I would put the over/under on Cubs games that I watch each season at about 130, and the amount that I listen to on the radio (be it via XM or MLB.TV’s audio streams) right around 25. I don’t think I’m exaggerating to put my level of team-following at 95%; I’m a pretty big fan, and don’t miss many games, especially in a year like the one they’re currently having, which is not only one of the best during my lifetime, but one of their best ever.

I used to think that being this devoted to following a team was tough while living in Champaign, an area that is not really in the Chicago market but is at least close enough to get the Chicago channels. When we decided to move to California, I somewhat erroneously thought that all I would have to do to keep up my rate of game-watching was to get the MLB Extra Innings package along with my return to DirecTV that was made a necessity due to their monopoly on the NFL Sunday Ticket offering and my unwillingness to miss Bears games.

The most unfortunate part of returning to DirecTV—indeed, the reason I did not stick with them when moving to HD in the first place—is their terrible DVR software. After using it for about 3 months now, I think it may be even worse than the Insight/Comcast DVR that I used to put up with. One of the many frustrating things about it is that it will sometimes arbitrarily decide that a game should be blacked out for me, in some cases even after I’ve watched half of it. MLB’s blackout rules are infuriating enough without needing to be made worse by an overzealous adherence to them on the part of poorly-written software.

The single worst (and most unique) example of this came yesterday. As a result of Hurrican Ike ravishing the Houston area, the Cubs’ series with the Astros was moved to a “neutral site” in Milwaukee (at the park that Cubs fans affectionately refer to as “Wrigley North”—admittedly not the most neutral of options). Before going to a Sunday afternoon movie, I verified that my MLB package would get me the rescheduled game and that my DVR was intending to record it. After returning from the movie, when attempting to view the game—I prefer to be able to fast-forward through the commercials, so I watch most games slightly after the fact—I found this:

For some reason, DirecTV and my DVR had decided that this game was a pay-per-view event (albeit with a price of $0.00). It had recorded it anyway, thankfully, or so it appeared. When attempting to watch the game, all I got was this:

Unfortunately this is something I’ve contended with multiple times this season, usually the result of the stupid blackout rules (although thankfully such occurrences are few and far between). This particular occasion was made all the more upsetting, of course, by the significance of this particular game, in which my favorite player, the ace of the Cubs pitching staff, threw his first no-hitter—something I’ve been anxiously awaiting for the past few seasons, as Carlos Zambrano has shown no-hit stuff multiple times in recent years. Could anything be more frustrating for a sports fan?

Not wanting to repeat the experience, I listened to today’s game while at work, and was almost treated to an echoing performance from Ted Lilly. Not relying on my satellite service or their DVR software at all seems like the only reliable way to not be disappointed and angered by them.

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Allow me to add to Mark’s rants about Fox Sports and their idiotic monopoly on Saturday daytime baseball broadcasts, and the idiocy of MLB that allows for it. Due to their agreed-upon blackout rules, I’m faced with another Saturday of not being able to watch my favorite team, despite the fact that I pay DirecTV over $200 per season in order to be able to do so.

Succinctly put on DirecTV’s explanation page, the policy goes as follows: “For every Saturday of the regular season, the FOX Television Network has the exclusive national rights to broadcast games up until 7:00pm ET (4:00pm PT).”

The reasoning behind this is pretty apparent: Fox wants to have the exclusive attention of any would-be Saturday-afternoon baseball fans, to maximize their advertising reach. I don’t think I’m in the minority when I say that this alone is completely stupid; I would say that I watch commercials less than 10% of the time I spend watching TV—and I watch a lot of TV. But it gets worse when you consider that there are other games that take place before 7:00pm ET on Saturdays that Fox makes no effort to broadcast, leaving fans with no options.

For example, today the Cubs-Pirates game started at 10:05am (this is a west coast phenomenon that I’m still getting used to, by the way, but find myself liking for the most part: I can get up, watch the game—if I’m actually able to get it, that is—and then have the entire rest of the day available, which is pretty nice). The Angles-Yankees game, which Fox is going to be broadcasting nationwide, will begin at 12:55pm. This means that it is extremely likely that the Cubs game will be over before the first pitch of the Yankees game has even been thrown. And yet, the “exclusivity” agreement means that the Cubs game is blacked out for everybody outside of the Chicago and Pittsburgh markets. It’s no wonder why so many people simply subscribe to DirecTV and then lie about moving to their market of choice. Not only does it save them the money of having to purchase the MLB Extra Innings package in order to follow their favorite team in the first place, but it also avoids these stupid blackout situations altogether. (The same reasoning goes, of course, for all of the other sports as well.)

It’s worth noting that ESPN has a similar agreement with MLB for their Sunday Night Baseball broadcasts. The major difference, though, is that there are no other games on Sunday nights. It could be said that days like today are the fault of the Cubs for scheduling a day game on a day when Fox’s blackout rules will be in effect, but why should Fox be allowed to dictate the entire league’s schedules, in the name of their greedy advertising bottom line?

I don’t think there’s any point where this will become an overstated sentiment: Fox Sports sucks. I’ve complained about it before, and I’m sure I’ll do so again.

UPDATE: A decent solution that I forgot to mention is to just leave the house and listen to the game in the car, which is what I ended up doing (we had somewhere to go anyway). XM includes every Major League game, with no blackouts, as part of their standard service. It’s not the same as watching it on TV, but Pat and Ron are always enjoyable, and it’s definitely better than sitting at home cursing Fox while staring at a blank screen showing error code 727.

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Some sad news quietly came out today without much press coverage of it, but I think it warrants recognition: Both Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper, of “At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper,” have opted to part ways with Disney and the show that’s borne their names since 2000 (and bore the names of Gene Siskel and Ebert for well over 20 years prior to that). It’s been a sad time for this show the past couple of years as it was, with Roger’s health not allowing him to appear. Still, Roeper has done a decent job of carrying the torch in his absence, and the guest reviewers have been generally enjoyable.

Things had been going downhill for a while, including Disney’s abrupt ending of the use of the trademarked “Thumbs™” and resultant blame game played between them and Ebert. Hopefully there’s a Disney-less future for this format. The good news is that the huge archive of episodes and individual reviews remains online, and should remain available in the future, barring any further fallings out.

On a positive Ebert-related note, an Ebertfest documentary recently premiered on the Big Ten Network. It’s well worth checking out—hopefully it’ll be replayed (keep an eye out for “Illinois Campus Programming” on the schedule).

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Having moved from western Michigan to the suburbs of Chicago when I was 15, I went through a not all that reluctant transition as a sports fan. It was hard to not get Bulls hysteria during the mid-90s, and I’d always been at least as much of a Bears fan as I was the Lions fan my father’d tried to raise me to be, having been a very impressionable child in 1985, not to mention the fact that we lived approximately equidistant between Soldier Field and the Silverdome, and it was a no-brainer which one would give a young NFL fan the superior experience and memories. I even decided, prior to the start of this past NHL season, to officially forsake the Red Wings in favor of the Blackhawks; I hadn’t followed the NHL since the strike and the Blackhawks have some very promising young talent that I’ll be able to follow for several years (especially now that their home games are finally being broadcast). This turned out to be humorous timing, but I found that the playoffs are at least as fun to watch when rooting against the Red Wings as when rooting for them, anyway (they’re sort of the Yankees of hockey).

Baseball was a different story, though. The fact that there are two very distinct and separate leagues makes it not a big deal to have an “AL team” and an “NL team,” and that is what I did. I have very fond memories of summer afternoons spent watching WGN as a child: The Bozo Show in the morning, a rerun of The Incredible Hulk, then a Cubs game at 1:20. The fact that watching the Cubs did not conflict with rooting for the Tigers, as I was naturally raised to do, made it all the more enjoyable. As such, the Cubs are the only team I can truly say I’ve been a fan of my entire life, and I have WGN to thank for it.

Today, June 12, 2008, marked the 60th anniversary of the first broadcast of a Cubs game on WGN, and both the station and the team chose to have fun with it. Being a sucker for tradition, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

For starters, the first couple of innings of the game were broadcast in black-and-white. Both teams wore throwback uniforms, a first-ever for Wrigley Field. WGN used “1948 camera angles” during these first couple of innings, simulating an era when only a few cameras were available to televise a game (as opposed to the dozens that are now common), and wide shots were how audiences watched most of the game. Going further with the theme, during the black-and-white innings no instant replays were shown, since the technology didn’t exist yet in 1948. I don’t know if they had teletype capabilities at all back then, but WGN did their best to give everything an old-school look in the font department, too.

The Cubs’ announcers, Bob Brenley and Len Casper, played their part by dressing as reporters would have in the 40s, with pinstripe suits, swanky vests, and fedoras. Not only did the channel use an old-time logo, but notice how they even went so far as to print new banners for the announcers’ booth, too.

The Wrigley Field announcer, Wayne Messmer, got into the act as well: in addition to dressing in 1940s attire himself, he also sat in the front row right behind home plate, as the stadium announcer would’ve done at the time. Also during the black-and-white-televised innings there were (presumably simulated) typewriter noises heard in the background, imitating the sound of a pressbox from the era.

In addition to the blocky font used, even the sponsor logos (such as this Pepsi one) were old-style:

Finally, throughout the game, pieces of old-school Cubs and baseball trivia were presented, still in that old-timey blocky font:

And after all of that fun, the Cubs went on to do what this 2008 team has done so many times already: win another game with a come-from-behind victory, another one at home (bringing them to a ridiculous 29-8 in the Friendly Confines so far this season), and enjoying a start to the season that’s better than that of 1948 or any other year before or since.

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Video games can be a lot of fun. Millions of people–young and, increasingly, old–enjoy them as a true form of entertainment, storytelling, and sometimes even artistic expression. Gamers have long enjoyed assuming the persona of an on-screen hero or heroine, allowing themselves to get wrapped up in a fantastic world where their imaginations can run wild and the impossible is possible. Until recently, though, it was typically pretty clear what was meant by a player “assuming the persona” of his or her virtual alter-ego.

With the advent and exploding popularity of the Guitar Hero series of games, the line has been blurred. Part of the problem is one of language: we “play” a video game and we “play” a musical instrument, but these are normally two different things. It then makes it hard for a Guitar Hero enthusiast to not sound like he takes himself entirely too seriously when he talks about the songs he’s been “playing.” But the problem is compounded by the fact that many Guitar Hero enthusiasts do, in fact, take themselves entirely too seriously (more on that in a bit).

Another aspect that blurs the line between playing a game and playing an instrument is the very feature that has most likely accounted for the series’ success: the novel guitar-shaped controllers it employs. As opposed to using the standard console controller, these allow one to assume roughly the posture, hand position, and motions (albeit all on a greatly simplified basis) of somebody who is actually playing a guitar. This, in turn, makes it easier for the player to convince himself that what he is doing while playing the game has some relation to the act of playing guitar. Compare the two activities:

The main difference lies in the initial startup cost, and in the fact that it’s much easier to pick up a Guitar Hero controller and start playing right away than it is to do the same with a real guitar. After that, though, becoming good at either activity requires sitting around for hours on end playing the same songs over and over and over again until memorization and/or mastery has occurred. It’s in this regard that I think the activity of playing Guitar Hero is baffling to some, myself included: Why spend all of that time and effort simulating the act of learning to play guitar, rather than actually learning to play guitar?

It goes beyond that, though. The next evolutionary leap of the Guitar Hero series is Rock Band, which takes the concept to the next level. Instead of only one or two players using fake guitars to “play” the lead and/or bass guitar parts, there is now additionally a “drum” part and a “singing” part (as well as a new $170 price tag). The packaging for the game invites players to “start a band” and “rock the world.” Unfortunately, a lot of people have taken this entirely too literally. A lot of the explanation for the whole phenomenon, I think, can be attributed to the fact that most people don’t really understand what is involved with playing the instruments represented in these games. It was bad enough when the games’ makers just oversimplified what it means to play a guitar; now they’ve added two additional parts that almost everyone thinks they can do without any sort of training, despite the fact that singing and drumming are just as musically involved and require just as much instruction, practice, and perseverance as the guitar does.

It certainly doesn’t help when reviews of Rock Band say ignorant things like, “while learning to play a plastic guitar gets you nothing but higher scores on a game, getting good at the drums in Rock Band will actually give you some drumming skills in real life.” Statements like this have the dual effect of demonstrating the reviewer’s ignorance of what actually constitutes “drumming skills” while also misleading would-be drummers into thinking that Rock Band’s lame excuse for a drum kit and drum charts will be a sufficient substitute for (or precursor to) learning the real thing. Some reviews, thankfully, are a bit more honest with their readers, but they still exaggerate the relation between the Rock Band drum kit and actual drumming: “With the exception of the drum parts, which are somewhat realistic, Rock Band substitutes reflexes for musicianship.” Yes, the drum parts are “somewhat realistic,” but in exactly the same way that the guitar parts are “somewhat realistic,” and no more. It is sad that people who have obviously never played drums before deem themselves worthy to comment on the experience. While it seems commonplace for most articles about these games to accept–and occasionally poke fun at–the lack of realism inherent in the guitar controllers, they simultaneously make the mistake of presuming the existence of a level of realism in the drum controller that is just as equally absent.

Amplifying the problem is the fact that the Rock Band drum parts–which, like the guitar parts, come in varying difficulty levels–are not a good way to teach somebody to play the drums, despite the fact that the possibility to use them for that purpose might actually exist. This is probably what leads to the assumptions on the part of most reviewers that progression through the game’s levels of difficulty is equivalent to progressively learning more about how to actually play the drums, but again that only shows the reviewers’ ignorance and not the achievement of the game in that regard.

My personal experience with these games is, admittedly, very limited. I find it very hard to get used to “playing” the “notes” ahead of the actual song; one thing that nobody seems to mention is that there is a slight but significant delay between when you “strum” the guitar controller or hit one of the pads on the drum controller and when the game registers the “note” being “played.” This does not teach you to play the song or to even come close to rhythmically approximating it on a basic level; rather, it is simply a test of reflexes, as previously mentioned, combined with memorization at the more difficult levels. It is not in any way musical, at least no more so than is tapping on your lap or strumming an air guitar. In fact, I’ve played Guitar Hero with both the guitar controller and a standard Xbox 360 controller, and found the musical experience I derived from the two to be equivalent.

It gets really weird when you consider that people actually put on “concerts” involving playing this game on a stage. There is even a smoke and light kit set to be released soon. And some people have taken it even further than that, combining the fake instruments with real ones in order to give them a more realistic look for their “performances.” This begs the question of why not just actually learn the instrument? even more, and makes for an even more ridiculous example of just how far people will go to keep themselves firmly planted in the world of a video game, no matter how much they attempt to emulate the world that the video game is supposed to be simulating. It’s additionally yet another case of the relevant South Park episode coming true in a way that’s as sad as it is hilarious.

So am I just such a curmudgeon that I can’t stand the thought of people playing a quasi-musical video game and enjoying themselves while doing so, as the xkcd comic implies?

The answer, of course, is no; “stop having fun” is not my point. My point is, honestly, that I worry about what this means for our culture, that it seems we can no longer be troubled to actually take up any hobby that doesn’t have a score attached to it. More than that, though, it’s that we seem to have moved beyond the fantasy world of video gaming and into the realm of games as substitutes for their real-life counterparts. I’ve been known, for instance, to play a game called Golden Tee from time to time, but nobody has ever mistaken that for an actual round of golf, and nobody has ever claimed that learning Golden Tee makes you a better golfer. It seems that day may not actually be far off, though, and I wonder what that would mean for the sport of golf when the next Tiger Woods gets addicted to the video game instead of the actual sport. Likewise, what does it mean when there are children who are considered to be Gods of Guitar Hero? Are these the would-be rock stars of tomorrow, choosing to pursue a perfect score in place of writing a future hit?

Mostly, though, this whole phenomenon gives me that sadness you feel when you see others getting cheated out of what you believe to be a worthwhile experience that you yourself have had. It’s like when somebody tells you they recently purchased a new HDTV, but then you find out that what they bought is a low-end Vizio and they’re still watching standard definition content stretched horizontally. It’s somebody telling you they’re a Linux expert, only to then divulge that their experience comes from using Ubuntu a couple of times. It’s somebody telling you they’re a hardcore programmer when all they’ve ever coded in is Java. None of these people are lying when they make these claims; they’re just missing the point of the experience by only going halfway with it.

And that’s how I feel about the Guitar Hero series of games, and especially Rock Band: Sure, it’s fun to play, and it might even help drive you to get better by having a simple scoring system to use as a yardstick. But when you confuse it with an approximation of that which it is meant to imitate, you’re missing the point of both.

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Just for the hell of it, here are my predictions for the major categories of the 80th Academy Awards, with brief comments on my selections. I think 2007 was an exceptionally strong year, particularly in its latter quarter, so it’s been a very exciting awards season, and I’m very much looking forward to the Oscars for the first time in several years.

Those are the only ones I really care about, so I’ll leave it with that. Should be a good and interesting ceremony this year. Here’s to hoping that 2008 can match the high quality we saw in 2007.

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Or, at least, it should be soon.

Now that Warner Bros. has switched from being in the HD-DVD camp to siding with Blu-Ray, the dominoes are falling and hopefully we’ll see the end of “The Format Wars, Round 2″ in the near future.

My primary interest in this is the fact that I’d like one format to win outright so that everybody can get on with adopting it. It seems clear that the majority of consumers have been waiting to see who wins before purchasing an HD home video player (although there’s some speculation that adoption will be slow, regardless).

The two formats are largely the same in terms of features, but the primary difference has been that Blu-ray offers a DRM scheme that the studios view as being superior (copy-protection features appear to be the studios’ main concern, and with good reason). Another difference–albeit a more minor one, as its use hasn’t been fully explored as of yet–is the fact that the Blu-ray format includes Java support. This also might explain why Microsoft, never a fan of anything Sun- or Java-related, has sided with HD-DVD, although even that seems like it might change.

And then there’s what I still consider to have been a shrewd and ingenious move on Sony’s part, the decision to release the PlayStation 3 with a Blu-ray player built-in. This forced a lot of high-end gamers to become early adopters of the Blu-ray format, whether they realized it or not. (On the down side, it initially drove up the cost of their gaming console, perhaps to the detriment of their market share; this issue has largely disappeared, however, since the introduction of the $399 PS3.) Personally, though, the presence of the Blu-ray player was the primary reason I had for wanting (and getting) a PS3; indeed, I do not own any games for it (yet), but I have already purchased several Blu-ray movies. An additional bonus to using the PS3 as a DVD/Blu-ray player (although one that’s not often talked about, for whatever reason), is that it does a great job functioning as an upscaling DVD player for standard-definition movies, too. After adding an IR remote, so that I can control movie playback on the PS3 with my Harmony 880, I’ve found that the PS3 makes a terrific centerpiece to my home theater setup.

I’m hopeful that the chips will continue to fall, and Blu-ray will be able to announce a de facto victory sometime in 2008. Then the studios can get on with producing more content for the format, more people will jump on the bandwagon, and hopefully prices will come down as well. Of course, as with all new technology, porn may serve as the tipping point.

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As I mentioned previously, about 6 months ago I switched from DirecTV to Insight Digital cable service, giving up my beloved DirecTiVo in the process. The experience has made me appreciate–and miss–the care and attention to detail that went into the design of the TiVo UI. I’d like to enumerate in detail exactly which design mistakes Motorola’s engineers made that TiVo’s accounted for. Simultaneously, CK is going to do the same thing in reference to his DirecTV Plus HD DVR, which he recently switched to.

We’ll start with the remotes. CK has already written his comparison, finding squarely in favor of the DirecTiVo’s remote (unsurprisingly). Now it’s my turn to take a look at the remote that comes with the Motorola 6xxx series of cable boxes. I have the Motorola 6416, which is the dual-tuner HD-compatible version with a 160GB hard drive.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention right up front that I haven’t used this remote much, as after the first week or so of having (and hating) it, I programmed my Harmony 880 (possibly the second-greatest TV-related invention, after TiVo itself) to control the new DVR, and tossed the Insight remote into a drawer, never to be used again. Here are the main reasons I have for thinking that every user of one of these cable boxes should do the same:

• Too many similarly-shaped and -sized buttons. While the “On Demand” button is nice and big and easy to feel for in the dark, that’s not the one I’m going for most often when I pick up the remote–usually it’s the pause button, or the video transport buttons. They’re all about the same size and shape, and grouped in a 3×3 grid. On the plus side, when picking up the remote your thumb naturally goes to the “OK/Select” button in the middle, which is a good “home position” to start from. It’s just that it’s hard to go anywhere from there except to the arrow buttons immediately surrounding it.
• Page up/Page down buttons. These buttons are stupid, because it makes much more sense to use the Channel up/down buttons for this functionality, when in a context where going up and down by page makes more sense (like being in the on-screen guide). This is the way TiVo does it, and using the Channel buttons comes very intuitively and works quite well. Not only has Motorola chosen to use separate buttons for Page up/down, though, but they’ve also placed them on opposite sides of the remote, making it impossible to easily go between them when browsing through the guide.
• The most important buttons are small and poorly-placed. With the notable exception of the aforementioned OK button, the most important buttons are in the worst possible places, with the worst offenders being the Guide and Menu buttons. The My DVR button also gets blended into the array of video control buttons towards the top; this is the button that brings up your list of recorded programs, so on a DVR box, it gets used a lot (TiVo users will know it as the List button).
• Too many “back” buttons. Perhaps as a sign of skittishness (or, more likely, a testament to how confusing their software is), the developers have given the user multiple ways to go backwards at any point in the interface. There’s a Last button to go back a screen, which does the same as the left arrow button in most circumstances. There’s an Exit button which exits out of the menu system completely. Then there’s a Stop button, which really doesn’t make much sense to me. When you’re watching TV, or a previously-recorded show from the DVR’s hard drive, what does the concept of “Stop” mean? Well, it certainly doesn’t mean you want everything to stop and go to a blank screen, as it would on a VCR. The TiVo engineers thought of this, and so TiVo remotes do not have a Stop button at all; instead, you simply press the appropriate button to indicate what you want to do next. If you’re currently watching a recorded show and want to switch to live TV, you press the Live TV button. If you want to go back to the menu of recorded shows to watch a different one, you press the List button. Stop doesn’t make sense in the context of a DVR, so it shouldn’t be there at all.
• Important funcionality missing. While there’s a “review” button (the circular arrow pointing “backwards,” found just to the left of the My DVR button), there is no equivalent “skip” button. This is especially odd when you consider that the box actually has this functionality–using my Harmony’s “replay” and “skip” buttons, I can skip backwards 15 seconds or forwards 30 seconds, respectively. Why only the “replay” feature has a button on the stock remote is a mystery to me; particularly when you consider the typical length of a commercial, the 30 second skip feature is arguably the more useful of the two. You might also notice that even though this remote is for a dual-tuner DVR, there is no obvious way to switch between tuners–keep reading for an explanation of that glaring omission.
• Picture-in-Picture buttons. These are especially confusing, since the box does not have picture-in-picture capability, and so the buttons serve no purpose… with one very notable exception. Having omitted a tuner-swap button in their design of the remote, the box’s engineers have chosen to co-opt the “PIP Swap” button for that purpose.:
  
  When I first got this box, for the first several days of using it I was actually under the impression that there was no way to explicitly switch tuners (this was an action I was used to performing quite regularly with my DirecTiVo). I mistakenly thought that the only way to utilize the dual tuner functionality was by side effect: if it is recording a show and you try to change the channel, a dialog box will pop up offering the option to switch to the other tuner. I would then be “stuck” on the other tuner, unless I went into the My DVR interface and selected the show being recorded to watch. I’ll touch on this more when I do my review of the DVR software, but suffice it to say that this was confusing and annoying. Even after figuring out how to swap tuners, it is still very non-intuitive to have to use a tiny button at the bottom of the remote in a group of otherwise unused (reserved for future use, maybe?) PIP buttons in order to take full advantage of the DVR’s two tuners. Luckily, on my Harmony I’ve programmed a custom button called simply “Swap,” and it’s in a much more easily-accessible place on the remote.

The remote’s deficiencies are a telling sign of the amount of thought that went into the design of this cable box overall. Especially when contrasted with the brilliantly-designed TiVo remote, it falls very short. The Harmony 880 (pictured at left) that I use and love, while not quite matching the TiVo remote in terms of button layout and intuitive feel in your hand, comes pretty close, while also offering the additional functionality of controlling all of your home theater components by itself and being completely programmable. I honestly don’t think I could put up with the stock remote that came with my Motorola DVR provided by Insight for any significant length of time, especially after having used a TiVo remote for over 3 years; luckily the Harmony means that I don’t have to.

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After getting my new TV several months ago, I was faced with the issue of deciding how best to get HD signals to it. I initially bought the lone HD DirecTiVo that was ever made, the Hughes HR10-250, but that proved to not be a very good solution: unable to receive the MPEG4 signals that DirecTV was moving towards, the HR10-250 could not tune in my local channels in HD. After struggling in vain with trying to get several different over-the-air antennas to reliably find a signal, I decided it wasn’t worth the headache, and I would need to make an equipment change. Things were compounded by the fact that DirecTV’s plans for their expanded HD channel lineup was going to be MPEG4-only, which along with their divorce from TiVo made the DirecTV Plus HD DVR the only option. This would have involved paying a $299 up-front “leasing fee,” buying (and installing, or having installed) a new $99 5-LNB satellite dish, and committing to a new 2-year service contract, not to mention having to live with inferior DVR software. Sitting on the phone with one of DirecTV’s famed “customer retention specialists,” the best offer I was given was $100 off the new receiver.

This was too much for me to stomach, and I wasn’t happy about it. Two pieces of information, however, conspired to provide some hope: The first was that my local cable company, Insight, was going to switch to Comcast as of January 1, 2008. The second was that Comcast was about to begin rolling out new TiVo software. I decided that I could stomach their horrible DVR software for a while, with the promise of an upgrade to TiVo down the line, and made the switch. The fact that I already get my home Internet through Insight meant that I would save some money on the digital cable service, too. And I certainly didn’t miss having the dish on my roof.

I’ll have a full write-up of my many gripes with the DVR software on my Motorola 6416 in the near future (along with a comparison to the experiences of CK, who recently went the other route). Aside from that, though, I’ve been very happy with the service I’ve received since making the switch from DirecTV to Insight… until last weekend.

On Sunday, the NFL schedule was as follows: at noon, Panthers at Packers on Fox and Chiefs at Colts on CBS, then Bears at Seahawks on Fox at 3:15. This is a great schedule for me, as I can flip back and forth between the two early games (not caring if I miss a bit of either one here and there), and then concentrate on the Bears game in the afternoon. Unfortunately, during the early games, I found that I was not able to tune to my Fox HD channel. When attempting to do so, the picture on my screen would simply freeze until I switched back to another channel. Trying the regular (non-HD) Fox channel and seeing that it wasn’t having any problems, I concluded that the problem was with Insight. Convincing them of this fact was another matter, though, requiring 3 phone calls over 2 days to even get them to admit to the actual source of the problem:

• 11/18, 1:48pm: Wanting to get things resolved prior to the start of the Bears game, I called and patiently explained what I was seeing. I was told by the support person that the reason for this was that “they don’t have HD cameras there.” Knowing this to be untrue, I decided to humor her, and attempted to explain that if that were the case, the SD broadcast would be shown on my HD channel. The fact that the cable box would simply freeze when I attempted to turn to that channel (and only that channel) seemed to pretty obviously indicate where the problem was, but I was unable to convince the woman on the other end of the phone of this. Hoping that perhaps the problem was specific to this particular game broadcast, I hung up.
• 11/18, 3:17pm:As soon as the Bears game started and I was still unable to turn to my Fox HD channel, I called back. At first, I was told to reset my box; once again, I decided to humor the support person (a different one this time) and did so. As I was expecting, this did not solve the problem. She then, in an apparent act of not believing me, reset my box remotely. This also didn’t work, of course, and now I was getting pretty annoyed. “How could my box have a problem in such a way that only affects this single channel?” I asked. At that point she put me on hold to try to see if she could find out any more. When she finally came back on the line, I was informed that there was, indeed, an equipment failure on their end that was preventing the Fox HD signal from being broadcast. When I asked how they were going to compensate me for this lack of service, I was told that since the problem was Fox’s fault, they wouldn’t be doing anything of the sort. I hung up on her out of frustration, and suffered through a non-HD Bears game (not to mention a bad loss).
• 11/19, 7:31pm: Coming home from a long day at work, I decided to see if the problem had been fixed yet. I had been assuming that it was the type of thing that would have to wait for somebody to come in on Monday morning to take care of. This was obviously not the case, though, as the channel still did not work. I called back, and was finally given the real scoop: the faulty part had been ordered, but wouldn’t be in for another day or two. I commented that this sounded like their fault to me, and this time the customer service woman agreed with me, assuring me that I’d be given credit for the time I was without that channel. We’ll see what my bills says.

The following day, a Tuesday, Fox HD once again worked. If it weren’t for the fact that Insight was only going to be my cable provider for another month and change, I’d probably think about switching for the second time this year over this. The situation with the Big Ten Network makes it tempting already, but I don’t think I’d be able to go back to DirecTV at this point, and Dish Network isn’t very appealing. I guess I’m waiting for TiVo to save me, and Comcast to get their head out of their ass, too. That’s starting to sound like a long shot.

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A few months ago, I wrote about the Crazy 4 Cult art exhibition, which was being hosted by Kevin Smith. I thought the artwork from the invite that Kevin posted was really interesting, so I thought we’d make a little game out of trying to name all of the movie characters featured there.

The originator of that artwork, Jeff McMillan, recently found that post and provided all of the answers for us in its comments. Note that the invitation from which I originally got the picture did not have the final version of the painting on it, which includes a few additional characters:

The full list of answers, as provided by Jeff, is here (going roughly left to right, as my original key did):

1. Divine as herself (Pink Flamingos)
2. Funeral Bouquet (decoration)
3. Paul Reubens as Pee Wee Herman (Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure)
4. Kevin Smith as Silent Bob (Clerks)
5. Johnny Depp as Ed Wood (Ed Wood)
6. Jeff Bridges as The Dude (The Big Lebowski)
7. Gunnar Hansen as Leatherface (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre)
8. Sacha Baron Cohen as Borat (Borat)
9. Dennis Hopper as Frank Booth (Blue Velvet)
10. Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves as Dead Presidents (Point Break)
11. Sheryl Lee as Laura Palmer’s Prom Photo (Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me)
12. Malcolm McDowell as Alex de Large (A Clockwork Orange)
13. Frank the Bunny (Donnie Darko)
14. Christopher Guest as Nigel Tufnel (This Is Spinal Tap)
15. Rick Moranis as Bob Mackenzie (Strange Brew)
16. Sheryl Lee as Laura Palmer (Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me)
17. David Lynch
18. Tim Curry as Dr. Frank-N-Furter (The Rocky Horror Picture Show)
19. Funeral Bouquet (decoration)
20. Jeff Cohen as Chunk (The Goonies)
21. A Fury from The Warriors (was previously Michael Rapaport as Remy in Higher Learning)
22. A Zombie from Dawn of the Dead
23. Stephen Root as Milton (Office Space)
24. The Leg Lamp from A Christmas Story
25. Mitch Cohen as the Toxic Avenger (The Toxic Avenger)

Aside from admiring (and being amused by) Jeff’s artwork, and grateful to him for sharing the answers with me and allowing me to exhibit images of it here, I’m also really impressed (and a good bit jealous) that Kevin Smith bought it from him! So in addition to saying “Great work!” on the piece, and “Thanks!” for sharing it and the “solutions” to its puzzles, I’d also like to say “Congratulations!” to Jeff not only for selling it, but for selling it to such a hero of mine who he also got to meet in the process. Very cool.

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