You know this whole thing about being one of three people who believe in the Cardinals every year is, when they are on a roll people truly think they are on a roll. And when they flop two things happen;
1. People go “Oh hey there are those lovable losers the Cardinals”!
2. People like me who talk shit about the opponent of the week end up receiving it twice as worse on Monday.
Yes it’s going to be a long Monday and if San Diego loses tomorrow night against the NY Bretts I’m really not going to be happy. I mean it’s one thing for the Cardinals to be 0-3 to start the season it’s almost unthinkable for the Chargers to be 0-3. Though after last years rough start they did make it to the AFC championship game where they lost to the Patriots who lost to the Dolphins this week who lost the Cardinals last week… So in some cosmic sense that probably means something but I’ve not had nearly enough beer tonight to even begin thinking about what that might be.
That is a question for minds greater then my own.
Now on to things that I might actually be able to do something about.
Last year I traded in my rather shitty Cisco / Scientific Atlanta 8300 HD Cable box for the sublime bliss that is a TiVo HD. And through the power of the Internet and upgrades to the operating system the TiVo has been coming out with new features. The latest of which is the ability to watch youtube videos on my 52 inch HD tv. You know because youtube videos need to be watched in 52 inches of HD. Another feature is the hook into the Amazon video no demand service for downloading pay content of TV shows and Movies as well as free Promo content (think pilots and season premieres) right off the top these are two things that I couldn’t do with my former cable box nor could I transfer shows to my desktop computer and then to another device to watch later.
So why am I writing about this? Well the question hit me recently downloading TV shows is pretty common now with iTunes and Amazon video on demand. Which if I like the show I have no problem paying for a copy that I can keep and watch when I want to how I want to (though we aren’t quite to that point yet we are finally making progress). Now what we need is a TiVo hook into Hulu.com which has tv shows for free for you to watch on the internet. And these are shows that are meant to be watched in 52 inches of HD glory. I will admit there are a couple of shows that I want to check out (Fringe, Doll House, Sanctuary) but I don’t want to record them on my TiVo since I feel that commits me on some level to watching them and I have enough crap being recorded on there and I’m pushing up against the space limits as it is in my TiVo Box. So I guess my next great hope for TiVo is to figure out a way to get Streaming programs with their associated commercials (like 5 minutes per 43 minutes of program) to stream to my TiVo… I don’t want to buy them but I do want to watch them.
So now to circle this back around… NBC has their web strategy all wrong… at least for as far as I can tell.
First during the Olympics they made you download Microsoft Silverlight to watch the competition online. Which great and all, but I don’t have that crap loaded on my either my PC or MAC and I just want to watch Michael Phelps and the Redeem Team kick some ass.
Second I was watching tonight’s Sunday Night NFL game between the Packers and Cowboys on TV and decided to check out the webcast of it. It was alright the raw feeds from the other cameras on the field are a nice touch to bad you have to sit through a commercial to get to it, sit through the commercials during the main game broadcast and if you get to click happy on the extra cameras guess what else you get? Yep another commercial. So really my only incentive to watch the webcast is to make sure I see every commercial possible.
Finally, in NBC’s infinite wisdom it has taken product placement to a whole new level and for as far as I can tell the only reason any of this is going on is because NBC has no clue. Some examples of this are Eureka on Sci-Fi (which is a wholly owned subsidiary of NBC-Universal) whose whole third season is being sponsored by Degree Deodorant (to the point that a “experimental new formula” was a key component in solving the problem of the week in one episode (my two suns).
And then there’s “Knight Rider” I expect a certain amount of cheese, but this is bordering on the absurd. First there is the obligatory Ford product placement in the new KITT (the Mustang VS the Old Trans AM)… but wait there’s more KITT has a new mode it’s called F-150 mode! So not only is NBC killing a tv show that I remember fondly as a child, but they are also turning the car into a transformer. The only way it could have been better is if another one of the new modes was “Expedition Mode with environmentally friendly and carbon neutral diesel hybrid engine” oh wait I may have given away a key plot point to a future episode.
No wonder the writers striked if I had to deal with this crap I would want more money too.
Also you may have noticed that I’ve taken the approach of calling several things out by explicit name this evening… Well this is my attempt at a Google Bomb. Maybe just maybe if I put enough pop culture geek references then maybe someone other then my 3 loyal readers will read this. Or NBC-Universal is going to be making a call to their sister company GE Nuclear Weapons and Microwaves and “take care of the trouble maker in Phoenix”