Category: Television

Treasure Hunters Not an Amazing Race

Of course ever-anxious Tivo recorded NBC’s response to CBS’ Amazing Race – Treasure Hunters. Off the bat, I have my reservations about a program that so obviously is the television version of the 2004 Nick Cage car-accident National Treasure and the Tom Hanks-starred Da Vinci Code.

Unfortunately, it’s much, much worse than that.

Aside from being a straight forward Amazing Race rip-off – complete with Orbitz.com playing the part of Travelocity – it’s like NBC asked the producers of Deal or No Deal to clone last year’s crappy-tacular Amazing Race family-edition. The contestants are completely flat and stereotypical – more soap opera than reality. The pairings made this painfully obvious – ex-CIA with Air Force, Young Professionals with Geniuses, Miss America with Brown Family. The Southie Boys were the worst – stereotypical southern boys edited to be searching Mt. Rushmore as if the hunted treasure was the forgotten batch of moonshine (see Carl’s comment below). I kept expecting David Sedaris’ brother to bring out a fuck-it bucket.

Cause after this, I need one.

Northern Exposure is Identity

We’re working through Season 3: Disc 5 of Northern Exposure (specifically My Sister, My Mother). In it, we find a nameless baby, Adam riding a roller coaster of emotions, and Shelly’s mom pretending to be her sister.

Add these story-lines to the series’ general fish-outta-water-ness and there’s a lot of identity theory – Jewish or otherwise.

Videos Tab in TiVo Desktop – Video Blogs Now Playing – Nearly.

There’s an Easter Egg in the version 1.9.3 of the TiVo Desktop software for Mac. Flipping the right switch in the Preference Pane’s preference shows a new ‘Videos’ tab.

Restarting the server and scrolling to the bottom of ‘Now Playing’ shows my MacBook.

I’m very pleased they put my videos in ‘Now Playing’ (even at the bottom), rather than buried within the clumsily labeled ‘Music, Photos, Products, & More’ where they put the rest of my stuff. I’m glad we’re that much closer to the TiVo future I mentioned a while back.

On the downside, the TiVo still only understands MPEG-2 files. Not very popular round the videoblog-o-sphere. So, there’s a conversion step needed (Tivoizer to the rescue). Bah.

Though baby steps are baby steps.

Duh. Advertisers are the Customers, not Viewers.

Listening to Tod Maffin’s latest Todbits (made my Podcast Picks as well) and pondering his bit about American Idol running 3 minutes after the hour to thwart PVR-watchers and encourage live-TV-watchers.

Honestly, I feel a little silly. All this time I was wondering why it felt like broadcast media outlets despised their customers. Switching up schedules, starting programs late, splicing them into a million pieces between commercial breaks. Follow the money. It stops long before it gets to the viewer or listener or reader.

I still don’t get why newspapers, radio, and television aren’t 100% ads. The honesty would be easier on everyone.

Wanted: Recommendations on 32″ LCD HDTV

We’re moving into a new house this weekend and we’re pondering an upgrade to a wall-mountable, LCD, HDTV, 16:9, something reasonable like 32″, and somewhere south of $1500.

If possible, I’d like something with an HD-tuner already built-in.

Any thoughts?

Here’s what I’ve found thus far that looks promising:

Jen and I stopped by the Roseville Circuit City to take a look at some of these. Justin (Senior Sales Something) walked us through HDTV technology, wall-mounting techniques, over-the-air antennas, even how to connect our Tivo. Rock on.

Even showed us this Magnavox 32″ HDTV that we quite liked. Though it’s his least favorite.

UPDATE 02 May 2006:
We picked up the Magnavox last night. We’ve very happy with it. Though, I’m far less happy with Tivo right now for two reasons:

  1. Tivo freaked out because it couldn’t call home and I’m pretty sure we lost everything in our queue. Though, we won’t find out until we get DSL installed later in the week.
  2. Tivo doesn’t see the .# channels (i.e. 11.1, 17.5) that our HDTV can receive. Meaning, we’re stuck with the standard definition resolution for Tivo recordings. So, Tivo went from very useful to nearly useless in 48 hrs.

UPDATE 12 May 2006:
The Digital Tuner on the Magnavox died after just a couple days. We brought it back to Circuit City and swapped it out for another one. Fantastic experience. When I mentioned the problem to the sales guy, he replied, “That’s not uncommon.”

Amazing Race Season 9 – Episode 8

I’ve lost my passion for the Amazing Race.

Maybe it’s the time switch – from 8pm Tuesdays to 7pm Wednesdays. Dunno. It feels like the segments between the commercial breaks are so fast cutting that nothing happens – like I don’t have time to focus on what’s going on.

On the whole, the challenges this season don’t seem very challenging or interesting. Just there. Like the producers have run out of cleverness.

Then, as I finish writing that, they show uncover the Shuwa. That sounds real tasty. Yeah, I’ll dig for steamed lamb.

It’s real tough watching BJ & Tyler rise from the last to first then fall back to last. I wish the editing gave a more accurate sense of time passing. It’s easy when night falls, less so when it’s still day.

You gotta give Fran and Berry props for coming in first on this leg. (Un)fortunately, BJ & Tyler were non-philiminated.

Garrick’s Favorites

  • BJ & Tyler – #5
  • Ray & Yolanda – #3

Amazing Race Season 9 Episode 6

I’ve said it before, BJ & Tyler are the best AR team yet; well-traveled, playful, multi-lingual, beards. The fake sign-up list was brilliant.

Also brilliant – the Dentists requesting a clue not from the designated grounds keeper.

Detour: Big Fish or Little Fish
Big Fish. Big Fish. Running through the city with swordfish is much more effective than trying to get the city to come to you. Oh, and the fish-over-the-shoulder technique is much more effective than carrying it out in front of you.

Roadblock: Kayak Polo
This is one of the coolest sports ever. I should start a league. Anyone got a kayak?

Garrick’s Favorites

  • BJ & Tyler – #2
  • Dave & Lori – eliminated. Jen’s reaction, “blah blah blah.”
  • Ray & Yolanda – (I missed it, hmmm. oh well)

Pre-Amazing Race Season 9 Episode 6

Hey all. CBS changed the time Amazing Race is on. Now, Tuesday is just Garbage Day. Not Amazing Race & Garbage Day.

Anyway a couple things in preparation for tonight’s installment.

There’s some other Amazing Race bloggers:

Phil’s got a blog too. Just no RSS feed. I’m sorry Phil. Your blog’s been eliminated.