If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

NBC Universal is looking to not renew its contact with Apple in regards to its Television content this December. Last season I purchased full seasons of Lost, Heroes, The Office, Studio 60 and Battlestar Galactica, mostly all NBC shows, from iTunes. I canceled cable and even bought an AppleTV. So you can expect, I’m a little pissed about this. If NBC wants more money, they are in ever right to ask for it and take it somewhere else if they are not happy. But if they pull from iTunes, I’ll have to resort to torrents for these files now. So Universal, since you’re so interested in dollar figures, what’s better…$1.99 of my money in your pocket or losing the war on piracy? When will companies learn that downloading shows via bitorrent isn’t about stealing, its about convenience. And I would gladly pay $1.99 an episode for convenience, especially with all the promising upcoming shows this season.

Beta 2 of Opera Mini 2 was released yesterday with a nice list of enhancements:

• Added encryption
• Added multi search, with shortcut #+9
• Added create search from form field
• Added landscape mode, shortcut #+*
• Added support for small anti-aliased bitmap fonts
• Added content folding
• Simplified setup process
• Improved image quality
• Improved fit to width mode rendering
• Simplified settings page
• Added native BlackBerry menu
• Allow BlackBerry to accept the EULA via the menu.
• Fixed decoding of images that were skipped when partially above the window
• Added clock adjustment setting
• Changing the font size via settings now clears the document cache
• Now saves full screen mode between sessions
• Dialogs are now displayed with round corners and alpha channel overlay windows
• Delayed randomess gathering for secure connections until first real page request

What caught my eye the most was the improvements made to its Blackberry support. I had tried beta 1 and was pretty unimpressed. It was clumsy, slow and hard to use so I deleted. With specific support for Blackberry devices, I decided to load up beta 2 on my BB Pearl and give it another chance.

Blackberry Changes
Right off the bat I was loving the changes. It now behaves like any Blackberry app should. The Menu button actually brings up the menu!! Previously you had to use the QW and OP buttons to access the menus. It was frustrating at best. They did a great job of making use of the Menu, Back and Trackball in the new version.

Landscape mode
As I segway from the changes for Blackberry devices, the 2nd change I was most excited about was the landscape mode. As soon as I loaded up the8thsign.com in Opera, I was hitting #+* every way I could. Nothing I did would get landscape mode to work. I must have spend 15mins using every possible key combination and still nothing. Looked under settings and no Landscape mode listed there either. So it looks like it its not enabled on Blackberry’s for some reason. Disappointing.

Other Features
Some of the nicer new features include using the 2-3-6-8 buttons to navigate around the webpage. This may have been in beta 1 but I don’t remember it being this easy or fun to navigate. When moving side to side, its even smart enough to stop at edges of text and pictures even if its only a few pixels away. Another feature I’ve noticed is that text will be reformatted to fit your screen, even when viewing the full page and zoomed in.

Most transitions are now made with a iPhone like slide effect. In most places its very smooth but gets choppy when zooming out of a page.

Also new to this version is a OS X like hud for shortcuts and info. To see what I’m talking about, hold down the * or # buttons for a few seconds. They also use this new interface for displaying link information.

Conclusion
Beta 2 is a HUGE improvement for Opera Mini 4, especially on Blackberry Devices. Why they didn’t include landscape mode on Blackberries puzzles me but hopefully it will show up in beta 3. Getting around webpages is fast and fun. I just wish there was some way you could set it as your default browser but RIM doesn’t allow that. Hopefully in BB OS 4.3. My only complaint is the full screen view looks very distorted. It maybe due to the small screen size but the iPhones full screen mode looks amazing. If you have a Blackberry, download the beta and check it out. You can get it for free by going to http://mini.opera.com/beta from your phone.

From a recommendation from The Totally Rad Show, I picked up Book 1 of Avatar: The Last Airbender from Netflix. I just finished the 5th DVD and I’m hooked on the show. While its definitely still aimed for kids, its easily enjoyed by adults. The plot revolves around Aang who is the Avatar, the last master of all the elements. The world is divided up into 4 nations, Water, Earth, Air and Fire, and the Avatar helps the balance between all the nation. Fire nation attacked the other nations 100 years ago and the Avatar disappeared. So fast forward 100 years and two children from the Water tribe, Katara and Sokka find Aang trapped in ice. After they free him they learn he is the missing Avatar and the last of the Air Benders. Benders are people who can manipulate their nations elements. So we pick up with Katara, Sokka and Aang setting out to put the different nations back in harmony. There is more going on but thats the basics.

The show offers a great mix of martial arts action, spirits, comedy and surprises. It feels like a Miyazaki film brought to life as a TV show. And I would suggest anyone who is a fan of Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke to check out Avatar The Last Airbender.

Captain N: The Game Master was one of those Saturday morning cartoons I watched religiously. Where else could I mixed my two favorite things as a child, cartoons and video games, in one package. I still have nightmares of Motherbrain and her drag queen voice.

All 3 seasons are finally available now in one 4 disc DVD set. Amazon has the set listed for $29.99 and I’ve already added it to my Netflix queue.

I don’t have cable nor do I want it but there are things I want to watch. To fill this need, a mixture of iTunes, Netflix and bittorrent gets the job done. So when Microsoft announced TV and Movies would be coming to Xbox360, I couldn’t help be excited. Right now I need to hookup my laptop to my TV to watch iTunes shows and movies or my own stuff using Frontrow. While it works, its less than ideal.

Strike 1: 360 isn’t equipped to handle HD content.

The biggest thing that got me excited was Microsoft would be offering HD content unlike iTunes or even bittorrent for that matter. My only HD fix right now is through HD DVDs on Netflix. With all HD content, the first problem is storage space. The Xbox360 has a 20gig HDD and only 13G is useable. That equals 2 HD Movies or 6 HD TV shows at the most. That would be ok if you could pull the content off and stream it using the 360’s new found Video Streaming but alas you can’t. I would settle for be able to connect a external USB HDD and having MS format it with screwy encrypted DRM’d filesystem just to be able to use it as extra storage.

Strike 2: Lacking Content

I was all about the CW and adult swim shows as iTunes does not carry them. The only shows I watch that I cannot get from iTunes are Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Robot Chicken, Veronica Mars and Smallville. Well, 3 of those are available from day 1 on the Video Marketplace. ALL RIGHT! Not so fast. While they are available, only the First Season’s on each of them are and there aren’t even in HD. Utterly useless. And thats not all, most shows and Movies are not in HD. Only a handful of each.

Actually content is weak with todays launch and hopefully it will continue to grow. With with the exception of V for Vendetta, not one movie is current and roughly 1/3 of all the TV shows are cartoons.

Strike 3: Pricing

Pricing isn’t horrible but $6 for a 24hr HD movie rental is little steep. For a penny less, you can get a 30d ay rental from Netflix. TV shows are on par with iTunes but as with iTunes, you pay the same price for a 15 mins episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force as you do for a 60 min CSI episode. I’m not upset about the pricing but I would have loved to see $1 TV show rentals and Movie purchase’s. I’m more likely to re-watch a movie than a TV show.

And for the record, MS Points suck. 480 points = $6?! huh? Ho much is 262 points? I don’t know either but I do know $6 is $6.

Closing thoughts

I bought an episode of CSI Season 7 and V for Vendetta today. Right now its been 6 hours since I purchased them and CSI is only 19% complete and V for Vendetta hasn’t even started. Obviously this is because everyone is hammering the servers but even when TV Shows and Movies launched on iTunes, I never had this problem. V for Vendetta HD DVD shipped from Netflix today. It will be interesting to see which one i get right.

Another problem I you can’t stream while you download. I’m going to have to wait until the full movie downloads before I can watch V for Vendetta. Even iTunes lets you stream.

I do like the fact you can download the SD version of HD content for free. Score one for Microsoft.

With Fall starting, that means the Network’s new Fall season is ready to start. While this time is mostly about what new shows are coming out and which are worth watching, lets take a look at which shows will not be returning this season:

ABC:

• Invasion
• Sons & Daughters
• Less Than Perfect
• Hope & Faith
• Rodney
• Commander-In-Chief
• Freddie
• In Justice
• Emily’s Reasons Why Not
• Crumbs
• Hot Properties
• Jake in Progress
• Alias
• The Evidence
• Miracle Workers

CBS:

• Threshold
• Out of Practice
• Courting Alex
• CBS Sunday Movie
• Love Monkey
• Yes, Dear
• Still Standing

The CW :

• The Bedford Diaries
• Blue Collar TV
• Everwood
• Living With Fran
• Modern Men
• Pepper Dennis
• Related
• Survival of the Richest
• Twins
• Cuts
• Eve
• Get This Party Started
• Half & Half
• Love, Inc.
• One on One
• South Beach
• What I Like About You
• Charmed

FOX:

• Arrested Development
• The Bernie Mac Show
• Free Ride
• Killer Instinct
• Kitchen Confidential
• Malcolm in the Middle
• Reunion
• Skating with Celebrities
• Stacked
• That ’70s Show
• Unan1mous

NBC:

• Surface
• Joey
• E-Ring
• West Wing
• Will and Grace
• Four Kings
• Teachers
• Heist
• Celebrity Cooking Showdown

I watch very little TV and even less than that is of reality TV. One show I’ve gotten into this season is Rockstar: Supernova. Basically is an American Idol for rock bands, it just happens that the rock band is a “super” group consisting of Gilby Clarke, Jason Newsted and Tommy Lee.

One of the contestants is a girl by the name of Zayra Alvarez. I’m pretty sure she gets her outfits from superherocostumes.com Take a look.

X-Men??

Batgirl??