I’ve been digging around for information about the Fall TV schedule - what’s new, what’s good, and when does it all begin. It wasn’t trivial finding decent sources of information that contained Canadian content.
First things first - for those of you who are in the Toronto area and are using Media Center you should be aware of some new channels available in high definition using just your antenna. I plan to stop using the Buffalo channels now that the locals are pretty much all up and running (although most of them still come in nicely too). With my antenna pointed at Toronto permanently, here are the local channels that are coming in with rock solid high-definition:
- Global TV (finally!)
- CTV
- City
- CBC
- E! (aka CH Television)
- SunTV
- Omni 1
- Omni 2
Now on with the programming. I’ve stumbled across a site with a very nice day-by-day table of the network schedules, click here to go to their grid view. They also have a nice sortable listing of the premiere dates and times broken out by channel, click here to go to their premiere dates.
Here’s what I’ll personally be watching for this fall, in chronological order:
Prison Break (Sept 1 on Global) - They’re dragging the premise out pretty far on this one, but it’s the first major drama to get back on the air so I’ll probably get hooked out of sheer need for new content.
Fringe (Sept 9 on CTV) - Give me a science fiction drama with what appears to be decent investment, and I’ll give it at least a few episodes. This one could take over where X-Files left off, which I know is a good reason for many people including my wife to not watch it.
Til Death (Sept 10 on Global) - I get a kick out of Til Death as they probe into the reality gap that exists between newlyweds and a couple who has been married for many years.
House (Sept 16 on Global) - Jodie hasn’t gotten into House much, and I’m told by at least one real doctor that it is s frustratingly fake show. But I just like it, and House is one of those TV shows that I take with me on plane trips to catch up on.
Survivor (Sept 18 on Global) - Keeping with the tradition of the last five years or so of Survivor, I will not be watching it. However Jodie will be tuned in diligently every week, and I might catch an episode or two to see how it looks in high definition. That’s their thing this year, it’s finally being filmed in HD.
Heroes (Sept 22 on Global) - Heroes has a tendency to move slowly, but otherwise is a very well put together sci-fi drama. Too bad it was only a half-season last year, but I’m looking forward to its return.
Big Bang Theory (Sept 22 on CBS) - No Canadian network picked this up? I’m surprised, as this is a fun and cute comedy that Jodie and I have grown to enjoy. That said, if it ends up getting canceled I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.
Two and a Half Men (Sept 22 on CBS) - Airs on A channel in Toronto, which is actually in Barrie so I’ll need to get it from the CBS feed. Best sitcom on television, period.
NCIS (Sept 23 on CBS) - As many of the other cop shows have fallen out of favour in our household, NCIS has gained steam in the last two years. Good balance of story and character development.
The Mentalist (Sept 24 on CBS) - This one has had some interesting/fun promos, so I’ll probably give it at least a couple of episodes.
Grey’s Anatomy (Sept 25 on CTV) - I’m still lukewarm on Grey’s Anatomy, but it’s one of the shows that Jodie convinced me to watch and it’s good enough that I keep watching it. Doesn’t require much introduction, most people already know about this medical drama slash primetime soap.
My Name Is Earl (Sept 25 on E!) - I’m not much into sitcoms, but My Name Is Earl is really well done and “white-trashy cute”. Been watching since it first started and not about to stop now.
The Office (Sept 25 on Global) - I had a hard time getting turned on to this series, but it’s now on my “record it and take it on the plane” list. It’s really witty, but not enough so that I watch it regularly.
Ugly Betty (Sept 25 on CITY) - Ugly Betty is a fun show that defies description. It is romantic drama that is produced tongue in cheek like a Mexican soap opera. It is really silly, but intentionally so and neither the show nor any of its characters take themselves too seriously.
Desperate Housewives (Sept 28 on CTV) - This is another one that requires no introduction, everyone knows what Desperate Housewives is and either loves it or hates it.
Family Guy (Sept 28 on Global) - Not much from the adult animated comedy category is still on my list, but I can’t stop loving Family Guy. It’s on my “watch it on the plane” list as well, mostly because Jodie can’t stand it.
The Unit (Sept 28 on CBS) - I barely made it through season one of The Unit, where they were trying way too hard to make it about the army wives. They’ve since found a balance between really compelling special ops missions with just a little bit of army home life to humanize the characters. This is a Pete-only show, Jodie’s not a fan.
Pushing Daisies (Oct 1 on ABC) - Pushing Daisies is the best new show from last year, but I don’t feel like it ever found an audience. It looks beautiful, the writing is fast-paced and smart, and the premise wonderfully quirky. How does one describe this show - about the best I can get is lighthearted mystery slash comedy. It might get cancelled, and if it does I’ll hold a candlelight vigil. Video below since I have a vested interest in getting more people to watch so it stays on the air.
Private Practice (Oct 1 on ABC) - This Grey’s Anatomy spinoff barely even started before the writer’s strike killed it. I didn’t particularly like it, but will probably watch a couple episodes again before permanently taking it out of the schedule.
The Ex List (Oct 3 on Global) - This could be interesting, basically a woman who is told by a psychic that her soulmate is someone she’s already dated. She then goes back into her past to try to find her husband amongst all her old conquests. I feel terrible to say this, but there’s something about the lead actress that I just can’t stand (nor could I when she was a bit character on Grey’s Anatomy). I’ll give it a try.
Corner Gas (Oct 6 on CTV) - I really like Corner Gas in all of its cheesy Canadian comedy goodness. Jodie however not so much, so this goes on my media player for watching on the plane.
CSI (Oct 9 on CTV) - Best drama on TV, and the trailer for this upcoming season has already got me on the edge of my seat.
My Own Worst Enemy (Oct 13 on Global) - I haven’t seen much about this, but it has some big names so I’ll probably watch.
Notably absent are several shows that I used to watch at one point in time, but now have fallen out of favour:
- Anything with a colon in the name (CSI: Miami, Law & Order: SVU, etc)
- Animated stuff that used to be good but is no longer funny (Simpsons, King of the Hill, American Dad)
- Terminator The Sarah Connor Chronicles - I watched this in its first season and it was a struggle to stay engaged. So long Sarah!
- Chuck - You’d think I’d be the target audience for Chuck, but no.
- Knight Rider - Wow, talk about your bad pilots
There are several shows that will be starting mid-season including many that I’ll be eagerly awaiting:
I’ve been hearing some buzz about this lately, and the site launched today. In a nutshell, this is a series of interviews with regular people to talk about why they think Vista is terrible, and to get their reaction to a new version of windows “Mohave”. In the video below, a woman rates Vista on a scale from one to ten as a “zero” and then rates Mohave as a “ten”. What they don’t know is that what they’re really seeing is Windows Vista.
Video: Mojave Experiment
There are lots of other videos available on the website, http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/.
This is a really interesting campaign, and a counter-strike somewhat to the Mac vs PC ads.
I would expect that MCE users who have read my blog in the past have been frustrated by a couple of things:
- the increasingly low ratio of family talk versus technical talk
- all of the broken images and links that happened from the last server move
So here we are, I’m going to pull all of the technical stuff from my personal blog, clean up all of the broken items, and resume technical blogging over at TGB. Thanks to TGB for providing this space, I hope it will prove to be a much more permanent and more focused home for my technical ramblings.
Blog Addresses:
TheNears Personal Blog: http://www.thenears.com
TheNears MCE Blog: http://thegreenbutton.com/blogs/pnear/default.aspx
RSS Feeds:
TheNears Personal Blog: http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheNears
TheNears MCE Blog: http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheNearsMCE
This weekend we got very frustrated by the XBox 360 and DVD playback. Once the 360 warms up, it refuses to read my DVD-R collection (which is significant, since I don’t want the kids to ruin their original discs). So we get 15 minutes into a movie and all of a sudden the disc becomes unreadable. Frustrating.
So we decided to get a new DVD player that would play all of our discs. I trotted off to the local Real Canadian Superstore to spend some of my cache of PC points on a new gadget (feels better when it’s funny-money) and looked at the selection. Turns out that the cost of an upconverting name-brand DVD player isn’t that much different from the HD-DVD kit for the 360. As an external drive, I figured it wasn’t going to be affected by the same heat issues as the 360 itself, so I picked it up.
As to the primary need, something that will play my DVD-Rs reliably, it fit the bill. As to the secondary cool factor, the ability to play HD-DVDs, of course that works as well but I was fairly unimpressed with the picture quality of the included King Kong disc versus a regular DVD. I might rent a few more HD-DVDs just to try them out, but until this format war is over I don’t think I’ll be adding anything to my collection permanently
The CRTC today announced changes to over the air broadcasting in Canada. I for one am happy to see these changes and look forward to reading into some of the details once I get some time. Analog shutdown in the US has been a real catalyst for over the air HDTV, and I expect it to do the same here. While I get fantastic over-the-air HDTV coverage here in Toronto the same is not true in other communities across Canada.
Notably, the Commission has decided to:
- remove restrictions on advertising time limits after gradually increasing the amount of advertising allowed;
- establish August 31, 2011, as the date by which television licensees will only broadcast digital signals;
- require English- and French-language broadcasters to caption for the hearing impaired 100 per cent of their programs over the 18-hour broadcast day, with the exception of advertising and promotions; and
- deny a subscriber fee for the carriage of local conventional television stations on cable and satellite as its necessity has not been demonstrated.
Microsoft is building an ice house in Yonge-Dundas square starting tomorrow and running into the weekend as part of the Windows Vista launch. I’ll be there tomorrow (Tuesday) manning the “ask the expert” booth, so come on by and say hello. I believe that they have carved out (literally) a section for me inside the digital home where I’ll be dispensing MCE and general Vista advice through my chattering teeth.
As I was reading an article on CNet this morning about Windows Home Server, the following passage caught my eye:
Microsoft has been touting plans for CableCard support for a long time. In November 2005, the company said it had signed a deal with the cable industry that would pave the way for Media Center PCs with built-in CableCards to arrive by the 2006 holiday sales season. That didn’t happen. At CES last week, Microsoft said it sees such PCs coming out in the second half of this year.
Really now? That’s the first time I had heard that, I was expecting them to be out at about the same time as the Vista consumer launch at the end of January. That’s unfortunate to hear, and sounds to me like a sliding date too (ie Christmas 2007 is technically in the 2nd half of 2007 and that’s probably the real drop-dead date).
Engadget has some leaked pictures of what is being called the XBox 360 Zephyr, which has an HDMI port right on the box. They are also reporting that this next revision of the XBox 360 will come with a newer 65nm processor and a 120GB hard drive. HDMI is the latest and best digital audio and video connection, and theoretically provides the best high-def picture quality you can get from the system. Image quality alone is enough to want HDMI on your XBox. What most people probably aren’t as aware of however is that HDMI provides content encryption, whereas component, VGA, svideo, etc do not.
This content protection has been one of my primary concerns with the current revision of the XBox when measured against many of the newer initiatives that are related to the Xbox. To spell it out for you:
Fact #1: HD-DVD, HD content from a media center running cablecard, and potentially HD movie downloads all have the requirement to run in a completely protected system. That means that in order to get the full resolution picture, every component along the way needs to be encrypted. For the time being, this requirement is turned off for movies.
Fact #2: Microsoft has not announced any sort of encrypted high-definition output for the XBox 360.
Fact #3: Microsoft is selling accessories and services that require encryption.
Add these facts together and it’s pretty clear that there is an issue. All that high-definition content that you can get for the Xbox 360 simply will not work in the very near future unless something changes quickly. And while there has been a reprieve announced for HD movies, the same reprieve has not been announced for Media Centers that use cablecards to get high-definition cable signals into the box. And here lies the biggest issue of them all - if you have a media center PC that uses cablecard, will you be able to use the Xbox 360 as an extender or not? Unless there is a change to either the policy relaxing the encryption requirement, or a change to the XBox 360 to allow encrypted output then for now it looks like these users will be SOL.
So what will that change be? Some are hoping for an HDMI add-on cable for the 360, others believe that HDMI requires enough new hardware that it will require a new revision of the XBox. This leak certainly seems to point to the latter, but hopefully we’ll find out next week with some announcements at CES next week. No need to get too concerned, MCE Vista isn’t even for sale yet, but it is interesting.
I received word via email this morning that I have received the 2007 Microsoft MVP award. This marks year #4 as a Media Center MVP, and I’m honoured to receive the recognition. This next year should be an interesting one for MCE, as I truly believe that it will move from “HTPC niche” to “mass market photos and music on the HDTV”. It’s a big shift for the product, and a big shift for the community. I look forward to introducing a whole new group of people to MCE as they discover it included on their new Vista PCs in February.
That was one big piece of news I was waiting on, the second is related more to work. My company was purchased by Oracle recently, and I’m expecting to hear sometime in the next week or so whether I will be transfered to Oracle with steady employment, or if my position will simply cease to exist. I’m significantly more nervous about this one, and I have my fingers crossed.
