Just a quick review for now. As you may remember, our TV developed a weird display issue some time ago. The issue was covered under our Best Buy extended warranty, so they offered to replace the TV for a TV of the same or lower price as the first one. After a little bit of waiting, mostly because we were away for the holidays, our replacement TV was delivered early yesterday morning. We ended up replacing our old Samsung LN-S4095D with the Samsung LNT4071F 40″ 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV. The Amazon page goes through most of the features, so I won’t rehash them here. Let’s just say that the TV has everything I’d want and then some. I still go back and forth on whether a slightly larger set would be better in our living room, but the 40″ TV does look great.

So far, after a weekend spent on or around the couch cleaning and coding, I can say that the TV looks awesome. Better than awesome, actually. We watched Planet Earth on HD-DVD which I gave to Heidi for Christmas on this set and it looked phenomenal. There’s a certain clarity to the picture that makes it seem like you’re either actually there or looking at an unprocessed copy of the video (almost like a soap opera or camcorder picture).

I’m now a believer in contrast ratios, by the way. Samsung claims a 25,000:1 ratio for this set, and it really makes a BIG difference compared to our old TV (6000:1). We’ve got great, rich colors with beautiful depth, great blacks, and smooth gradients. Everything I’m reading says that those areas are where the contrast ratio really makes a difference.

If you’re looking for a new TV you won’t be able to beat this one by much. The latest Sony’s are supposed to be roughly the same or slightly better, and the new LED lit Samsungs offer some tradeoffs worth considering. In the end, since I liked my old LCD TV, I decided to stick with that technology for now.

One minor complaint, which is that I don’t like the sound of the new TV. They’ve done some stuff to boost the bass, but it ends up making things sound unnaturally deep. I think in part I’m picky about this because I listen to my music on better than average headphones that have an even frequency response. You can modify the EQ settings, though, so a little time in the menus and I got the sound back where I like it.

Bottom line: Love it, happily recommend it.

On a random topic, this is the first Sunday where I’ve watched football at home in a while. Sunday Ticket is pretty nice, especially since we get many of the games in HD. DirecTV has done a good job with the package, including the enhanced menus and scoreboards in the package. Didn’t know the set top box had the ability to do enhanced menus and on-screen widgets.

Update: Forgot to post this little tidbit: The biggest complaint about the TV is something people are calling the “triple ball effect” where the Auto Motion Plus function creates ghost images for small, fast moving objects (e.g. balls when watching sports). Samsung has a new firmware update out for the TV that helps mitigate the problem when Motion Plus is set to low (the default) or medium.

In a comment at Josh’s place, slugfest asked what would happen to network TV if everyone bought TV shows online rather than watching them via ad supported TV. That’s the question I set out to answer tonight. Beyond the general point, it’s another angle into the NBC/Apple dispute.

I’m not that familiar with the TV advertising biz, and if anyone that knows better wants to chime in, I’d appreciate any insight. I’ll see if I can track down someone at ABC or ESPN to give me a better explanation.

For now, here’s my methodology to do a rough estimate. The key piece of data is the price of a 30-second spot. We also need to know the number of commercial slots per hour episode. We then need to estimate the number of households that would have to purchase iTunes to match the episode’s actual viewership.

Working backwards, here’s how I decided to tackle this. I’m going to assume an iTunes purchase is necessary per household. So, I should be able to take the number of households implied by the episode’s rating or share and just use that number directly. Looking through the 2007 Studio Briefings, a top 10 show averages around a 10-12 rating (non-rerun), which comes out to about 11.1-13.3 million households.

Looking at episodes of Lost, House, and CSI on iTunes, I’m seeing an hour episode running around 43:30, which means that there is 16:30 allotted for commercials. In order to simplify the math, I’m assuming this is sold in even 30-second chunks and is all national advertising. So, no regional slots, no splitting revenue with affiliates, cable broadcasters, etc. That makes 33 slots per hour.

The hardest thing to find was the per slot price for a 30 second spot. After a fair bit of Googling, I found several sources reprinting an AdAge article that breaks down the rates for the top 10 shows in 2006-2007. For the sake of simplicity, again, I’m going to pick an average for the top 10 at about $400,000 per 30-second slot. Obviously, this could be higher or lower depending on which show you’d like to do the math for.

So, based on these numbers a typical hour episode of a top 10 TV show brings in around 33 * $400,000 =~ $13.2 mil. This estimate is going to be on the high side because I doubt the national network gets all of the slots, as I mentioned before.

Based on the household numbers of 11.1-13.3 million households, we can estimate a gross take for Apple at $1.99 * 11.1 mil =~ $22 mil. At 13.3 mil households, it’s around $26 mil. Assuming it’s a 50/50 revenue split (unlikely — Apple probably takes a very small percentage), the network rakes in between $11 mil and $13 mil. More if they command a larger percentage of the retail price.

Based on this quick, “back of the envelope” math, it sure looks like TV will live if we all started paying for what we watched, at least as far as the top shows are concerned.

Where NBC may have a point, though, is if they wanted to reduce the price of some shows on iTMS based on ratings. I shouldn’t have to pay the same for, say, Mythbusters or Ice Road Truckers as I do for Lost or Heroes, which are way more popular. That’s not what NBC is arguing with their desire for “flexibility in wholesale pricing”, since they seem to be complaining that the prices are too low. TV Squad interpreted that statement to mean that NBC wanted to offer special promotions so that you could get an episode of The Office when you buy Evan Almighty (TVSquad’s example). That sounds as bad as the current cable scheme where I pay one “low” price and get more channels than I can watch.

As I mentioned above, I’m interested in feedback, corrections, or additional information from everyone, especially those more knowledgeable about ad sales and the TV business in general. I think this is a worthy conversation to have.

Update: One other thought: the total ad dollars above, based on a rating of 11 (12 mil households), would create a per episode price of $1.10. And, these are for the top 10 shows over the year. How much is something like Battlestar Gallactica or Psych or What Not To Wear worth in this scenario? Something else to think about.

I’ve been looking at iTunes, Joost, and the other Internet-based ways to consume TV and am beginning to wonder if I could live without cable. It’s more or less possible to view episodic content, from shows like Lost and Heroes to The Daily Show and The Colbert Report using just iTunes. Sure, it’s not HD or even widescreen, but with the Apple TV now out, I’m sure that’s just around the corner. Microsoft is offering a similar service with it’s XBox Live offering, where you can download shows right to your XBox 360. Sony should be coming out with something as well.

My biggest concerns are around “live” broadcasts, things like sports, cable news, and weather. I can’t imagine TV without ESPN or football on Sunday or the other things that I can’t get over-the-air (OTA). No CNN or MSNBC on election night or during election season would be weird and I take the Weather Channel for granted.

At least for the news and weather things, there are OTA choices in the HDTV world. Almost every city I’ve been in using OTA HDTV, one of the local stations is broadcasting an automated 24-hour weather forecast on one of the sub channels. There are also more frequent news breaks on some of them, as well.

Really, it comes down to sports. Ultimately, it’s why ESPN can charge the subscriber fees it can. There are a ton of people just like me who get cable primarily to have ESPN. So, any world that replaces cable would need to offer a way to subscribe to ESPN, local live sports (NESN, YES, etc.), a la carte. Knowing how much ESPN relies on subscriber fees (worth several billion a year according to public estimates), that’s going to be a tough sell with the networks, let alone Comcast, Cox, AT&T, etc.

Still, I’d like to take a stab at what it would cost to watch the shows I really watch every month plus a guestimate on the “live” content based on current package pricing. I don’t know cable subscriber fees charged by folks like NESN, YES, etc. so I’m basing the price of getting all the Eagles games, for example, on 1/16th of the NFL Sunday Ticket price.

So, with that said, here is the list of TV I watch along with my estimated prices. Where available, I’ve taken prices directly from iTunes, and I’m estimating what I’d be willing to pay just for ESPN or CNN or the other “live” channels I want that aren’t OTA. These prices are per year.

My monthly cable bill is about $70 per month ($72.62 including box rental, remote rental, some of the taxes, and fees). That totals out to $840. So, I would be saving over $100 per year, avoiding commercials in most of the episodic TV (ESPN and live TV plus OTA could still sell advertising). The shows would be available when I want them and, if I used iTunes, the shows would be saved on my drives, available for viewing later over and over.

Am I forgetting any shows? How does this math work out for those of you that watch more TV? Keep in mind that OTA channels like ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, etc. would still exist, so you wouldn’t lose things like American Idol or Dancing with the Stars or even Lost if you wanted to see it at the scheduled time.

Also, considering the paltry (by comparison) subscriber fees charged by Discovery, History Channel, TLC, etc., an a la carte broadcast-style offering would probably be within budget with the $100 savings.

Anyway, consider this a rough, back-of-the-envelope estimate. I’m curious what folks think is missing?

PS. All of this was prompted by this article on CNN reporting on changing TV habits. While it’s hard to take seriously any article that fails to mention commercial skipping with DVRs, it’s worth reading.

This weekend I finally decided to pick up the SlingBox after struggling with the lack of a TV in my home office. I’ve been in there a lot lately, working late and have been going nuts without the background noise of TV. I’ve ended up buying silly movies from iTunes. I’ve also gone through my DVD collection several times over. I think I just need background noise after growing up in a house that was never quiet.

So, why the Slingbox? I have a house that’s just about 90 years old. That means no cable in most rooms and no phone jacks. As it is, we have an Ethernet cable running across the floor upstairs to connect my office into the router in the other room. The idea of running a coax cable across the floor isn’t appealing. And yes, we’ve thought about having the house wired. That’s coming, but not for now.

To deal with this, and also to get ESPN and live sports into my office, I started looking into IPTV solutions. There was the open source route with MythTV, but that would require another box with a computer’s power supply. There’s enough power getting drawn by devices in the TV room already. Then there’s Sony’s LocationFree. Their devices don’t have a tuner and need a set-top box to control. I don’t really want to interfere with whatever Heidi might want to watch in the other room, so that was a non-starter. On the other hand, Sony has a PSP player and I own a PSP. On the other hand, the Slingbox has a version that has a coax in and has an analog tuner built in, so that’s the one I ended up going with, especially after reading reviews.

So far, it’s been great. The viewer is a bit of a CPU hog (probably because the stream is encrypted) and the box runs very hot, but those are my biggest complaints. Setup was a breeze, installation was painless, and I had TV on my computer within 15 minutes of opening the box. That includes wiring it all up (granted, I’m pretty good around my AV gear).

I wondered a while back whether it would run on a G4 Mac. While it takes up 50% CPU on my dual core Intel-based Mac, Heidi’s 1.25Ghz eMac kept skipping and pausing trying to play the video. Again, the encryption was probably to blame. On my iMac, I can program, run Eclipse, do whatever with minimal impact on the video.

If you look closely at the screenshot of the player, you’ll see what it looks like in it’s smallest mode. It’s tight. Click one button and a remote control pops up where you can punch in any channel. Quick channel buttons are included right at the bottom, and clicking the little inverted triangle to the right exposes more presets. The most important feature, though, is the “Always on Top” option, something that too many players forget (I’m looking at you, iTunes!).

You also may notice the bit rate on the bottom right of the picture. Yes, that’s 6 Megabits, really. I don’t think I’ve ever had that much sustained bandwidth flowing across my home network. Good thing I’m upgrading to Gigabit at home right now. (OK, Gigabit won’t improve anything, but it sounds good, doesn’t it? Don’t tell my wife…).

The one feature I haven’t had a chance to test is the remote viewing. Slingbox apparently allows me to watch TV across the Internet, even on some mobile devices. I had some trouble with getting this set up with my router (some UPnP issues for the geeks) so no joy yet. Seems like these network apps are still problematic, and it’s not just limited to the Slingbox. The key feature, not obvious unless you’re a techy, is that the player and the box are adjusting the bit rate dynamically based on connection quality. That feature alone enables Internet viewing of this video. It’s pretty much a must have for a consumer device.

Overall, after the first few days of actual use I’m really happy with the purchase. I recommend the device if you’re looking for TV over your home network.

A small side note: I’m out of network ports in my living room. Basically, I have 4 ports on the router. One goes to my office (where there’s another 5 port switch), one goes to Heidi’s office, and the Tivo and XBox360 take up the other ports. I’ve had to disconnect the PS2 (no major loss). So, right now the Slingbox is plugged into the switch in my office with another cable running across the floor. Needless to say, the 8-port GigE switch is on the way from Amazon.

If you missed this past week’s episode of Scrubs, you really missed the best episode ever. The episode, called My Musical, was a musical episode based on the premise that a patient in the ER keeps hearing everyone around her singing. The episode was amazing. TVSquad has the rundown of the episode, but I basically just wanted to post the following clip on FM:

There are about 9 songs that make up the episode. They were written by the folks behind the musical Avenue Q, and they have the feel of a traditional musical with the big dance numbers and the whole works.

If you want more information on the episode, Heidi mentions that Wikipedia has a page on the episode. Enjoy.

Update: YouTube has removed the clip, so Hulu it is…

I’m actually frightened by seeing those two things connected in some meaningful way. Bush fanatics, however, apparently are not.

No, not a typo. See?

I was just complaining to Heidi that the first two episodes have been a disappointment for me because we’ve gone two whole shows without finding out what happened to the Hatch. The most intriguing parts to me about the season finale was the revelation that a) someone detected the magnetic event and b) that the failsafe key was used. Two episodes and we got nothing. The season premiere for Season 2 was far better. Walt gets taken and the hatch is opened. We got it all right there.

Anyway, while poking around YouTube, I found this extended preview from the Canadian network that broadcasts Lost. I don’t remember the preview on ABC being this informative:

Oh boy, this is going to get interesting.

I know I said I would limit my posts about the Path to 9/11, but this is completely horrible. The movie contains a scene where a CIA agent supposedly calls the White House for authorization to kill bin Laden after supposedly having surrounded him Afghanistan. Sandy Berger is portrayed as not answering before the line gets cut.

One problem. The incident never actually happened. It’s a complete fabrication. From CQ:

Berger, reached by phone after the screening, seconded Ben-Veniste’s criticism. “It’s a total fabrication,” he said tersely. “It did not happen.”

That is not likely to prevent the film from being embraced far and wide among Bush supporters.

…

Neither Berger nor Ben-Veniste was consulted on the film. Kean, however, is an official adviser; he says the incident was a fictionalized composite. It was “representative of a series of events compacted into one,” he replied to Ben-Veniste at the time. In a phone interview a few days later, he added, “It’s reasonably accurate.” And he offered a prediction that the show will “get just as many howls from Republicans.”

It’s worth pointing out that Kean has something to gain by kissing up to the Republican establishment: his son is running for office in NJ.

Contrast this account to the comments by Richard Clarke, Larry Johnson, Rand Beers, Paul Pillar, all former NSC or CIA officials who worked in the Bush administration. Take a look at this account of Richard Clarke’s focus during his time in both administrations. Kean simply isn’t credible and this movie is nothing but a rehash of the “blame Clinton” line that Republicans have been peddling since 2000. It may be winning elections, but it’s flushing our country down the drain.

Early reports make the Path to 9/11 a sorry excuse for a docudrama. Mendacious might not be strong enough.

Here are some more blogs, newspapers, and magazines talking about this fictional bit of historical lovemaking to the Bush administration.

Blogs

• ABC Yanks the Movie’s Blog
• Firedoglake examines the marketing and early reviews of the movie. Hint: there’s a bias in the marketing.
• TPM Cafe talks about the movie

Other

• MediaMatters talks about the creators

I’ll keep this updated as I find more. It will probably be the last post on this subject.

(Standard disclaimer applies — see here.)

I’m home today sitting in front of the newest addition to the toy family, a 40″ Samsung LCD HDTV that does 1080p. Now, I still haven’t found a source that can push the TV at 1080p, but this TV is as future-proof as I can get right now. Even though this TV isn’t a 50+ inch behemoth like my mom’s TV, it still commands the room it’s in.

I haven’t really used the TV enough to do a full review, but so far it’s been great. The TV is hooked up via a set-top box to Comcast’s HD Cable service, an XBox 360, and my old Series2 Tivo. So far, I’m impressed with the HD sources and the Tivo looks as you might expect an SD source to look on a TV like this.

The XBox 360 is a surprisingly good upconverting DVD player. I thought it played HD-DVD disks, but that was a mistake (btw, anyone want an HD-DVD copy of Sky Captain?). HD-DVD capability is coming this year, so maybe I’ll get a chance to try it out. I’m watching Mr. & Mrs. Smith which looks really good.

A quick note on the XBox 360: I think Microsoft may have actually built a good product here. This might be the first one since they rolled out Windows 95. I’ve played Madden in HD on this TV at 1080i and it looks gorgeous. The online play looks pretty cool, and the always on nature of XBox Live seems like a really good idea.

I’ll write more about these things later, but I need to get back to work now. The bottom line right now is that I’m really happy, especially considering that I got the TV, XBox 360, Madden 07, and extra controller from Best Buy for right about $3100 and zero interest financing for 24 months. The price on the TV was $2559 after the discounts for the XBox 360 bundle deal, Comcast HD discount, and the discount I found on BestBuy.com. Not a bad deal all around.

• Samsung’s site for the LN-S4095D.

Holy crap.

Tonight’s Lost was absolutely nuts. Spoilers after the jump.

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