sports?)

The soccer season is now in full swing. Unfortunately, most televised games are on ESPN2, a station we don’t currently get. As such, the games I usually end up being able to watch are on Univision. (My lack of Spanish knowledge is only one of the things that makes watching that station amusing.) Sunday’s USA vs. Mexico match for the CONCACAF Gold Cup was such a game. At the conclusion of USA’s come-from-behind victory, a Univision reporter did a brief interview with Landon Donovan, the captain of the US team. To my amazement, the entire interview was done in Spanish, and from what I could tell, he didn’t miss a beat, responding in fluent Spanish. Impressive. Then again, he did grow up in MexiCalifornia. I have no doubt knowing Spanish comes in handy in many of their international games …

As for TV, both 24 and Lost wrapped up with barely memorable finales, though the seasons were certainly enjoyable. We were sad to say good-bye to King of Queens. While it lasted longer than most sitcoms, it never tried to take itself too seriously. Thanks for the laughs, Doug and Carrie.

With the summer lull having begun, we’ve once again renewed our Netflix membership. This is the third summer where we’ve used the membership to fill the gap. Hopefully the year-round Netflixers don’t view us seasonal members as lesser folk. I don’t think we’re alone in using the subscription only during the summer. While we enjoy catching up on some movies here and there, we seem to use the membership mostly for watching TV shows. It so nice being able to burn through a season without the time off between episodes or commercials (not that we watch those with current shows anymore, either). Previous summers have been used to start watching Alias and 24. We’ll see what this summer brings.

Mar

14

the sounds of summer

Filed under weather, tv at 7:56 pm | Leave a Comment

It felt like summer today, probably due to the sunny 85 degree weather. With it being such a beautiful evening, we have our house windows open allowing us to hear the sweet sounds of summer: kids outside playing, birds chirping (though they seem to do that year round here), dogs communicating with one another … and the unmistakable sound effects of TiVo wafting from the open windows of neighboring houses. Bloop, bloop, bloop-bloop. Heh.