Amazon Unbox + Tivo vs. Netflix

Yesterday on a whim, I connected baby Tivo to Amazon’s Unbox service…the things I’ll do for $15. Unlike Tim, I haven’t purchased or rented anything, yet. While the prices are competitive (and more convenient) than purchasing DVDs it isn’t that competitive against our Netflix subscription ($15/month/rental vs. $18/month ).

I see Amazon + Tivo perfect for impulse purchases – when I can’t adjust the Netflix queue fast enough – or Target’s closed. That said, I’m not much of a impulse purchaser.

If I find something that looks interesting, I’ll let you know – at this point, Netflix wins.

Looking through Amazon’s current Unbox selection, I had a clash-of-rating-systems moment: I kept clicking the customer star rating expect it to change. It didn’t.

UPDATE: 20 March 2007
Tivo was empty last night and we’re between Netflix. Hmmmm. Seems like a great time to try out Amazon Unbox. After scouring the selection to find anything interesting – I bought the Bones pilot. Unfortunately, Unbox doesn’t stream. Simultaneously, Jen and I disappointedly exclaimed, “Aweeeeeee.”

We called it a night before hitting play. So much for impulse buys.

The Future of Hiring

“I want to see evidence of video and audio skills. I want to see evidence of familiarity with CSS, RSS, HTML and every other acronym of new media. I want people who live online, consume content on mobile devices, use social-bookmarking tools and participate in Web communities. I want people who don’t think they need some gray-haired, middle-aged man like me to give them permission to create — I want bloggers and page designers and database builders who have made things even when they weren’t getting paid.” – Paul Conley

Wednesday, March 7, 2007 11:33:43 AM

I wasn’t getting the upload speeds I was expecting. Not by a long shot. After troubleshooting the dsl line and the modem itself, the Speakeasy rep and I determined the Linksys WRT54G router was the issue. Upgrading the firmware to v4.21.1 didn’t improve anything. Then, after poking around the router’s admin settings, I found the culprit: Quality of Service (QoS) on Upstream Bandwidth was enabled. Disabling it gave me 2.5x the uploading speeds.

If Radio Changed Would Anyone Hear It?

“If radio featured significantly less advertising, would that keep listeners away from their CD’s and iPods and satellite radios and TV’s and video games? Indeed, would that make the radio industry a healthier one?” – Mark Ramsey, Mercury Radio Research.

These days, after more than 5 minutes of broadcast radio, I need to turn it off or leave the room. It’s not just the commercials, or the decade-old play lists, or the insipid banter between “personalities” (NPR included), it’s also the lack of control (pause, skip, etc).

I was reminded yesterday of Flato – a coupon radio program (now with podcasts!). It’s an entertaining listen if you’re driving near Milwaukee. Back when we made that drive more frequently, there was a stickie note inside the dashboard with Flato’s frequency on it.

Radio needs to stop acting like it’s in competition – for ad dollars or community entertainment – with any of the media forms on Mark’s list. Radio needs to start being interesting. Hopefully before we all forget what broadcast radio is.

RELATED:
The payola investigation was successful:

“Under the pending agreement — reported yesterday by the Associated Press and confirmed by Adelstein — Entercom Communications will pay $4 million in fines, followed by Clear Channel Communications ($3.5 million), CBS Radio ($3 million) and Citadel Broadcasting ($2 million). Adelstein said he expected a majority of the commissioners to approve the settlement this week.” – Charles Babington, Washington Post

2 Things

  1. First, a reminder – that when you sit down to do something, and focus on it the results are impressive.
    A little back story – this last week all I did was add things to the To Do index card stack. Rarely, did I have the celebratory crumple-up-and-toss-in-the-recycling-bin. Today, I cranked through a bunch of them and even made fairly dramatic headway on a problem that’s been taunting me for at least a month.
  2. Secondly, there’s still quite a bit of work to be done in RSS reading/aggregation land. There are too many identical offerings and none of seem attractive enough to migrate my 300+ feeds too. Something’s missing. I’m on a hunt to find it. Any thoughts?

Later:

“I think the problem with browser-based RSS software is that the people who write the apps aren’t news junkies. If they were, they could, with much less effort, create something far more powerful and far more usable.” – Dave Winer