Bezabor: “Video is the New Audio” and Netflix… (posted from home)
Sunday, 15 January-
We spent much of the day cleaning the house and preparing for visitors (yeah, believe it or not I wield a mean Swiffer). We had friends Mike and Amy over for dinner. Labashi outdid herself with terrific Old Bay crab cakes and a salad. The time flew by as we caught up on things since we last saw each other almost five months ago. We really enjoyed their company and learned about some new restaurants to try in the Washington, DC area and about some motorcycling movies (one my ‘guilty pleasures’….and more often than not Labashi likes them too).
Saturday, 14 January-
I spent much of today on the internet checking out web sites dedicated to short videos. This came from my reading the latest issue of PC Magazine which dedicated several articles to the concept that “video is the new audio”, i.e., that video on the web is hot. So I spent much of the day checking out CNN’s Pipeline, Google Video, Comedy Central’s Motherload, Ifilm.com, AtomFilms.com, MtvU.com, CinemaNow.com, and DL.com. The one I found most indicative of something new was the DL.com site. “DL” stands for Digital Life and is an online television show about new digital technology. The thing I liked about it was the control you have: you could either watch the episode in its entirety or select the portion you want to see by clicking on the picture accompanying a synopsis of that segment.
Google Video will get interesting once it starts getting some more content. I did a search for ‘motorcycles’ and ran onto two point-of-view videos of motorcycles touring and I enjoyed the POV footage. I liked being able to check out a few comics on Comedy Central with, again, the control I want—I could abandon ship on comedy skits which didn’t appeal to me. I thought MtvU, the MTV channel for universities, was ridiculously jammed with commercials. Ifilm and Atomfilms had some interesting things to watch but I’d think the challenge would be to keep things interesting.
This evening we watched the movie “Long Way Round”, part 2.
Labashi and I decided we’d try Netflix this year. I signed up on 2 January, received two of our first three movies by 4 January and the other by 5 January. We’ve viewed them and their replacements. I think this is going to work out well. I was a little reluctant to commit to the $18 per month fee but then started figuring out how much we’ve been spending on movie rentals. For the past several years we’ve been going to our local video rental store for movies about every week and a half to two weeks. We tend to come home with three movies, though sometimes only two. But if we assume it works out to a movie a week at bare minimum, that’s four dollars a week or $16 per month. And when I realized that each ten-mile round trip to the video store costs me up to four dollars just on gas and vehicle expenses, it became an easy decision---- it’s at least a wash in cost if not a small savings. I’m sure I could argue with myself on how the video store is just one stop along the way on a trip to the hardware store or that many times I take the motorcycle for the run to the video store, but close enough. Besides, it seems like we’ve seen everything worth seeing in our local video rental store.
Now that we’ve started Netflix, I’ve seen some other advantages. We like documentaries and Netflix has lots of them to pick from. I like being able to find movies on the Netflix web site and consider their reviews and recommendations and then open up another browser window and use Movie Review Query Engine (www.mrqe.com) or Rotten Tomatoes (www.rottentomatoes.com) to read reviews (you can’t do that in the video store!). We also like some TV series (we started with “Sex and the City” and “The Sopranos” because we didn’t have HBO but then we realized we like having them on DVD so we control when to watch and how many episodes to watch. We enjoyed the first two seasons of “Six Feet Under” and “Deadwood- Season 1”. Then we were turned on to “Alias” and watched the first three seasons. Recently we developed a new guilty pleasure when we watched “Lost - Season 1” all seven-discs-worth in one five-day rental.
I can get all the TV series and all their seasons at Netflix where my local movie rental has only a haphazard collection of them.
Another thing I like about Netflix is their search engine. In considering Netflix, I read about their big head-to-head competition with Blockbuster Online. But the Blockbuster search engine doesn’t compare well at all. I had looked at Netflix when it first became popular and that’s why I didn’t bite at the time— their search engine was inconsistent. I remember not being able to find a film I wanted but then when I searched by director, there it was. Blockbuster Online’s search engine was giving me films which just started with the same few letters of my search—that’s not helpful—that’s distracting!
Netflix’s library is also better—or perhaps just better for my tastes.
We have also found it nice to finally be able to do something about movies we learn about by reading about them somewhere or by seeing the previews included with many rental movies. In the past, we’d say “let’s get that one” and make a note but we’d almost never be able to find the note or the movie wouldn’t be in stock yet or whatever. Now, if we see a movie, I can just log on to my laptop (which, now that we have wireless is very convenient to use right from my chair), check the reviews, and then add it to our Netflix queue. I love it!
Sunday, 15 January-
We spent much of the day cleaning the house and preparing for visitors (yeah, believe it or not I wield a mean Swiffer). We had friends Mike and Amy over for dinner. Labashi outdid herself with terrific Old Bay crab cakes and a salad. The time flew by as we caught up on things since we last saw each other almost five months ago. We really enjoyed their company and learned about some new restaurants to try in the Washington, DC area and about some motorcycling movies (one my ‘guilty pleasures’….and more often than not Labashi likes them too).
Saturday, 14 January-
I spent much of today on the internet checking out web sites dedicated to short videos. This came from my reading the latest issue of PC Magazine which dedicated several articles to the concept that “video is the new audio”, i.e., that video on the web is hot. So I spent much of the day checking out CNN’s Pipeline, Google Video, Comedy Central’s Motherload, Ifilm.com, AtomFilms.com, MtvU.com, CinemaNow.com, and DL.com. The one I found most indicative of something new was the DL.com site. “DL” stands for Digital Life and is an online television show about new digital technology. The thing I liked about it was the control you have: you could either watch the episode in its entirety or select the portion you want to see by clicking on the picture accompanying a synopsis of that segment.
Google Video will get interesting once it starts getting some more content. I did a search for ‘motorcycles’ and ran onto two point-of-view videos of motorcycles touring and I enjoyed the POV footage. I liked being able to check out a few comics on Comedy Central with, again, the control I want—I could abandon ship on comedy skits which didn’t appeal to me. I thought MtvU, the MTV channel for universities, was ridiculously jammed with commercials. Ifilm and Atomfilms had some interesting things to watch but I’d think the challenge would be to keep things interesting.
This evening we watched the movie “Long Way Round”, part 2.
Labashi and I decided we’d try Netflix this year. I signed up on 2 January, received two of our first three movies by 4 January and the other by 5 January. We’ve viewed them and their replacements. I think this is going to work out well. I was a little reluctant to commit to the $18 per month fee but then started figuring out how much we’ve been spending on movie rentals. For the past several years we’ve been going to our local video rental store for movies about every week and a half to two weeks. We tend to come home with three movies, though sometimes only two. But if we assume it works out to a movie a week at bare minimum, that’s four dollars a week or $16 per month. And when I realized that each ten-mile round trip to the video store costs me up to four dollars just on gas and vehicle expenses, it became an easy decision---- it’s at least a wash in cost if not a small savings. I’m sure I could argue with myself on how the video store is just one stop along the way on a trip to the hardware store or that many times I take the motorcycle for the run to the video store, but close enough. Besides, it seems like we’ve seen everything worth seeing in our local video rental store.
Now that we’ve started Netflix, I’ve seen some other advantages. We like documentaries and Netflix has lots of them to pick from. I like being able to find movies on the Netflix web site and consider their reviews and recommendations and then open up another browser window and use Movie Review Query Engine (www.mrqe.com) or Rotten Tomatoes (www.rottentomatoes.com) to read reviews (you can’t do that in the video store!). We also like some TV series (we started with “Sex and the City” and “The Sopranos” because we didn’t have HBO but then we realized we like having them on DVD so we control when to watch and how many episodes to watch. We enjoyed the first two seasons of “Six Feet Under” and “Deadwood- Season 1”. Then we were turned on to “Alias” and watched the first three seasons. Recently we developed a new guilty pleasure when we watched “Lost - Season 1” all seven-discs-worth in one five-day rental.
I can get all the TV series and all their seasons at Netflix where my local movie rental has only a haphazard collection of them.
Another thing I like about Netflix is their search engine. In considering Netflix, I read about their big head-to-head competition with Blockbuster Online. But the Blockbuster search engine doesn’t compare well at all. I had looked at Netflix when it first became popular and that’s why I didn’t bite at the time— their search engine was inconsistent. I remember not being able to find a film I wanted but then when I searched by director, there it was. Blockbuster Online’s search engine was giving me films which just started with the same few letters of my search—that’s not helpful—that’s distracting!
Netflix’s library is also better—or perhaps just better for my tastes.
We have also found it nice to finally be able to do something about movies we learn about by reading about them somewhere or by seeing the previews included with many rental movies. In the past, we’d say “let’s get that one” and make a note but we’d almost never be able to find the note or the movie wouldn’t be in stock yet or whatever. Now, if we see a movie, I can just log on to my laptop (which, now that we have wireless is very convenient to use right from my chair), check the reviews, and then add it to our Netflix queue. I love it!
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 23:06
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