Davis Freeberg, Author at Zatz Not Funny!

Supercharge Your Summer Television Lineup

It used to be that once the spring TV season ended, Iâd pretty much shut off my TV and take a break for the next three months. Occasionally, I might check out a rerun, but by and large, the time between the end of basketball season and the start of football was always a TV wasteland for me.

Of course that was before TiVo. Once I got a taste of time shifting, I realized that my television season never had to end. Over the years, Iâve missed a lot of good TV, but between the TV syndication agreements and TiVoâs ability to automatically record every episode, the summer has turned out to be a perfect time to catch up on shows that Iâve missed. Whether itâs been going back and watching every single Twilight Zone or catching the X-Files a decade after it aired, TiVoâs season pass functionality has supercharged my reruns in a way, that was never possible before.

Some shows are better suited for summer TiVoing, but when it comes to episodic content, there is a downside to TiVo reruns. The shows arenât always in the order that they originally aired and itâs almost always impossible to catch the first episodes. This isnât a big deal for sitcoms and some reality shows, but when it comes to episodic content, it leaves you confused over the storyline and can spoil earlier episodes, you havenât seen yet.

That is where my Netflix account kicks in. If I know that I really want to see a series that tells a story, Iâll use Netflix to make sure that I get to see it in order. If Iâm not sure if a show will be interesting or not, Iâll record a couple of episodes on TiVo and test drive it before committing to watching the entire series. This has improved my overall television experience because there is always at least some fresh content that I can watch.

Over the last few years, the studios have also started releasing more and more new series each summer. Itâs a chance for them to try out more experimental shows or concepts. A lot of these new shows are things that I probably wouldnât check out during the normal TV season, but with a little extra downtime, Iâm willing to experiment with new programs, even if there is a good chance they wonât be back again next summer.

So far there have only been a couple of the summer premiers, that have become favorites, but if I can find two or three decent shows to start following, it would be enough to keep me busy. Here are some of the new shows, that I plan on checking out over the next couple of months.

Would You Give Up TiVo For Your Air Conditioner?

TiVo’s remote can do a lot of great things, but apparently Brainfreiz’s remote, includes a little too much functionality. The good news is that he’s able to control his new air conditioner with his TiVo remote. No special hacks, it came out of the box like that. The bad news is, everytime he hits the … Read more

A Closer Look At TiVo’s Series 3 Remote

When most people think about TiVo, they only think about being able to record TV. They might be aware of some of TiVo’s extra features, but unless they’ve actually tried the service, it’s hard to understand the little things, that make TiVo so great.

It’s easy for consumers to understand the appeal of features like suggestions, wishlists or internet scheduling, but it’s the more subtle differences, that actually makes TiVo such a luxury product. Things like being able to clip out that extra minute of programming the networks schedule, just to punish DVR viewers or being able to skip forward 15 minutes at a time, so that you can get back to the middle of a ballgame, in case you happened to ~~pass out~~ fall asleep before the end. When I had my generic DVR, I was forced to navigate several menus, just to get to my recorded content, but with TiVo, all I need is to hit the TiVo button twice and I’m right at my now playing list. It’s a very small detail, but one that makes their user interface, so much more enjoyable to interact with.

Of all the subtle differences that make up the TiVo experience, the remote control probably has the greatest impact. The cable companies remote might get the signal to your set top box, but the TiVo remote looks better and gets you where you need to be faster.

From the very start, TiVo got the remote down right. It’s peanut shape fits perfectly in the palm of your hand and the buttons were placed in areas, where you would optimize them most. When the remote first came out, it was recognized by the Consumer Electronics Association for it excellence. I used my first remote so much, that I wore off the fast forward icon on my button.

I was always happy with the original remote, but when TiVo released the series 3, I was excited to see an upgraded remote, included with it. While the series 3 remote doesn’t offer any functionality that you can’t live without, some of the the new features are still worth checking out.

EA Sports – It’s Not In The Game

Over the course of my life, I have been one of Electronic Arts best customers. Itâs embarassing to admit how much money I have spent on the company, but year after year, Iâm the guy who falls for their trick of repackaging the same content, over and over again.Iâm not sure why I feel so compelled to upgrade each year, but for the last decade, Iâve purchased an EA title at least, once every three months. A few of these have been new games that EA has come out with, but by and large Iâve mostly stuck with the tried, but true sport franchises.

I like the sports games the best because they allow me to play a quick game without having to keep track of whatâs going on. Iâll usually start with a season mode and by the end of the real life season, I am wrapping up the playoffs. When the online capabilities started to come out, I was pretty fired up about being able to skool other gamers with my mad John Madden skillz, but as a casual gamer, I quickly found out the hard way, that I was no match for the caliber players, who have the time to play online.

Right now my lifetime winning record for all Xbox Live games is under 10%. These days, I tend to stick to playing the computer, but every now and then, Iâll still log in, just so that I remember what itâs like to take a beating.

EA knows that they make their bread and butter on customers like myself. Most of their titles are franchise oriented, which allows them to have a neverending game pipeline in the works. In the past, I thought it was silly to upgrade from one title to another, just for the updated player stats, but each year the subtle differences in the gameplay was enough to convince me to keep upgrading.

Normally, overpaying for a game that I wonât play very long, isnât really all that big of a deal, but over the last few years, Iâve noticed a disturbing trend at EA and after continuing to be disappointed with their products, Iâve finally decided that enough is enough.

Every since I first bought my Xbox 360, Iâve noticed that EA sports has been building in planned obsolescence into their franchise titles.

Picture of the Day: Holy Matrimony

Matched pair of TiVo wedding cakes.

TiVo Awarded Patent For Password That Is So Hard To Guess It Will Outlive Your Hard Drive

TiVo’s dust up with Dish may get all of the ink love, but in reality, it represents a very small part of their patent portfolio. Between their trademark filings, their patent applications and their aggressive open market acquisitions, TiVo has managed to build a very impressive intellectual property portfolio around their technology. They haven’t always had the cash to defend this moat, but with damages from TiVo’s potential patent award against Dish, now up to $130 million it could free up a lot of cash to go after other infringers, if Dish loses their appeal.

Some of TiVo’s patents have obvious applications and some of them are really held more for defensive purposes, but it’s the bizarre ones that I find most interesting and on Tuesday, TiVo was issued a patent for a method of locking down hard drives, that involves creating a password, that is so hard to guess, it would take longer than the expected life of your hard drive for someone to crack. According to the patent document, the method is described as the following.

An authentication system for securing information within a disk drive to be read and written to only by a specific host computer such that it is difficult or impossible to access the drive by any system other than a designated host is disclosed. While the invention is similar in intent to a password scheme, it significantly more secure. The invention thus provides a secure environment for important information stored within a disk drive. The information can only be accessed by a host if the host can respond to random challenges asked by the disk drive. The host’s responses are generated using a cryptography chip processing a specific algorithm. This technique allows the disk drive and the host to communicate using a coded security system where attempts to break the code and choose the correct password take longer to learn than the useful life of the disk drive itself.

At first the whole thing seems pretty silly to me, but when I think about it, I see two ways that TiVo could take this technology.

Back To The Future: 21st Century Movies

As a digital TV blogger, I spend a lot of time writing about where I think television is heading. Given the impact that technology is having on the television experience, it hard enough to know what is going to happen next week, let alone 25 years from now.

This is why I was surprised at how eerily familiar things seemed, when I was reading Paleo-Future’s review of the The Omni Future Almanac. The book was written in 1982 by Robert Weil and offers his vision into what the television industry would be like, in the 21st century.

We’re only a few years into the 21st century of course, but considering that it’s been 25 years since the book was published, I couldn’t help, but be impressed with how many of the predictions he got right (except for the whole people loving westerns thing, he was way off base on that one.) In looking over the list of predictions, here are a few, that I think we’ll continue to see throughout the rest of this century.

*Instant classics will be created by increased Hollywood hype and intensive advertising. Aggressive marketing techniques will also be used in the promotion of pay television and home video media.

Nielsen Unveils DVR Stats – Time To Rethink The 30 Second Ad

For avid TV watchers, May is one of the best times of the years. The networks strut out their best quality stuff, there are plenty of cliff hangers, NBA finals (Go Lakers) and don’t even get me started on the season/series finales. It’d be nicer if we could just have fresh content all year round, but for whatever reason the networks want to make consumers gorge on television, just to take it all in for one month. At least there will be time for sunlight during summer reruns.

For advertisers and the studios though, May marks the start of a vicious frenzy of negotiations, where fortunes can be won and lost in a bizzarre game of chicken, that I’m not sure I’ll ever understand. Every year, we see the same dance, the studios unveil their A list stuff and the marketing agencies come drooling with their blank checkbooks.

Last year though, things didn’t go as smoothly as planned. Issues like DVR usage and streaming internet video started to creep into the negotiations. The marketing agencies demanded that they only pay for live viewers and the studios tried to convince them that DVRs were somehow actually good for them.

The truth was though, that the studios had lost control and eventually the ad agencies were able to negotiate rates on their terms, instead of having to cave to last minute pressure. With May sweeps about to start up all over again, you can bet that both sides are positioning themselves for how they plan on dealing with these irritating DVR owners.