Oh sure, they have wi-fi. There’s a guy in Madison Park who’s been playing WoW almost nonstop for years at one of the flagship stores. But it isn’t free, and internet you pay for isn’t really a hot item in the most wired city in the country.

But as if it weren’t enough to have to pay for internet there, Starbucks is revamping their system to create a wi-fi access point of unprecedented complexity. Instead of doing something like selling vouchers for a day, a month, or a year of wi-fi at any Starbucks, they are instituting a complicated rewards system, with tiers, drink privileges, and a bunch of other stuff involved.

What can I say about a program with a FAQ like this? You’re giving people stars, and moving them around levels? I can’t decide whether they’re trying to be Super Mario Galaxy or a first grade classroom. It’s completely ridiculous.

I think what they’re doing is just pushing pre-paid cards, because that forces you to go back to Starbucks more. And if there’s a free drink there for you after however many drinks, and the card is linked to your internet access, you’re kind of stuck with it. But really, why not just have verified punch cards for free drinks, and if you really must charge for internet, why not just sell blocks of time and have people log in through a gateway? This cumbersome Starbucks ecosystem is why people who dislike Starbucks do so. …Also, your espresso is thin and the drip sucks.

As a corollary to Biggs’ “cable companies are doomed” article from earlier today, I thought I’d demonstrate how easy it is to accomplish what he was threatening. That is, live a happy and successful life without having to pay $100+ a month to Comcast, Time Warner, DirecTV, or whomever. (Note: I’m neither happy nor successful, so this advice is spurious at best.) Here, I’ll teach you a pretty basic method of automatically downloading things like TV shows, and movies, and whatnot from Usenet. Yes, this breaks the first rule of Usenet; sorry.

What? Today we’ll be setting up our Usenet software to look at an RSS feed. (You can also accomplish pretty much the same thing using BitTorrent, but BitTorrent is so plebeian.) This RSS feed will carry NZB files that, magically, point your Usenet software to the actual files you’ll be viewing in VLC or MPlayer or whatever. In English, that means when you come home from work or class you’ll have the latest episode of The Ultimate Fighter all ready to be watched.

You’ll need:

• A Usenet provider. The big ones, off the top of my head, are Giganews, Newsdemon, Astraweb, and Supernews. You’ll be spending around $10-$20 a month for access, but that gives you access to all the riches that Usenet provides. In my experience all these services are more or less the same, so feel free to shop around. I have no favorites.

• Usenet software. The easiest to use for our purposes here today, once you’ve set it up, is SABnzbd+. It’s free as in freedom and free as in beer.

• An NZB site that provides an RSS feed. I’ll be using Newzleech.com as my example, but pretty much every NZB site out there should do this. Maybe, I don’t know.

• No qualms with any of this. Yeah, Americans can go to Hulu to watch some shows, but my overseas friends aren’t so lucky. Maybe if Hollywood got its act together we wouldn’t have to resort to this. (Incidentally, I’m right now removing the copy protection of a bunch of DVDs I bought in the UK this past week. All I want to do is see Top Gear! Is that a crime?)

OK!

1. With your Usenet account in hand, go ahead and download and set up SABnzbd+. It’s not hard, but I’m not about to hold your hand here. It basically involves launching the application, putting in your Usenet account info, then pointing the application to a few folders. If you can’t figure this out then the rest is probably too much for you to handle anyway.

2. Set up the RSS feed! I’ll be using the TV show The Ultimate Fighter as an example. For newzleech.com, the RSS feed you make looks like this:

http://www.newzleech.com/rss/php?n=50&g=alt.binaries.multimedia&s=the+ultimate+fighter+s10

That’s your RSS feed. What that does is comb the Usenet group alt.binaries.multimedia (that’s the “g” in the URL) for the last 50 posts (that’s the “n”) containing the phrase “the ultimate fighter s10” (for season 10 episodes; that’s the “s”). The RSS feed is updated every 20 minutes.

3. Go to SABnzbd+’s settings (Config:RSS) and input that URL. Then set the RSS checking interval (Config:RSS checking interval) to something reasonable, like once every 60 minutes. Under no circumstances should you set it for anything more frequent than every 20 minutes, since that’s considered uncouth, and your IP address is likely to be banned by Newzleech. You don’t want that.

That’s pretty much it.

Now what you’d do, I guess, is launch SABnzbd+ Wednesday morning before you leave your house. If it’s set up like we set it up here, SABnzbd+ will check alt.binaries.multimedia for news posts containing the phrase “the ultimate fighter s10” via the Newzleech RSS feed. When SABnzbd+ finds the new posts, it’ll download the appropriate NZB file, then start doing its magic.

In other words, as soon as the latest episode hits Usenet, it’ll automatically be downloaded to your computer, Internet connection speed notwithstanding.

Of course, you can add as many RSS feeds as you want, with whatever parameters you want. Maybe you like 30 Rock, or want to see Louis CK on Parks and Recreation? Or maybe you like Curb Your Enthusiasm? To quote that Nas song, the world is yours.

The purpose of this here article was strictly educational blah blah.

Now I’m off to rip the copy protection off a DVD I BOUGHT FROM HMV WITH MY OWN MONEY! What a pain.

Honestly, this technology seems a bit outdated to me. You’ve got a VoIP handset that works with a wireless router to provide easy access to your email, weather, news, and contacts. Most mobile phones already do this, so why is Comcast doing this now? Admittedly the service will only cost $39.95 a month, but still, what’s the point? I mean, most mobile phones have this functionality by default, so it doesn’t really make much sense to offer it on a handset that’s tethered in your home. On top of that, it only works with one phone number, and requires that you also have broadband in order to get the full functionality out of the device.

Rumor is that there will be a $5/month charge for the hardware, and then access to the service will cost you $39.95 a month. I’d be hard pressed to find someone who this would appeal to, even if they do bundle it with other services. Of course, Verizon tried something much like this before, and we all know how that turned out.

Both items are pink and pretty.

Sony is holding special sales at SonyStyle stores all over the world on October 20 excepting the Sony Style COMCAST center in Philly, for whatever reason. Maybe because it’s closed.

All this talk started when Verizon’s CEO indicated that he wanted to “make video the company’s core product for its fixed-line business.” The Wall Street Journal then kindly points out the obvious that the best way to do that is to scoop up a satellite company. DirecTV would be the logical choice over Dish Network as it’s better performing and has a larger subscriber base.

Of course DirecTV or Verizon haven’t indicated that this is currently in the works, but the WSJ does have a point. Verizon’s fiber optic service, FiOS, is almost universally loved for its fast Internet, wide range of high-def stations and modest price. However, it’s been slow to roll out to new markets because fiber optic cable has to be ran to each home, which is a timely and costly endeavor. Verizon probably doesn’t have any plans to scale back its FiOS expansion plans, but it will take the company a while to be a national player at the current rate. Buying DirecTV – or Dish Network – is the fastest way to the top.

My God in Heaven! It’s been about four hours since the FCC announced its intention to add two more pillars to its idea of Net Neutrality: one, ISPs should not be allowed to wily nilly permit/disallow traffic on their networks (non-discrimination); and two, traffic management should be done is as transparent a manner as possible, so you don’t wind up with people discovering that their software is being tampered with, without their knowledge or consent, after the fact. I don’t know about yous guys (not a typo), but that seems pretty reasonable to me. And if you disagree, then you’re probably a high-ranking executive at Comcast.

One of Comcast’s executive vice-presidents, David L. Cohen, posted a message to the company’s Web site that, in so many words, attempts to throw cold water on the FCC’s proposals lest they become popular with its customers. The post, entitled “Does the Internet Need More Regulation? FCC to Decide,” is skeptical of the whole operation even before it begins. If not the FCC, then who should regulate the Internet? I’m certainly not Mr. The Government Solves Everything, but I’d much sooner trust the FCC to see to it that consumers don’t get screwed by this nation’s ISPs than the ISPs themselves.

So yes, the FCC should decide; that’s what it’s there for.

Then there’s a bit of a contradiction within two breaks:

There’s been a debate in Washington for the last six years over whether rules like these are necessary to promote an “open Internet” and an innovation economy. And before that, there was a debate that began more than a decade ago over whether Internet Service Providers should be required to let others resell their services.

But before we rush into a new regulatory environment for the Internet, let’s remember there can be no doubt that the Internet has enjoyed immense growth even as these debates have gone on.

How you can characterize six years of discussion as a “rush,” I’ll never know. In six years you have two congressional elections, and one general election. That hardly seems like “rushing” to me. And if what the FCC is true about Internet traffic doubling every two years, then six years is plenty of time to Figure Something Out™.

It’s not all negative, though, as Comcast says it’s “committed” to working with the FCC. So that’s good, and promising.

For the record, I’m not some scorned Comcast customer; I’ve never used it. I’ve used two ISPs since 2002 when I first got broadband: Cablevision’s Optimum Online, and Time Warner. So, really, what Comcast does isn’t any of my business.

As expected, the chairman of the FCC, Julius Genachowski, announced today his agency’s support for Net Neutrality. Odds are if you’re reading us then you have a basic idea of what Net Neutrality is, but if not it can be summed up like this: ISPs will be expected to treat all data equally, and not favor 0s and 1s from Company A or Company B, no matter what sweetheart a deal may be in place. (Wikipedia has more, of course.) The idea is that, since all data is treated equally, consumers will have better, unfettered access to the sites and services they choose to support.

Let’s say you’re a Cool ISP customer. You like Skype, and you use it to call your sister in Europe and your brother in Maine. Cool ISP, however, has a deal in place with Mad Good VoIP, which pays Cool ISP x-number of dollars per year to be the “preferred” VoIP application of Cool ISP. In exchange for those dollars, Cool ISP makes it so that Mad Good VoIP network traffic takes precedence over Skype. So if you want to make a call on Skype, but there’s a whole bunch of people currently using Mad Good VoIP, then your call quality necessarily suffers (“waiting to connect,” for example). Then you quit using Skype because the call quality stinks. Then Skype goes out of business. Then Mad Good VoIP can rest on its laurels, knowing that it’s the only VoIP service in town worth a damn. Then it raises its rates just because it can. You see where I’m going with this.

Today’s announcement should, theoretically, prevent all of that from happening. The FCC already has four principals, but today it added two: non-discrimination (the above example, where ISPs can’t favor one application or service over another); and transparency. That last one should be of interest to BitTorrent users: here, ISPs will have to make available their methods and rationale for managing their network. That is, Cool ISP (or Comcast!) won’t be able to arbitraily limiit all BitTorrent traffic just because it doesn’t like the strain it puts on its network—who’s to say what you’re sharing over BitTorrent isn’t considered free speech? That said, ISPs shouldn’t be expected to “eat it,” as it were: if you’re downloading 300GB of data per month, you may well have to pay more for that than Grandma who checks her e-email once per day.

All of this, of course, is being done to preserve the “free and open” Internet. If the Internet is to remain an engine of commerce and ingenuity, it needs to be totally free and open. As Genachowski said, if the FCC waits too long to ensure the free and open Internet it will be too late. Since Internet traffic is roughly doubling every two years, steps need to be taken now to ensure the Internet doesn’t burst into flames.

What I liked most about the speech was when Genachowski mentioned, in passing, people who, for some reason, are against Net Neutrality, which, again, merely means the preservation of a free and open Internet. Net Neutrality isn’t government regulation for regulation’s sake; who’s to say that your ISP doesn’t want you writing comments to Right Wing Blog or Left Wing Blog because it doesn’t agree with the politics therein, so it blocks access to that site? You’re damn right you want Net Neutrality in that instance.

Basically, this is common sense at work. Enjoy the rest of your day, and if you’re not too busy, you may want to poke around the FCC’s new Web site, OpenInternet.gov.

Amazon has the Motorola Surfboard SB5101 Cable Modem for only $55. At that price, it would only take you eleven months to recover the cost. But if your area has the faster DOCSIS 3.0, you may want to spend a little extra and get the $85 SB6120 that’s compatible with Internet connections over 30Mbps. But remember, you’ll still save money in 17 months. (and you won’t be giving more money to evil Comcast)

Multichannel News,

In a statement, Comcast said: “We continually invest in providing customers with next-generation equipment and technology that delivers advanced voice and Internet services with enhanced capabilities. Our costs for this new equipment will increase by 167% over the next two years. As a result, we will increase modem equipment charges by $2.”

The rate hike will start this fall in select markets, but eventually the whole Comcast nation will be affected.

You know what’s a little more difficult than I first imagined? Upgrading the hard drive in my late 2006 iMac. I had initially wanted to upgrade the hard drive so I could finally dual boot between Mac OS X and Windows 7, since the old drive, a 250GB model, was pretty much filled to capacity. (Trying to run Mac OS X with only ~5GB of free space isn’t ideal.) And even though the iMac user manual clearly states that the only user-replacabable parts are the RAM, I figured, “Bah! I think I can handle a simple hard drive replacement.” I did, but not before wishing I had never so much had broken out a screwdriver.

Please note that the following is merely a description of my attempts to replace my old iMac’s hard drive. The primary purpose of this post is to kill time on a Monday afternoon, where even Drudge has had the same headline since this morning. It is, in fact, a slow day, in other words.

So why did I decide to subject myself to such nonsense? Why wouldn’t I merely buy a new iMac? Well, for one, new iMacs cost money, and when you owe Citibank the amount of money I do for the privilege of having attended college, well, money is tight. Besides, it would be a fun adventure, cracking open the iMac, going against the grain (the grain being the manual that says “don’t bother wasting your time, it can’t be done”). And if I ever buy a computer in the future, which is not a guarantee, it most certainly won’t be a proper Mac. Rather, I’ll buy a cheap PC, then Hackintosh it. I get to run Mac OS X, without having to shell out more money than I’m willing to these days.

So let’s get to it!

I decide to upgrade my hard drive. I do a little research just to confirm what type of hard drive the iMac uses (a standard SATA one, so nothing crazy). One trip to Newegg later, I have a nice 1TB hard drive heading my way along with an external enclosure for the old drive, just to make it easier to grab things like music and photos off my old hard drive.

I start searching around, trying to figure out if there’s any unreasonable steps involved. I find a description to replace a G5 iMac’s hard drive, and, wrongly, it turns out, I assume the directions are the same for my iMac. I search a little more, and find a thread on the Apple Discussion Board saying how hard it was to replace an Intel Mac’s hard drive. You mean the steps are different for an Intel Mac? Yes! While the G5’s hard drive could be replaced in what looks to be about five seconds (you slide out the old one, and then slide in the new one), the Intel Mac requires you to break into the iMac and perform a little surgery. Still, no big deal.

My hard drive and enclosure arrive in the mail, and I crack open the iMac as per any number of instructions you can find online. I manage to lift off the plastic cover; my next task is to unscrew the LCD and lift it away. I don’t know about you, but the thought of having to physically removing the LCD from the iMac was a little disconcerting. But we soldier on!

Or no we don’t! It turns out that the precision screwdrivers I had used to perform a little surgery on my PSP—several specks of dirt had gotten underneath the plastic screen protector, so I had to open it up and clean it—weren’t the proper tools for the job, and my other Torx screwdriver set was too big to fit into the tiny space where the screw was located. Fine, that’s my fault. I hop on eBay, because I just have the feeling that the local store isn’t going to have a precision Torx screwdriver set, and order a set. Several days later my shiny new screwdrivers arrive.

Keep in mind that about two weeks had passed between my ordering of the new hard drive from Newegg and my getting the proper screwdriver set from eBay. To say that I had lost interest in the whole project would be correct.

Stupid new screwdrivers in hand, I crack open the iMac again. Take this, LCD screws! Thankfully, the eBay-ordered screwdrivers were exactly what I needed, so that problem was solved.

Remember: all we’re trying to do is replace a hard drive.

Gently, I lift the LCD away, and very very carefully disconnect it all the related wires. LCD totally disconnected, I meet the enemy: that blasted hard drive.

Several screws later, the hard drive is, um, disconnectable. I pry away a temperature sensor, disconnect the SATA cables, then, with all my might, stop short of throwing the old hard drive out the window. Why I’m angry at the hard drive, I don’t know. I should be annoyed at Apple for making it easier to get a mortgage than it is to replace a mere hard drive.

I remove the hard drive; oh, but there’s two more screws on there that you still need to remove, in order to put the new hard drive in a cradle.

To replace a hard drive!

New hard drive installed, I put everything back together. There’s a few screws on the floor, but I don’t even care. They’ll be thrown out shortly.

I turn the iMac on… and it works! Well, it turns on, which is a plus. I then slide in the Snow Leopard disc, and after a restart, it starts installing. Only, well, things seem a little dim.

I mess around for Snow Leopard for a minute, install World of Warcraft, and am convinced that the display is a whole lot dimmer than I remember. In fact, yeah, I must have broken the darn thing during the hard drive install. Terrific.

So I crack open the iMac again, and check the LCD wires. As it turns out, I didn’t break it, I just didn’t plug one in hard enough. Snapped into place, I put everything back in its place. I turn the computer on, and…

Yes~! It’s bright again! The colors were never so bright! Praise Jehovah!

Total install time: I don’t know, like three weeks, give or take. Install time not counting the wait in between hard drive/screwdriver shipments: still a good two hours. It’s very tight inside the iMac, you see, and any sudden movements were liable to blow the whole thing up.

The moral of the story? The next time you upgrade your hard drive of your fancy pants PC, just thank your lucky stars that you’re not working with an old iMac, since Apple, for whatever reason, made it exceedingly difficult to perform such a basic upgrade. (It was easier to upgrade an old Bondi Blue iMac back in 2002ish!)

Everyone but Peter Ha loves FiOS. It’s fast, relativity cheap, and not Comcast. But now the deal is a little sweeter thanks to a cool promotion.

Right now Verizon is letting you choose the deal. Either you can get three services – voice, data, & TV – for the price of two for six months, OR a Compaq Mini netbook, OR a Flip Ultra camcorder. Personally I think I would rather get the cheaper monthly price, but that netbook is tempting since the lower price is only for six months. I would totally do one of these deals if I had FiOS available. [via Dealnews]

You probably already hate, for whatever reason, the MPAA (and its music industry cousin, the RIAA), but here’s another reason to do so. The group is asking, for like the zillionth time, for the FCC to approve something called selectable output control. In essence, this allows a video signal to be sent to your TV from, say, a video on-demand service, that prevents the use of certain, non-approved audio/video outputs. In other words, if you want to watch Terrible Movie 2: Yes, It Has Contrived To Be Worse Than The First on Comcast On-Demand, you won’t be able to record it using an old TiVo that connects via component cables.

You see, the MPAA is scared to death that you’ll buy the On-Demand version of said woeful movie, then won’t buy the Blu-ray when it comes out. It’s also afraid that you’ll take your DVR recording, and start bootlegging it at your local bowling alley. (Because people have that kind of time!) If you don’t keep buying the same movie over and over again (at the theaters, on On-Demand, on Blu-ray, along with a HBO or Showtime subscription), it’ll be Hell on Earth. And to be fair to the MPAA… actually, I can’t. The MPAA could disappear and I wouldn’t mind one bit.

One group, Public Knowledge, produced a video last year that, while slightly overboard on the Internet humor, gets the message across:

Of course, the MPAA will call the video nonsense, and insist that it’s merely trying to help the elderly or those without a babysitter watch the latest Hollywood blockbusters more easily. Sorry, I don’t believe you.

Then again, I’m sure the MPAA could give a Flying F what I, or any of you, think.

(That’s a 50 DKP minus for the rubbish picture here, I know. I couldn’t think of a clever way to illustrate Internet angst against the MPAA.)

Advanced Video Communications may have a winner on its hands with the internet-connected LiveLine video camera. Simple setup, a low $10-per-month access fee, and a fairly straightforward user experience make the LiveLine worth a closer look.

Early beta testers got a free camera, which AVC claims to be a $299 value. And while the company has sold out of all its initial freebies, it’s currently restocking its inventory. The actual selling price of the system once it’s out of beta will likely dictate the overall popularity of the product.

If the actual camera itself costs $299 on top of a $10 monthly service fee, it’s not going to do well. There are plenty of IP cameras with similar features available for well under $300 that don’t carry monthly charges. So let’s keep in mind that this thing hasn’t really been priced yet. If it stays at “free camera plus $10 per month,” it’ll be compelling.

As for features, the camera uses a wired or wireless internet connection and the pan, tilt, and zoom functions can be controlled remotely through most web browsers. The system can also be set up to record video files any time it senses motion. Those files are then made available with time and date stamps and playable inside your browser (they’re Flash video files).

Setup is pretty easy. You have to first connect the camera to your router with an Ethernet cable. Then you go on LiveLine’s website and enter the camera’s MAC address as part of your account setup. Once that’s done, you can type in your router’s wireless network name and from that point on, the camera will use its built-in wireless antenna.

As far as controlling the camera remotely, take this test account for a spin. It’ll give you a good idea of what to expect.  The interface is pretty ho hum right now and the overall motion and video quality is a bit choppy, but it gets the job done. There are other relatively inexpensive IP cameras on the market, however, that promise 30 frames-per-second video. This one does not do fluid video — at least it didn’t in my tests, and I have a Comcastic 30Mbps down/7Mbps up internet connection.

Here’s an actual still from the camera. The resolution is only 320×240.

And here’s a clip of actual footage (3MB AVI) to give you an idea of the framerate and whatnot.

Apparently the camera’s capable of recording audio, but I was never able to hear any during my testing. Everything’s still in beta, though, so that functionality may not be enabled yet.

AVC also touts the ability to view your camera from your phone’s mobile web browser. You lose all of the camera controls and access to recorded clips, though. Right now it’s little more than a static still image with a refresh link underneath it. That’s fine for older phones, but it’d be nice to see a more robust offering for newer mobile browsers.

Overall, it’s a pretty solid effort from AVC so far, provided they keep the price low. If the camera stays at free or maybe $50 plus the $10 monthly fee, it’d be a much easier purchase for most people to justify.

It might also be a good idea for AVC to drop the monthly fee altogether. There’s a link on the company’s site for advertisers, which leads me to believe the camera pages may someday contain ads. In that case, AVC might consider trying to make a few bucks off of camera sales while keeping the web access free.

Product Page: LiveLine.net

Do you have Comcast stock? Are you concerned with all the money the company has in its coffers? Yes, that sounds ludicrous, being concerned that a company has a lot of money on hand, but the fear is that Comcast could be ramping up for a big media buy, something no one wants to see.

Back in 2003, Comcast made a bid for Disney, which Disney summarily rejected. Then it laughed at Comcast like Nelson from the Simpsons. Now, in 2009, Comcast has a few extra pennies in its Piggy Bank, and investors think it may be in the market to buy a big media company. The likes of Viacom and Time Warner are being thrown around. (How terrible would that be, Comcast finally getting into the New York cable market by buying Time Warner? If you think Time Warner stinks now!)

Anyway, this is largely speculation. See, it’s August, and there’ approximately 27 people currently on the island of Manhattan; there’s no news for miles. So, pick up the phone, call a couple of investment houses, get a couple quotes, bam, you have a story.

There’s two ways to look at the story that many of the country’s biggest ISPs have refused government stimulus money for broadband infrastructure investment. One, the ISPs patently don’t need the money, and are more than capable of delivering broadband to as many Americans as possible with their own capital. Two, the ISPs could use the money, but they’d prefer not to accept it lest they be beholden to all sorts of government-imposed restrictions, one of which relates to net neutrality.

Let’s take the first one, that the ISPs, including Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon, have a sufficient amount of capital to invest and build the country’s broadband infrastructure. (I write this using Cablevision’s Optimum Online Ultra, which is pretty much unnecessarily fast.) Since they have the capital, they don’t need to accept any government stimulus money, unlike, say, GM, which was about two minutes away from bursting into flames had it not received sweet, sweet government loans. That really is a Perfect World, Kumbaya scenario, I think. If the ISPs are so flush with cash, how come people complain on a daily basis about how rubbish Comcast is; how come they have to impose bandwidth restrictions on connections? If their networks are so robust—made robust, mind you, with all that money they supposedly have lying around—then they shouldn’t have to worry about Timmy High School Student streaming tons of video all day long.

Hence, the second way to look at this, that the ISPs damn well could use the money to invest in this country’s broadband infrastructure. No one expects rural Georgia to be zipping along the Internet at South Korean or Swedish-esque speeds, but surely the days of dealing with “slow Internet” should be behind us. This has to do with net neutrality. In taking the broadband stimulus money, the ISPs would have to agree not to “favor any lawful Internet applications and content over others.” So if AT&T, for example, strikes a deal with Video Site A instead of Video Site B, AT&T can’t turn around and give Video Site A preferred access to its network. That’s the crux of net neutrality, ISPs want to cut deals with their preferred partners at the expense of everyone else. It hampers innovation—Develop a cool Web site? Better cough up the bucks, otherwise people accessing it will be bitching about the slow speeds that’s entirely not your fault!—and rewards the smoke-filled-room shenanigans that have been a detriment to consumers for years.

Of course, no ISP will admit, on the record, to refusing stimulus money because they’re afraid of all the restrictions and unwanted attention.

Not that I’d worry about it: as we all know, the Market solves every single problem!

Digeo just pushed the summer Moxi HD DVR update and I had to check it out. I had a few issues with the DVR after the last release that was supposed to be resolved. One, I hate the vertical channel guide bar thing and the summer update added a traditional grid guide. Two, the GUI was supposed to be faster now and require less button presses. Three, the player was finally suppose to be able to playback more video file formats like AVI and MKV.

Spoiler: Digeo fixed two out of the three issues mentioned above and ignored other glaring problems like the fantastically funny but also very offensive Porn search tool.

If you read my review of the Moxi HD DVR, you should know that I’m not a fan of the vertical bar channel guide. I think it’s a pain and doesn’t utilize the widescreen layout of an HDTV efficiently. But the summer update was supposed to add a grid guide and that was the first thing I checked out.

So I went to the settings, and sure enough it was enabled. I then quickly navigated to the Channel icon (and ignored the onscreen message about the grid guide in the settings menu) only to discover that damn vertical bar was still there. So this time when I went back to the settings, I actually read the message that explained the only way to access the grid guide was to hit the little square icon on the remote twice.

Yeah, so when you hit the Moxi button, you still have the vertical channel guide. When you navigate to the guide through anything else, you still have the vertical channel guide. The only way to get the grid guide – which looks like it was designed by an 8th grader btw – is to hit the little square icon on top of the remote twice. Dumb.

There is some good news though. This update does speed up the GUI a bit. It doesn’t lag like it did before, which is always nice. Also, when navigating the network shares, you no longer have to hit the back button twice. A single click to the left navigates the system down one step. Before the GUI would ask you if you wanted to step back even though you hit the back button. This was a huge pain if you where several directories into a network share.

But – this is rich – now when navigating the network, the GUI asks you if you want to enter the folder you just clicked. Let me you walk you through this. I select PlayOn Media Server and click OK. The GUI then asks me if I really want to enter that folder, which I then must confirm by clicking OK again. Then I select Videos, which prompts the same confirm screen that I have to say OK again to. Then I can select the genre of movie I want to watch. But don’t forget about that confirmation screen which wants to make sure that you really want to enter the folder you just selected.

I don’t get it, folks. Navigating a menu should be as easy as possible with no extra steps. I think the purpose of this confirmation screen is to allow users to add the folder to a favorites menu, but there must be a better way of doing things. The current method is downright aggravating.

Just as Diego promised though, the Moxi HD DVR can playback more video file formats including AVI and MKV. Although, don’t expect to be able to watch any MKVs though as it seems that the speed is too slow and the playback is very choppy on larger files. AVIs playback fine although this is something that PlayOn resolved a few weeks ago. But now you can use any DLNA service including TVersity and Twonky.

I still have one major issue with the Moxi HD DVR and that’s the search tool. As a family man, I really don’t want my child seeing descriptions of 18 Petite N Creamy, 18 Year Old Dream Teens, or any of the hundred other programs shown in the search tool. The problem is that these stations are available from Comcast, and even though I don’t subscribe to them (promise), all the programs show up in alphabetical order starting with numbers. This is a major problem I noted in my review that still hasn’t been addressed. The search tool should not show you programs on stations that aren’t available, pornographic in nature or not.

I would grade the Moxi summer update as a C. It’s not failing, but it’s also not excelling. These tiny fixes and poor implementation of a grid guide probably could have been rolled out without any fanfare. Don’t get me wrong, this $800 HD DVR is dramatically better than anything cable offers, but it still doesn’t reach the level of usability or function set by TiVo years ago.

Peter might not be able to pay his FiOS bill, but apparently a lot of folks can. The Verizon fiber optic service now has over 2.5 million subscribers. That puts Verizon above Bright House Networks, but of course way behind the gigantic 25+ million subscriber base of Comcast.

Still, that’s not that bad considering that Verizon first started rolling out the fiber only a few years and is still only available in some markets. Personally, I have not heard of anyone that has access to FiOS turning it down over another provider. Some people look up the availability every single day. Maybe it’s the fact that the prices are reasonable, the speeds above par, and there are new features occasionally like free hotspot access.

Comcast will open the service to 5,000 beta testers in the coming weeks. I’m just curious about how many more networks will sign up before it launches to everyone. The service already has the most of any online viewing site available with, all the major networks, HBO, Cinemax, Stars, TBS, TNT, and most of the cable stations.

CBS TO PARTICIPATE IN COMCAST’S ON DEMAND ONLINE
NATIONWIDE TRIAL

As the First Broadcaster To Participate, CBS Agrees to Test Standards and Principles for

“TV Everywhere” Model

NEW YORK and PHILADELPHIA, July 14, 2009 — CBS Corporation (NYSE:  CBS.A) and Comcast Corporation (Nasdaq:  CMCSA, CMCSK) announced today that CBS is the first broadcast network to participate in Comcast’s technical trial of On Demand Online.  The new service will significantly expand the number of top-rated TV shows available online and across platforms at no additional charge to Comcast’s cable customers while delivering increased advertising value to content owners.  During the course of the trial, CBS plans to test various types of current and library content.

“CBS and Comcast share the same vision of giving consumers more — more content, in more places,” said Matt Bond, Executive Vice President of Content Acquisition, Comcast Cable.  “On Demand Online is a major step in extending consumers’ television experiences online, and ultimately across platforms by giving any television network, including top brands like CBS, the ability to make their content available on the Web.”

“CBS is very supportive of initiatives that help extend our content to new platforms in such a way that we gain new audiences and additional value for our advertisers,” said Quincy Smith, Chief Executive Officer, CBS Interactive. “Comcast is already a trusted platform to distribute CBS content on air as well as on demand; expanding this relationship online is a logical step.  In addition, CBS’s strategy has always been about open, non-exclusive distribution of our content in a consumer friendly way, which is a core tenant of TV Everywhere and On Demand Online.”

CBS’s participation in Comcast’s technical trial comes on the heels of last month’s joint announcement between Time Warner Inc. and Comcast which introduced a set of principles called “TV Everywhere.”  Developed by the two companies, the principles are designed to serve as a framework to facilitate deployment of online television content in a way that is consumer friendly and pro-competitive.

Comcast will begin its technical trial of On Demand Online with approximately 5,000 customers from across the U.S. in the coming weeks – the first national trial of its kind.  A major focus of the trial is to test Comcast’s new “authentication” technology, which will allow Comcast customers to receive the same content online for free that they subscribe to on TV.  The service will utilize a simple log-on system for streaming content and, in the future, will allow for download content to go.  The On Demand Online service will roll-out in phases, adding new features, functionality and content over time to provide consumers with a new way to watch television.

On Demand Online is part of Comcast’s Project Infinity, the company’s long-term vision to give customers an ever growing amount of video content on multiple platforms, whenever they want.

We still have questions about the authentication system and if the service will have an open API that will allow developers to build it into streaming software PlayOn or Boxee. Those details will probably drop later, but if Comcast can continue to add premium content online from the big names, they might be onto something. Now, how about Showtime for some Californication and Weeds action.