This is a blog after all. It's been a slow news week. No celebrities passed so there's no reason for huge retrospectives or top ten lists. So, what to do? You guessed it, more random thoughts from yours truly.

The Promise of the Internet.
I remember watching a quirky not-very-funny PBS special about HDTV. It was called Digital TV: A Cringley Crash Course and it was released late last century (1998). It was a awkward little documentary with a host who bounced around the screen touting the amazing possibilities of digital TV. While digital television is indeed amazing, it never quite reached the realization that Cringley, among others, predicted. For example, during the show he visits every one's favorite chef Julia Childs (she couldn't possibly care less about HDTV mind you) to discuss the interactive possibilities of DTV as well as prepare a delicious salad. The idea is that while your watching a cooking show, there would be an option to click a button and an onscreen menu would display the recipe; A baseball game, stats. etc.
But this never really happened. I'm sure there's some technical reason this feature never developed. But the fact that I've never seen or heard of anything remotely like this ever being implemented is pretty amazing. Were we just day dreaming? Anyway, I've emailed Cringley to see if he could shed a light on the subject.
Speaking of stealing bandwidth (and T.V.s for that matter.) The issue of DTV multi channel bandwidth image degradation was just brought to my attention. Previously over the air broadcast were the best way to get high quality broadcast because of the minimal amount of compression. Now, because of the DTV transition, many networks have split there broadcasts into two or three channels which basically stretches the bandwidth reducing overall picture quality. Satellite might be the best option in this situation

Bravia with Netflix Sony finally landed Netflix, though not on their prized media box game console. Instead new Bravia's will be able to stream flicks
directly from Netflix. It would work similar to the Xbox service, that is, you would queue it on your computer and watch it on your TV. I've watched Netflix from my computer on my TV before and my only complaint is the picture quality. It's at best sub DVD and at worst choppy VCD. Though, it's really dependent on your connection. It's really to bad that the PS3 didn't get any love. But net incorporation is a smart move on Sony's part. Here's to the future.

Sub 100 Blu-ray Player: Finally, the news last week was that Wal-Mart planned on "rolling back" the price of their cheapest BRD player to 98$. Which could possibly increase adoption. But I'm curious to see how this affects Sony's "hold your ground" price point. These race to the bottom just officially started. But with average consumers as well as enthusiasts still baffled over profile types, I don't think sales will soar immediately.


And finally, I've played about 200 rounds of SF4 this week and as a monument to that absurdity I thought i post a video of some character swaps from the PC version. Enjoy.