After two months of delays, the hatbox-shaped Sony VAIO VGX-TP1 PC is finally shipping. Mine arrived last week, and I took a few photos of the various components as I unboxed them. Just like the initial photos showed, this is a computer with very austere looks in an unusual squat cylinder case. The TP1 has [...]
Last month I spent just under $20 on Internet-delivered video versus $70 for my typical cable TV bill. Year-to-date, my spending is $127.14 versus $280 for cable. More than half of my spending last month came from the Xbox Live Marketplace’s 720p movie rental service. For 480 Microsoft Points, about $6.53 with tax, I can [...]
I just got an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) account. With EC2 and Simple Storage Service (S3), I think I can convert my DVDs into iPod-video-sized files much more quickly than my desktop and laptop could do. Here’s one person’s experience with doing the conversion using FFmpeg. He estimates that it costs well under a [...]
As my DVD stockpile has grown and as I’ve spent more time at work, I didn’t buy very much video in March. In fact, I’m still working through the $50 of iTunes Store credit I bought at a discounted price from a co-worker in February. My only iTunes purchase was of Andy Barker, P.I., at [...]
February has come and gone. 24 is getting more intense though I still like season 5 better than this season. The Office continues to stand out as a great show in its own right. In February I spent $33.67 on video expenses. Compared to my usual cable bill of $70, that’s more than a 50% [...]
In January I spent $61.94 on video, all of it from the iTunes Store. Compared to a baseline digital cable rate of $70.00, I’ve saved $8.06 year-to-date. Most of my expense this month was for a season pass of 24, which at $48.94 gives me a discount of about $3 versus buying the episodes individually. [...]
The Joost user interface features several unobtrusive widgets that disappear when the user stops using the mouse and keyboard. (enlarge) The folks who brought Voice over IP to the masses with Skype are at it again, making Joost the punchy new name for their multicast Internet video system. (The old name, the Venice Project, was even [...]
Today was the hugely-anticipated keynote at the Macworld Conference & Expo. As expected, we saw the final version of the iTV (now called Apple TV) which streams video from five PCs and syncs with one. For $300, as much as I paid for my Xbox 360 (which will act as an IPTV set-top box as [...]
I’m already starting work on my first new year’s resolution: I’m cutting cable out of my expenses. Comcast quoted me a promotional rate of $30 a month for digital cable, plus $10 per month to rent a high definition DVR that is crashes and malfunctions nearly as much as the model I had in Pittsburgh. [...]