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TiVo’s Big Announcement Is…WebTV?

By Chief Oddball on March 4th, 2010 at 3:10 pm

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Last month, TiVo teased us with an upcoming announcement, saying that their inventing the DVR was just the opening act, or some such puffery. This week they finally revealed the meat and potatoes: it’s the all-new TiVo Premiere, otherwise known to us old hats as the Series4.

The big news about this box, to me, is the fact that the long-familiar TiVo user interface has been completely redesigned using Flash, of all things. It now runs in full HD resolution, unlike the existing UI which is 480p only. It also adds a “picture in picture” view of the channel you’re watching in the upper right corner like most cable company DVRs, an oft-requested feature. But the central point of the TiVo Premiere’s release, if you believe all of the TiVo marketing speak, seems to be the fact that it’s a “single box solution” for all of your video needs, including streaming video from Netflix and Amazon as well as web video from YouTube and what-have-you.

Personally, I found this announcement strange, because my TiVo HD already does all of those things. I’ve long been able to watch Amazon video on demand, although I never do because of the cost. I’ve long been able to watch YouTube, although I never do because, trust me, most YouTube videos look like total shit when they’re blown up to 1920×1080 on a 57-inch screen. I’ve even been able to stream Netflix Instant Queue titles to my TiVo, although I never do because the interface is poor and the performance is far inferior to the streaming on either my Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 (the latter of which is currently my Netflix streaming device of choice).

So it was hard to see the TiVo Premiere’s apparent raison d’être as anything but a new skin on a feature set that’s already been there for months or even years. If I were to get really derogatory, it’s almost like the TiVo Premiere is the next generation of Microsoft’s WebTV — a set-top device designed to as an alternative to a computer that allowed people to browse the web on their TVs, albeit at standard-def resolutions (a miserable experience) and without the features of most PC-based web browsers.

Now, realistically, TiVo is known for their great UIs, and from what I can see of the new UI in action, the Premiere UI looks to be no exception. Still, as a current two-TiVo owner and lifetime subscriber, I can’t help but feel a little underwhelmed — my current TiVo seems to be at least as capable as the Premiere when it comes to being a “single-box solution” for getting content on your TV. And, as one commenter on Engadget remarked, how can the TiVo Premiere be a “single-box solution” if it doesn’t play Blu-ray discs and DVDs?

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Quick, Act Like We Give a Crap

By Chief Oddball on February 24th, 2010 at 10:08 pm

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Today the president of Toyota Motor Company, Mr. Akio Toyoda, appeared before a U.S. congressional committee to answer questions about the ongoing recall and safety/PR crisis that his company is currently suffering. My wife watched the proceedings on live TV, and as she put it, the result could only be described as “a serious culture crash.” Like a runaway Camry stuck at WOT, Mr. Toyoda ran headfirst into the unbelievable arrogance of the American government.

I will be the first to admit that I have a massive case of schadenfreude against Toyota. Over the last decade this company has proven that they aren’t infallible after all; that they are capable of the same greed-fueled mistakes and inestimable stupidity that, at one time or another, plagues almost every car company — even great ones like BMW or Mercedes-Benz. Yet the media has been blind to the slowly mounting quality concerns of Toyota vehicles, always holding them up as the good guys while demonizing the domestic automakers in the same breath. A common refrain is how much more concerned Toyota is about fuel efficiency, which is a patent falsehood betrayed by the wide swath of SUVs and trucks they sell, many of which get inferior mileage to their domestic competition. Worst of all are those hacks at Consumer Reports, who until recently were giving every new Toyota model an automatic recommendation, sight unseen, simply because of the company’s past reputation.

I guess it’s always 1989 in Consumer Reports land, because these same hacks would always turn right around and lambaste the domestic automakers for continuing to churn out crap, even when that so-called “crap” was comprised of legitimately competitive products like the current Ford Fusion or Chevy Malibu. A huge crisis of credibility has been going on in the auto journalism of this nation for so many years, I’ve almost gotten to the point where I avoid auto news on principle.

Indeed, for the last several years now, I’ve despised and avoided two things: Toyota Motor Company, and the U.S. Congress. There’s Toyota, trying to paint themselves as the self-appointed “great American car company” and our benevolent “green savior” while all the while they’re just another corporation cutting corners and stepping on toes wherever they can to get to the top as fast as possible, for little more than bragging rights. And then there’s the U.S. Congress, filled with people with so much more money than sense that it’s a wonder the House and Senate don’t collapse inwards on themselves in a vacuous singularity of wanton ignorance. Our senators and representatives are such unbridled egomaniacs that they all fancy themselves the babysitters of the entire American public who could not possibly know what’s good for them — yet, by and large, they accomplish nothing, have little-to-no private sector experience and would probably fail miserably if forced to deal with a working man’s pressures without all their perks and hired help. Today’s headlines, for example, brought news that Congress’ approval rating has dropped to a record-breaking 10%.

Now imagine these two forces — Congress and Toyota — coming together. Peter DeLorenzo of AutoExtremist predicted the results weeks ago: An embarrassment of epic proportions. Peter, no fan of Toyota himself (his book, “The United States of Toyota”, helps explain why), urged Mr. Toyoda not to accept the U.S.’s invitation to personally attend his company’s hearings — for the bloviators on the hill would only turn it into an embarrassment and further fuel the PR nightmare. After all, look at how the Big 3 bailout hearings were handled: as little more than an opportunity for our CongressCritters to beat up on auto executives, treat them like little babies and then argue (in the Republicans’ case) that they deserved no government support, when those same Republicans were already supporting the likes of Toyota to the tune of millions of dollars in tax credits in their home constituencies.

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Getting Seasonal

By Chief Oddball on December 2nd, 2009 at 6:29 pm

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Every year it’s the same thing. The same commercialized rush for your shopping dollars, the same rotating playlist of seemingly half a dozen Christmas songs on at least one local radio station, the same daily avalanche of direct mail catalogs and coupons from every company you’ve ever done business with in your life. And for some reason that I cannot explain, I love all of it.

Okay, that may be a bit much. I don’t love the heaps of junk mail, and the incessant retail hullabaloo can get a bit old. But for as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved this time of year — the Christmas “season,” as it were, that seems to officially begin over the long Thanksgiving weekend and doesn’t end until you finally start winding down from your New Year’s festivities. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the increasingly crass and commercialized way that the retail industry treats the holiday season, or any other occasion they can use as an excuse to leverage more money from us. But in the process, it’s also easy to overlook the genuine magic of the season, those almost palpable hints of cheer that creep in when you see all the Christmas lights on your neighbors’ houses, see cars drive by with fake reindeer antlers (I swear, today was the first time I ever thought of a Prius as “cute”) or hear a favorite Christmas carol while walking amongst the shops and restaurants with someone you love.

You could say that I’m being naïve; after all, there’s no real “magic” to this season other than that of the artificial variety, created by the morass of commercial enterprises that claim to govern our daily lives. And it’s hard to feel all that “magical” when you’ve got bills to pay, when you’re out of work, when you have family members fighting on the front lines in the Middle East for an increasingly dubious and unidentifiable cause, or when your own dreams just don’t seem to be coming true despite your best expenditures of money, spirit and time. You could say whatever you like — one way or another, during the month of December I can never help but become intractably giddy.

It’s largely an internal phenomenon — an escape mechanism, dare I say. While you’ll never find me using the holidays as an excuse to stand in a Black Friday sale line at 3:00 in the morning, cavort drunkenly at a local Christmas party or spend myself into a debt-fueled coma, you will find me using them as an excuse to put all the pain, suffering and workaday shit in a drawer somewhere for a month and just be happy. It doesn’t always work — not every day, for that would mean I would have to change my last name to “Stepford” — but it always propels my sense of creativity and inspiration to new heights, and puts me in the mood to go beyond the usual daily routine of work, eat, sleep.

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Shadow Politics

By Chief Oddball on August 21st, 2009 at 3:55 pm

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I’m a regular reader of the Joystiq video game news blog, and this week my daily scanning of its pages revealed a lot of praise for a game I hadn’t heard of previously: Shadow Complex. This Xbox Live Arcade game by Chair and Epic Games is a 2D sidescroller built on the 3D Unreal engine, combining old-fashioned, Metroid-style gameplay with modern day graphics, effects and combat. The whole thing is set in a modern-day universe similar to that of Metal Gear Solid, and finds you stepping into the role of the reluctant son of an NSA officer who stumbles upon the underground base of a terrorist army that’s just hours away from taking over the city of San Francisco.

I downloaded the free demo available from Xbox Live and had such a great time with it that I purchased the full version about 30 minutes in. (It’ll set you back 1200 Microsoft Points, or about $15.) For your money, you’ll get what I believe to be a tremendous gaming value that easily surpasses some of the $60 retail games I’ve purchased over the years, and also comes with excellent replayability since it encourages exploration, doubling back and finding hidden items you missed on your first run-through. From an entertainment perspective, I can heartily recommend Shadow Complex as one of the best titles I’ve ever downloaded from XBLA.

But today I uncovered what many believe to be the “sinister underbelly” of Shadow Complex: Its affiliation with Orson Scott Card (author of Ender’s Game), whose creative universe its story is based upon. Specifically, the game’s story is set in the same continuum as Card’s Empire novel from 2006, which tells the tale of a second American Civil War (between right- and left-wing political ideologies) instigated by a radical leftist organization called The Progressive Restoration.

Why is this a problem? It’s a problem because Orson Scott Card is a very vocal opponent of gay marriage, and in fact has made a number of very vitriolic statements in the past on any number of right-wing causes that have ruffled a lot of feathers. Card is also a member of the board of directors of the National Organization for Marriage, a group that seeks to retain the definition of marriage exclusively as “a union between a man and a woman.”

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Acura Wins the Ugly Stick Award

By Chief Oddball on August 14th, 2008 at 11:22 pm

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2009 Acura TL

2009 Acura TL

I’ll freely admit that I’ve never been a huge fan of Asian automotive design. Most automobiles from the Far East employ either a fairly straightforward, utilitarian appeal, or a proportionally exaggerated style reminiscent of Japanese SD (“Super Deformed”) caricature. But I’d like to think that even the common observer would have the same reaction that I did upon seeing Acura’s all-new 2009 TL (pictured left). And that would be to throw up on their shoes.

Seriously, I’m not sure what Acura was trying to accomplish here, but this can only be described as an Epic Fail. It’s as though they tried so hard to differentiate the look of the TL from the car on which it’s based, the Honda Accord, that they vastly overcompensated. This doesn’t just look unlike a Honda Accord, it looks unlike anything you’d ever be caught dead standing next to, let alone driving.

Until I see worse — and I probably will, at some point — the TL wins Chief Oddball’s Ugliest New Car of 2009 award. By a frickin’ landslide.

If you thought that one photo was bad, check out the rest. Love that engine bay — what you can see of it, anyhow!

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10% Ethanol (E10): Friend or Foe?

By Chief Oddball on August 1st, 2008 at 8:31 pm

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Last week, my dad and I were getting together to grab some dinner when he mentioned that our community gas station was switching to a 10% Ethanol blend, colloquially known as E10. “Guess I won’t be getting gas there anymore,” he lamented.

Not that any of us have gotten gas at our once-convenient community station lately. Their prices have been absolutely the most expensive of any station in all of southwest Florida for at least the last 6 months, for reasons unknown. And now they’re switching to an Ethanol blend? To guys like my dad and I, who are both very protective of our automotive investments, this set off red flags. Messing with the recipe for gasoline seems like an almost universally bad idea to us — and particularly for me, after a bad batch of gas cost my Trans Am its fuel level sensor.

I’d heard some rumblings about E10 over on my favorite GTO message board, but nothing substantial. In an attempt to get informed about the stuff, I started hunting around for further information. Based on what I found from a myriad of different sources, here are some facts about E10:

  • It will run just fine in almost any car made from 1998 on, as well as certain older models.
  • Florida state law requires all gasoline sold in Florida to be 10% Ethanol by 2011.
  • Fuel mileage will decrease when using E10 (probably by about 1-2 MPG).
  • Since it contains more alcohol, E10 is more susceptible to water intrusion and has a shelf life of approximately 3 months. This is especially pronounced in hot, humid areas (gee, like Florida!)

Essentially, being Florida residents, we might as well get used to E10 because pretty soon we’re not going to be able to get anything else. I guess it’s a good thing I don’t have any classic cars down here, eh? (Which reminds me, there are a lot of folks with old hot rods in Florida, thanks to our year-round sunshine — I wonder what they are supposed to do?)

In addition to that, I might as well stop fretting about E10 because it looks like Apple and I have been putting the stuff in both of our cars already. Since I’ve visited a couple of gas stations in town, I am seeing the “Contains 10% or less Ethanol” stickers everywhere. I think I probably put the stuff in the goat a couple weeks ago when I filled up, and didn’t even realize it. In fact, two weeks ago I didn’t even know E10 existed — I thought there was only regular MTBE gasoline and E85.

You may be wondering, why are gas stations being forced to convert to E10 at all? Ethanol replaces MTBE, both of which are added to gasoline as an oxygenate. MTBE apparently is a cancer risk, and in cases where underground gasoline tanks leak, it can contaminate ground water. Its replacement, Ethanol — a fancy name for regular alcohol — is not a carcinogen and would not pose a health risk if leaked (although the other substances in gasoline undoubtedly would).

So this is not about saving you money (since it may not), it’s not about improving fuel mileage (since it will actually worsen), it’s about preventing pollution. It’s also being propped up as a push toward renewable fuels because the alcohol content is made from corn and other crop byproducts.

For my dad’s case, there should be no problem putting E10 into his Trans Am — I have seen forum users state that they run E10 in their 1998 Trans Ams with no problems at all, and that GM in particular started designing their fuel systems for Ethanol compatibility as far back as 1986. Indeed, E10 has been a requirement in some areas of Texas and the Midwest for years now.

Note to self: I guess I’ll have to make sure to put some Sta-bil in my gas tank before we head off to Thailand next time. Other than that, I probably won’t worry about E10 any further.

Now the only real question left in my mind is, what about cars like our ‘79 Trans Am? If older cars aren’t supposed to run E10, but E10 is all you can get, what do you do? I’ve posed the question over on the GTO forums, so perhaps I’ll soon have an answer.

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Fuel Saving Nutbars Are Going to Kill Us All

By Chief Oddball on July 11th, 2008 at 1:03 pm

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With gas costing a lot of money these days, we’re constantly regaled with the media’s so-called “brilliant ideas” about how we can all save money on gas. Their ideas, unfortunately, go directly against every safe driving practice in the book. You know how people talk about how we’re all going to see fewer traffic fatalities because people are driving slower in order to save gas money? I’m betting on an increase in traffic deaths, if people put these cockamamie fuel-saving ideas into practice:

1. Shift into neutral when slowing down or when stopped.
Yeah. Let’s all go ahead and take our cars out of gear while we’re still moving, so that we will be completely unable to react quickly in the event of an emergency situation. Let’s even put additional wear and tear on our cars so that we can pay all the money we saved on gas toward rebuilding our transmissions. And correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t cars with an automatic transmission generally idle at lower RPMs when they’re in gear than when they’re in neutral?

Almost as if to prove my point, I was listening to a radio show today where a caller was promoting this idea, and in the same breath admitted that she accidentally put her car in reverse while attempting to go to neutral once. Great! I can’t wait to be the guy behind the next idiotic suckface who grenades his transmission by popping it into reverse at 45 MPH!

Use cruise control on surface streets.
Again, let’s break another cardinal rule of driver’s ed and set our cruise control at 40 MPH while we’re on a surface street — you know, a street with actual intersections, residential areas, school zones and other things that we may need to continually adjust our speed to navigate safely through. This is just one more excuse for American drivers — who already have a problem discerning between the gas and brake pedals — to zone out behind the wheel.

Drive at 35 MPH on all roads regardless of conditions.
Yeah, I have actually heard of a guy who does this. If you drive slow, you’ll burn less fuel, right? Right, but what you fail to realize is that driving 35 MPH on a road with a 55 MPH or higher speed limit is more likely to get yourself and others killed than jumping out of a perfectly good plane. Adjusting reasonably to the flow of traffic isn’t about kowtowing to the nutbars doing 20 over, it’s about creating an overall safe environment in which to travel. If you’ve got a dozen cars moving at 70 MPH and suddenly there’s one guy in the road doing 35, I’ll give you one guess what will happen if just one of those dozen drivers isn’t paying attention.

Please, people: Don’t throw the rules of the road out the window because you want to save a damn buck. If you’re that hard up, get a friggin’ bicycle.

Edit: Seems AAA has the same opinion, particularly about taking your car out of gear while in motion. I swear I did not see that article before I posted this rant.

I was also going to add a link to an automotive forum I visit where I just found this article posted. However, as is typical of automotive forums, it only took until the third post in the thread before somebody started a flamewar, so I’m not going to bother. Suffice it to say, the flaming troll’s argument was that he’ll put his car in neutral when he slows down if he wants to, since he should be “comfortable while driving” and not “stressed out about whether his engine is going to die” as he slows to a stop (presumably from bogging, as he has a manual transmission).

All I can say is, the guy must have just learned stick yesterday if he is still worrying about that. I think I outgrew that fear on the first day driving my first stickshift car.

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Another Guy Who Thinks Design is Alive and Well

By Chief Oddball on April 2nd, 2008 at 2:12 pm

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What was I just saying the other day about design — about how there’s no way I can see it becoming a lost art, despite what the disillusioned Philippe Starck may think?

Today, my pro-design argument received more support in the form of Peter DeLorenzo’s latest rant at AutoExtremist.com. Peter talks about how, despite all the boring focus groups where people regurgitate “safety, fuel economy and quality” as their top deciding factors in purchasing an automobile, the actual reality is that those factors have become the basic ingredients of almost every car out there — and that an actual purchase design hinges more on the vehicle design, and the emotional connection it creates, than anything else.

“As I’ve said before, we should never forget the essence of the machine, and what makes it a living, breathing mechanical conduit of our hopes and dreams,” says Peter. “Some out there may insist that the old saying, ‘you are what you drive’ has become obsolete in this touchy-feely, green-tinged world — but I’m not buying it for a second.”

Read the whole rant at AutoExtremist.com.

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Kwame Does Not Rhyme with Shame

By Chief Oddball on March 24th, 2008 at 10:49 am

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(Although maybe it should.)

Detroit Mayor Charged in Sex Affair

Kwame Kilpatrick, the mayor of Detroit, and his mistress former Chief of Staff Christine Beatty have been charged this morning with a combined 12 counts of felony perjury, obstruction of justice and conspiracy. They both have until 7 a.m. tomorrow to turn themselves in or they will be sought and arrested by the Wayne County Sheriff. In addition, the Wayne County prosecutor insinuated that an investigation in ongoing into other city officials, possibly to include the chief of the Detroit Police Department.

It just hit the Drudge Report, which means you can look for this news to go national today.

Kilpatrick is scheduled to hold a press conference at noon eastern, where he will respond to these charges. It is expected that he will reiterate that he has no intention to resign.

Since I left my home in the Detroit area and moved to Florida a decade ago, there have been numerous occasions when I’ve been embarrassed of my new home state (the 2000 election debacle comes to mind) and downright disgusted with its citizenry. But on this day, I am nothing but thankful that I left Detroit behind. What a joke.

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How to Reboot a Television Franchise

By Chief Oddball on February 19th, 2008 at 10:47 pm

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Before I started this entry, I considered simply adding to the comments thread of Pooch’s post on the Knight Rider movie. In the end, I had so many thoughts banging around in my head that I decided it was worth adding an entirely new post on the subject.

To recap: This past Sunday night, NBC aired their “reboot” of the Knight Rider franchise, starring Justin Breuning, a Shelby GT500KR and a few forgettable folks. While I certainly didn’t think it was horrible, it also didn’t completely satisfy me, a die-hard KR fan from way back. In the end, I think this was due to a number of factors:

  • The overt commercialism got in the way of my ability to suspend my disbelief. As ludicrous as some of the concepts in the original Knight Rider were, the show always took itself seriously. Somehow, that made it easier for the audience to do likewise. The new movie, however, felt fake somehow, like a 2-hour advertisement.
  • The actors in Sunday night’s remake were either utterly forgettable or completely unlikeable, with the exceptions of David Hasselhoff’s Michael Knight (during his all-too-brief cameo) and Charles Graiman, played by Bruce Davison. Mike Traceur seemed like a sour, spoiled punk; Sarah was endlessly holier-than-thou, then there was the lesbian FBI agent with a permanent chip on her shoulder…all of them, stiff as boards. What’s with these people?
  • The writing was completely uninspired, with the exception of a few “golden moments” where the Knight Three-Thousand actually demonstrated a glimmer of Two-Thousand-esque attitude.

Now, all of the above are issues that can be addressed, if the new Knight Rider gets picked up as a series (and its excellent ratings performance suggests that it has a pretty good chance of that). And if a series does premiere on NBC, I’ll be right there to watch it. If nothing else, I feel like that’s my karmic duty as an original Knight Rider fan.

But one day after the Knight Rider movie premiere, I was reminded — by a network called Fox, of all things — that rebooting a television franchise in a genuinely exciting, interesting and engaging way actually is possible. This is exemplified by a show called Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and it might just be the most exciting sci-fi drama on TV right now. (At least, until Battlestar Galactica returns to the airwaves next month.)

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