The Case of the Missing DVR

I know, it's been a few days since I posted last. Sometimes though, life just has to take priority. To make up for it, here are some of my favorite pictures from the ACM retreat out in La Grange. Here's a panoramic of the view around us:



And here's our little tent town:



The booze spread (beer not included):



The view at sunset:



Just a stupid idea for a picture I had:



I also went to a TLD party on Friday, and that was fun, though slightly embarrassing since many of the other guys were so much better than me. I felt better today though at practice when I nailed the crossbody. Anyway, I know I've addressed this before, but Roughly Drafted has a better piece on it that I wanted to cover: why is DVR functionality missing from the iTV? I totally forgot the fact that Tivo is still losing money, and they've been at the DVR game for a long long time now. So why would Apple want to try jumping in that hole? Also, do they really want to go through the hassle of having to get cable companies and television networks to partner up with them for a DVR service when they're already working hard at selling their shows commercial-free on iTunes? That just wouldn't make sense. Not to mentioned that the DVR market is saturated enough, especially with software solutions already available and the fact that it's not feasible worldwide, which would confuse Apple's marketing strategy. I think that above all this though is the fact that it would be counterproductive to try to sell shows on one hand and then practically give them away for free by just allowing users to easily record them to a digital format from their television. If DVR does come to iTV, it won't be for a while.

I've been chatting here with someone about some important stuff, so I have to breeze through the rest of this stuff. There's a good list here of free stuff on iTunes. I'd check it out if I was, well, anyone who uses iTunes! Microsoft has decided to "competitively" price their Zune at $249 against the new iPod with music downloads being $1 apiece, but do they really stand a chance even then? Computerworld believes so, but I respectfully disagree. I think the social aspect is totally extraneous, and the screen really isn't that much better for movies (not that people would even care). I think the design looks good, and it's a nice device, but what does it bring to the table that's actually revolutionary? What is kind of revolutionary, in my opinion, is Viidoo, which allows you to stream live television via a P2P backend, and it includes premium channels like HBO and other channels that people actually watch (not just random networks). It does include ads so it's legal in theory, but don't bank on it. Lastly, Google has opened up Google Talk to the public at large. It's a decent IM service, but it's going to be hard to gain steam against existing hard-hitters outside the realm of chatting within Gmail.

This weekend was rather uneventful for movies, once again, with Open Season taking the top spot at $23 million and The Guardian only behind by a few million bucks. Just one more thing though, the new Knight Rider poster looks sweet.

Unconscious Mutterings are down, so I'll go with the Sunday Seven:

Name your favorite sports teams, and for the less sports-educated, be sure to indicate the sport with which they're associated.
1. Texas Longhorns (CF)
2. Houston Astros (Baseball)
3. Dallas Cowboys (NFL)
4. Ohio State (CF) (Hey, I know they beat us, but I still respect them)
5. USC Trojans (CF) (Only for what they did to OU 2 years ago in the Orange Bowl)
6. Houston Rockets (Basketball)
7. Tennessee Titans (NFL)