After a few years of languishing in my bored frustration with blog software (I'm no programmer), I abandoned my first real blog, "Hi-Def Home Theater Firmware Updates". That was about three and a half years ago, when various industry forces pounded a stake in the heart of HD-DVD, and iTunes and AppleTV were finally starting to show signs that they might be more than a "hobby" in Steve Jobs' eyes.
I worked in the creative and technical industry of DVD and found the need to blog about the confusing mess of the format wars, constant firmware updates, hardware compatibility, etc. I was mad at the industry for shipping hardware that was half-baked, that required my tech-challenged friends and family to frequently run ethernet cables or burn CD-R's or wait for manufacturers to mail them firmware updates (often weeks after they were released) in order to self-repair their expensive hardware when certain discs wouldn't play.
For financial and philosophical reasons, I continued to hold onto my industry-savvy and skeptical standard definition life and I felt no shame- afterall, I had a fantastic DirecTV Tivo box and Netflix immediately stopped me from ever setting foot in a rental house again. Besides, my young children were bound to destroy anything new that I brought home, so what was the hurry- maybe I'd wait until physical media evaporated and I could embrace true broadband hi-definition downloading and streaming. DVD's lived on, Blu-ray started gaining popularity with price reductions, and iTunes was gaining marketshare. Sure enough, Hollywood Video dried up, and Blockbuster retail stores continued to be an embarrassing shell of their former selves.
In 2010, in our new home, we fired up our first 42" LCD 1080p set, with an uprez DVD player, Nintendo Wii w/ Netflix streaming and an early AppleTV. Flash ahead one year, and I found a great $85 wireless Blu-ray player on Woot!, AppleTV saw a major re-design and impossible-to-resist price drop, and Netflix HD streaming has become a major threat to Apple and the studios. I begrudgingly put away my 5.1 speakers, largely for cosmetic and functional reasons. I'm an iPhone geek, so streaming photos, Pandora and video from my iPhone to the home theater is the coolest thing I've seen in a long time.
We have a ways to go before this stuff is as awesome as it should be, but things are pretty cool now. My kids have it so much better than I did!
1 comment:
I'm still working on the design elements folks- not much free time to do this, and I have old rusty Photoshop/Illustrator skills, so using blog software has been a bit of a challenge. I'm thinking that the comments will hopefully be the most useful aspect of this site- so offer up your personal experiences, pose some questions, or just geek out. Feel free to talk about specific content, but mainly from a technical quality perspective- I don't care if a movie is boring or scary or vulgar- just tell me how it looks and does the sound knock your socks off.
I'll try to keep my Apple fanboy enthusiasm in check, and I apologize if this blog is light on Linux or Windows based stuff or homebrew solutions, but I am mostly an out-of-the-box name-brand Macintosh kind of guy.
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