Free FOX Fall Premieres on iTunes: click here.
Archive for the 'TV' Category
Well, FOX put up the final two, unaired episodes of Drive up on their website. Just click here. Yes, the Firefox plugin is legit, go ahead and install it. You’ll have to disable AdBlock (if you’re using Firefox, which you are…right?) to watch the episodes. The two episodes you’ll be interested in are The Extra Mile and then Rearview. Enjoy! If only FOX would cancel the crap shows like Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? and ’til Death. Boom! See? Blank hour timeslot on the schedule. Drive fits perfectly in there.
If they cancel House, Hell’s Kitchen, or (possibly) Kitchen Nightmares, there’s gonna be hell to pay….
Today, I got a brand new TV tuner card. My previous card, the Leadtek WinFast TV2000 XP Expert refused to work in Vista if I used anything but its crappy software. No thanks. Plus since it did not have a digital (ATSC) tuner, the card would be crap in a matter of a year or two when all TV broadcasts will switch over to digital. Since no one has a review on this product yet, let me do a review on the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1800.
White box, no frills…just how I like it! Not even instructions!
I really can’t get a good shot of the back of the card, because the flash reflects too much, so I’ll just tell you the layout on the back. If you have the motherboard on a flat surface like a table, and you’re putting the card in that way from top to bottom the connections are: FM In, TV In, Antenna In, S-Video In, Left Audio In, Right Audio In.
Also note that this card is a PCIx1 card, and is NOT LOW-PROFILE! This is perfect, as I have an unused PCIx1 slot right above my video card, which would probably never be used. Time to fill it in! I’ll be back, as I’m going to reboot and put this card in.
Windows wasn’t able to find drivers online — surprise, surprise. I went to the Hauppauge website, and I came across this page. Very important for anyone that has Vista.
As I was cleaning up the area, I found this. Looks like I missed it:
It’s an S-video to composite connector. Good bonus with the card.
As for TV quality, I’m still messing with the different applications. I’ve only tried the card out with Windows Media Center in Vista. For the record, I’m using Vista 64bit, and this card works fine with it. No worries here.
I tried the Hauppauge software. No thanks. The only thing that it’s good for right now is picking up QAM channels, which Comcast doesn’t offer.
Using Windows Media Center for TV produces about 2-3 seconds of delay from live TV, due to the fact that it’s using the card’s built-in MPEG2 hardware encoder (or the fact that Windows Media Center has a built-in timeshifting feature that you can’t turn off…). I have yet to test the composite/S-video input. It’s a shame that DScaler doesn’t work yet, since I have 64bit *sigh* although people are working on 64bit drivers. Best of luck to the DScaler team.
I’m glad I found something about this on Google. From the Retro Junk Forums:
NeonNightrider: Who remembers “Nick Days”?
This was something Nickelodeon did until about the late-90s or so. Each day would be some weird theme day, like “no nose picking day” or “surprise day.” I think they would announce the theme for that day, and then tomorrow’s.
Even though I’ve forgotten most of them, there is one that I haven’t: Rabbit Rabbit Day. This fell on the first day of each month, and if you said “rabbit rabbit” when you woke up, you were supposed to have good luck for the rest of the month.
I hope someone knows what I’m talking about.
I do! 
Original post here.
Check it out here. My brother-in-law would hate Myth #7.
House AND old cartoons on iTunes?! Sweet!
This is NOT the last Price is Right with Bob. The last one will be aired at 8pm on Thursday.
C’mon FOX. You brought back Family Guy, and I respect you for that…but to cancel a show just 4 shows in, and two more episodes to be aired in the summer, and that’s it?! With such a great storyline, and interesting characters, it’s a great show! Sure, it might not get good ratings right now, but look at the iTunes episode sales, and how the show is getting views on air, and see if the numbers are going up either by iTunes sales or viewing on the TV, and then continue the series on the more popular medium, but don’t cancel a series completely! It’s idiotic! If the episodes are there, how much money would it cost you for air time, or space on Apple’s servers? I’m sure it’s cheaper for space on Apple’s server than to cut into valuable air time slots, but jeez, don’t drop it all together. FOX, you had better not put House on the chopping block….
UPDATE: Here’s how shows get rated, and a link to Drive’s scripts and initial ratings (scroll down).
“In the ’80s, all of a sudden, these businesspeople started looking at television, saying, ‘Wow, these things make a lot of money.’ For businesspeople who owned television stations, the bottom line is simply the bottom line, making money, and they don’t care much about the product.“
The new TV show Drive is now available on iTunes. I’ve gotten addicted to it, and since I missed the show on Monday, I’m now able to watch it whenever! Yay! You can check it out here.