Tonight (or whenever you happen to listen) on the Boxes:
Live from London, James Talia. Some stuff not to buy. Memorable things people have said. A triple attack of new US shows. Answer the questions, win a prize.
Plus everything you need to know from and for the world of television for this week.
Listen:
Say hello, talk to us about Knight Rider etc
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29 Comments
jimbo says:
Swingers is the best movie ever made. Ever.
So there, McQueen.
Doug Liman, more power to ya.
Ross says:
Somehow I knew you comment on this Jimbo but I was expecting more swearing.
jimbo says:
Nah. I’m trying to cut down!
Even without the profanity my post is still money.
It’s so money and it doesn’t even know it.
Adam D says:
Congrats Ross!
I’ve one more point to make about SD/HD, I’ll try not to make it too technical: Coonan’s a dick. Yes the networks can’t launch extra SD channels until 2009, but as of December (?) last year they can do what they like with their single HD channel. This is why they’re all doing HD channels rather than SD.
If all this were done properly years ago [i.e. allowing proper multichannelling right from the start], most people would have adopted digital by now and the old analogue frequencies could have been terminated in 2009 instead of 2012, making these thick bastards loads of money sooner. It really does beggar belief.
Last night she’s telling Kerry O’Brien the Liberals’ broadband rollout is to finish in two years and will be progressively rolled out in that time, not at the end of it; then two minutes later she’s bagging out Labor because its plan ends in 2011, therefore nothing will be done before the end of that year! Hello, didn’t you just contradict your own argument?? Argh they need to stop making people who are this stupid.
At least this time she didn’t say ‘pie in the sky’ or refer to ‘gigabytes of power.’
Mike Beckham says:
The feed is not working for me on iTunes…
MordWa says:
Don’t feel too bad gang – I remember (as a much younger ‘Wa) getting to sit in KITT when he was flown in for Brisbane’s Expo ’88; I think I was similarly starstruck. Of course, there’s only so many things you can say to a car…
I think I mumbled something along the lines of “so… seen any good movies, lately?” “and just how ARE you related to the Cylons, anyway? erm…”
Anywho, I always thought KARR was the cooler vehicle – even if I could never work out where his goatee (to symbolise he was the evil twin) was kept…
Now THERE’s a mental image-!
catbrain says:
I still don’t reckon The Block boys would return to Nine until JA is well and truly out the door.
That’s a nice idea re the ITV soap/behind the scenes show… but is it really something new? Isn’t that exactly what they do already with Doctor Who and Doctor Who Confidential on BBC?
It always looked to me like he was running backwards at the end
fourthof5 says:
The feed is not working for me on iTunes?
Comment by Mike Beckham 10.02.07 @ 18:11
Me either.
As to the fall list, Yes I will agree that The Bionic Woman took Waaaaaay to long to get to the point of the show…. But it does have potential. Life I didn’t mind at all. As a “non-house” watcher (I don’t really like medical shows), Life is some what refreshing. Another new one out there is Moonlight which has potential, its about a Vampire private detective (reminded me a lot of Forever Knight) so I will be watching that (its a Vampire show, always have to watch those) Family Guy is back on for those of us that like it. Criminal Minds is back too which is something I will be watching. Heroes is back (and the first ep was pretty good. Journeyman is another new one which is not bad (bit Quantum Leap-ish)And of course Dexter is coming back and that will be good.
Brett says:
Hey Guys, could you retry your iTunes feeds? Mine was a little sluggish and then I updated through the Boxcutters subscribe page, which wasn’t affected, but now I can’t check if it’s working.
The in-browser player up in the post shouldn’t have affected anything but it’s the only thing that’s changed this week that may be breaking the iTunes feed. Perhaps there’s something up with the Feedburner conversion.
The browser player was added with no fanfare this week, in case it complicated things. We’ll have to discover and splat out any bugs.
fourthof5 says:
Was ok this morning Brett.
Brett says:
I think the problem was through Feedburner’s conversion rather than anything else – I had to update the feed there and that fixed my resubscription in iTunes.
What do people think of the show being available in a player in the browser? Are you switching pages too much to get through the show or does it work?
Brett says:
Well done to Catbrain on taking out the Crumpler bean bag. There was some stiff competition from a large field that brought in many new visitors – thanks for all your efforts.
Catbrain’s response was in an obscure post so here it is again for those who missed it:
Adam D says:
For what it’s worth, I use IcePodder and received it as normal.
In a web page? Meh. Most regular listeners will have it in aggregation anyway.
Mike Beckham says:
It works now, if you want an embedded player use this plugin for Wordpress.
We use it for our podcast and it works a treat.
Brett says:
Mike, I almost went for that plugin but the one we’ve installed – WordTube – is a WP front-end for a more functional media player. It shouldn’t actually affect the RSS feed and I suspect it was a problem at the Feedburner point.
Adam, I know that most of our smart listeners are fine with managing podcast downloads but there’s a lot out there who haven’t taken that step. We get heaps more hits on the blog than we do on the mp3s – that we can see stats for anyways – and a readily accessible player will hopefully allow them to discover the joys of the show without having to download or install anything.
Brett says:
I did say on the show this week that I’d post more details on a couple of stories we ran out of time for so here they are:
SOURCE: yourTV.com.au
scalpel4hire says:
Hi All
iTunes didn’t seem to want to know re downloading the podcast this week, till tonight. Don’t know if you re-jigged anything, but thanks if you did.
Re the in-browser player idea, I guess it doesn’t affect me much – I don’t have a desk job, usually download the podcast & listen to it in the car.
Keep up the good work.
catbrain says:
What an odd show Bionic Woman is – shades of Bladerunner and Kill Bill in there too. It doesn’t really seem to know what it wants to be, does it? I did enjoy her initial reaction to the anthrosites, though – I’d be screaming and punching people too.
Josh says:
Brett, do you maybe want to quote your sources on those articles you republished? Media Watch have their hawk-like eyes on us and are just waiting for us to slip up.
dlutchy says:
Josh,
You mentioned that The Bionic Woman had to go through the explaination in the first episode and the the $6 mill man summed it up at the beginning of the episode.
Wel recently I saw the 1st episode of $6m man and it was very slow as it went through the whole explaination with him.
Josh says:
Oh, really? How upsetting. Clearly I’ve never seen the first episode. Then again, if I thought about it for long enough, so many of those 70s shows had long, laborious introductory episodes that didn’t add anything to the story.
This trend spread into the 80s with shows like Greatest American Hero and probably started in the 60s with shows like I Dream of Jeannie.
Can anybody think of other shows that had a premise that was explained tediously in the opening episode and then had to have the premise repeated in the opening credits?
David Boxcutter says:
Sigh. Nobody can tell you what “High Definition” is, because the term is meaningless.
It’s a completely pointless pursuit to try and use the term in a serious context. The finding of those survey results are totally worthless, because any of the video formats they show could be considered “High Definition.”
DVD is High Definition according to some usages. The term has been used for decades, to refer to video of even lower resolution than DVD or today’s analogue PAL broadcasts.
For example:
Understand? High Definition TV has been around for over 70 years.
If you are using this term expecting it to mean something specific, then don’t be surprised if it backfires, because it has never beden used to refer to something specific – just something of higher resolution than something else.
Seeing as that “something else” has been of extremely low resolution at previous times in history – then pretty much anything qualifies as High Definition if it has more than 2 pixels.
David Boxcutter says:
Just to add a little mopre background to the above – “more than 2 pixels” might be pushing it, but not by far.
30 lines. Maybe that should be considered “low definition”, being a prototype.
So, what’s “standard definition” – that’s probably answered by the TV systems that were actually employed in mass service:
So, I guess we can consider 240 lines of resolution as “standard definition”. The BBC’s 405 line system was called “High Definition TV”.
There you go. 405 lines could be considered the point at which high-definition is achieved – if you wanted to create an arbitrary cut-off point.
But still, it’s better to avoid using the term because it’s meaningless. 405 lines might be logical, but different people will disagree with that, too.
What I don’t really understand is why the industry started using “high definition” to describe their new TVs, when the term is over 7- years old and is applicable to much lower resolution systems. Why didn’t they just come up with a new name to avoid confusion?
fourthof5 says:
Josh said: Can anybody think of other shows that had a premise that was explained tediously in the opening episode and then had to have the premise repeated in the opening credits?
The Prisoner. 12 minute opening sequence every ep.
Re: Bionic Woman.
I have now seen both edits of the first ep, and though I thought it was still a little slow in places, the re-shoot was far far better. They completely changed Jamie’s sister from a deaf emo chick to a Computer nerd. Different actress too. I actually think the show has quite a lot of potential. Looking at it, there was a lot of stuff that got re-shot throughout the episode, even the first view of her bionics.
fourthof5 says:
Watched ep2 of Bionic Woman. Significantly better.
dlutchy says:
Josh said: Can anybody think of other shows that had a premise that was explained tediously in the opening episode and then had to have the premise repeated in the opening credits?
Heres a few easy ones:
– Brady Bunch
– Odd Couple
– Gilligans Island.
Wow thinking about it now it seemed to be a theme in the late 60’s and early 80s
Mike Beckham says:
@Brett you could always use the plugin I use on the actual posts and your plugin on the sidebar. Just a thought…
Adam D says:
Not that I want to have another giant techy conversation, but David, the reason chunks of Europe defined HD as 720 lines and higher is to give HD a distinctive meaning.
David Boxcutter says:
Adam, I think that is just as problematic. That means that companies can market their products as “HD” without supporting 1080i or 1080p.
The solution is simply to refer to the specific resolution. Using HD as a catch-all phrase will always be problematic.
The thing that gets on my goat is the survey mentioned on Boxcutters, where they were telling people they were “wrong” about HD. Even though the facts are on my side, if I gave a technically correct answer, I would be considered wrong and ignorant – even though I know all about HD resolutions and the history of video.