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Guest Post: the Broken Golden Age of Television

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This is a guest post by TV industry thought leader Erik Schwartz:

broken golden tv

It’s broken. But in 4K!

“Television is dead.” 

“It’s the golden age of television.”  

Here at the NATPE conference in Miami Beach this week, I’m hearing both of these arguments being argued repeatedly.  I think there’s truth in both positions.

This is the golden age of television. Programs like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, HOC, Hannibal, Fargo, The Americans, are as good or better than anything that has ever been produced. The current MVPD model is optimized around every network having a blockbuster show that makes that network a “must carry” for cable and satellite providers, and then filling up the rest of its schedule as cheaply as possible. As the number of networks has grown, the number of these tent-pole programs has swelled.  

Television is dead. Fewer consumers are watching this programming in a linear fashion, as the network airs it. It is DVR’ed, viewed on demand through TV Everywhere or Hulu, or purchased from iTunes or Amazon. It’s a generational shift. This is making it more difficult to monetize via traditional TV advertising channels. (My kids barely know what commercials are.) If this trend continues, will networks continue to invest in the funding of premium programming?

Will the SVODs like Netflix pick up the slack by funding even more new programming? To a certain extent, yes. But SVOD growth was fueled by buying archives of existing high-quality content, for much less than it would cost to produce new quality programming. This content is cheaper because it is already monetized.  It is found money for the rights holder. At market saturation (and Netflix is almost there in the US), if the SVODs have enough programming (original and archive) to prevent subscriber churn, is there incremental ROI in making more premium shows? Their profit is maximized by offering just enough content to keep a viewer subscribed — everything over that threshold eats into profit margins. A viewer consuming more SVOD is an incremental expense that does not increase revenue.

Yes, it is the golden age of programming. But the existing models for monetization are flawed given today’s consumer’s preferred consumption channels. Flat-rate SVOD incentivizes “just enough” great programming. For decades, advertising made revenue directly proportional to consumption. That changed when retransmission fees started accounting for more network revenue, and then it changed more with SVOD. For this golden age to continue, we need a new model in which revenue for all stakeholders is correlated with audience size.

– Erik Schwartz



6 Reasons Why Apple Won’t Announce NFC Payments

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stuffed-costanza-wallet

DisCo-Stan-Za

Disclosure: This is a Guest-contributed Post

In the early part of the last decade, when everyone was carrying blackberries and phones, the big buzzword was “convergence.”  We couldn’t wait to have our phone mashup with our email device and carry just one electronic gadget that did both.  The iPhone launched and, though Blackberrys had added phone capabilities, this was true convergence as you could do email, browse the web, make phone calls (sometimes depending on AT&T), and listen to music.  This was the first widely adopted and functional “SmartPhone”.

We’re still looking for that great convergence of your Smart Phone with our wallets and every Apple release is preceded by rumors of Near Field Communication (NFC) and mobile wallet.  Here are the reasons why as much as I’d love to ditch my George Costanza-sized wallet for one device, this isn’t going to happen this year:

1. Stores don’t take NFC

Sure there are some stores that have NFC terminals, but those account for about 2% of all terminals world-wide.  For those drugstores like CVS and Duane Reade that do have NFC, it’s painful to watch a clerk try to be helpful when they have no idea how the technology works.  Apple won’t ship a phone with NFC payments that only works in some stores, some of the time.

2. It’s not Globally Equivalent

When Apple ships a product it generally is the same product around the globe.  There aren’t iPhone 4x’s in Singapore and iPhone4z’s in Germany.  The world gets the same platform with a few modifications to radio frequencies.  Sure, they add currencies and countries to iTunes over time, but a core capability always ships around the globe within months.

3. Apple isn’t first to market

Remember the Creative Nomad Jukebox.  Most of you won’t, but this was one of the many MP3 players that launched before the iPod . How about the Treo mobile phone and email device. Apple is notorious for not being the first to market with a piece of hardware, but when they launch getting it so right that it blows everyone away.  There are plenty of people trying to do NFC like ISIS – the consortium of carriers, MCX – the consortium of merchants, Google – the consortium of Google.  Apple is happy to wait and watch how they fail, let them educate the market and spend to “terminalize” stores and then swoop in many years later with an updated PassBook that you’ve been using to go to concerts, movies, board airplanes, etc.

4. Payments is messy

Payments is a complicated beast that has so many hands in the cookie jar of a transaction taking their crumbs that it’s hard to distinguish from beltway politics.  When you think of where apple would fit in the ecosystem, they closest you get is a PayPal solution for online, where they can set the merchant discount rate.  At the store, unless they became their own payment mark (not happening in 2 weeks), then they’d be riding on someone elses “rails” (Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Amex).   Sharing in this transaction with a partner upon whom they’d be reliant is not a very Apple thing to do.  They own customers and ecosystems.  They don’t share so well.  Also, payments is a high-touch, customer complaint wellspring.  Without accruing a lot of value to Apple, it doesn’t seem likely they would work to add this without nailing all the other promotional goodness that would yield benefit.

5. Apple isn’t an advertising company

The real money is in promotions and advertising where you don’t take .05% of a transaction,but get to take a bigger chunk by delivering a lead or changing customer behaviour. In previous efforts around advertising, Apple hasn’t had the stomach for these messy and high touch endeavors.  Look at iAd and why you don’t see Apple competing, seriously, with Google or even Facebook on that front.  They make software and hardware.  They generally aren’t great at services.

6. Swipe isn’t broken

Finally, Apple likes to create step-change in consumer experiences.  Swipe isn’t broken, nor does tap add that much ease of use and simplicity.  Anytime I’ve stood behind someone trying to pay with their mobile phone, I watch as customers get mad while they try and open the payments app, enter the pin code, and wait for the clerk to understand what’s happened because they didn’t hand over a credit card or cash.

So, while Apple may launch a neat way to share songs or photos using BlueTooth LE or NFC, or greater enhancements to their ecosystem of entertainment like a more robust remote for your apple TV, I don’t see payments coming anytime soon for physical world transactions.

Holiday TextExpander Giveaway Contest

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You may remember our post showing how to automate Bit.ly using AppleScript
and TextExpander. Since then, TextExpander has been bumped up to version 2.5, and in doing so SmileOnMyMac included our bit.ly URL shortening script in the new release.

To celebrate we’re having a holiday contest and giving away two TextExpander licenses!

Contest the First:

TextExpander has one of the cheekiest registration screens around; it offers up data on how many times you’ve triggered an abbreviation, how many characters have been replaced, and how much time you’ve saved typing. The first license will go to the reader who guesses the number of characters (as of the time of posting) that TextExpander has spared me from typing. The Price is Right rules apply: closest guess (without going over) wins.

TextExpander Register Screen

Contest the Second:

This started off because I came up with a new snippet; now it’s your turn. The second license will go to the reader who suggest the best idea for a new snippet, as judged by the LiveDigitally team. Extra points for contest entries with working code snippets. (You can download the trial version to get started.)

Submit your guesses and ideas in the comments (you can link to a blog post if your idea is too long to fit.) The contest deadline is midnight on Wednesday, December 31st, and we’ll announce the winners in the new year. Good Luck!

Review: TuneUp Finds Missing Music Meta Data

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In brief: TuneUp (500 song cleanups for free, $12/yr subscription, $20 lifetime license) makes it easy to find missing metadata for songs and missing album art.

I bet your music collection is a lot like mine used to be: a hodgepodge of mp3s, m4as, and other types of audio files that you’ve acquired over the years and ripped using various shareware products of dubious quality, resulting in hundreds or thousands of tracks that are misspelled, missing album names, and are generally a mess:

A small snippet of my pre-TuneUp Library

Sad Snippets of my pre-TuneUp music collection are coupled with…

Album covers small

… an even sadder dearth of album covers.

Sorting your library in iTunes yields a list of songs named “Track 01 – Insert Song Name Here” or “Kanye West Christmas Album 02: Jingle #(@*#ing Bells.” You’re missing album art, your genres are a mess. And, since doing a file-by-file fix would take hour upon frustrating hour, there’s no prospect of things getting better any time soon.

But don’t lose hope, because TuneUp (Windows only, Mac version coming this fall) is here to help. Launched earlier this year by the TuneUp Media, TuneUp offers a dead-simple way to scan audio files and correct missing or corrupt meta data, including album cover art. Its back-end is powered by Gracenote’s music fingerprinting service, which boasts a database of 80 million different tracks and 6 million albums.

Cleaning up your wayward tunes is easy – drag incomplete tracks to TuneUp’s interface, and the program returns results in a few seconds. Click to approve the suggested changes to update the file information, or reject suggestions or undo changes if you see a mistake.

In addition to scrubbing features, TuneUp offers a “Now Playing” companion that suggests YouTube videos, merchandise, and concert schedules for the song that you’re scrubbing or playing.

So what’s good?

  • It works: I threw nearly 400 songs at TuneUp, and it found the correct track name, album, artist and genere for all but 2 – a godawful techno remix of Boys of Summer (like you don’t love DJ Sammy), and an instrumental version of the New York Mets theme song (my favorite ringtone). That’s 99.5%, for you stats geeks. TuneUp claims a standard 85% – 90% success rate, with most misses coming from remixes, unreleased live concert tracks, and the most obscure of obscure songs.
  • It’s easy: Drag, drop, click. Done.
  • If you don’t have a ton of music to fix, it’s free: TuneUp offers a free trial version that will clean up to 500 tracks.
  • “Added value” is actually added value: The “Now Playing” section offers a fairly comprehensive list of videos, concert schedules, related music, and more. The merchandise and ticket auction sections feel like you’re having a bunch of referral links pushed at you, but they’re easily ignored.

What’s not as good?

  • Clear the schedule: While TuneUp identified tracks quickly (2ish seconds apiece in my run), writing the metadata and album art was not. My 400 songs took nearly 15 minutes to find, 40 minutes to write.
  • It’s not that I don’t love you, it’s just that sometimes I need some me time: Like a needy, whiney, insecure significant other, TuneUp won’t let you start iTunes without TuneUp tagging along. There is no feature in the preferences to disable this, and a forum posting on the topic doesn’t contain any reassurance that it will be coming anytime soon. Without uninstalling the program, I couldn’t find any obvious way to prevent TuneUp from loading.

As for my results? Take a look:

Fixed covers

If you’ve got an eyesore of a music library that seems to taunt you every time you try and find a mislabeled track, you would be well-served by shelling out an Andrew Jackson to give TuneUp a try. It does what it says it will do, and does it well. As long as you’ve got a couple of hours to kill and don’t mind an application that loads every time you run iTunes, you will be rewarded with a music library that is so pristine that it looks like you actually paid for every single one of your tracks.

Update: The San Francisco Chronicle also provides a write-up of TuneUp, and contains a brief discussion of the Picard Project, which offers a free alternative to TuneUp. I haven’t tried Picard.

Editor (JT)’s Note: While I have both a personal and professional relationship with the TuneUp team, I did no edits whatsoever to this review, nor provide any direction or insight into the content, tone, etc.  My only involvement was to provide an introduction between Dan Rubin (article author) and the individual providing reviewer support at TuneUp.

Should We Pay for Broadband by the Byte?

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Man on computerBy announcing that it would cap residential broadband users to 250 GB in downloads per month, Comcast last week made a tacit admission that it can charge users $0.17 per gigabyte ($43/month for the service), cover its operating costs, and still make a profit. If Comcast is happy to charge these rates to its heaviest users, the people who put the biggest strain on its residential broadband infrastructure, why shouldn’t the regular users enjoy the same benefit?

Buffet. Just like broadband, but tastier. The answer is that US broadband service is akin to a Chinese Buffet – the heavier users, who scarf down everything they can, are subsidized by lighter users, who pay more in exchange for consuming orders of magnitude less. The restaurant owners (and broadband providers), who scream “you eat like killer whale!” while a miniscule percentage of their users exceed some arbitrary limit, continue to pull in the same amount from everyone, making a killing on those who don’t eat very much, or only use their broadband to email, surf the web, watch a couple of YouTube videos every day, and download a few big files every month.

For a buffet, which is generally an infrequent indulgence, the system works. But for a recurring service like broadband, there’s no sense in charging customers a fixed rate when there is such a large disparity in consumption.

So here’s my modest proposal for Comcast, and other broadband providers: make broadband equal for all users. Set a monthly account maintenance/access fee (tier it to overall connection speed, if that’s your thing), and then charge everyone for the bits they actually use. The benefit to consumers is clear: if you’re paying for what you use, most users will pay less. The benefits for providers? With the battle for broadband users heating up, and 40% of the country still using dial-up services, the cable companies and telcos have a huge opportunity to attract vast swaths of new customers to not only their broadband services, but also their TV and phone services. Played right, the revenue increase from new sign-ups (if you were a new broadband customer, what kind of pricing would you choose?) could easily offset the initial decrease in broadband income.

There’s no reason for arbitrary caps if you charge for every bit. There’s no need to drive the people who use your service more than anyone else into the arms of a competitor (if, of course, there is one). Charge people for what they use, and customers will flock. Or, keep playing these ridiculous cat and mouse games that only upset your top users, and cause you reams of bad press with all the others. It’s not that hard a choice, broadband providers. Do the right thing.

Why the Technology Stances of Our Politicians Are Meaningless

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I don’t much care about a politician’s stance on technological issues. Do you?

Joe Biden.Sure you do. The net? Gotta keep it neutral! Excessive penalties for minor copyright infringement? Joe Biden’s proposed legislation that would force electronics makers to ensure that the government could have access to any encrypted communications? Take my key and shove it, komrade Biden!

John McCain is against net neutrality legislation (not the idea of net neutrality, mind you, just the idea of legislating it. He’s super free-market, despite the fact that the free market can’t thrive where there’s no competition. How many broadband providers can you choose from, again?) Barack Obama, the geek’s stalwart, is all hat, no cattle, when it comes to punishing the evil telecoms and protecting you from warrantless wiretaps (I don’t worry too much, I just set my Twitter account to “Private” and don’t add “US Government” or “NSA” as a friend on Facebook. Plus, I totally jailbreak my iPhone That should solve it, right?)

All of this stuff is really important. Right? That’s what we say… until we get in that voting booth. Then, our pragmatic side finds that little things like national security and the economy are just a wee bit more important. It’s a natural reaction – in the grand scheme of our lives, having a sound economy and taking out the bad guys du jour are always going to trump our need access ESPN.com in 30 milliseconds instead of 90 milliseconds, or our fear about whether or not we’ll be ponying up a couple of grand because we swiped a copy of Bring it On 2: Bring it More On off of the Pirate Bay. It’s easy to support net neutrality, it’s another to shrug off short term worries in order to support it, especially when your candidate of choice may not be on the right side of the issue.

It’s a shame, (and here comes the pessimism) because net neutrality will be one of those topics that we look back and ten years from now and say “if only we had held lawmakers responsible back then, we would have something other to do on the net than tune to the Sports Portal (sponsored by ESPN), the New-o-Tron (CNNBCFOX), and LOL Cats Central.” But it also means that, when CNET publishes a story on McCain’s VP pick that’s as brutal as the story they published on Biden, you won’t have to fret too much if you’re a McCain supporter, because a bad tech record isn’t going to mean anything when you close the curtain to vote November 4.

Update: Ziff-Davis’s Larry Dignan covered this as well.

Review: The Nextar T30 Portable Media Player Demands a "Saved By The Bell" Analogy

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Saved By The Bell CastNote: If you’re not familiar with Saved By the Bell, I suggest you open up your wallet, clear a couple of days, and catch up. Then, return for the review.

The Nextar T30 is the Jessie Spano of the Portable Media Player world. The sub-$100 player has its upsides – it’s attractive, has a decent feature set, and the price for picking one up isn’t nearly as daunting as the cost of its more popular competition. But, much like AC Slater discovered when he started courting Jessie, the Nextar T30 features just enough potential deal-killers that you’ll wish that you had either made the effort to get your hands on the more attractive competition, or settled for something just as middling, but not quite as frustrating.

The Superficial

The T30, like Jessie, is a smart-looking piece of hardware with a slim profile. Its face is dominated by a 3.5 inch QVGA (320 x 240 resolution) screen, which Nextar claims supports over 260,000 colors (I didn’t count). The body, which is just under half an inch thick, sports a cheery orange accent. Tiny buttons for playback and navigation run the top and right edges. At 4″ x 3″, the whole package is light, easily pocketable, and garners the coveted “wow, that’s a big screen! Cool!” reaction from the easily impressed.

Nextar with Jessie SpanoNextar T30 ports

Nextar T30 Nav buttonsNextar T30 Play, Volume Buttons

In any range of conditions, I had no problem with the screen’s brightness – even in full sunlight, the picture wasn’t washed out. The picture quality is passable, but not great – even with well-encoded video or 320×240 images, there was still noticeable pixelation.

Sound quality was adequate via the built in speaker, better using headphones.

Smarts (It’s What’s on the Inside That Counts, Right?)

Jessie Spano, a geek’s girl before there was an even a concept of a geek’s girl, knew it all. History, math, science, she could handle it all. The T30’s functionality is almost as impressive, with qualifiers – it plays music, plays video, displays photos, and serves as an “ebook” reader. 4GB of internal storage come built in, and an SD port allows for up to an additional 2GB. If you roll analog, you can calm your Top 40 craving with a built-in FM tuner that also allows you to record the audio directly to the T30’s storage. I was able to manage my media with Windows Media Player with no problem, and the brave can simply create folders and drag files in Windows Explorer.

I’m So Excited! I’m So Scared!

So how can you resist? Let’s reserve a table at The Max, get on the Zack Morris phone, and take this little mama to the prom!

Not so fast, bucko.

Hands-on, the Nextar T30 has some issues that could, for some users, prove more worrisome than our beloved Jessie’s skeleton-laden closet (most worrisome first):

  • The Caffeine-Pill Addiction (the deal breaker): Just like Jessie’s lust for caffeine-fueled all-night study sessions almost destroyed her, the Nextar T30’s downfall is the device’s interface. It’s maddeningly slow and the button layout forces you to operate it with two hands. New media is listed seemingly by the day it was added, and there’s no way to adjust the display. Since you can’t sort your data (by album, song name, artist, etc), finding any piece of individual media when you’ve uploaded a full 6 GB will be an extensive, frustrating click-fest.
  • The Bad-Boy Brother: Media management, like Jessie’s rebellious half-sibling Eric, is aggressively irritating. Quick example: I own Wang Chung’s Greatest Hits (who doesn’t?), and I want the option to be able to listen to the album as a whole, or to listen to “Everybody Have Fun” on my “All Time Greatest Hits” playlist. To do this, I had to create two folders (one for each playlist), and then copy the song into each folder. Having to load the same media onto the same device twice is about as bad as trying to cheat Screech out of his valedictorian spot because you want to get into Stamford University.
  • The Know-it-all Attitude: You can play any type of video, as long as it’s an avi (video conversion software comes in the box, but doesn’t convert Quicktime files). You can read any ebook, as long as it’s a .txt file. You can listen to any type of music, as long as its an mp3 or wma file. Blech. I know format lock-ins aren’t unique to Nextar, but it’s still frustrating.

The Kelly Factor

Kelly Kapowski. Must... Not... Be... Gratuitous...Like Jessie, the Nextar T30 is in a field laden with tough competitors. Jessie Spano always seemed to find herself shown up in one way or another. The Nextar finds itself similarly outcompeted:

  • The Creative Zen 4 GB, the Stacey Carosi of the bunch. Not much prettier, but a lot more pluck – for the same price point, provides a more vivid (but smaller) screen, better media management, and basic contact info/calendar management.
  • The iPod Nano 4GB, for $50 more, is the Lisa Turtle – richer, and more polished. It’s an iPod. The screen’s smaller, but if you’re reading this site, you don’t need a rundown on how the iPod works.
  • The Archos 605 and iPod Touch are the lust-worthy Kelly Kapowskis. Both sport similar sized, more vivid screens, and are heads and shoulders above the Nextar in every category. I know the comparison is completely unfair, as these devices are targeted at entirely different markets, but the men of Bayside High and the Malibu Sands Beach Club had to make their choices as well. Is it worth a couple hundred extra bucks to have everything you always wanted, or do you want to settle for the issues-laden, unmanageable cheapie? The choice is yours.

The Report Card

Poor Jessie, despite all of her surface appeal, never came out on top. Time after time, her beauty and smarts were subsumed by her haughty whining, costing her friends, boyfriends, and audience love. The same holds true for the Nextar T30, a portable media player that manages to disappoint despite its attractive price point, appealing design, and huge screen. You may need to shell out a couple of extra bucks to pick up a better option, but the trifle of a few bucks is worth not having to deal with the T30’s maddening interface and media management issues. This little mama is going to detention – turn your sights elsewhere.

Explaining the "Digital Transition" and Review of the RCA ANT1500 Antenna

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I recently had a phone interview with Lou Lenzi, Sr. Vice President, Product Management with Audiovox Accessories and he gave me the statistic that 13 million homes in the US currently use an antenna to receive television signal to their main TV. Then there is another 6 million that use and antenna to receive signal to one or more of their extra TVs. Lenzi explained that people have TVs in the spare bedroom, basement, or out in the garage, all fall into this category. That means that come February 17, 2009, there will be about 13-16 million TVs that will stop working unless some actions are taken. Some of you are saying 13 million plus 6 million is 19 million, but there are some small markets that are not required to kill their analog signal.

For those of you that want answers to every digital TV questions, here are some resources. DTVanswers.com, DTVtransition.org, and here is a video created by CEA that explains everything. For everyone else, here are the basics.

There are 2 different OTA (over the air) TV broadcasts. NTSC (National Television System Committe) and ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee). There is no such thing as a HD antenna, all antennas can pick up the ATSC signal, or the NTSC for that matter, it is just that the rabbit ear antennas aren’t able to pick up a strong enough digital signal. Each of the signals need a tuner to correctly interpret the signal for the television.

Everyone that has an older TV with a rabbit ears antenna, will have a couple options. The first is to pony up the money and pay for cable or satellite service on the TV. If you want to keep on receiving free television, your next option is to purchase a newer TV that comes equip with a digital (ATSC) tuner. If you want to keep your old TV, you will need to purchase a converter box that has a digital tuner. With both of these free TV options you will also need to purchase an antenna that is built for the ATSC signal, and is strong enough to receive the signal in your location.

For all of the options above there are some pros and cons. First of all, anytime an antenna is used there is the possibility of what is called “drop off”. Meaning, if the signal drops too low for the tuner to display the TV picture, the picture freezes or skips. There is no fuzzy picture that happens, which is the case when the analog (NTSC) signal is not strong enough. If you don’t have the correct antenna for your location, this problem may occur many times during a show or game, and become very annoying. The big bonus of using an antenna for HDTV is that the OTA signal is uncompressed. So if you receive a clean signal with no drop offs, you will have the potential for the absolute best picture possible, pending your TV display. If you decide to go with cable or satelitte, you will receive a 100% uninterupted signal (unless you have Comcast, but thats another issue all together), but the picture could be highly compressed. You will also be paying a monthly fee, where as with the antenna, HDTV and/or converter box, you will just be paying a one time fee. Finally, most of the indoor antennas are bulky and pretty much the eye sore of you entertainment center. Enter the RCA ANT1500.

RCA ANT1500 Photo 1 RCA ANT1500 Photo 2
Front view of the RCA ANT1500

 Front view of the RCA ANT1500
with DVD case for size reference
RCA ANT1500 Photo 3 RCA ANT1500 Photo 4
Top view of the RCA ANT1500
with DVD case for size reference		 Back view of the RCA ANT1500
with DVD case for size reference

This new antenna from RCA is a compact, multi-directional, HD optimized antenna. With its small, form factor, you can lay it flat on top of entertainment center, hang it flat on the wall behind your TV, or in theory, stand it upright on a shelf.

Before anyone goes out and purchases an antenna to use with their digital tuner, they should check out AntennaWeb.org. Here you can type in your address to see what channels should be broadcasted in your area, and what type of antenna you should be able to use to receive them. After you find out what antenna you should be able to use, I would purchase one at a retailer with a good return policy, in case the antenna doesn’t work quite as well as you’d like.

I live in an apartment near O’Hare airport creating 2 factors that are big downsides for digital reception. AntennaWeb.org says that I should use a powered multi-directional antenna. I tested this ANT1500 with my ATI HD Wonder card in my PC, and a 24 in widescreen monitor. I loved how small and compact the antenna was, I was able to shove it in the corner, out of the way of all of my A/V gear. I just wish I could have kept the antenna in the corner out of the way, all of the time. In fact, I had to move the antenna between 2 different locations depending on the channel that I wanted to watch. I think if the antenna wasn’t hard wired with a 6 ft. coax cable, I would have been able to attach a longer cable, and find a single location farther than 6 ft away from my tuner, that would be able to receive all of the channels successfully. With the antenna in the correct location in order to get a good signal, I would still have “drop off” about 3-4 times in a 30 min program.

RCA ANT1500 Back Stand
RCA ANT1500 Back Stand

Besides having a hardwired coax cable, the only other design flaw is the “stand” that comes with the antenna. As you can see, there is a C shaped metal attachment that goes into 2 holes at the bottom of back of the antenna. The only thing is that, the cable comes out of the bottom as well. There is no notch or anything for the antenna to safely avoid bending at an awkward angle, making the antenna look like it is ready to fall over. I think the stand should have been thought about better, or just removed from the package altogether.

After reporting my not so awesome reception to AudioVox, they went ahead and sent me a Zenith converter box, saying it should work better than my HD Wonder card. Using the converter box was super easy, I connected the antenna to the box, and RCA cables from the box to my video and audio. The box automatically scanned for channels and was able to display programming details. Again, I had the exact same problems, needing to move the antenna between the 2 different locations, and 3-4 “drop offs” per 30 min program. My apartment might be one of the worst scenarios when it comes to digital reception.

If you live in a location where a non-powered multi-directional antenna will receive most of your channels, I highly recommend this antenna. Its small form factor is a huge plus in the world of antennas, because most of them are so darn ugly, and HUGE. Example A, B, C, D and E. Again, I would recommend trying the antenna out in your setup before you throw away your receipt.

I know some of you might be saying, with all this hassle of signal, and “drop off” why would I even want to bother with this whole HD antenna deal? As mentioned before, the two positives are no monthly payments, and uncompressed HD quality. But the real question is, whether or not either of those two are worth it, if your signal drops out every so often, especially during the big game. If you can receive a 100% free, crystal clear signal, with limited “drop offs”, I would say it is, for sure worth it. This digital transition, can be as costly or as not so costly as you want it to be. Hopefully this information can help you make the best decisions.

Liberal Media Deals In Lies: NYT Rewrites iPhone History

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The NYT feeds the Android/T-Mobile hype machine with a fairly tepid press-release-dressed-up-as-an-article, but this utterly craptastic piece of “analysis” cannot go unchallenged:

Apple’s iPhone has shaken the cellphone industry, partly because of its design, but mostly because AT&T and Apple have allowed owners to download any number of applications to their phones. That freedom to individualize a phone’s functions has helped increase the popularity of the iPhone.

Ummm, NO! Sure, the iPhone shook the celphone industry despite warnings (like this one from Palm CEO Ed Colligan) that making phones is hard and “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” But the iPhone launched without extensibility or third-party apps.

The iPhone began life as a closed platform. In January of 2007, Steve Jobs said “You don’t want your phone to be an open platform”. There were always plans to open the platform up, but for the majority of the time iPhones have been on this earth, if you wanted to put new programs on your iPhone, you had to jailbreak it. It wasn’t until recently, after a great deal of fear, uncertainty, and drama, that the iPhone platform was opened to outside development.

To say that the iPhone shakes the industry “mostly” because of its extendibility is demonstrably false. It shakes the industry because its a well-designed, well-integrated product in a market sector that’s gotten away with producing staid, nigh-unusable garbage for way too long. Which is why the article in question is so offensive – there’s plenty of opportunity for Google/Android ahead, and tons of other areas to focus on the notion of customer freedom. Why force-fit this story about the iPhone when it just isn’t needed?

Here’s to hoping that Google’s introduction of the Android platform will provide Apple with a worthy competitor—and push the industry to develop 21st century phones.

How-to: Automatic URL Shortening with Bit.ly and TextExpander

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Hi, my name is jonathanpberger and I’ll be covering all sorts of nerdy topics here on LiveDigitally. Got comments? Questions? Rants? You can drop me a line at jpb@livedigitally.com or see what else I’m up to on my Twitter feed, my homepage, or my tumbleblog.

One of my can’t-live-without-it time-and-keystroke-saving apps (TextExpander) got bumped to version 2.3 today. It’s a minor update: a few bug-fixes and a new snippet group for Accented Words (like “rosé”, “olé”, “sauté”, or “jalapeño”). But I got to playing around, and saw a cool video demonstrating how to use TextExpander for another time-and-keystroke-saver: URL-Shortening.

URL-Shortening may not seem like a big deal, but it comes in handy when you’re dealing with space restrictions (like Twitter’s 140 character-limit), you want to tidy up some messy links, or you’re trying to RickRoll someone. It’s one of those possibly-extraneous activities that makes life a tiny little bit easier, but only when it’s effortless to employ. Enter TextExpander.

Jack-Daniyel Strong has a great tip for shortening URLs using TinyURL, TextExpander, and Applescript. After setting it up, you can shorten URLs by

1) copying the URL to the clipboard, and 2) typing a preset abbreviation. It’s that easy.

I’ve adapted his technique for the new kid on the URL-shortening block, Bit.ly (which everyone is gushing over), and which provides a host of neat features like History, Click/Referrer tracking, thumbnails, mirroring, and best of all, a robust API. Continue reading →

What if Apple invented and sold the Segway?

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Steve Jobs on SegwaySo I was walking around Downtown Chicago last weekend, the very same weekend Apple pushed 1 million iPhone 3G units out the door, and saw a police officer stroll by on his government issued Segway, which got me thinking. What if the on-top-of-the-world tech giant invented, marketed, and sold the Segway today. Would Apple be able to push the 50,000 to 100,000 units out the door that Segway Inc. expected to sell in its first year of sales? I think the answer is 100% yes. Well, maybe 90%.

-Design Design Design
Apple has a knack for taking products to their limit of how good they can look. When Steve Jobs got a first look at the Segway back in 2003, he said, “Its shape is not innovative, it’s not elegant, it doesn’t feel anthropomorphic.” (For those of us that needed to look up that word: anthropomorphic adj. – resembling or made to resemble a human form.) If Jobs and his designers were to design the Segway, it would, for sure, be better in those three areas. Of course there would be a snazzy placement of a light up Apple logo, causing all the Apple lovers to eat it right up.

Also, the most important design & production point, Apple would be able to get enough of a mass production discount to keep the cost of the device down. They would shoot to have these priced at $2,999.00 (or as low as $77.00 a month). Crossing that $3,000.00 price point, for the base unit, is too scary for consumers.

-Bandwagon
With the popularity of Apple now, and the way people are eagerly handing over their credit cards for anything with an Apple logo on it, they would easily be able to push 100,000 units out the door in a year. I know some of you are saying, “Hey don’t push that overzealous bandwagon theory into this argument, everyone that buys an Apple product knows exactly what they are buying!!!” Well let me present to you this sample dialogue told to me by my co-worker that was waiting in line for his iPhone 3G.

20 something woman waiting in line, gets approached by what is assumed to be her mother.

Mother: What are you waiting in line for?
Daughter: Oh this new Apple phone. It’s cool, its got a touch screen, plays MP3, it’s really cool.
Mother: Really?! Maybe I want one of those too!
Daughter: Yeah, you should get one! Wait with me!

Woman and her Mother wait in line. An Apple associate comes by to answer questions.

Mother: What’s the deal with this phone?
Apple Associate: Ma’am the Apple iPhone is the most advanced cell phone on the market now, it has fully integrated PUSH email, calendar, and contacts. Along with real web browsing, an app store, and now integrated GPS.
Daughter: Oh really?! GPS, I had no idea it could do ANY of that!
*(Words are approximated, but idea is the same – Thanks Dave)

This was probably a common occurrence within the lines and lines of people waiting for the iPhone.

There are some of you saying, there are plenty of Apple products that Apple sells that don’t reach the numbers you are talking about. You are correct, but with the iPhone-like hype the Segway got when it was originally announced, Apple would be able to quickly turn that hype into sales. They have built up a well enough rapport with consumers, that as long as there is a line to get it, a cool factor, and an Apple logo on the side of it, people will shell out the cash/credit for it.

-Marketing is King
Apple is a marketing juggernaut and would have to assert its dollars in this area in order to make this product sell. They would saturate the movie and television market, making it look like everyone in our society uses a Segway on a daily basis. With the right ad campaign, they would be able to make everyone in the world think they were morons for wanting to walk anywhere. Commercials, billboards, and subway cars would all be screaming at us, “Soon there will be 2 kinds of people. Those who walk, and those who walk different.” Other ads will be telling us to purchase this new transportation device because, “It just goes”.

With the skyrocketing fuel prices, and the big push for “Being Green”, electric powered transportation is the “new black”. (Ironically, all of Apple’s successful gadgets come in black!) Apple would need to leverage this in their marketing and let people know, “Not only is this the coolest gadget IN the world, it’s the coolest gadget FOR the world.” A perfect example of this is the Honda Civic Hybrid. The Civic was already one of the coolest cars for teens and 20-somethings. But make it “Green”, and you got yourself a car that you have to get on a waiting list to buy.

Whether you agree with me or not, it seems like something just might be a brewing on this front, since on July 7th, the former CTO of Segway, Doug Fields, left to join Apple (JT: maybe this new hire has to do with the unknown “future product transition”).

Hopefully Fields can get this project on a roll. I know I speak for most when I say that we are just so tired of walking everywhere, and we don’t want to look like the biggest nerds ever, on a non-anthropomorphic Segway.