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Monday, January 17, 2005 |
This CNN-Money article discusses the notion that sports may be the most TiVo-resistant form of programming, because people want to see sports "live". I think there are two flaws in that thinking.
First, if you just start the game 30-40 minutes late, you can see it "nearly live", but still skip the commercials. That seeme pretty appealing. You will still know the result soon enough to be current "at the water cooler".
Second, I have an interesting notion, which looks like a business opportunity, let's call it XYZ Sports Editing...this assumes there is a market for non-live sports...Wouldn't it be nice to watch a "Reader's Digest" version of sports events? Sort of like they do with the Olympics tape-delay (only better), where you: 1) Only watch something if it turned out to be watchable; 2) Have the chaff--not just the commercials--cut out?; 3) Have control so that you can drop into the full-length version if you want.
If you had someone "edit it down", I would think you could watch a typical pro game (pick your sport) in 1 hour or so. Football and baseball seem particuarly favorable for such treatment.
The interesting twist is that I think this could be done in a way that wouldn't require approval from the broadcaster/original content provider, because it wouldn't infringe on copyright. It assumes that the customer of XYZ has TiVo'd the game. Then, right after the game is over (or even as it is in progress), the editors at XYZ would begin reviewing and editing down the game. But, when done, they would not be distributing the game itself, only a series of editing instructions that meshes with timecodes for the real game. So, an XYZ customer would download the editing info, and that would be paired up with the full-length game already recorded on their TiVo. This is how video editing software works. Seems like it should be legal??
11:00:44 PM 
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I happened to read Dave Berry's farewell column, which I found pretty fun, as I have most of the other Dave Berry columns I have stumbled across. I say stumbled across because I have never read him regularly, but over a decade, I have probably read a dozen or more of his columns.
I didn't think too much more of it until I read this article in Slate about him. I remembered my introduction to Dave Berry--a one-a-day desk calendar Beth gave me over 10 years ago. A month into it, we both agreed it really wasn't particularly amusing.
I'd be curious to re-read it now. I'm not sure where the content came from. I'm guessing it was pulled out of context from his columns. The funny thing is, Slate observes " Barry writes some of the jazziest opening lines in the business". So one would think out of context wouldn't be a problem, just grab some of those great opening lines.
10:44:48 PM
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Okay, so I've bragged about bagging a $200 eMachines PC a year ago Black Friday. Although not quite the minimum configuration, it was obviously pretty bare-bones. So here are the totals to date on "peripherals":
200 eMachines CPU CPU-only price
125 monitor imputed cost of 6-year old 19" monitor
20 firewire
20 wirless network
60 keyboard +mouse a non-necessary nice-to-have
50 RAM critical
80 DVD-R/W
80 200 Gb drive The OEM 80 Gb was not bad, but not enough for digital video
So, $435 in peripherals. Now there may be some dying to say "see, you bought a cheap PC and spent as much to upgrade it as you could have paid for a 'real' machine". Not true, though--none of the upgrades would have been obviated by buying a low-end brand-name machine.
10:19:14 PM
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I guess this is my weekend for computer challenges. In the lats month, I experienced ankle-biter problems with PC audio, on both home computers. I overcame them, but didn't really remember what I did exactly. Well, the problem re-surfaced on my main home machine after I installed the hard drive.
Since that had involved a full un-plug exercise, I assumed loose connection, or maybe speakers in the mic plug. Triple-checked, that wasn't it. I even swapped speakers to eliminate possible hardware failure cause. Nope.
Next, I checked the audio controls. On my laptop, the mute-all periodically gets checked by a poltergeist (possibly related to un-docking, obviously not an issue with my home desktop). That wasn't the case. But I clicked the Advanced tab to see everything. My hopes lit up--there was a "PC Speaker" option that had (mysteriously) gotten muted. Alas, that made no difference.
Once again, I slept on the problem, and when I came back to it, I decided to use the Windows Help troubleshooter. Not very helpful, but for whatever reason, that led me back to thinking about the Advanced Volume Control options. I saw that Wave was muted. I un-checked it and voila! Problem solved. Simultaneously, it came back to me that that was the problem the first time 'round, as well.
Again, I have no idea how it got checked, but I hope this is a reminder to myself what to do NEXT time this happens!!!!
1:11:14 PM
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© Copyright 2005 Erik Neu.
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