Davis Freeberg, Author at Zatz Not Funny!

10 New Pilots Headed For A Crash Landing

It’s not very politically correct, but I’ve always been fascinated by dead pools. I’ve never actually participated in one, but there is something about wagering on life and death that appeals to the degenerate gambler in me.Since I’m pretty sure that participating in a dead pool is illegal in San Francisco, I suppose that I will have to live with the next best thing, dead TV pools. Marketing Shift is putting on a contest where they are asking readers to try and pick ten of the new shows, that you think will be off the air by the end of the fall season.

The winner of the contest will be the first person to have all ten of their picks canceled. The winner will receive a little bit of link love from MarketingShift.com, but the loser ends up with an internship at ~~Cat World~~ the CW

If you want to see a list of all the candidates for the pool, you’ll find it on Marketing Shift’s website, but here are my picks for their first annual TV dead pool contest:

NBC Direct Will Never Replace My TiVo

NBC has announced that they are introducing a program that will let you automatically download some of their shows to your PC. With the announcement came the latest round of TiVo doom and gloom articles, that assert that this technology will some how be able to replace a DVR. While I like that NBC is being innovative and are offering more choices to consumers, I am also skeptical about the long term prospects for this one.

I suspect that NBC is hoping to build a strong subscription base for the shows, so that they can then try and pitch companies on paying for ads by the download. There may be some advertisers that will be foolish enough to accept these arrangements, but over the long run, the advertisers will figure out why it’s doomed for failure.

Free Fall Season Online Premieres Reviewed

It was a long and boring summer for television this year, but with the fall TV schedule just around the corner, I’m starting to get excited about some of the new shows that are popping up. At the start of the summer, I thought that I would have lots of exciting new shows to check out, but with the exception of Burn Notice (which is freaking awesome), this summer’s crop of new shows was a major let down for me. Too much reality TV and not enough compelling fresh content.

Normally, the start of the Fall TV schedule is a pretty busy time for me. If I don’t catch a show from the very beginning, there is a good chance that I’ll never tune in, so I try to catch as many of the pilots as possible. I won’t end up subscribing to all the shows, but I like to check all of the new ones out, so that I can figure out which ones deserve a season pass. This year, this task got a little bit easier because a couple of the studios have been making some of their pilots available early.

Last week, NBC released free pilot downloads on Amazon’s Unbox service, for 4 of their upcoming shows. Not to be outdone, CBS decided to release an episode of the Big Bang Theory early. Over the weekend I checked out all five of the early releases and had some mixed reviews on the new shows.

DivX Goes Shopping: Buys Fine Art And Search Technology

Last week DivX released their 10-Q and while I was able to find the time to tune into their conference call, I didnât get a chance to read through the actual document until this past weekend.

In the filing I didnât find any bombshells or new lawsuits, but there were a few details on some of DivXâs recent acquisitions that did reward my curiosity. According to the filing, DivX made two purchases over the last quarter.

In May 2007, the Company made an equity investment in a private corporation that aggregates and distributes art via its web community and facilitates an open forum where artists can exhibit their artwork and build community around that art in an effort to drive commerce. The Companyâs investment consisted of $3.5 million cash for which it received certain shares of the private corporationâs Series A Preferred Stock and entered into an advertising and marketing agreement. The Company has preliminarily allocated approximately $650,000 of the investment to the advertising and marketing agreement, based on its estimated fair value, and the remaining $2.9 million will be carried as an investment.

DivX doesnât name the actual artwork site in their filing, but since I already knew that they had purchased a piece of DeviantArt, this one wasnât hard to figure out. Originally, I had thought that they were only partially behind the $3.5 million investment, but according to the filing, it looks like they put in all of the cash. DivX doesnât disclose how much of a stake they got for their money, but they do disclose that it is less than 20%.

Lycos Loses ‘Home Court’ Advantage

It looks like TiVo, Netflix and Blockbuster will be packing their bags for Massachusetts, after they won the first of many legal scrimmages in their patent defense against Lycos. Lycos has asserted that all three companies have violated patents they own, on âinformation filtering technology.â? The two patents that are at the heart of the case are related to the recommendation services that the companies provide.

After Lycos filed their lawsuit against the trio, ChoiceStream (the company that created Blockbusterâs suggestion service) filed a separate lawsuit, to have the patents thrown out.

In their lawsuit against Lycos, they argue that the patents are invalid because of obviousness and prior art. Because Choicestream filed their own lawsuit in the Massachusettsâ court system, TiVo, Netflix and Blockbuster sought to have their case transferred there as well. Iâm not familiar enough with the legal subtleties to know why Lycos originally opposed the motion, but with Lycosâ headquarters in MA, the judge found the request reasonable enough and granted the motion.

Sony Has Already Lost The Console Wars

There is no doubt that Sony dominated the second generation of the console wars. Their PS2 platform had an early jump on the Xbox and Sony never looked back. Since it’s launch, the console has sold over 105 million units and has made Sony a video game powerhouse.

Given their footprint, Sony should have had an easy time convincing their customer base to upgrade, but as the latest generation of consoles have launched, Sony has lost their control over the market, after trying to force users to buy a Blu-Ray drive, along with the console. The inclusion of the drive has resulted in high prices, product delays, and limited supply during the launch. Even after Sony has agreed to sell the console at a loss, they still have not been able to get the device down to an acceptable price level for consumers.

As the latest generation of consoles have been hitting the market, Sony’s PS3 sales reflect some pretty troubling numbers. They may have recently celebrated their 1 millionth sale in Japan, but overall they’ve actually performed pretty miserably. According to the latest data from the NPD group, Sony sold a pitiful 98,500 PS3 consoles for the month of June.

Sony is quick to point out that these figures represent a 21% increase over their May sales, but even with the gain, if they continue at this pace, it will take them 83 years to hit 100 million console sales. If Sony was hoping to sell 100 million consoles over the next 5 and a half years, they would need to increase their sales from 98,000 units a month to 1.625 million.

Nintendo, Wii Have Liftoff

This weekend I was driving through the East Bay, when I noticed a Gamestop store nearby. Normally, I would have kept driving, but I wasn’t in a hurry and having canceled my Gamefly membership, it’s been a while since I’ve checked out any new games, so I decided to stop in and see what they had.

I usually buy my video games from whatever store is closest to me, but Gamespot is one of those rare stores, where I actually enjoy shopping. Normally, when I go shopping, I just want the employees to leave me alone and let me get in and out with the product I’m interested in, but at Gamespot, the employees are the best part of the store. I don’t go there to buy things, I go there to graze. Unlike the employees at Best Buy or CompUSA, Gamespot employees are usually working there because they love video games.

I’m not sure if they get free rentals or discounts or if it’s just that Gamespot attracts employees who like playing every game that comes out, but every time I go in their store, the employees give me customized game reviews on any title that I’m interested in.

Because these employees tend to be hardcore gamers, I have to be careful to not always pick the games that they are fanatical about, but I still listen to what they have to say and more than once, they’ve saved me from buying a bad game.

When I dropped into Gamespot this weekend, I wasn’t planning on buying anything. I just wanted to know if there were any new games coming out. Once I started to talk with the clerks though, one of them pulled me off to one side and in hushed tones, told me that they had one more Wii tucked away in the back of the store.

Pier Screening Offers Glimpse At Future Of VOD

As a video enthusiast, I love checking out new companies that are trying to get a piece of the digital landscape. It’s easy to pay attention to the big guns in the industry, but for every AppleTV, there are 100 smaller companies playing just as an important role in redefining the future of television. At this stage of the game, it would be impossible to predict how things will end up shaking out, but at the end of the day, it’s the consumers who will win the most.

Last night, I had an opportunity to attend NewTeeVee’s 2nd Pier Screening. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the event, but was really impressed with how things turned out. They hosted the event at pier 38 in San Francisco. This is a great venue. If felt like I was at a Drive-In theater that was built right over the water. There was something unique about being able to mingle at a party while watching the sun go down. Later on it got cooler, but they had heat lamps that people could cuddle under Once it got dark, they started the program and I was able to hear some interesting insights into the video world, from some of the people who’ve been involved in digital video from very early on.

During the event, NewTeeVee screened a number of parody videos and gave out awards for the most interesting ones. The winner was the hilarious “Real World Ikea“. It’s a story of what happens when five strangers stop acting polite and start getting real. They really probably should have told Ikea, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as funny if they knew that they were moving in.