Me, my wife and kids are heading out to Pennsylvania (“PA”) today for Christmas to visit my parents and the rest of my side of the family. My parents bought an HDTV earlier this year and my father told me he didn’t see much difference between the HD channels and the regular stations. I went through all the things I normally do when someone says something utterly astonishing to me like this, however he insists that he has everything configured correctly… Read more…

There are some things you don’t want to mess with. And if you do, you better do them right. You don’t, for example, take a childhood icon like Knight Rider and repackage the show as a big sponsorship with Ford Motor Company. You don’t debut said Knight Rider without its trademark modulating red light, and you DON’T deck it out to look like a muscle car with no brains. KITT was sophisticated, not some chunky mass of steel. NBC almost seems like it is going out of its way to tank this movie-trying-become-a-series in every way imaginable. We were fortunate to overhear a conversation between KITT and Michael Knight to get a feel for exactly what was going on behind the scenes…
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OK, this isn’t about audio or video but it’s really getting to me how nobody seems to be able to use plain English anymore. Take this quote (in writing) from the local Omaha news station where 9 people were just killed in a mall shooting:

“Omaha police Sgt. Teresa Negron said there are nine fatalities. She said officers found the suspected shooter dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

OK, I think you can go ahead and just leave off the “suspected” part when you call the dead person with a gun in his hand who just killed 9 people in front of witnesses before shooting himself a shooter. Political correctness and the inability of people to communicate without fear of being sued is changing the sensibility of our culture, language and common sense. What a tragedy – I don’t think we need to be sensitive about the dead shooter’s rights.

I just had something come across my desk today… It’s an aftermarket mail-in repair program from Blue Raven for iPods. You simply order the kit, pack up your iPod and it’s repaired for you in three days (not including shipping time.)

What struck me funny was a line the PR person used to promote the plan. And I quote:

“almost everyone has an out of warranty broken iPod.”

Really? And then it hit me as I took a mental survey. She’s basically right. Way to go, Apple. What other product or industry can you say that with? Let’s try a few:

• “almost everyone has an out of warranty broken plasma TV.” – Nope
• “almost everyone has an out of warranty broken microwave.” – Nope
• “almost everyone has an out of warranty broken remote control.” – Nope
• “almost everyone has an out of warranty broken fax machine.” – Nope

Apple is the bomb! As in: “you have 90 days until your product explodes.”

OK, everyone probably knows that many many moons ago, while others were discussing which of the new HD-DVD formats would win, I wrote an article sounding the death knell for BOTH. What I didn’t realize was the extent to which each format would participate in this death in a sort of digital Hara-Kiri that was drawn out over months of consumer confusion and self-congratulatory press releases. Read more…