seantorbett.com

Broadcast television engineering topics and rants.

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Category: Computers

New Site Location, New Site Look, New Site Smell.

6 August, 2008 (15:41) | Computers, Projects | No comments

I thought I had a good thing going for the past few years by having my websites hosted by 1AND1. Unfortunately, over the past month 1AND1 has been having serious reliability issues and my sites have been inaccessible for days(!) at a time. Calls to the tech help line were anything but helpful. [...]

Dr. Horrible Tops In ‘TV Shows’ On iTunes. Only It’s Not A TV Show…

21 July, 2008 (13:29) | Computers, TV, rant | No comments

As broadcasters continue to face eroding audiences, lousy programming, declining ratings, a lackluster fall line-up and pending changes in FCC rules regarding ‘localism‘; here comes another punch in the gut.
Joss Whedon of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Firefly and the Serenity movie fame created a three part mini-musical (!) video netcast called “Dr. Horrible” that only [...]

Will The Popcorn Hour NMT Replace My XBMC?

13 June, 2008 (10:18) | Computers, Projects, TV | No comments

Not yet.  And after the latest debacle with the June 18th firmware, maybe not ever.  My old, original xbox softmodded to run XBMC is still more polished and faster than this little guy, despite the glowing reviews I read which led me to purchase the Popcorn Hour NMT in the first place.
As [...]

Comcast got Hacked! Thank You ‘No Script’!!!

28 May, 2008 (19:22) | Computers | No comments

I just tried to log into my Comcast webmail and was greeted by the following at the Comcast.net main URL:

It looks like KRYOGENIKS EBK and DEFIANT are looking for credit on this hack.
Thankfully I have ‘NoScript‘ installed as a plugin for my Firefox browser to minimize the exposure I would get when something like [...]

Local Broadcasters Can’t Catch A Break. Mostly Their Fault.

26 May, 2008 (17:14) | Computers, TV, rant | No comments

A writer’s strike, shitty programming and the Internet. Oh my!
Viewer’s are leaving appointment television by the droves and broadcasters are scrambling to do something, anything to keep them firmly planted on the couch during prime time. I’ve covered the topic of declining viewers in the past, but the trend in hemorrhaging viewership of [...]

Is the NAB Show going the way of COMDEX?

17 February, 2008 (14:07) | Computers, NAB, TV, rant | No comments

For those that don’t know, COMDEX was a computer centric convention that ran in Las Vegas from 1979 to 2003 before lagging attendance from competing conventions and the convergence of consumer electronic devices ultimately made it uninteresting and killed it off.
Back in November of 2007 Avid, currently facing too much competition from Final Cut software [...]

What broadcasters need to know about the core demo.

14 January, 2008 (19:44) | Computers, TV, rant | No comments

They don’t watch TV. Mostly. Get it?
OK, I’ll repeat myself. Broadcaster’s (and many cable networks) are not relevant to young people most of the time. This is not news any longer, however it bears repeating, because thick-headed, narrow field-of-view TV execs, GMs and news directors keep fooling themselves into believing they [...]

How I spent the Christmas Holiday - Modding My PS3

26 December, 2007 (12:59) | Computers, Fun, Hacks, Projects | No comments

One of the cool features of the PS3 is that it is a serious computing device and Sony provided the option to easily upgrade its hard drive as well as install an alternate OS. So I did both.
By far, the easiest HDD upgrade known to man (presently). Simply remove a panel and a [...]

My new PS3 - Go! Go! Blu-Ray!

24 December, 2007 (23:00) | Computers, Fun, HDTV, TV, rant | No comments

Today I made the plunge and finally got off the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray format fence and bought a PS3 system.
There were several reasons for this; first I did NOT buy it because I love Blu-Ray. I like that it has multiple studio and vendor support as well as about 25GB storage per layer, but the hardware [...]

The best $600 router project for my $60.

15 July, 2007 (09:00) | Computers, Electronics, Fun, Hacks, Projects | No comments

I have heard of this custom, free firmware called DD-WRT for a while now, but I needed to purchase a compatible router that would accept the replacement software and the one that was recommended the most by others was the Linksys WRT54GL. It also was one of the most trivial to perform the upgrade.

Right [...]