A while ago Amazon and TiVo generally released the linking of Amazon's Unbox to TiVo DVRs. They also gave $15 credit with the link, so I decided it was worth trying. I quickly found a show that had been canceled last fall after only 3 episodes, and discovered the next 4 were available on Unbox, and labeled as TiVo compatible.
The quality on them is indeed good. It's not DTV quality, but definitely better than the normal TiVo best quality (which is OK, but not great). There was much less macroblocking, which is probably the most annoying part of watching normally-recorded content. I wouldn't say it's DVD quality, but part of that is likely due to the fact that the best quality output on the Series 2 is s-video. Overall I was thinking the service was sorta cool (although a bit overpriced for download-only).
Then I hit the 3rd episode I tried to download (Smith: Six if anyone cares). I went back online and saw it wasn't listed as allocated to any device, so chose to download it again. Unfortunately it appeared to start online, but never appeared in my Now Playing list, and eventually went back to not allocated in the library online. I tried again and contacted Amazon's support, who responded it appeared to be downloading, and to just wait. They also said it could be available space (unlikely as I had over 50 items in my Recently Deleted), and if I have further problems contact TiVo. Never mind that TiVo pointed me at Amazon for any issues related to downloading.
A while later I went to try again and respond to the fact that it timed out that time as well, and discovered that it's no longer listed as available on TiVo. Off the note went to support, asking why it's no longer listed, if it is related to the problems downloading, and when it will be listed again. The response I've received says it's not currently available (I got that - it's why I submitted the note), how to tell if something is available to TiVo (they must not have looked at the history, and thing I just picked something not compatible with TiVo), and how to view it on a PC (of which I don't have any compatible one, because other than TiVo their DRMed system is rather limited).
So at this point I haven't bought anything since I hit this issue, as I'm debating what to do depending on the outcome. I'd be OK with it if they were up front about it and said the original encoding had issues and they needed to resolve it. This whole replying with barely-related canned answers isn't atypical from my other interactions with Amazon's support. For physical products they seem to have things streamlined, and any problems get resolved quickly despite the canned answers. If they can't handle issues other than fixing a shipment or issuing credits though, I'm not sure this will be a service that's really usable. And that's not even considering that the downloading process was effectively equivalent to saying they shipped, and then when checking because it didn't arrive having them say it hadn't been shipped (no errors or indications it had previously been attempted). It'll be interesting to see how (if) this gets resolved.
I was going through the spam report mailbox and found this. It's cleaned a bit — the removes of the company name are mine, the redacted is AOL (yea, it makes it a pain to track them, thus why I had a bunch piled up from earlier this week and only saw this today).
Subject: Email Feedback Report for IP <removed>
Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2007 14:26:03 EST
From: scomp@aol.net
To: <removed>
This is an email abuse report for an email message received from IP address <removed> on Thu, 01 Mar 2007 12:47:50 -0500
<generic stuff removed>
--
Feedback-Type: abuse
User-Agent: AOL SComp
Version: 0.1
Received-Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2007 12:47:50 -0500
Source-IP: <removed>
Reported-Domain: <removed>
Redacted-Address: redacted
Redacted-Address: redacted@
--
Subject: [redacted] <removed> Closing at 12:30 p.m. on Thursday Due to Winter Weather
From: cmannounce@<removed>
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2007 11:42:58 -0600
To: redacted@<removed>, redacted@<removed> redacted@<removed> redacted@<removed>
CC:
<removed> will close at 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 1, due to the severe weather. All <removed list of programs> classes scheduled after that time are cancelled. Employees may also leave at that time.
I guess if they want to stick around and work, attempt to go to classes, or whatever else (I don't know the person's status with the institution, and I'm not going to look it up either), they can do so. It just gave me a bit of a laugh (even though I speculated when it first went out that at least one person would probably do this).
I noticed this on the welcome center window while driving into work this morning. I wonder if someone decided that shooting at security may help get them past the checkpoint. It does leave the question of whether whoever was in there didn't notice or didn't care (given that it has been stuck there all day today).
About a month ago, someone driving by apparently hit my mailbox, leaving the front chipped, hinge destroyed and the cover in pieces in the neighbor's yard. Based on the height, it looked like someone probably hit it with the mirror on their SUV. Last week I had finally acquired a replacement box, but unfortunately had not yet installed it. Then this morning while shoveling my brother noticed it was missing, and found it in the neighbor's yard, mangled and the mounting hardware destroyed. So now I have no mailbox, and need to go back to the store to get things to mount it. At least I'm not really expecting anything this week.
A couple years ago they pissed off a lot of people by threatening anyone referring to their trademarks. Then a few days before the big day this year they managed to do their pointing out copyright law to churches in such a way that they received national attention for it. Now they threaten a law professor for using the pseudo-legal notice on their telecasts to make a point. It'd almost seem they don't realize the effects of bad PR, but the sad part is given their exclusive market and the short attention span of most USians for companies being jerks, they probably figure may as well threaten and not care because the bad effects won't stick.
I didn't realize the bank would see 23 deposits at the time, but I guess it makes sense. I wonder how many red flags in how many places this generated.
The Hong Kong Telecommunications Authority announced that their links to the outside world are repaired — the ones damaged in the quakes in late December. And I thought our 21 hour outage by the runaway crane was bad...
New Apple GetAMac Ad about Vista Security. "You are coming to a sad realization, cancel or allow?" The unfortunate part is the people it's there to protect see it as just as ridiculous, and it will just get them in the habit of clicking ok/allow/yes to things.
As Mike mentioned in a recent comment, I recently made a rather major upgrade to my home theater in the form of a new projector, and neglected to mention it here. It's a native 720p DLP, and so far I've been very happy with the quality. I'm still running on the old screen until I decide what to do in that regard. Today my DVI/HDMI and fiber cables for hooking up the laptop arrived, and so I watched some movie trailers and took pictures. Unfortunately between my hand-holding them in low average light, the camera not handling the dynamic range of the picture, and the distortion from being zoomed out with that camera, they aren't all that great. You can take a look anyways if you want. Those missing out on Sunday will have to show up for a movie night sometime soon.
A rather interesting site. The combinations of the notes and how they are patterned over time on both the graph and the audio is cool.
Copyright ©2000-2008 Jeremy Mooney (jeremy-at-qux-dot-net)
