Membership Has It’s Privileges
December 28th, 2006 Davis
No Parking Hosted on ZooomrPosted in Photos | 2 Comments »
No Parking Hosted on ZooomrGotcha! - Caught In A Game Of Blogger Tag
December 28th, 2006 Davis
Thomas Hawk nailed me in a game of blog tag, so I’m supposed to tell you five things that you don’t already know about me. At first I wasn’t going to do it, but since Tom was the one who introduced me to tagging articles, photo-tagging and geo-tagging, I figure that he probably knows a thing or two about playing tag, so here goes.
1.) The best prize I ever won was a free Turkey. At the time I thought I would get a live one, but sadly my bird was frozen, yet still quite tasty.
2.) I once actually attended clown school
3.) The first time I served Jury Duty, I volunteered to be the foreman and we spent three days arguing over a fender bender before we hopelessly deadlocked.
4.) I used to have a pet goat. It would eat anything.
5.) At one time in my life, I worked as a butler.
Since Alex Raiano is itching to get tagged, I’ll tag him, Jose Alvear, Dale Dietrich, Jason Unger & Julio Ojeda-Zapata.
Posted in Spam | 2 Comments »
Single Zoom Kiosk Sells $55,000 Worth Of iPods In Just 1 Month
December 28th, 2006 Davis
Hot Product Hosted on ZooomrSetting the gold standard for the kiosk industry, Zoom Systems has revealed that they’ve taken in $55,000 worth of iPod sales from just 1 vending machine at an Atlanta airport over a single month. This is an amazing amount of revenue from a kiosk and may offer a glimpse at how we’ll see high end electronics sold in the future.
Earlier this week, Sanford Bernstein said that they estimated that Apple earns about $4,000 per square foot at their retail stores each year. While this is an impressive number in it’s own right, if Zoom can replicate this type of volume for a full year, it would mean that they have the potential to earn $20,000 in income for each square foot that they take up.
I’ve seen these Zoom kiosks in action and while they don’t dispense DVDs, they are certainly unbelievably hot. Consumers love them and want to try them out, just to use them. The machines are simple enough to use, consumers pick out the type of iPod or accessory that they want, put in their credit card and then the machine gently gives them consumer electronic love. The whole process is actually easier and more enjoyable than a traditional retail transaction and Zoom doesn’t have to pay their robots overtime.
Over the last year, Zoom raised $10 million in round C funding and another $35 million in round D funding just six months later. With a very hot kiosk design, an emphasis on high end retail and backing from investors like Goldman Sachs and Motorola, Zoom is well positioned to lead the kiosk industry from snack foods to luxury goods.
Posted in Technology, Kiosks | 3 Comments »
TiVo Plays Christmas Grinch To TiVoDownUnder
December 28th, 2006 Davis
Every Who
Down Under
Liked TiVo a lot…
But the TIVO,
Who lived North of Down-Under,
Did NOT!
The TIVO hated Down-Under!
The whole TV season!
Now, please don’t ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be that his antenna wasn’t screwed on quite right.
It could be, perhaps, that his tie was too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that TiVo’s stock price was two sizes too small.
The holidays are always a special time of the year. There are the decorations, the parties, plenty of food, and of course great stimulating conversations. But while most of us were busy fighting crowded malls and sugar overdoses, TiVo’s legal department got into the holiday spirit by playing the Grinch to TiVoDownUnder.com
In the US, if you want to offer an electronic program guide (EPG) then you better be prepared to take on TVGuide. TVGuide claims that they own all patent rights to the EPG in the US, and their strategy has been to sue anything that records into submission. So far they’ve been pretty successful with this strategy and over 50% of all set top boxes in the US, now pay some kind of tribute to TVGuide.
TVGuide’s broad interpretation of their patents has raised charges of anti-trust behavior in the past, but in Australia, technology companies face a much worse situation. Not only does Nine Networks claim to own the copyright on EPGs for Australian TV, but instead of trying to license this information like TVGuide does, they’ve instead choosen to restrict it’s use in a futile attempt to try and squash DVR usuage. Because Nine Networks also sells TV advertising, they’ve been in no hurry to usher in the DVR age for citizens living down under.
To get around this technological roadblock, creative Australians started importing TiVo units into the country and have created a community where they use unwieldy tools to scrape the internet for TV listings. One company, Ice TV, actually tried to build a business around selling EPG data, but as soon as they filed to take their company public, Nine Networks scuttled their plans by filing a lawsuit against them that will likely establish the precident as to whether or not time shifting will be allowed to move forward in Australia.
Finding the resources to support a bootleg EPG industry hasn’t been easy, but for years TiVo has inspired a small group of die hard fans, who’ve sacrificed their time and who’ve risked potential legal repercussions just so that they can spread the joy of TiVo in the land of Oz.
Despite all of the sacrifices made though, all was not joyful for TiVoDownUnder this holiday season. Instead of planning out Turkey dinners and unwraping presents, this small grey market TiVo reseller was dealing with Scrooge McTiVo’s legal department who shortly before Christmas, threatened the site over it’s use of their registered trademarks. Rather than fight this legal attack by TiVo Corp., TiVoDownUnder instead negotiated a little extra time to get rid of their inventory and effective January 31st, 2007, they’ve agreed to turn over their domain name to TiVo and to stop supporting the Australian market by providing hard to find refurbished TiVo units that have been modified to support the Australian power and internet infrastructure.
If TiVo was actually selling their DVR’s in Australia, I could understand why they might take issue with TiVoDownUnder using their name as part of their domain, but with TiVo being frozen out of the EPG market in Australia, it’s hard for me to see how TiVo is being harmed by letting a company sell TiVo units to a market that they legally can’t address. While, I don’t condone breaking the law, I do believe in civil disobedience when laws hurt consumers and if TiVoDownUnder was able to introduce a few Australians to the luxury of a TiVo DVR, in the long run, it would only put pressure on the Australian government to end this ridiculous ban in their country. By taking away a key contributor to the underground TiVo movement, TiVo has made it much more difficult for Australians to get their hands on a real TiVo experience at a time when Microsoft has shown they’re not afraid to muscle in, even without an EPG.
When members of the Australian community came together and started XPMediaCentre.com, Microsoft didn’t quibble over registered trademark issues, instead they had a member of their media center team go directly to the community and share some of the reasons why they couldn’t officially support the guide data. Of course, when your business model doesn’t involve making profits on your hardware to begin with, I guess it may have been too much for the suits at TiVo Inc. to keep ignoring the growing popularity of grey market DVRs in Australia.
Truth be told, TiVoDownUnder took the news much better then I did. I suppose that after spending a year dealing with unruly rivals and product shortages, they were ready to get back to their day jobs. In their blog post announcing the closing, TiVoDownUnder thanks TiVo for being flexible by giving them a month to get rid of their inventory and sounds almost happy to be done with their project. The problem is though that while TiVoDownUnder may have been a rouge business using TiVo’s trademark, they did serve a positive social function for TiVo. By importing and modifying the TiVo boxes for the Australian community, they made it easier for people to experience the joy of TiVo. While TiVoDownUnder may not have seen this legal request as an attack on their community, it still makes me sad to see TiVo pull this type of stunt without at least having their own EPG solution on the market.
Over the years, TiVo has benefited tremendously from the grassroot efforts of their fans and while I can understand why TiVo would want to protect their brand from being used by other companies, I also think that TiVo could have looked the other way in this particular case. TiVoDownUnder was never trying to capitalize on TiVo’s good name, they were just trying to fill a market void that TiVo can’t officially fill themselves.
While for now, TiVo’s action against TiVoDownUnder appears to be an isolated event, it does raise the possibility that TiVo could threaten things like OzTiVo, The TiVo Community forum, the Un(official) TiVo blog or even the frowning TiVo icon that bloggers love to use following TiVo quarterly earnings announcements, if they decide to exercise eminent domain on their registered trademarks. While technically and legally, TiVo may have the right to enforce these trademarks, going after the grassroots community that has helped to make TiVo so popular to begin with, is the wrong tactic to take.
Posted in DRM, Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, TiVo | 3 Comments »
In The Early Morning Rain With A Dollar In My Hand
December 20th, 2006 Davis
Early Morning Rain Hosted on ZooomrPosted in Photos | 3 Comments »
Blogosphere Smackdown - DVR or DVD?
December 20th, 2006 Davis
Let’s face it, there are only so many hours in the day you can actually watch TV. I consider myself a huge TV nut and certainly do my best to boost up the national average, but even with my voracious appetite for film, I still can’t keep up with everything that is being produced right now, let alone all the good films that have been made in the past.
Add to this distractions from the internet, real life, my poker habit, and this little thing called work that I’ve actually got to do once in a while, and it’s clear that something has to give. Because we’re limited by time, consumers are forced to choose between not just what we watch, but how we watch it as well.
In a great post highlighting the smackdown between DVDs and DVRs in competing for our attention, The One Eyed Man Rules, covers the various reasons behind why the DVR has replaced the DVD in his life. Amoung the advantages are the problems that come up when his kids use DVDs as frisbees, the speed at which it takes for you to boot up a DVD compared to the ease of hitting a button on a DVR and having your proramming right there, and being forced to watch a bunch of crappy Disney ads vs. being able to fast forward past ads on a DVR.
PVR Wire agrees with most of the points that are brought up, but does point out that on the plus side, DVDs typically come out sooner then when you can get them on TV and that when you watch DVDs, you don’t suffer from the storage anxiety that you face with a DVR.
Ever since I picked up my TiVo series 3, I’ve been going back and forth on which format I prefer the most. Because I hacked into my S3 with a 750GB Weaknees upgrade kit, I now have 1,000 hours of standard recording capacity and 100 hours of HDTV capacity.
This has turned out to be far too much hard drive space then what’s good for me and with TiVo knowing my secret weakness for Officer Frank “Ponch” Poncherello from the show CHiPs, it keeps me very busy trying to keep up on all the great TV. No wonder Officer John Baker never got any of the chicks with Officer Ponch always hanging around in those tight leather motorcycle pants.
With so much great content on my TiVo, I’ve been really tempted to give up the Netflix subscription because it’s hard enough for me to spend 20 minutes on a sitcom, let alone devote 2 hours to a movie.
The biggest advantage that I see to DVDs though, and perhaps what’s kept me from cancelling my subscription to Netflix, is the ability to watch serialized TV episodes in chronological order.
TiVo does a great job with this, but only if you catch a brand new show from the beginning. If you happen to miss an episode, then you either face the choice of jumping in midstream or trying to catch the show in out of order reruns. With all of the shows broadcasting at prime time, even with two tuners, I can’t always follow every program, so if I miss something, I just stop watching it and then add it to my Netflix queue instead.
By watching whole seasons in quick blocks, it actually makes the program more enjoyable for me. It’s like binging without the calories or guilt. If the studios ever got their act together and created an everything on demand service, it’d probably kill the DVD for me, but as long as DVDs maintain their superior selection over what’s shown on TV, then I’ll plan on keeping my Netflix subscription for these DVD marathon sessions.
Posted in TV, Movies, VOD, DVDs, TiVo, Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, Netflix | 6 Comments »
Remember It’s Not TiVo If You Can’t Fast Forward Past Our Ads
December 20th, 2006 Davis
Zatz’s Not Funny found two TiVo ads running in the wild. The first is a TV spot that goes after the married crowd with the Kidzone pitch and the second is a radio spot of Christmas carolers singing the praises of TiVo. The video spot isn’t half bad, although not really tailored to my particular demographic, but the radio ad is absolutley brutal. They end it with their “remember it’s not TiVo, unless it’s a TiVo” slogan, but frankly they should have ended it with remember if you had TiVo you could have fast fowarded through this ad and it would have been much more effective. Thank goodness that technology has made radio obsolete in my lifestyle because if I had to hear the radio ad over and over again I’d probably try to drive a candy cane through my eye just to make it stop.
Posted in Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, TiVo | 3 Comments »
Critical Condition - Where Bad Movies Go To Die
December 18th, 2006 Davis
Robo Vampire Hosted on ZooomrDuring my meandering across the world wide web, I stumbled upon a truly horrifying, yet captivating website, for a video store freak like myself. In reading over the site, it’s like watching the aftermath of a terrible car crash that I know is grotesque, yet I still can’t seem to turn away no matter how much worse things seem to get.
The site is named Critical Condition and it is a digital musuem set up to preserve the countless bad movies that made their way to the VHS format during the early hey days of the video store. In a rush to capitalize on the growing popularity of home movies, many small time producers tried to cash in on the home movie phenomenon by releasing tons and tons of b-movies that never would have seen the light of day, if we still lived in a world dominated by film. Some of these titles include; Rocktober Blood, Cellar Dweller, and my personal favorite the Nail Gun Massacre to name a few.
While most of these videos are out of print (and even if they were in print you’d never admit to carrying them in your Netflix queue), it’s still a fascinating trip through a graveyard of a forgotten VHS era. While I do reccomend checking out the site, don’t spend too much time there or else you may find yourself trying to add one of these films to your own DVD queue.
Posted in Movies | No Comments »