James Andrews

The other day I went over to a friend’s house who I hadn’t seen for a while. During my visit he went to show me some video. He grabbed a keyboard and start media player application on the PC attached to his TV. The application was XMBC an open source media player. I am a mac user, and a while back XMBC forked and Plex was created for OS X. Yesterday I downloaded Plex and started looking at it’s potential to be my multimedia app, instead of buying an AppleTV.

If you have used XMBC you will be happy to hear that the interface is identical. You can add your movies, music, photos, pretty much whatever media you have you can play, and it does it well. One of the things about XMBC and Plex is the ability to add plugin bundles. These bundles allow you to play videos from Comedy Central, Hulu, BBC and a slew of other online video resources. There are even some questionable un-supported bundles for “mature materials”. I tried a few of the different bundles and they worked pretty good. I did have issue with Comedy Central’s pluggin. Some videos listed didn’t play at all, and I am not sure if it was my internet connection or something wrong with the content, but I was slightly disappointed with that.

Plex also allows you to change the skin of the media player, but most of them are piss poor at best. The Best of the bunch is called Mediastream and is the default one that loads with it. You can change the background images to be what ever you want. Images from your favorite TV show, pictures you took on your vacation, or video. It’s all very cool and customizable. Though there seems to be no way to fas tforward through video, It always seems rewind. If you get to the beginning it will go to the end and rewind. I’ll have to investigate more.

I have an XBox360 and some time ago I bought the Harmony Remote for it. It so happens to support Plex, so I also programmed Plex into the remote. I took a little figuring out, but you can easily navigate through the menu items. Though there is still a lot they could do better. For example the VCR controls could actually control the video properly. play, stop pause etc. They don’t act correctly with the remote. Same problem exists with fast forwarding. You click on the right arrow expecting it to fast forward, and it rewinds instead.

I also think it would be real neat if it played mp3+g media (mp3 based karaoke). I need to get a mac mini so I can create a dedicated machine, but that’ll have to wait until later this year. early next year. I would have used an old iBook G4 I have, but Plex only works on Intel based macs.

For more information you can check out http://www.plexapp.com/

I give Plex 4 out of 5 remotes.

Last night I watched the 1st episode of the new FMA: Brotherhood series courtesy of Funimation. To continue on my future of television post. This is what I love about TV on the Internet. FMA Brotherhood Episode 1 was first shown in Japan 5 days ago. Funimation got it, had it translated and subtitled, in 4 days, and then had it online for the US anime audience.

It is located here in case you want to watch it.

The episode starts off with the same animation style that we say in the first FMA series. The general story telling seems very much the same as well. Ed gets all pissy about being called punnie, All the other members of the military seem to have the same mannerisms, not much different there. Within the first 5 minutes of the episode you can see that the continuity is off. Certain characters who you know should already be acquainted Major Hews his family, Ed and Al for example seem to meet for the first time here. When in the original series they had met before Ed became a state alchemist. In the original series Ed and Al even helped deliver Major Hews daughter who in the new series is already 2-4 years old. This really saddens me that they totally threw off the continuity. I am hoping there aren’t too many more similar issues.

So far it seems like it’ll be a fun series. We’ll see as they start introducing more characters.

Over the last 2 days I have managed to watch 102 episodes of a Japanese anime called “Naruto Shippuden”. I was able to do this legally online without having to pay to watch for each episode all thanks to the partnership between the Hulu and VIZ media corporation who are the license holders for Naruto in the US. There are a few things about this that really made me happy and I hope that some one somewhere in that industry reads this because I think they have a great thing going.

First off. I HATE Cartoon Network. As many of you may know CN is owned Time Warner when it was originally conceptualized the main idea was TW wanted a place where they could show all the old Hana-Barbera cartoons that they had purchased. That was all fine and good but it grew to be something more than that to the point where they were showing a lot of really great Japanese animation, as well as some great original material. Cartoon Network eventually started Adult Swim, which took control of CN’s airwaves after 10pm on weeknights and weekends. While they had some original programming based off of old Hana-Barbera media, they also had a nice collection of Japanese animation. Cartoon Network had become the leader in providing Japanese animation on TV despite ADV’s attempt at Anime Network.

Today’s Cartoon Network is a different beast. While they still do have some great original programming they have forsaken the Japanese animation even though there are still a lot of interest in Anime. With the exception of Pokemon which is played every weekday morning there is very little anime during the 7am-10pm hour. Adult Swim is a different story. For a while they had a lot of GREAT original programming. Aquateen Hunger Force which was my personal favorite and many others seemed to shine, but recently the shows have gone downhill in a menacing spiral and all anime has been pushed off to late saturday night/early sunday morning. A slew of [AS]’s mistakes include showing Family Guy to the point of it being unwatchable, shows like “Tom Goes to the Mayor” and “Tim and Eric good show great job”, and more recently the inclusion of “King of the Hill”, probably because some suit at TW felt that that horse hadn’t been beaten to death enough. They’ve basically ruined a good thing.

This is just one example of a television network screwing up and disappointing their viewers. Fox is notorious for scheduling changes that keep shows from becoming smash hits (ie Firefly/Family Guy), and I personally think that now is the time for the industry’s major overhaul.

NBC the parent company for Hulu is on the right track, but I still think they have a LONG way to go. Allowing the choice of what you want to view, when you want to view it is a great first step. Limiting the number of commercials per commercial break is AWESOME, even though I think they could do better in means of allowing the user a choice in the kinds of commercials that interest them. For example I don’t care about women’s products, don’t advertise them to me while I watch. The internet is empowering, allow the consumers the power to control what they want to see. There are so many times I turn on the TV and at 4am I can’t find a thing to watch because it’s all infomercials. Give me a world where I don’t have to watch banners at the bottom of shows advertising other shows. Give me a world where I don’t have to watch commercials about little blue pills until I need information about those little blue pills.

The state of television is dim, internet television’s future is bright, let’s do it right!

Reality TV shows for several years have been one of the main spotlights for TV stations.  Someone finds a topic they think will get the audiences attention, gets some gear and goes and produces a show.  Some of these shows are worth their production costs.  They teach valuable life lessons such as “Small People Big World” and “John and Kate plus Eight”.  Others are contests like “Top Chef” and “Project Runway”.  I will admit I have been dragged in by many reality TV shows.  I was a big fan of “Trading Spaces”.  I enjoy both “Top Chef” and “Project Runway”.  It’s nice to see the common folk given a chance to work towards something better.

There are 3 reality shows that really piss me the heck off.  These are “the real housewives” shows.  It started off with “The real housewives of Orange County” following the meaningless livestyles of five “housewives” and their families who resided within Coto McMansions.  The series was such a success that they have since launched “The real housewives of Atlanta” and “The real housewives of New York City”.  Both follow similar styles of the original.

What I really dislike about the show is first these women claim to be real “housewives”, but they are not.   Many of them have some kind of occupation.  I remember two were realtors.  A housewife is responsible for doing housework by definition.  They don’t.  They hire maids and cooks, and spend all there time gossiping, drinking, fighting and generally being a waste of space.  Second, these women have the worst attitudes they fight over stupid shit.  ”Oh, I can’t associate with you because I am a higher class than you”  or “someone said that someone else said that this person said that you are this that and the other thing…”.  It’s ridiculous.  The fact that this show is a disgrace to humanity.  It teaches no one anything except that drama is the only way to be successful.  Something our future generations don’t need.