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Archive for the ‘TV’ Category

Last Flight from Da Nang — video of the most powerful piece of television news ever filmed.

For many of us post baby-boomers, this event in the 1970s was when we were just starting to watch TV news and trying to realize what was going on.  The Last Flight from Da Nang set the standard for television reports and was an inspiration for hundreds of aspiring journalists. If you haven’t seen it, [...]

Video of the Rangers baseball fan falling from the upper deck

No, you don’t get to see the actual fall–thank god. And I hope they don’t actually show it because it isn’t something I’d want to see. But the reactions of the players and fans to this tragedy that happened in Texas is pretty frightening. FWIW, he got the ball. Another fan caught it and gave [...]

Download Youtube videos via Safari Extension

Safari has added a new feature in the Version 5.0 release called “Extensions”. If you have Safari running version 5 (relatively smoothly, as there have been more than a few problems) you might want to take a look at some of the new extensions you can add: http://mac.appstorm.net/ By far one of the most exciting [...]

The man on the horse commercial, the sequel.

NBC Coverage of the Vancouver Olympics: More coverage with less staff

“NBC sucks” is a constant drone you hear each and every Olympics.  ”They didn’t show enough of the Tajikistan entrance, ergo they are biased against Tajikstan” and other silliness often is heard on the messageboards and other sites (and no, I’m not kidding about the Tajik reference–it happens). So now that we’re done with that, [...]

My Brent Spiner (Cmdr. Data) photo from the IWSIV party

Yea, it was low light and all I had was an iPhone, but I did manage to snap a quick picture of Brent Spiner from the It Won’t Stay in Vegas Party in Las Vegas last week.  I also met Levar Burton and quite a few tech celebrities like Robert Scoble, Leo Laporte and Dr. [...]

3D TV or Die: Television’s last gasp gimmick to slow IPTV?

So everyone who went to Vegas came back talking about 3D televisions, and I guess I probably should as well. The folks who saw 3D tv and who were awestruck basically fell into two categories:  gamers and sports fans.  The gamers were really excited about some of their favorite titles ending up in HD, and [...]

The Stig Xeroxes his face

Didn’t even notice this until re-watching a Youtube clip.

Increase size of subtitles in BBC iPlayer

Random tip of the day. One of the odd things I’ve noticed with the BBC’s iPlayer downloader is that when you play back videos in full screen, the font size of the subtitles can be ridiculously small.  I looked through the settings trying to find a solution, but there didn’t appear to be on easy [...]

Watch France 24 on your computer with a desktop widget

When it comes to IPTV, the US has Hulu, and the rest of the world has the really cool stuff. France 24, the France’s government-funded answer to CNN (and in English too)  has been doing some cutting edge stuff like being one of the first ‘live streaming’ applications for the iPhone.  Now they have a [...]

Living without Cable TV–Month 2 observations

  Wow, it’s been over two months since I made the decision to cut the Comcast cable to the house and just live in an IPTV and ‘Over the Air’ world.  I hooked up Mac Mini’s to each of the TVs (god I wish Apple would really delve into the market of guys who have [...]

Is everyone in Sweden a sex-crazed homicidal maniac? My thoughts on Wallander

You might get that idea in the media.  This month I finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which in Swedish was called Men who Hate Women Menn Som Hater Kvinner.  It was about some murders of women…well I won’t spoil the plot other than to say sex and murder had a pretty big role.  [...]

Al Jazeera English now over the air in the USA

Al Jazeera’s English service is very slick, very professional, and if you want, very biased (depending on who you talk to).  But for most Americans without FTA dishes or access to some IPTV programs, they never had an opportunity to judge for themselves.  Until now. MHZ Networks, a non-profit in DC that rebroadcasts nearly 10 [...]

A week without cable

Well, I survived, more of less. When I was in Hong Kong, there were basically only a few channels of English programming. BBC World, CNN International, DW (English and German), the English Premier League soccer channel and ATV, which showed reruns of 24 and a few other tv shows. In fact, while I was over [...]

Slingplayer for iPhone

From the about fricking time department, word has come from the TUAW that the much anticipated Slingplayer application for the iPhone has been submitted for approval with the overlords at Apple HQ. Slingplayer is a tool of many an expat used to ’sling’ back television content from a central location (i.e. their parent’s house) to [...]