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Tagged: digital

July 31, 2011

Windows 7 + Creative Audigy SE + What U Hear

I play in band, and for learning new songs opening them up in Audacity and slowing down them tempo is a great help. So pissed off that Creative have disabled “What U Hear” in the Windows 7 driver. Rolling back to “SB24_VTDRV_LB_1_04_0065A.exe” after uninstalling everything Creative and rebooting seems a hacky workaround, but it works.

July 11, 2011

Pay to view

I don’t mind paying for films, just not in the way you are trying to sell them to me.

I don’t want a shelf of DVDs

When I lost my LP collection, I switched to cd’s which were smaller and less aesthetically pleasing to look at when listening to the album, and as soon as I could go completely digital – Emusic, Spotify (and for books too) I did. I pay and play and that’s fine. I have a box of cd’s that I’ve thrown the cases for, but they never see the light of day.

So I have no desire to build up a collection of DVD’s. Especially when a new film sells for £15. £2-3 tops, and I’ll buy. But I’ll rip it and watch on my PC. That box and disc are just a way of getting it to my PC or Xbox. Let’s skip that step, please.

I want to watch the film, not 20mins of adverts

Keep your trailers off DVD's - there's better online

And if I buy that DVD, I rip it, because the film is what I want to watch. I stopped renting because I had to pay to rent, and then be forced to watch your promos. No more. I can use Apple trailers and Youtube to see trailers. Don’t force me to watch yours.

I don’t want your animated menus with repeating sounds

Is it my fault you can't tell I bought the DVD in the UK?

And if I want to watch 5 episodes of “Family Guy” or “Breaking Bad” back to back, your crappy menu with annoying sound clips that loop over and over and over aren’t the answer. And if I reant or buy a DVD in the UK, why are you making me click my way through 20 screens of language choices?!

I don’t want to install your program to watch a digital download

VLC player is great – it plays a whole bunch of formats, handles subititles easily, does fullscreen, does always on top, and is open source (if that matters to you). I have it installed on my PC, I use it to work. I’m funny about what I install on it. I’d rather chance a virus than ever risk installing your dodgy software so you can delete the film I paid to download from my PC because I started watching it, got interrupted, and didn’t begin watching it again with some arbitrary time period. Just let me download the film in the format of my choice, and let it sit there forever until I delete it.

I don’t know what I want to watch when

Sometimes a film is wrong for a mood, and five minutes in it gets switched it off, and it’s time to try another. So I like having a selection of TV and films for when the mood takes me. If after watching three seasons of “Breaking Bad” I fancy a “Louie” chaser, it’s there. At 4am a trip to HMV isn’t really an option. And even if it was, if it is currently showing on TV, will it be available in the box set to buy yet?

What would I like?

  • A site with a list of TV shows and films
  • With a download in a choice of formats
  • That aren’t DRM’ed
  • That I can download quickly
  • And pay for easily, by episode or series

And sure, I might share a film or show with someone. I know you worry about this. You think that film or show should be locked down so that however much I rave about it, a friend has to take my word for it and buy their own copy. But look at a show like “Shadow Line” on the BBC. Brilliant. But as the weeks pass, it is no longer available to view. One by one, starting with the first episode – the one people will want to watch to see if they like it – it is no longer available to watch. So what can a friend do? Trust me enough to buy the DVD box set when it is finally available? Don’t think so. They’ll forget about it, and you’ll decide that it cost too much to make, not enough people watched it, and that’s that.

Not much point in raving about it if people can't watch it, dammit

Instead, let me download each episode for £1 or so. Maybe I’ll share it with people. But when season two comes up, perhaps they download their own copy. Isn’t that better than everyone downloading it for free from sites where you have no control over the content and make no money from?

Pirate sites show you what people want and how - rip off their ideas for a change

I pay for Spotify, I paid for Last.fm. I pay to see films at the cinema. And if I download a film and love it, I buy the DVD just to give something back. But I’m fed up of buying DVD’s I don’t need or want when there are perfectly good alternatives the film industry could be looking into (but please don’t make me stream).

July 3, 2011

Geeks may be building the web…

…but that doesn’t mean the world will want what we build.

 

Last.fm visualization of my top artists compared to all the others I've listended to

Last.fm with it’s listing of every song you’ve listened to, and how many times, and the total number of times that song as been listened to is great for geeks. We love sorting and collating and cataloguing. And Flickr, with the number of views a picture has had, and the graphs showing the ebb and flow of visits to your pictures. And then there was the ultimate in built by geeks for geeks app that was Google Wave. And where Last.fm has it’s music listening service, and flickr is a great way to share photos, and all the stats and graphs and figures can be ignored by the average non-geek, Google Wave was just a geek tool. And even then it went a step too far.

Facebook works because at the end of the day it isn’t for geeks. Sure, it’s great for geeks to use and was built by the the archetypal geek, but it what it does isn’t geeky. And that’s why I suspect Google+ may fail. It’s a geeks’ answer to Facebook in much the same way Google Wave was the geeks’ answer to IM and Skype and Email. But the averge web user just doesn’t need what we need, doesn’t obsess over the stats we obsess over, and won’t get beyond a quick trial however enthusiastic we are.

For some, that’s a good thing. But I see that as us just withdrawing to our lunchtime school computer clubs. Sure, the rest of the world may eventually come to see the toys we play with as useful at some point, but give the average user a choice and they’ll go for the iPad and it’s walled garden hand holding friendly face every time.

June 7, 2011

A digital dare

No sooner than I stop all Facebook notifications, update my profile to say “Really don’t check Facebook much anymore – email or mobile or twitter waaay better for a response”, and retweet @hamishmcdonald‘s “Nuking Facebook tmw. So many people I care about, but blendered together in a proprietary, junky medium. Relief! Long live the real web” along comes a digital dare c/o Twitter.

Well, hell yeah, I love a dare. So off I go clicking through the choices. But what result do I get? “Befriend a stranger on Facebook”. Ha, okay, I agreed to do the dare when I watched the video so, so be it.

I’ll let you know how I get on.