Corcoran Brothers

Fios TV is still not available in Stoughton, even though I have the internets. So when I got my HD tv, I went with Comcast DVR with TiVo service. I oft times have this discussion with the geeks at work, which is the better route to take, Buy the expensive hardware and pay smaller monthly fee to TiVo, with better functionality, or take less functionality and a slightly higher monthly cost, but on leased equipment.

First, new TiVo:

Pros: Work awesome, best DVR their is. Integration with new cable cards should make things seamless. Expandable with somewhat expensive external hard drive. Plays well with other TiVos, great features. 7/10 on the updates scale, come often and usually have something useful, ok at QA it first. Never had a TiVo fail on the software layer outside of annoying bugs.

Cons: Costs a boatload, higher monthly fees. You own it, so any future upgraded hardware, you have to buy new hardware. Worry about dropping $600 on a setup to find it won’t work with your next tv service option.

Comcast DVR:

Pros: Leased equipment. When it breaks, Comcast is there with a replacement or service call inside 48 hours. Best integration with on demand.Next Gen hardware means you call and get the new hardware (may have some wait time) for the same or close to same monthly fee. Decent DVR software. Leaves a little tv window when going through the guides, etc…, like Picture in Picture.

Cons: Bunches of features inherit to the hardware locked out. No hooks into system, so no 3rd party development. Not nearly as feature rich. No moving shows back and forth across different DVRs. Can’t eliminate channels from lineup so guide is way bloated.

Comcast DVR w/TiVo service:

Should be the best of both worlds. A lot TiVo’s features, familiar guide, record suggestions, channel lineup, etc for $3 more than the hardware you are going to get anyways. What could go wrong?

How about, uhm, QA’ing it before you send it out. Comcast has to come out to enable it on your box, you can  not pick up one from the Comcast storefront. I am on my 4th box. The first one they installed would not play ESPN in Hi def. They pulled that and put in another. That lasted for a little while, until an update was sent out that fried the box. The tv was on in the background but the TiVo starting up was blocking it at 4×3 over the 16×9. No saving that box, put in a new one. Setup channels, season passes, etc all over again.

Then we had the infinite reboot issue. They say there was no update, but somehow the box rebooted itself and just would not start up fully. Think windows blue screening before it loads all the way, over and over again. No saving that box, put in a new one. Setup channels, season passes, etc all over again.

Also, standard def channels sometimes turn completely green until you blindly find an HD channel. Oh yeah, and setting a season pass can sometimes take up to 10 minutes to work it’s way through and return to the normal screen.

It is quite apparent the TiVo software is thrown on top of the Comcast software. It does not have direct access to the guide, and is not properly tested. I’ll see how long this box lasts, but then comes the decision…

Do I go with straight  Comcast DVR, or lay out the cake for an HD-TiVo? Either way - I recommend no one get the Comcast DVR w/TiVo service

I was not one to hop on the HDTV bandwagon. I was quite content watching my programs in normal sd, I tivo’d everything so HD wouldn’t work for me. Besides, HD Tivo was almost a grand for hardware alone. (Rumor is the series 3 is getting phased out, way too expensive.)

Then I got into football. I was fine on my tv, til I went and watched a game at kinyahbrutha’s. Then my tv was not good enough. I decided I would bank my year end bonus, wait for prices to drop, then score me one in August.

Then I saw a woot. 52 inch, 1080p Olevia for $1599.00 American + $5 shipping. An engineer at happened in to ask about HDTV, he bought it in 3 minutes flat. I called the wife, and got the go ahead.

Woot is fun, but you know you have to wait for shipment. I was shocked when I got the fedex number the next day, expected delivery on the 8th. Turns out woot screwed up sending the numbers when only the labels had been printed. A lot of people bitched about taking the day off for delivery, but fedex guestimates delivery as soon as the label is generated. Fedex completely blows for online tracking, UPS eats their lunch for proper updates, etc…

Anyway, fedex sent trailers for the tvs to be loaded on, but picked them up very slowly. I didn’t mind waiting, but I was following the oft times angry woot thread on the product. A lot of broken tvs, mostly from shipment, some from powering up while the tv was still cold, others just bad tv. I was getting nervous.

It showed up today, box a bit beaten. The Fedex guy was very helpful to Rachel, they both lugged the 145 pounder upstairs. It came around 1, so it had warmed up enough for me to get it to fire up. It is big. Way big. Really too big considering I sit about 12 feet away from it. And I love it.

Don’t mind the mess. It is actually wider than the stand, covering an inch or two of the bookcases on either end. Comcast is coming tomorrow to hook up the the HD-DVR with Tivo. Can’t wait.

As for the old tv, I actually mounted into the downstairs chimney, with no help from a real guy who knows how to use tools. The bruthahs are amazed I am sure.

Also, anyone know anything about optical audio cables? I have the lil square pull thingy on my receiver, and on the tv out, is this the right kind of cable? It doesn’t look like it would fit, or hold.

I broke down and got an HDTV because it was on sale at the NEX. Then, of course, I had to get the HD Tivo. Now I’m thinking of getting an HD-DVD or whatevs (mayhaps an X-Box 360 add-on?) simply to watch one thing in HD.

Children of Men is the best movie of the past ten years; it even kicks Saving Private Ryan in the ass. It was so good in the theater that I saw it four times on the silver screen. The DVD loses something. Am I willing to spend however much it takes to get an HD-quality DVD player to recapture that feeling?

Alright kidz the tv season is almost in full swing. I am not loving TV as much as I used to. I don;t record something just because TiVo has an empty slot, and did first runs only. I got too much other shit to do for shows I don’t really enjoy.

Let’s hit the reviews:

Scale:
Love it - Tivo is set to record 5 episodes, will never hit that cause I watch them within 24 hours of being recorded

Enjoy it - Set to record 10 episodes, hit right after the Love it’s

Record it - If all the others are gone, I try to find the one most interesting and watch that. If Tivo is getting full delete it to ensure I have proper room for others.

Watch with Kin-wife - Kin-Wife makes me wait for her to watch them

Living Room Tivo:
Private Practice
Love it, Watch with Kin-Wife - Doesn’t have the spark of Grey’s yet, like that it is more adult. Will keep watching.

Grey’s Anatomy
Love it, Watch with Kin-Wife - watched it as the summer fillin it started as, loved it. Gets silly at times, but nice time filler.

Big Shots
Record it - Da Kine whacks to it each week I am sure to Michale Vartan. I have em recorded, not watched yet.

Life
Love it - Captain Dick Winters. Love this one. Adam Arkin is a h00t. Obsession with fruit.

How I Met Your Mother
Watch with Kin-wife, enjoy it - About the same as the first two seasons, enjoy it. Watch with Kin-Wife.

The Big Bang Theory
A suprise enjoy it - I work with people like this, so whikle I don’t get the math, I get the jokes.

Two and a Half Men
Record it - Charlie Sheen time filler. WTF, Berta cracks me up.

Rules of Engagement
Enjoy it - Love the older couple, hate the engaged couple, David Spade is a lap dog.

CSI: Miami
Enjoy it - Don’t watch original CSI anymore, Miami is ok, love watching Lt Cane find new ways to express himself with sunglasses

NCIS
Watch this with Kin-Wife, Love it - The only issue, wifey wants private practise and Greys first, and we run out of time to watch it. Will kill a man to watch Ziva and Abby go at it.

The Unit
Same as NCIS, save Kin-Wife wants Jonas over me wanting Abby/Ziva.

Cane
Record it - having watched it yet

Pushing Daisies
Love it - Chuck is oddly hot, Chi Mcbride never dissapoints, and the style is like audlt Dr Suess. Love the narration, though the timiung down to the second will get annoying soon enough.

Womans Murder Club
Enjoy it - Like the clubish girly talk, the reporter is so Mary Louise Parker it is disturbing. Fascinated by Blond DA’s hair.

Office Tivo:

Back to You
Record it - kinda sucks, must be very bored to watch. Probable deletion

‘Til Death
Record it - Hit or miss, after the first 5 minutes I either enjoy it or delete it. Good cleavage.

Criminal Minds
Love it - Love me some crime drama, Mandy Patankin leaving is a loss.

CSI: NY
Enjoy it - Crush on Montana, liked it better when it was darker. Love Lt Dan. Needs to move back away from the seasonal story arcs to its roots as one show, one/two cases, stand alone crime drama.

My Name Is Earl
Love It - how long will Earl be in prison? Randy kills me as always. Kin-Wife hates it

The Office
Enjoy it - Don’t start your spouting about the American Office vs. English office. Yes English was way way better. This is a different show. Get over it. WTF is with the run of double episodes? They’ll be making room for another show? (Maybe Scrubs - in it’s final season?)

Without a Trace
Record it - actually, I wound up ditching this one. First season or two was ok, couldn’t take anymore.

Ghost Whisperer
Enjoy it - Jay Mohr, Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Boobs, Ghosts. In that order.

Moonlight
Record it - I miss Angel too. What, did you get bored writing fanfiction and make a show instead? Super rich asshole buddy from VMars is awesome as a prick though

NUMB3RS
Love it - I hate math, but I love this show. Probably can’t get past that was the guy from Northern Exposure. Huge crush on Dianne Farr.

Cold Case
Record it - same as Without a Trace, hung around taking up hard drive space til I deleted it to make room for other shit.

Shark
Record it - Same as Cold Case. Not worth my time.

Chuck
Surprise Enjoy it - stupid show, but a lot of fun. Glad to see Jane working. Relationship with sister is very very odd.

K-Ville
Love it - Fox show I love, it won’t make it past season 1. Anthony Anderson rocks in this sumbitch. not too too much about Katrina, helps the story, not overly preachy.

Journeyman
Record it- watched pilot when drunk. Don’t recall much. Still have the next two to watch.

Bones
Love it - Ahhh angel, you landed on your feet so very well. Semi-Watch with Kin-Wife, it is not a save for her, but I wait until she is doing office work to put it on. Mad crush on Angela.

House
Love it - 2+2=4. It could be lupus. Love the janitor threw that one out during the season opener. Show can make fun if itself. Yes, it is formuliac. But sometimes that can be comforting. It is like a hiaku. How can you stick to the formula, but still make it enjoyable.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
Love it - same as it ever was, with a new guy. Never really thrills, never lets me down.

Torrent:

Heroes
Love it - yet to watch, wait until the first break, watch them all in a row. Looking forward to it.

Sara Silverman Show
Love it - have not started season 2. Hot in a jewwy kinda way. Hits hard on taboos. One trick pony (in this setting) but I love watching that trick each time.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Love it - waiting to get all to watch.

Reaper
Downloaded it - All I know is Silent Bob produced it. Will catch up on it when first week of repeats.

Dexter
Love it - someone leaked the first 2 episodes of the new season, I did not know when I watched them I would have to wait so friggin long for the rest of the season. Read the books, TV show is better. Very rare to say that. Books were good, show delves in to it a lot more.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Friday Night Lights was the best new show of last year, and it comes closely behind SciFi’s Battlestar Galactica and HBO’s The Wire as the best show on television. This show is so good (and underwatched) that they are offering a money back guarantee on the first season DVDs. It costs $20, for chrissakes. Go buy the thing and see some of the best storytelling, acting, and plot development in the history of the television.

Seamus’ awesome recommendation of Yahoo! TV led me to the premiere episode of season 2. Courtney and I watched it last night, huddled up next to the computer. A few notes:

- They must have gotten some notes from the executives, because there is one story arc that is very non-FNLish, but adds drama, suspense, etc. The wife and I hope it is resolved quickly so they don’t ruin one of our favoritest show. If you’ve seen the first season and premiere of season 2, you know of what I speak.

- The fact that Kyle Chandler and Connie Briton don’t have a mantle full of awards is disgusting. They are so good that it approaches the sublime. Landry, too.

- The GMC will happen sooner than expected: fuckers don’t like to sit around computers and have to contend with skipping and pausing from streaming video. With NBC’s new download policy, the next step is for stuff to go directly to DVRs so people can watch them on the TV. If they build the stupid DRM into it so it expires in a week (as they do with Amazon Unbox stuff already), so be it.

The new shows are starting up. I was going to do my annual spreadsheet, but there are plenty of resources out there. Nothing new really excites me, I am more in to the old shows coming back.

I did find a nice solution to last year’s running back and forth from TiVo to TiVo getting my season passes in order. I wiped out all my season passes, then used tv.yahoo.com. On Yahoo TV, you can not only set your local provider, and filter on favorite channels, they have an API into your TiVo account. Let it authenticate, you can then pick individual shows or season passes on either/all your TiVos. You can do the same from TiVo online, but the interface is much faster and easier to move around in.

All the season passes  showed up as expected on the TiVos. Can’t wait for it to start.

NOTE - not real drunken posting, but done with pharmaceutical assistance. Shay is typing and thinking in slo-mo.

So I bought Rachel a new Dell inspiron 531 minitower. It friggin rocks. Dual core 64 bit athlon, 2 Gig of RAM, Vitsa home premium. It is pretty sweet. I was going to wait to score me a new one, but having all that power in teh room made me jealous, so like a pouting child, I had to get my own. I went with the 256 graphic card, the dual core 64 athlon 5800, and Windows Vista. I skipped on the 2 gig of RAM ($100 more) and bought 2 gig from Crucial, for $100. So I has 3 gig. This shit fucking flies. (I had to build my system up  to over $999 to use a $350 coupon found online. Was worth it for sure.)

I was one of the Fuck Vista, OS X, Linux punks. I have to say, while not ready for full on work release, I am pleasantly  suprised at how much I enjoy it. The flash is not too much, enough to keep me interested. And while there is lotsa shit moved to new places, I am getting the hang of it. There is just a lot of shock when you are first setting up. While most people hate the needs permission popups, which are so prevalent the first few days, one I began thinking of them as popup “sudo” commands, they seemed easy and useful to me.

My only disappointments, I ordered 2 64 bit systems. and they come with Vista 32 bit. WTF? Also I had to open a ticket as SATA ports 2 and 3 on the motherboard don’t work, so I get either C:\ and either my CDROM or extra 500 Gig SATA drive. They’ll be shipping out a new motherboard this week. I am so using the Gparted/ImagePart rescue CD as found on Lifehacker. The 320 gig C:\ is getting chopped to 60 gig OS partition, 6 Gig swap partiton, 40 Gig linux (64 bit Feisty Fawn) with the rest as SCRATCH for video and such. All data stays on Truecrypt volumes on the 500 gig drive, with offsite backups to Mozy. I highly suggest using it for offsite backups. Moving the /users/Shay special folders (Pictures, Music, etc) to be on the second drive was way easy.

So in two days I got my system, RAM, new nic (Gige), soundcard (not pilfered from work), speakers, and on the side a woot special XM radio alarm clock. As I need to fall asleep listening to something, this beats watching the same old Forensics Files or Dirty Jobs.

We are also going to try doing a job like this one, as cable management really sucks in the office. Instead of BBQ grill we’ll use black painted pegboard cut to side.

I also went to look for the Tivo Desktop. Version 2.5 is out there, and I am installing it now. Here’s the specs:

TiVo Desktop 2.4 allows you to transfer the following types of video files to your TiVo DVR:

• Windows Media Video (.wmv)
• QuickTime Movie (.mov)
• MPEG-4/H.264 (.mp4, .m4v, .mp4v)
• MPEG-2 (.mpg, .mpeg, .mpe, .mp2, .mp2v, .mpv2)

TiVo Desktop 2.5, and later versions ,also allow the transfer of .divx and .avi files containing divx content.

I stopped using it around 2.2, so this could be badass. I always wished TiVo would switch their base encoding to Divx, it is much higher quality in a smaller package. Sure MPG2 is supposed to make it burn to DVD much quicker, but any time I tried doing it it always re-encoded the whole file anyway. Besides, whenever I try pulling or transferring shows, it is slow as dog shit. I went from trying Wireless B to Wireless G to hard wired 10/100, and my pull speed is alway 200 kps.  WTF.

Anyone using 2.5? Vista? Tips and tricks?

ireland. wales. scotland. france. italy. england.

every year these rivals compete in the six nations rugby tournament. here are some thoughts about the three weekends played thus far without actually giving results (some people haven’t actually seen the matches yet).

1. katherine jenkins is the welsh international side’s semi-official mascot. she is an opera star (mezzo soprano) who sings the welsh national anthem (”Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau”) before the match. she would also get touched with the quickness. homegirl is a little on the short side, and has potential to beef out, but hoofah-desnay. she’s really the only thing wales rugby has going right now.
2. sebastien chabal defies the laws of nature. granted he is a large, tough man, but there is no way on g_d’s green earth that a creature should support that disproportionately large a head. from the front, it looks like a normal big head (i know b/c i see one in the mirror every morning). when you walk around the side of his noggin, it’s like going from the front to the side of a short bus. there aren’t any actual photos of his melon from the side. what photographer brings a panoramic camera to a rugby match??
chabal is a vicious, savage gaul. for a garlic sniper, i like him. if only france had been loaded with bastards like him during wwii….

3. BOD (or brian o’driscoll) is not the tallest, not the fastest, and not the strongest player on the pitch. but, without question, he is the larry bird of irish rugby. he may be the best outside center in the world. they suffer greatly when he’s not playing. he’s about as tough as they come, dishing out crushing tackles to much larger men. he always seems to be in the right place at the right time.

peter stringer is his dennis johnson. and he’s a little shit. i love him.

well, two more weekends of play, including three matches on “super saturday”, paddy’s day (march 17th for you heathens).

I am giving props to something Canadian.

Little Mosque on the Prairie is a Canadian sitcom about a group of Muslims who open a mosque in rural(ish) Canada.  It’s frigging yularious.  I’ve only seen the pilot, but it was awesome and well worth acquiring by whatever means necessary.

You may recognize the paterfamilias as Chloe’s current boyfriend on 24.  Mad respec.

No shit, give it a shot and you’ll probably like it.

I was accidentally forced to watch American Idol, and I shall ne’er be the same.  See, my hetero lifemate D-Nasty is currently in Iraq and needs me to burn shit off of Tivo and send it to him to occupy the 10 hours of the day he ain’t working.  He loves American Idol, it is available for burning off of Tivo, and therefore, by the laws of hetero manlove, I have to send it to him.  An unintended consequence of this scientific fuckup if that I inadvertently watched the first episode of the sixth season.  This is the first time I’ve watched it, and here are a few observations, sans links:

1. There is no reason that fuckers who can’t sing should show up and wait in line to make an ass of themselves.  Well, that is the cult of celebrity that our country has empowered.  Whatevs.

2.  Jewel is hot as fuck now.  When did that happen?  Did she have her jacked-up snaggleteeth fixed and nobody told me?

3.  Paula Abdul is on something.  I used to practice onanism to her videos, but she has a lazy eye and looks loopy at all times now.  I don’t  think it’s booze, so mayhaps pills or smack?

4.  Simon isn’t mean at’all at’all.  He just tells people the truffus.  What’s wrong with that?

5.  That Randy cat looks like a wax figurine.  What’s the deal with him?

P.S. Am I gay now because I watched 1/2 of this thing?