The Insomniac Coder

Image via CrunchBase Disclaimer: I am in the middle of one of my well-documented encounters with Insomnia. You've been warned. Very early impressions: Noticed the Hulu plus sponsored mode on the dashboard around 5:45 AM DST .  Took me a few clicks and one failed Google search to find out how the hell to download the stupid dashboard app. Eventually found it by going to the only obvious place in the dashboard where such a thing would be. The dashboard app had an update, this was installed instantly and with no interruption. I already have Hulu Plus, logging-in was painless and did not involve going to hulu.com to authorize the device.  Usage is consistent with the UI for things like Netflix and the Zune Marketplace . It took me less than a minute to get up to speed.  Watched a Daily Show clip, looked fine even if the volume was a bit off. And yes, there are ads even if you pay for Plus, which is the same experience as using a browser or the Roku HD. Watched...

Image via CrunchBase Netflix Original Content Is Much More Than A Strategy Shift — It Could Shift An Industry This is very true. What Netflix is doing is moving around without the encumbrance of having to carry hundreds of channels of shit like every cable operator in this country does. I have even seen ads from satellite providers saying "nobody can give you the channels that you want, so we just (insert lame excuse here)." Either you can or you can't. With Netflix paying for NEW content, they prove it is possible to make money giving people JUST the content that they want, when they want it. Who the hell wants to pay $100 (like I do) for a few hundred channels worth of shit when I can pay $8 to Netfix, $8 to Hulu and $7 to Amazon for a better variety than what I get right now? My $100 tier with Comcast is shit, all I watch is the local FOX and CW affiliates, Ivette only watches Investigation Discovery , and PJ watches PBS Kids and WETA Kids. That's a lot of ...

Image via CrunchBase I have been struggling for months with performance issues whenever I try to play NetFlix HD streams on my laptop. It doesn't matter which version of Silverlight, or browser, or even using Media Center, it will always choke the machine. Replacing the GPU is of course is out of the question, and the machine is just a year old, I need to get at least two more years of work out of it before I can justify picking up a new one. The sad part is that if you don't take into account the HD streaming issue, the machine is pretty damn good. Even better if you take into account the SSD and that most data that used to sit in USB2 drives is now in an external SATA drive.  Do I need the streaming at all? The way I work I need a constant source of background noise. Music doesn't work because it is predictable, which makes it distracting. What really works for me is things like daytime court shows, trash talk shows, or movies. I have a dual monitor setup (company pa...

Image via Wikipedia Amazon Prime Streaming Will Disrupt Netflix, Here's How | The Business Of Online Video It's been an interesting week for video streaming . Amazon is allowing us Prime members to watch about 5000 of their streaming titles for free, Hulu made a deal with the Criterion Collection (at least for the Hulu plus members), and Netflix made a $200 million content deal with CBS . I had a chance to test the free Amazon streaming and it was no different than Netflix, and the only difference (in principle) from Hulu was not having to watch the fucking ads (even if I pay for Hulu plus). I also cashed-in a rental credit with Amazon and watched Exorcist: Director's Cut offline. This was pretty cool except that the DRM license is tied to whatever monitor was active when you asked for the purchase ( at least that is how Amazon explained my customer support inquiry  I have verified this behavior, whatever monitor is active when you start the movie will set the DRM and ...

Amazon.com Instant Video: Watch Movies and TV Shows Instantly Oh hell yes! Related articles AMAZON TAKES AIM AT NETFLIX: Instant Streaming Of 5,000 Movies And TV Shows Part Of Amazon Prime (AMZN, NFLX) (businessinsider.com) Amazon Prime Instant Video Now Streaming Free To Prime Subscribers (crunchgear.com) Amazon Prime Now Includes Streaming Video Service (readwriteweb.com) Amazon Prime Instant Video service switched on (slashgear.com)

The funniest part about this comic is that I was the one that basically spent Sunday avoiding The Game. Alex Esoterica thought that was hilarious, so instead of sending me game updates every 30 seconds he sent me a running commentary of everything NOT involving The Game itself. My geek forcefield consisted of: Top Gear UK (incredible as usual) The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (loved it) The Girl That Played With Fire Troubleshooting why Netflix kept choking while streaming The Girl That Played With Fire Testing to see if turning Aero on or off made a difference with the Netflix performance issue Testing to see if there was a difference in the Netflix performance across browsers and with Windows Media Center Tweaking Dropbox and iDrive so certain backups wouldn't spike CPU usage at weird times (like for example, when trying to watch a fucking movie on Netflix). Some minor grinding in Oblivion, which is sort of my methadone to try to shake off the Fallout: New Vegas ad...

Or, as we call it in the company, "penis envy." A coworker that I am positive reads this blog hit his new machine window a few weeks ago. We are all entitled to a brand new laptop , to our specifications, every 3 years and as a norm Dear Leader buys whatever the hell we ask for. My first to-spec machine was a loaded Mac Book Pro , the second one was a kickass (or so I thought) Dell. I already upgraded the Dell to 8GB through Dear Leader's very generous threshold for bitching about capital expenditures (if you request for something reasonable under a semi-classified dollar figure, he approves it on the spot). My coworker simply followed instructions and asked for the most laptop he could wish for. And he got it. With a fricking quad-core CPU , 8GB of RAM and SSD. He's one of the good guys, so I can't be a player hater, but that didn't protect me from penis envy about the SSD. So we came up with a plan: every X hours or so he would tell anyone that listened...

Image by pvera via Flickr This is idiocy. HBO would rather spend a fortune building their own streaming mechanism, and hold their audience hostage, than to spend less money licensing the same content to a much broader audience. All of this happens while it is almost impossible to go a full hour after a new HBO program airs without it being posted to bit torrents. Yes, as a norm any HBO series gets posted online within the hour of its first airing. But of course, HBO would rather be the only ones offering the streaming. Even worse, HBO already has been feeding their shows to Fancast , but only if the subscriber already has HBO. If they can put such a deal in place, why not do the same? Charge us whatever per month, and let us have the content through Netflix too. We all understand content costs money, but for what HBO charges per month having the content available as streamed media is a great value. What we are seeing here is an annoying lack of consistency. Otherwise HBO is ...