Month: January 2010

There’s No Such Thing As Free TV

In the early days of television it appeared the shows were free, just put up an antenna and watch your favorite programs for nothing.  But as we all know, we paid for our viewing by watching commercials.  Then came cable TV.  We paid a small fee to avoid the hassle of messing with antennas, but we still watched a lot of commercials.  However, this started the upward cost of watching television.  Cable providers slowly added more channels and raised their fees.  They even offered commercial free networks like HBO and Showtime, but at an even greater cost.  It’s not uncommon today to pay over $100 a month for cable or satellite access.  Then they charged even more for DVR boxes and services so we could skip over the commercials.

Now people are abandoning their cable/satellite services to save money and going retro by using antennas again, and getting over-the-air (OTA) HD television.  They supplement their viewing variety with Netflix, HTPCs and now DLNA compliant devices.  Getting TV from the Internet gives the illusion that we’ve finally found a way to get free TV.  Don’t count on it.  We still pay $25-50 a month for broadband Internet access, and we still watch a lot of commercials.  And if the movie and television industry has their way, they’ll find new ways to charge us for watching our favorite shows over the Internet.

Netflix, at $8.99 for 1 disc service and streaming video via a Roku box is probably the cheapest way to get the most TV watching bang for the buck.  Now Netflix is under attack by the Hollywood Studios.  As the Business Week article points out, studios don’t like the all-you-can-eat streaming pricing.  They want a cut of the action for each movie you watch, because they consider streaming equal to cable/satellite pay-per-view movies, that cost viewers $4 a pop.  And the studios, like Warner Brothers, want to slow the access to movies that Netflix rents because Netflix is cutting into sales of DVD/BD discs.  I know I don’t buy discs anymore, so I can understand this.  And if you haven’t noticed lately, a lot of streaming content on Netflix started showing expiration dates.  Bummer.

Generations of television viewers who grew up after the Baby Boomers don’t remember “free” TV.  Every house had an antenna sprouting from the roof and you didn’t have to pay a monthly bill to watch your shows.  Of course, we didn’t have the power to skip commercials, and we only had 3-4 channels in our nightly lineup.  We had NBC’s Saturday Night at the Movies showing new to broadcast films, and each station had a library of old films they could show at odd hours of the day, usually in the middle of the night.  Life was simple then.  Of course, so were the shows.

Decades later, television shows and movies cost untold millions to make, far more than what broadcast commercials and movie tickets can finance.  Movie makers want to maximize their profits by selling their films several times, in a standard tiered released system where they get the maximum revenue at each stage:

  • Theatrical releases
  • DVD/BD sales
  • Pay-per-view
  • Premium cable (HBO, Showtime, etc)
  • Basic cable
  • Broadcast networks
  • [Netflix streaming?]

So where in the hierarchy do they release titles to Internet streaming?  And if DVD/BD sales are hurt by rentals, when do you release titles to Netflix?  Right now, I pay the most for movies because I watch a lot of flicks on the big screen.  I could probably save $500 a year by waiting for movies to come to Netflix.  This is one reason why I don’t care about getting cable TV anymore, or when movies get to Netflix.  But if you aren’t big on going to the movies, this does matter.

The trouble for movie makers is Netflix is so damn efficient and cheap.  Even without streaming, for $8.99 a month you can watch about a 100 movies a year, and with streaming, your selection is overwhelming.  Who needs to watch more?  And if you count that Netflix rents/streams TV shows and documentaries, that makes $8.99 a month the cheapest form of TV watching other than OTA viewing.  Sports is the main thing missing, and probably why more people don’t give up cable/satellite.

Now Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) is catching on, allowing you to stream video content off the Internet directly to your TV, without using a computer.  Geeks have been hooking up their computers to their TV for years, but it’s not an elegant consumer oriented solution.  All the major TV manufacturers are starting to build DLNA technology directly into their TVs, meaning you won’t need a Roku box to stream Netflix and Amazon videos.  Each manufacturer can choose which streaming system to support, or in some cases, they can support PC servers like PlayOnTv that will talk to your TV directly, or via your Wii, PS3 or Xbox 360, so you can watch Hulu and other emerging Internet TV networks.

Essentially, online TV networks like Hulu.com, CastTV and TV.com are ways to get broadcast and cable network shows free off the Internet, or free if you ignore your ISP bill.  But when content providers realize that these services will undercut services higher up the economic viewing ladder, will they continue to offer their content for free?  Will there be more commercials, or even subscriptions required?

I installed PlayOnTV on our Wii and played around with Hulu.  The Wii remote made a decent TV remote and worked well with the Hulu menu system.  This bit of testing provided an epiphany for me.  Internet TV is like cable TV – too many channels and too much to see!  Since I’ve given up cable TV and lived for a few months with just ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and Netflix, I’ve learned to love simplicity.  I thought I wanted more documentaries which Internet TV might offer me, but it’s not worth the hassle of finding them. 

I like the higher quality of watching Blu-ray discs, or even DVD quality, over watching Internet TV quality.  Broadcast HD seems better than cable HD, and Blu-ray 1080p is even better yet.  I’ve gotten used to pristine picture quality, and for me at least, visual quality is better than viewing quantity.  I don’t mind waiting for BD discs to come in the mail.  I know my viewing habits aren’t typical.  My wife is a channel surfer and loves to see what’s on by flipping through hundreds of channels.  If you’re like her, then you’ll need to pay for cable/satellite, or spend the money for Internet TV options.

I pay $16.99/month to Netflix for 2 discs out at a time with Blu-ray.  That’s as cheap as I can get while getting the most TV watching for my dough.  If the movie studios force Netflix to charge more for streaming, I’ll live without streaming.  I’m a little annoyed that Blu-ray discs cost more to buy and rent than DVDs when they look physically identical, but the extra visual quality is worth it to me.  I don’t mind watching Big Love or Weeds months after their HBO and Showtime broadcasts.

TV isn’t free, but it doesn’t have to be expensive either.  How much you pay for TV depends on how impatient you are to see new shows and films.  As I get older I’ll probably stop going to the theater as much, because paying $10 to see a movie the first week it’s out won’t be as important.  I know a lot of old guys who stopped going to the movies altogether.  If you’re young, restless, twitchy and impatient, then you’ll probably love flipping through 300 cable channels and won’t mind paying $100 a month for that pleasure.

When I heard Warner Brothers wanted Netflix to wait a whole month before renting movies that had just gone on sale, I laughed.  At 58, a month is nothing.  To a teenager or twenty-something, waiting a month is probably unbearable.  I’m still finding new movies from the 1930s to watch, and I’ve seen thousands of them already.  I’d much prefer Netflix maintaining it’s low rates than getting movies sooner.  Let the young finance the movie and television industry – if you’re patient you can save your money for retirement.

JWH – 1/17/10

Songs Rated 10

I am home today because of a snow day, and I felt deliciously sleepy, so I put on my Songs Rated 10 at Lala.com, turned up the volume, kicked back in the La-Z-Boy, covered up with a warm fuzzy blanket and let my mind float away with the music.  I absolutely LOVE listening to my favorite tunes when I’m half asleep, drifting in and out of slumber land.  I play the music loud so it constantly jerks me back to near wakefulness, usually as each song begins, and then I slowly fall back into unconsciousness.  This is as close as I can get to listening to music high anymore – it’s been decades since I  mixed music and smoke.

My Songs Rate 10 playlist are cuts that I can listen to anytime, in any order, and repeated endlessly.  My lullabies currently represent 47 songs from various genres dated from 1965-2009.  Click on the link and you can see and even play the list.  This is the magic of Lala.  They let anyone play a song once for free, so it’s a great site for sharing music.  I wonder if anyone else in the world has this particular list of 47 songs?

These songs resonate in my mind in a way I can’t comprehend.  Somehow these songs are on the same frequency as my emotions because when I play them they make my feelings well up and become highly sensitive to the music’s words and notes.  Their rhythms stimulates my thoughts, their melodies flow around my synapses freeing old memories.  My mind releases random images stored away in neural chemistry that float to the surface of my dreamy consciousness.  I’ve often thought this is the state of mind I want to be in when I die, so I’d just drift away, returning to the blackness of nothingness while my awareness floats between two notes.

JWH – 1/8/10   

Predicting the Apple Tablet

The computer press is buzzing with rumors of an Apple tablet computer.  I don’t think anyone knows anything for sure, and I expect Steve Jobs to wow people when he finally announces whatever he plans to show off as his next big product.  It may be a tablet computer, or it might be something surprisingly different.  Most people speculate it will be something to compete against netbooks and ebook readers, both of which are hot products that Apple currently doesn’t compete against.  A lot of rumor sites show an artist conception of a giant iPod touch like device.  Some sites are even predicting it will cost $800-900 dollars.

Well, if the Apple tablet is to compete against netbooks and ebooks the price needs to be a whole lot closer to $400.  I do think a touch screen tablet is the perfect competition to a netbook, but I’m not sure about such a device replacing ebooks.  Maybe for reading magazines, newspapers and web content, but not for reading fiction.  Think about it, reading fiction is something people do for hours on end, and imagine holding a heavy device that long?  I think the Kindle and Nook are too big.  My ideal ebook would be mostly screen, about the size between a mass market paperback page and a trade paperback page, weigh next to nothing, be extremely durable, and cheap enough so I wouldn’t be afraid to carry it everywhere I go.  That doesn’t describe any of the Apple tablet rumors.

If a new Apple device is going to be rolled out it must not compete with the iPhone or the MacBook, and that puts it squarely into the netbook space.  Netbooks have keyboards and work just like bigger computers.  A tablet doesn’t.  So how many of your everyday routines can be enhanced by a 10 inch touch screen?  For me, that would be something to replace magazines and newspapers.  If bookworms balk at paying $260 for an ebook reader to make novel reading easier, will newshounds accept spending $800 to make reading the news easier?  Not me.

You can get a 22” LCD monitor for around $200, and sometimes a lot less.  For reading the New York Times, magazines and blogs, I’d love to have a monitor I could hold in my lap and read while sitting in my La-Z-Boy.  A 10-12” screen would probably be ideal, but it must be thin and very light.  It doesn’t need to be a computer, but just a reader, maybe just a portable Acrobat reader.  And I don’t want to pay more than the cost of a monitor to have a monitor I can hold in my lap to read.

I’m not sure I’d even want video and music from such a device, especially if it will raise the price significantly.  I just want to read what I normally sit at the computer and read, but in a comfortable chair.  My Zune, iPod Nano and Sansa Clip are perfect for audiobooks and music.  My iPod touch mostly goes untouched.  My netbook mostly goes untouched.  I just don’t do that much on the go computing.

The iPhone was brilliant.  The iPod was brilliant.  Do we really need the iTablet?  How many more useful devices can we use?  Steve Jobs does have an amazing track record of creating devices we didn’t have before but can’t live without now:  Apple II, Mac, iPod and iPhone.  But I prefer a PC to a Mac.  The Sansa Clip is easier to carry than my iPod Nano or touch, and even though I’d love an iPhone I won’t spend the money.  The $64,000 question is whether or not Steve Jobs will announce something I will run out and buy.  I’d own a Mac if they were cheaper, so I’m guessing I’ll be waiting on the HP tablet computer.

JWH – 1/7/10

Sherlock Holmes and Other Modern Myths

There are some fictional characters that have achieved a kind of immortality outside of the stories from where they were conceived, and they get interpreted over and over again in new books, television shows, plays and movies.  These include Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Tarzan, Ebenezer Scrooge, Frankenstein, Superman, James Bond, and to a lesser extent, Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, the March sisters (aka Little Women), and so on.  The list is surprisingly short compared to the millions of books that have been published.  And it’s fascinating to note the fading of some of these characters, like Nick and Nora Charles, Dick Tracy, Perry Mason, etc.

One way to understand fictional immortality is to study how various Shakespeare’s plays have been in and out of fashion over the last four hundred years.  We like to assume we’re getting the true Shakespeare when we read the plays, but are we?  Read a play and then watch it performed.  It comes to life with actor’s performances and the director’s interpretation.  I have read that Shakespeare changes with the generations and centuries. 

Another specific way to see mythmaking in action is to study Wyatt Earp.  Sometimes a famous fictional character is based on a real human.  Read a handful of Earp biographies and then watch several of the dozens of movies based on the Earp myth, especially the films with Kevin Costner and Kurt Russell.  You’ll begin to see how myths are created.  Absolute facts don’t count, but the defining of a Platonic Form that makes the character recognizable no matter when and where he or she appears and in what guise.  Wyatt Earp is still Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine, even only a damn few facts remain.  That’s the power of myth.

Many people hate when their favorite book is made into a movie because the filmmaker’s interpretation of their beloved character is different from how they brought the character to life in their mind.  But everyone’s mental interpretation is different, so I don’t criticize movies for seeing characters different.  In fact, I love seeing multiple interpretations, especially when moviemakers are trying to be faithful to the original story, or trying to tell the original story in a modern setting.  I love when actors inhabit a character and make them come to life.  I’m critical when a writer uses an iconic character for a stock performance, especially when they obviously don’t strive to add life to the character.

I found one source that said Sherlock Holmes has been played by 75 actors in 211 films, but it was dated 2005, so we know it’s at least 76 and 212 now, if not a good deal more.  Arthur Conan Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories featuring the detective adventures of Sherlock Holmes, so there’s a wealth of literary history from which to define the Holmes mythology.  And I think that’s what’s happening, our popular culture is giving life to modern myths.  I wonder if this is how the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans gave life to their gods?  We only see faint shadows of those ancient individuals today, and have no idea what their fully empowered identities were like.

Sherlock Holmes has been around since 1887, and Wikipedia has a fascinating summary about Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation, which also backs up many of the details in the new Guy Ritchie/Robert Downey, Jr. interpretation of the cerebral sleuth.  I am not a rabid aficionado of Sherlock Holmes – I’ve read some of the original short stories and seen many different Holmes movies over the years, so I can’t accurately judge how Guy Ritchie treats the canon, but read Tom Richmond for a true fan’s view. 

People who haven’t read Sherlock Holmes stories, or even seen any of the older Sherlock Holmes films will have a virgin impression of Holmes, and that’s fascinating by itself.  If they are now inspired to read the stories or watch older interpretations they might be shocked and dislike the non-Robert Downey versions.  Often filmgoers and readers imprint with the first encounter with a characterization, like ducklings to their mother, and find reasons to dislike any other performance.  I think this is especially true of Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy.  For baby boomers and older folk, Basil Rathbone is the definitive screen Sherlock Holmes.  Such bonding is unfortunate because it restricts the evolution of the mythic character.  Often the character must be reinvented for each generation.

I hope I live long enough to see the Harry Potter books get made into a second set of films – to be epic mythic a character needs to have been in dozens of films.  Not that I don’t like the first productions, but I’m anxious to see new interpretations.  I suppose this is why there are nearly a half a million fan-fiction retellings of the Harry Potter stories.  I was very excited to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie hoping it would instill new life into the fading Baker Street citizens, and acquire a new generation of believers for the Holmes mythology. 

But here’s my problem, even though I can buy Robert Downey, Jr. as Holmes, and especially Jude Law as Watson, and love Rachel McAdams as Irene Adler, I’m not sure I can buy the plot of the new movie as a standard Sherlock Holmes story.  While watching the film I predicted how it would wrap up and I was satisfied with the direction the writers took, but think Ritchie went too overboard with the violence, explosions and especially the scene at the shipyard.  I absolute adored the recreation of Victorian London.  I would have been happy if the only action had been Holmes and Watson strolling for two hours around town and just chatted.

I bet the Sherlock Holmes virgins had a far more exciting time watching the new film than most of us older fans because they weren’t burden with worrying if the story disrupted the canon.  Besides the first time is always the most memorable.  Many Pride and Prejudice faithful can’t stand any of the film versions because they want to adhere to the purity of the novel, knowing any aspect of a film version can drown out content from the original story.  Most people will always think of Tarzan as Johnny Weissmuller even though the original 26 Edgar Rice Burroughs books describes Tarzan very differently.  I’m sure there are lots of kids that have never read the Harry Potter books but worship the films and they would be shocked to discover a very different Harry Potter described by his creator J. K. Rowling.

But I don’t think any of this matters.  Everyone can tell a cat from all other animals even though they come in an endless variety of appearances.  There seems to be an indescribable natural form that is the cat ideal.  You can always spot a Tarzan in any TV show, movie, book, comic, video game, cartoon, or other fictional venue.  Ditto for Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, Ebenezer Scrooge and Frankenstein.  In popular culture this is also becoming true for Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, but isn’t as widespread as those already mentioned.  I think the March sisters from Little Women have potential to evolve into 21st century famous fictional pop culture identities.  They were major in the 19th century, and they maintained their fame since at a steady low level, but I sense a new surge.  Pop culture prefers flesh and blood people to make famous, but it’s fascinating to see word and sentence people gain worldwide fame.

It will be fascinating to know if Sherlock Holmes or Tarzan, or even Harry Potter continue to exist one hundred, two hundred or a thousand years from now.  Isis and Osiris are still around, but how many average kids know who they are.  How many kids even know Odysseus or Gilgamesh.

JWH – 1/6/10

Avatar

First off, let me say I loved seeing Avatar, and want to go see it again.  Second, this is not a review, but a dissection of the movie and it has spoilers, so don’t read this unless you’ve seen the movie.  Avatar represents state of the art movie making and proves computer technology can turn any imagined story into a film.  I agree with the majority of reviewers that have said “Wow” to the special effects and then mumbled some grumbles.  The story retraces Dancing with Wolves, but the filmmaking blazes new territory.

However much I loved watching Avatar, I have one really big gripe:  I hate that humans are presented as stupid, cruel and blood-thirsty.  Why does Avatar portray future homo sapiens as 19th century colonial ravagers? Star Trek came up with the Prime Directive back in 1966, so why does this futuristic flick predict mankind as idiot imperialists?  I asked my friends about this and they defend the movie by saying “Oh, the film is just a liberal metaphor for how corporations and people treat the environment.”  But I can’t imagine James Cameron ruining the most expensive piece of art in history with such a crude message.  I can’t but wonder if Cameron thought the “kill them all and let God sort them out” mentality is how the majority of moviegoers want the majority of men and women characterized.  Why aren’t viewers insulted by seeing ourselves shown in such a nasty light?  Or are people sitting in their chairs thinking, that’s not how I am, I’d be one of the good scientists, but all the people around me must be like those blood-thirsty killers of the poor Na’vi. 

The film imagines technology evolving, but shows men and women devolving from our present knowledge.   Cameron presents the military as disciples of General George Armstrong Custer.  I’m surprised Colonel Miles Quaritch didn’t go around saying “The only good Na’vi is a dead Na’vi.”  Sure the solders in Avatar are passed off as private security, so as not to insult the U.S. military, but they think of themselves as Marines – thus it still attacks a stereotype.  And I worry that international film goers will naturally accept the bad humans, and especially the military in this film, as representing typical Americans and typical American thinking and philosophy.  If the Na’vi had been the bugs of Starship Troopers, I would have been pumped up by the military might of the story too.  We are a violent nation, but it’s important to know when violence isn’t the solution.  Strangely I think our real military knows that better than we do, or movie makers.

Why did Cameron spend so much money making such a cliché story?  It’s Starship Troopers at the Little Big Horn.  Sure, I can picture the story as a metaphor for how we’re destroying the Earth and its indigenous people and life forms, but that analogy is too crude to work.  How many filmgoers leave the theater thinking about how we’re destroying the rain forest?  Or does Cameron think we’re all spectators at the Coliseum, just sitting in front of his spectacle to get pumped up over a simple action picture show – hey the white hats win in the end, but we’re not wearing them.

Also, it’s time for film makes to stop relying on cliché science fiction.  The humans and the military in Avatar could have come from the same generic Sci-Fi reality as Starship Troopers, Aliens, and countless other SF movies and TV shows.  When are science fiction movie makers going to evolve and create more realistic science fiction? 

I would have been more impressed if Cameron had made almost the same movie but with a different opening premise.  Start with a generation ship that has traveled for three hundred years, finally reaching its destination, Pandora, with interstellar colonists.  The human space travelers must colonize or die.  They must find acceptance in a harsh new world, so instead of Custer’s Last Stand, they must be Jamestown and struggle to share a new world with equally intelligent creatures, and this time not follow the same path as we did with the Native Americans.  The colonists could use the same avatar technology to communicate with the Na’vi – what a fantastic first contact way to communicate.

I’m tired of science fiction films having comic book level violence.  The world is not Tom and Jerry, or Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner.  Also unbelievably silly, is to think that anything in existence would be valuable to mine at interstellar distances.  This is pretty much basing a plot on the Santa Claus principle.  Why aren’t science fiction fans enraged at this kind of Easter Bunny thinking about the future?  If Avatar had been made in 1955 I could forgive the story, but the world has gone through a lot of enlightenment since then.

I’m sure James Cameron assumed we’d go through some catharsis of guilt and hate ourselves for being so evil.  I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being the bad guy.  I know humanity has been evil in its treatment of the Earth.  It’s time to go past that and change.  Science fiction needs to show us evolving, and becoming wiser in the future.  Science fiction needs to show who we should aspire to be, rather than make us hate who we are.

Avatar is too beautiful to hate.  It is stunning to see.  It immerses us into an alien world better than any other science fiction film.  I just wished it didn’t have such a cliché plot.  Avatar proves that just about any science fiction or fantasy novel could be made into a film.  I’m tired of movie makers thinking the only science fictional conflict worth filming is human versus alien death matches.  What great science fiction book would you love to see filmed with the same technology as Avatar?  The first one that comes to mind for me is Hyperion by Dan Simmons.

JWH – 1/4/10