Categories
Brain Buster Gaming Geek Stuff

HD for High Definition – XBox 360 Delivers Movies

Over on The M Show I mentioned an article last week from Variety that named the XBox 360 the leader in movie downloads via the web (beating out even Amazon). Since I managed to score a 360 for Christmas I thought I would put it to the test and download my first HD movie.

You buy (actually rent) the movies by spending Microsoft Points from your XBox live account. So – just to bring you up to speed – you need the XBox 360 console at $399 (includes a 20GB hard drive, not the core system which is cheaper, but does not have the hard drive), and then an XBox Live account which I think is around $50 a year (I rolled my old XBox account onto the new box).

You then by the coin of the realm – Microsoft Points at 1000 points for $12.50. I can see why they do this so that they don’t have to worry about international currencies, but there is what I call the “casino chip” effect – you’re not really thinking hard about how much a point is worth and you don’t really think of it as “real money” so you tend to burn through them.
I was also suprised there was no volume discount on Microsoft Points, you can buy in increments of 500, 1000, 2000, or 5000 but all at the same rate.

There are currently 64 movies available, and 71 different TV shows (multiple seasons for many shows such as CSI, and you can select individual episodes of the TV shows). I chose V for Vendetta (great movie by the way) at 480 credits – $6 – for HD (320 credits – $4 – for the widescreen 480p – DVD resolution). Note that the file sizes were 1.7GB for the 480p and 6.1GB for the HD version. This is smaller than a normal DVD file for the 480p and same for the HD so there’s some kind of funky compression going on (probably a flavor of WMV?)

I have a fast RCN cable modem and I think the download took around 30 or 40 minutes. I’m not really sure, I started the download and switched to a game and it finished in the background, not exactly on-demand, but faster than Netflix or me carting my fat self over to the Hollywood Video.
The Digital Rights Management (DRM) is hardcore. You have 14 days from original download, or 24 hours from the first time you start watching it before it deletes itself. Not a huge deal because the 20GB drive can only hold 2 or 3 movies because I also have game demos on the drive.

A downer – you have no DVD chapters, only the normal tape controls (FF, Rew, Pause). This was a bit of a bummer because there was only one scene where the higher definition took my breath away and it was only a split second so it wasn’t worth going back a second time.

I can see why HD is fantastic for sports, but it only made a difference in once scene for me in the film. On the other hand I switched over to a normal DVD next and was surprised at how fuzzy it looked. It’s strange you don’t notice going up, but then you do notice going back down.

The thing I liked most is that for $6 I’ve been able to skip the HD DVD format wars completely. Let Sony choke on Blue-Ray (didn’t anyone learn anything from Betamax?). Why even bother with the XBox 360 HD upgrade? I’m not going to buy a single disc until the format wars are over if I can rent first run HD for $6 a pop.

Categories
Podcasting

A New M Show

Yes friends, Happy New Year, and please welcome the new look over at The M Show. The latest podcast will be up within the hour for your morning commute tomorrow. I’m also giving away an XBox, looking to win some wine, and talking about watching my first movie in HD (which I will have a full blog post on tomorrow).

I hope you enjoyed your New Year’s Eve, but now it’s back to work.

Categories
Daily Life Podcasting

Welcome to 2007

Happy New Year everyone! I’m finally taking my vacation, no new posts until Tuesday.

Thanks to everyone who’s been following the blog and the podcast (yes, traffic is up 4x since June).

2006 was fantastic and I’ve already got even more great projects lined up for this year, buckle up!

I’m starting off with a fresh coat of paint for The M Show, I’ve only got the homepage rolling, but I’m really liking the new look. Best of luck to you in 007.

Categories
Brain Buster Daily Life Gaming

Drowning In Media

Am I the only one feeling that way? DVD’s have become the new magazines, just a couple of bucks and not even worth reselling (and more fun to just pass on). There are a number of great podcasts that I have resigned myself to the fact that I will never get to them. Vidcasts are even worse, Tiki Bar and the Rumor Girls make the cut, and even they pile up now and then.

I’ve got the XBox 360 up and running and the integration with Live has been stretching my brain – how cool is it to be watching a DVD and get a pop-up that a friend on the other side of the country is looking for a game?

Add producing my own media to the mix (I saw the New M Show template today!) and that’s it – I’m doing this morning’s post at 11pm. But – I’m having more fun than ever. The bad news is that the bar is rising and the mediocre content is falling off my list. Perhaps the rising tide will raise all boats. Please comment if you’ve dropped casts or other media that you used to find compelling but no longer have time for.

Categories
Podcasting

It’s The M Show

A little late thanks to the holiday, but why not stop by for a listen anyway? You can check out the best business podcast by just clicking through!

Categories
Daily Life Email Marketing

God Bless Amazon Wish Lists

Or more importantly the people in Seattle that added that functionality to Amazon. It was a regular Christmas, me sitting around doing a lot of reading and plenty of visitors up here at the farm.

Of course the burning question that has not changed since I was 6 years old – “Tell us about the loot!”. Amazon has made the holiday a lot more satisfying. I got my nephews stuff that they were psyched to get, as opposed to being the weird old uncle getting them an ugly sweater or whatever. The lovely Carin got me a rare german Rick Astley disc (sorry, I’m a child of the 80’s), the type of thing that would be impossible to find in a pre-Amazon era.

I never got around to recording an M Show, probably tomorrow, not a lot worth chatting about on the Marketing front – except that Land’s End has been pummeling me with email, you’ve got to love a vendor with the guts to send me a reminder about holiday shopping on Christmas day.

I hope your holiday has gone well and you are enjoying your time off.

Categories
Daily Life Gaming

Happy Holidays!

To me that means Merry Christmas, if that’s not the case for you I hope you enjoy whatever your celebration of choice is. I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who celebrates Kawanzaa, I hear a lot of people mentioning it to be PC but I’ve never met anyone who actually celebrated it.

It’s been a great year again for the Podcast, especially with PodCamp on the scene. The blog has already been a lot of fun, I was surprised to see over 100 uniques today on a day I expected things to be totally dead. The past year has been incredible, if 2007 is even half as interesting it’s going to be great.

I’ve been posting daily but I may slip a day or two here until Wednesday (unless I get bored (usually every 2 hours or so)).

In other big news Carin scored with a killer Geek gift, I got the tricked out XBox 360! HD Games here I come!

Categories
Brain Buster Podcasting The Marketeer

Christopher Penn – Honorary Ronin

So I thought I was pretty clever earlier this week with my Rule of 2 (don’t waste your time with social networks that you only hear about once), then Chris Penn, of The Financial Aid Podcast weighed in with a brilliant comment – who gives a damn about the 2 minutes it takes to register, join every network out there to lock down your namespace (protect your brand in Marketese), and he’s absolutely right. He also pointed me towards some other crazy crap Google is trying.
The thing is, this is not the first time he’s dealt me a brainbuster. He’s doing crazy stuff all the time over on MySpace and he’s always experimenting. He’s also good at scripting, and I’m not, so that makes me jealous.

You may ask “Why only an Honorary Ronin”? Chris is actually a ninja, so calling him a Ronin would be an affront. I’ll let him correct my limited understanding if necessary, but the Ninja work for the emperor, sort of like Navy Seals (but you never see them and if there was a movie about them with Charlie Sheen in it, everyone involved in the film would end up assassinated). The Ronin is often without a master, usually because they have been disgraced – basically mercenaries.

In other words it’s sort of like how Colin Powell would be Sir Colin if not for that altercation we had with the kingdom back in the late 1700’s.

I also salute him for working at this place that, for some unknown reason, he’s the only one there that’s not a supermodel (actually I just checked Flickr and for some reason there were some other guys at the holiday party this year, maybe they took some heat for discrimination or something).

So Chris, this sangria’s for you.

Categories
Daily Life Productivity Booster

Defend Against Social Networks – The Rule of 2

As a hip, swinging Web 2.0 kind of guy/gal, I’m sure you have the same problem – every other week, at minimum, you get an invite to join YASN (Yet Another Social Network). After a while your inbox is crammed with notices and spam from a bunch of websites have names with no vowels, and no traffic.

Fear naught, the answer is here! The defense is “JFunk’s Rule of 2”. Anytime I’m asked to join YASN I make a mental note of the name of the network and if I ever get asked again (this is where the 2 part comes in…) I’ll join. I figure that if a social network can’t get on my radar from more than one source, it’s probably not going to make it anyplace.

Not the most earth shattering post, but for some reason I feel much better on passing up an invite for YASN… “Oh, I’m sorry, we just have rules about these things, It’s not that I have anything against giving my personal data to some group nobody has ever heard of before”.

In other news we had the work Yankee Swap. I got a candle (not a guy’s gift), swapped for some lottery tickets (which always move on), swapped for a Mag-lite flashlight. I was happy with that but then that got swapped out for a cheaper no-name flashlight. I would have preferred the Best Buy gift certificate I threw in the ring, alas…

Categories
Brain Buster Geek Stuff

Brain Busting Dilemma

This just happened and I had to sneak over here for a quick post. My plan this morning was to go to a holiday gathering of former co-workers from DCI. I just heard about Crayon’s holiday party in Second Life… I’m actually considering passing on the real world event for the virtual one.