Category: video

Eighties Nostalgia and weird Christmas stuff

The new Netflix series The Toys That Made Us looks like it should be fun. It looks like it’s concentrating mostly on toys from the 80s. I’m old enough that I was pretty much done with toys by 1980, but I did (of course) have some Star Wars toys. (Though maybe those were my younger brother’s toys, technically. Either way, they were pretty cool.)

My old friend Mike Pajaro is a guest on a recent episode of an 80s-themed podcast called Stuck in the 80s. The two regular hosts and Mike each pick a Christmas special from the 80s to talk about. Mike, of course, talks about the Alf Christmas Special. I was never a big fan of Alf, and have never seen this special, but it sounds like it’s a doozy. (If you’d rather read an amusing text summary of the special, rather than listen to my friend Mike describe it, read this.) The podcast is pretty funny. The other two Christmas specials they talk about are the Pee-Wee Herman special and the He-Man special.

Which reminds me that I added the Pee-Wee special to my Netflix queue when they added it a few years ago, but never watched it. I may have seen it when it originally aired, but I’m not sure. Either way, I should watch it this year. I haven’t really been in the mood for Christmas stuff this year, but I think I’d enjoy the Pee-Wee special.

And speaking of oddball Christmas stuff, I could really use a new Christmas-themed Radio Rashy episode, but I guess they stopped doing Radio Rashy, since there haven’t been any new episodes since 2015 or so. Maybe I’ll go back and listen to the Santa Claus is a Bitch episode, one of the last ones they did. (I’d love to grab one of their old Christmas Jukebox episodes, but I don’t think any of those are still available. I should have saved those mp3s.)

Batman: The Animated Series

The one random thing I forgot to mention in yesterday’s post is the 25th anniversary of Batman: The Animated Series. I’ve been seeing a lot of articles about it, many of which are pretty pointless, but here are a few good ones.

B:TAS is one of my favorite TV shows of all time, and one of my favorite takes on Batman (and his supporting characters). This all reminds me that I only ever bought the first season on DVD. I should really buy (and watch) the rest. Or I could just re-watch them all on Amazon Prime.

 

more cable TV and internet shenanigans

I got a phone call from my cable company recently; the person who called started rattling out a prepared script about some good news: they were upgrading my internet speed. I got suspicious pretty quickly, and, at some point in the script, she mentioned some additional fees. I assumed the call was a sneaky way of getting me to agree to upgrade my account, and cut her off to tell her that I was happy with my current service and didn’t want to upgrade. Then I hung up.

Afterward, I started to get a feeling that maybe I should have listened all the way through or at least tried to engage her in conversation and get some questions answered. Maybe it wasn’t a sneaky attempt to get me to agree to a service upgrade, but instead a sneaky way to try to brand a price increase as a service upgrade.

A few days later, I got an email from them, again with the “good news” that they were increasing my internet speed, to 60 Mbps. I read the fine print carefully, but there was no explicit mention of a price increase or any additional fees.

So I did some internet research, and I found a thread at DSL Reports that seemed to confirm that there would, indeed, be additional fees. So I then went and checked my most recent bill, and found the details in the fine print there. It looks like they’re going to start charging a $5/month modem rental fee, starting next month. And they’re signing me up for their “service protection plan,” for free until the end of the year, after which it’s probably $7/month. (I think I can drop that when the free period is up, at least.)

The most frustrating thing about all this is how they can’t just come out and tell you that they’re raising prices. It’s always a bunch of double-speak and shenanigans. The “service protection plan” is (of course) nonsense.  And the modem rental fee is also pretty ridiculous. (And they try to make it sound like they’re doing you a favor on it, by discounting it from the usual $10/month fee.) I might be able to dodge the modem rental fee by buying my own modem, but it’s not clear if they’d let you do that, or how much grief it would be to set up. (And I’m not really in a mood for a bunch of extra grief right now, so I’ll probably suck it up and pay the fee.)

Anyway, Cablevision/Altice just keeps getting worse, but I don’t really have any alternatives. I also found out recently that Verizon is retiring their old copper lines in my area, and that they probably wouldn’t be running new fiber into my apartment building. So I may lose the option of getting POTS from Verizon soon. (I know all the “young people” think that having a landline phone is an anachronism, but I kind of like having one.) So I might have to drop home phone service entirely, or switch to Optimum Voice, giving Altice yet another way to drain money out of my wallet. (Also, I had always assumed that Verizon FiOS was an option for me, for internet service, but from what I’m hearing, apparently it never was, since my apartment building isn’t wired for it. So I’m stuck with Altice for TV, Internet, and maybe phone service.)

Oh well. (Yes, I know that this was a pointless rant, but if I can’t rant on my own blog, where can I rant?)

Cable TV shenanigans

About a month ago, I blogged about how my cable TV provider was discontinuing my old plan and moving me to a new one. That’s happened, so I now have BBC America, Disney XD, and a few other channels that I’ll probably never watch. For the first year of the new plan, it should have been slightly cheaper than my old plan, so I was OK with that.

For a while now, Cablevision has been tacking on a “surcharge” of $6 per month for “sports and broadcast TV.” This is basically just a way for them to raise prices without saying that they’re raising prices. Well, this month, they announced that they’re splitting the surcharge into two separate surcharges, a $5 sports surcharge, and a $4 broadcast TV surcharge. As silly as the original surcharge was, splitting it into two separate charges is even sillier. And, while it’s not a huge price increase, it does wipe out the price difference between my old plan and the new plan, so I’m now paying about $1 more per month than I was previously.

Ever since Altice bought Cablevision, I’ve been wondering what kind of changes they’d make. It looks like they’re taking the path of eliminating legacy plans and bumping up prices a bit, while taking some steps to avoid losing customers (like the promotional pricing they gave me for the first year). So, I’d say they’re still better than most of the other cable companies out there, but that’s not saying much. Cable TV prices keep rising at a rate higher than inflation, and I don’t think that situation is going to get any better, as the industry continues to consolidate into a few very large companies.

This is all pushing me even further towards cord-cutting, though I’ve decided that I won’t do that until at least a year from now, when my second year of TiVo service is up, and my promotional pricing from the cable company expires. The NY Times recently published an interesting guide to cord-cutting, with advice based on your viewing habits.

On the cable TV side of things, I think that cord-cutting will, at some point, exert enough pressure to keep prices in check. Even without that pressure, TV service isn’t a necessity, so there’s that. I’m worried about the internet service side of this thing though. High-speed internet service is becoming more of a necessity, especially for people like me. The tendency for prices to go up while service quality goes down, when one company has a monopoly in a given area, is well-documented. For now, I’m quite grateful that I live in an area where Cablevision/Altice has to compete with Verizon, so there’s at least some incentive for both companies to provide good service at a not-too-ridiculous price.

Cable TV

A few days after blogging about how I was likely to keep paying for TiVo and cable TV, I got a letter in the mail from my cable company. I’ve been on an old, discontinued, plan for years. They’re finally dropping that plan and forcing me to change to a new one. To start off, they’re giving me a slightly better plan at a slightly lower cost, with Starz thrown in for free, so that’s good. But after a year, that offer ends, and I’d presumably have to start paying the regular price for that plan, and I’d lose Starz. So I’m not sure what I’ll do a year from now. Next October may be finally time to drop cable entirely.

In the meantime, though, my new plan includes BBC America and Disney XD, which weren’t on my old plan. This means that I can watch stuff like Doctor Who, Dirk Gently, and Orphan Black on BBCA. And I can catch Star Wars Rebels and maybe the new Milo Murphy’s Law (with Weird Al!) on Disney XD. So that’s pretty cool.

TiVo Bolt, second year

Evernote just reminded me that my free year of TiVo service is just about up, so I need to decide if I want to pay $150 for a second year, or trade in my TiVo Bolt for something else.

I bought the Bolt about a year ago. The first year’s service was free. After that, it’s $150 per year. That seems a little steep, considering it’s mostly just paying for the TV guide service. After a year with the Bolt, though, I don’t think I’d ever want to go back to the cable company DVR. It’s just so much better.

I might also consider ditching the Bolt in favor of the Bolt+, which is a pretty nice upgrade, but totally unnecessary for me. It’s got a larger hard drive, but I’ve never run out of room on the Bolt’s drive. And it’s got six tuners instead of four, but I’ve never needed to use more than two or three tuners at a time.

I’m not particularly worried about TiVo getting bought out by Rovi. That happened almost six months ago, and there have been no issues with the service since then. It looks to me like that went smoothly and TiVo is continuing to function as always. So I’ll stick with the Bolt and let them charge me $150 for a second year.

I’ve also thought about ditching cable TV entirely, of course, but there’s still enough interesting on to make it worthwhile. I am, though, thinking about dropping Netflix. They raised prices last year for new members, but held the price down for existing members for a year. I just got the notice that my year is up, and my price will go up to $10 per month. With the new TV season starting up, I probably don’t need Netflix right now anyway, though I was looking forward to Luke Cage. There is also some other good stuff coming to Netflix this month, but I don’t think I really need it. I heard someone on a podcast mention recently that they subscribe to Netflix only during the summer months, and cancel it in the fall. That might not be a bad plan. Cancel Netflix, then resubscribe when Agents of SHIELD, The Flash, and Supergirl go into reruns. (Speaking of which, I need to remember to check my TiVo OnePass for Supergirl and see if it’s still valid, since the show has switched networks!)

Apple TV follow-up

I used my new Apple TV to watch a few older Doctor Who Christmas specials last night, and to watch the new one today, so I thought I’d post a follow-up to my last post about it. I have to say that finding individual episodes of Doctor Who through the Apple TV interface is pretty frustrating. I had hoped that Siri would help, but asking for “Doctor Who Christmas episodes” just gets me the standard “I don’t understand” answer. And even giving the specific episode title doesn’t help. It just doesn’t seem to be very good at exactly the one thing it should be really good at: finding already-purchased iTunes video content in the user’s library.  It can tell me the weather, or what time it is, which is nice, but I could just look at my phone for that. Well, anyway the new Doctor Who special was pretty good, and certainly worth the $5 I paid for it.

Oh, and I’ve stumbled across one interesting app: Pluto TV. It’s a service airing a number of channels, including one that’s showing MST3K 24/7, apparently.

Apple TV 2015

A friend bought me a new Apple TV for Christmas this year. I was perfectly happy with my old Apple TV box (the previous generation), so I wouldn’t have gone out and bought myself a new one. But it’s a cool new toy, so I’ve been playing around with it. (My friend also bought me a Nimbus game controller, which is kind of nifty, but I haven’t done anything with it yet.)

My main use for the Apple TV has always been to watch iTunes content, specifically Doctor Who. I don’t get BBC America, so I buy Doctor Who from iTunes and watch it through the Apple TV box, usually. For that simple use case, the new Apple TV might actually be a little less convenient than the old one. I’ve found the interface for browsing through purchased content is usable, but slightly less convenient than the old interface.

The new remote is interesting, but so far I don’t find the touch surface to be any more useful than just having buttons like on the old remote. The Siri functionality works well, though I feel weird talking to my remote, and I’m not sure how often I’ll use it. And I’m also not sure how I feel about having a rechargeable battery in it; it’s a nice idea, and maybe necessary to support the touch surface, but I’m wondering how often I’m going to have to recharge it. (And I’m wondering how long before it wears out, since it doesn’t appear to be user-replaceable.) With the old remote, I just had to stick a new watch battery in it once every couple of years.

The app store is a good thing, and I hope to see some interesting apps show up there, but so far, there’s not much I’m interested in, aside from stuff that was already available on the old Apple TV. The Netflix app is fine, and there are apps for the usual networks, like PBS, Disney, Comedy Central, and so on. I did use the Disney XD app yesterday to binge on a bunch of Gravity Falls episodes, and it worked well.

I haven’t tried playing any games on it yet, but I’ll get around to that eventually. I hear that Alto’s Adventure is pretty good, so maybe I’ll pick that up.

TiVo Bolt

I ordered a TiVo Bolt yesterday. I’ve been using a cable company DVR ever since I upgraded from standard def to high def TV, and I’ve never been really happy with it. I had a TiVo Series 2 from 2004 to 2008. I retired it in favor of the cable company box because, at the time, I didn’t want to pay for a new HD Tivo. (I can’t remember exactly how much they cost, but I think they were pretty expensive at the time.)

The old Series 2 TiVo was pretty cool, but with a few rough edges. The IR blaster that you had to use to control your cable box was a kludge, and it didn’t always work. And, initially, the box had no connection to the internet; it had a modem connection that was used to dial directly into TiVo’s servers every night to download program guide updates. (At some point, I hooked up an external wifi adapter, which allowed me to unplug the phone cord, and allowed the TiVo to pull content down from the internet.)

The cable company DVR service costs me $12/month. And the cable box itself costs a little less than $8/month. So I’m paying about $20/month for equipment. With the Bolt, the first year of service is free, then it’s $15/month, if you pay monthly, or about $12.50/month if you pay for a full year in advance. And the cable company will charge me $2/month for a CableCARD. So. in the long run, the Bolt should turn out to be less expensive than continuing to use my crappy cable company DVR.

I don’t know why I haven’t bought a new TiVo before now. There always seemed to be good reasons not to. First would be the cost. The more recent boxes have actually been pretty affordable, and I get occasional emails from TiVo with specials on refurb units, but I could never quite talk myself into it.

Second would be perceived risk. Nearly every time TiVo releases a new unit, the reviews on it inevitably start off with a paragraph about how TiVo is a “troubled” company that can’t compete with DVR boxes provided by the cable companies. Yet they’re still out there, making new boxes, and doing well enough, as far as I can tell. And it’s been maybe ten years since cable companies started renting DVR boxes to their customers.

Third would be ambivalence and/or guilt about how much TV I’m watching. I’ve been toying with the idea of “cutting the cord” recently, but buying a new TiVo is also, in a way, a commitment to continuing to pay for cable TV. There’s not much point in the monthly TiVo subscription if I’m not also paying for cable TV. So I feel like I’m committing to cable TV for at least another year or three, if I’m paying for a TiVo now.

So I’m pretty well committed to keeping my cable subscription going for at least another year, I think. I’m having thoughts about dropping down to a slightly less costly service level, but I’m grandfathered into a plan that doesn’t exist anymore, and there really isn’t much flexibility in their current plans. I’d love to drop down to something that just has the broadcast channels, and a few basic cable channels, like Comedy Central and SyFy. But there really isn’t a plan like that.

I also need to figure out what to do with my old Series 2 TiVo. I’m a little embarrassed to say that it’s still sitting on the shelf under my TV. It’s at the bottom of a stack of equipment that’s basically stacked in “relevant” to “obsolete” order: Roku, Apple TV, Cable box/DVR, HD-DVD player, TiVo. So I can really get rid of the Series 2 and the HD-DVD player, and of course the Cable box will go back to the cable company. I did a little digging, and it looks like Best Buy will accept the TiVo and HD-DVD player for recycling (along with some other old electronics I have lying around), so maybe that’s a task for this weekend. I’d actually like to plug in the Series 2 and see if it still works, before scrapping it. Partially out of curiosity, and partially so I can wipe the hard drive. I don’t think there’s much that anyone could do with the information on the drive, but you never know.

And I’m also thinking about the best way to get the new TiVo hooked up, and in what order I should do things. The TiVo should show up in the mail next week, maybe on Tuesday. I need to get a CableCARD, and maybe a tuning adapter. I should be able to take care of that by going to my local cable company office on Saturday. Then I’ll have all the equipment I need to do the setup. Then I can hopefully return the cable company DVR next weekend. It occurs to me that there’s probably no way to transfer my unwatched content from the cable DVR to the TiVo (or anywhere else). And I don’t think I can have the TiVo and cable box hooked up at the same time. So I’m going to have to either binge-watch all the stuff on my old DVR before hooking up the TiVo, or just write it off. Well, I guess it’s good to get a fresh start once in a while, right? I am finding that I’m letting a few shows pile up, and I’m just not that enthusiastic about them, so maybe it’s time to start over and trim down on what I’m recording. I really haven’t been excited about Gotham or Blunt Talk, for instance, even though I feel like I should like them.

Poirot

I’ve been binge-watching old episodes of Poirot (via Amazon Prime) recently. I haven’t seen the early episodes since they first aired, and I probably haven’t see all of them, since I (of course) didn’t have a DVR in those days.

The series is coming to an end now, after about 25 years. There are good write-ups on it at NPR and the NY Times. I don’t think I’ll be signing up for Acorn TV just to see the last few episodes. I’ll wait until they show up on PBS (or possibly Amazon Prime or Netflix).