Jason Unger

Stop Motion + Super Mario + Legos

Posted by junger - 01/29/08 at 04:01:08 pm

Stop motion videos never get old. I have amazing respect for the people who can film these, edit them and make it look flawless.

Lego Mario might not be as in-depth as Tony vs. Paul, but literally every single frame of this has to be shot.

It's pretty impressive.

Please MASN, Go HD For Me

Posted by junger - 01/28/08 at 04:01:07 pm

Last night, I was watching a classic Orioles game — 1996, ALDS, O's vs. Cleveland, Game 4 — on MASN.

It was the Orioles' first playoff series in 13 years, and their first of two straight appearances in the ALCS.

Those were the days.

This year, I'm not expecting much out of the Orioles — especially with the O's three best players (Erik Bedard, Brian Roberts and Miguel Tejada) essentially gone.

But if there's one thing owner Peter Angelos can do for us lowly fans: please put MASN in high-definition.

It's despicable that the only teams to not have HD broadcasts are the O's, Nationals and Royals. Angelos has always treated our area like a second-tier market. It isn't.

(image from Nasty Nats)

Jason Leaves Boston, Comcast Gets TiVo

Posted by junger - 01/22/08 at 03:01:05 pm

If there's one thing Debbie and I disagree on, it's which is the best DVR – Comcast or TiVo.

For some odd reason, she loves the Motorola HD DVR we use from Comcast. And it's not just the convenience of it — she likes the interface, the usability and the remote.

On the other hand, I hate it. And love TiVo.

Since we only have a Series 2 unit — relegated to the office, where the TV isn't even connected to cable — my TiVo has not gotten a lot of love recently.

Then Comcast comes along and starts marketing a sort of hybrid TiVo software for use with their DVRs.

Perfect! Now we can have the best of both worlds. We don't need to buy another box (for our HDTV), pay more service fees, and we each get a slice of the pie.

Too bad the Comcast-TiVo rollout is happening in Boston, where we no longer live.

After three years of painstaking work, Comcast, (CMCSA) the nation's largest cable provider, Tuesday will begin marketing TiVo's (TIVO) interface as a premium software upgrade for DVR customers in the Boston area.

Of course, this was supposed to happen a long time ago, with a national rollout expected by the end of 2006.

It didn't happen.

Hopefully Comcast will start pushing this out to other markets — maybe Washington, D.C.? — soon.

This would be one of the first things the company could do to make me happy.

Big Surprise: Gaming Driving Blu-ray, HD DVD

Posted by junger - 01/22/08 at 01:01:28 pm

Gaming Pushing Blu-ray/HD DVD Market, Research Finds

Gaming hardware is driving the adoption of both Blu-ray and HD DVD, according to new research from DisplaySearch.

According to “Quarterly Global Next Generation DVD and Game Platform Hardware Shipment and Forecast Report,” high-definition DVD gaming hardware—Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360’s external HD DVD drive—had revenue growth of more than three times that of standalone players from the second to third quarters of 2007.

This isn't shocking. Why would someone on the fence about the format war invest their hard-earned money in a player that could eventually be useless?

(The exception here is when the price of the units competes with current DVD players, as HD DVD's $98 Wal-Mart special did back in November.)

The only reason I'm considering a PS3 is that it would provide two entertainment options — Blu-ray and gaming. While it's looking more and more likely that Blu-ray will win the format war, at some point digital downloads will be the norm.

One of the big problems with Blu-ray research and the PS3 is that everyone uses it at their convenience. The HD DVD side doesn't include it when discussing "standalone" players — I would consider it one — and the Blu-ray side uses it when totaling their market share.

For all intents and purposes, the PS3 should be included in all Blu-ray statistics. Obviously, it's questionable just how many PS3 owners use it as a Blu-ray player — some studies say a lot, some not a lot.

But it has a Blu-ray drive in it, so it's a Blu-ray player. That doesn't mean that Toshiba should be trying to compete against it — it shouldn't — but you can't ignore its presence.

Mavis Beacon Would Be Proud

Posted by junger - 01/18/08 at 11:01:59 am

84 words

I remember the first time I used Mavis Beacon – I had a lot of those little dead flies on my car's windshield.

(via JD Roth)