So, Lost ended, as you may have heard, and you also may have heard your friends complaining about the number of commercials that were in the finale. EW says there were 107 of them in 2.5 hours — or more than 45 minutes worth. [More]
tv
Family Of Six Ditches Satellite TV, Gets All Shows Online
By 5.17.10
Three months ago, Larry made a bold move. An avid sports fan with a wife and four kids, he unplugged the satellite TV. Larry loves TV, so much that he once worked in a TV station for six years. But his wife made him do it. That $50/month fee had to go, so he learned how to hook up his TV to the internet. “We’ve had our challenges,” he writes, but, “even with March Madnes I’ve managed to save a ton of money and with a few small adjustments, not miss out on any of our entertainment.” Here’s what he did and how it worked out. There’s nothing super fancy here but for someone just trying to get their feet wet, it has some good ideas: [More]
New TV Watches You While You Sleep
By 5.15.10
Snoozing in the flickering light of your TV set could be a thing of the past, if you want it to be — a new Sony Bravia model uses facial recognition technology to detect when you’re sleeping and turns its display off, The Guardian reports. [More]
Google Prepares To Dominate Your TV With New Technology
By 5.2.10
In case there was any doubt, Google is getting ready to just straight up dominate the world: The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is going to unveil Android-based TV software in May at the kind of event where life-changing announcements are made, the Google I/O conference. [More]
NPR Exposes Documentary Hucksters Preying On Non-Profs
By 4.23.10
NPR just wiped the floor with Vision Media, the company that demands big bucks from non-profits and startups to pay for what they say will be a retired and beloved anchorman Hugh Downs-hosted public TV show about them. Invariably, NPR found, the shows never broadcast and the limited few that do air as paid commercials. Once again, it just goes to show, never do business with anyone from Boca Raton. [More]
"Brownie Husband" Brings Emotional Eating To Delicious New Level
By 4.12.10
Tina Fey’s new fake commercial for a product called “Brownie Husband” is delicious and gross. (Whoever made the prop should get a special award.) It captures in one ridiculous product all the promises advertisers make about filling your emotional needs, with just a microwave and a vacuum-molded plastic tray. It’s also kind of food porn-y. Watch it below. [More]
Does TV’s Dr. Oz Really Know How To Fix What Ails You?
By 4.11.10 — Updated: 1.4.13
It’s easy these days to turn to the Internet to try to self-diagnose what ails you, especially with the glut of information provided by authority figures like Dr. Mehmet Oz – better known as Oprah Winfrey-certified Dr. Oz – one of the most recognizable names in the media when it comes to comes medicine. But a new report by the Chicago Tribune is calling his wide-ranging advice into question. [More]
Judge Forces Comcast To Pay Customer $5,087
By 4.9.10
“I have researched his issues and based on our records the case is without merit,” wrote a Comcast spokesperson to local news investigator Amy Davis. She was looking into the case of Wayne, whose credit was damaged by Comcast just before he was going to refinance his house. This meant that on top of what he had already paid to lock in a lower interest rate, he had to pay several thousand dollars more. [More]
HDTV Popular With Octopuses, Jury Still Out On Squid
By 3.22.10
Marine biologists studying octopi have begun using HDTV to simulate prey and predators, relying on the sharp onscreen images to trick the animals into responding as if they’re actually under attack or on the hunt (when basketball is on, they reach for breaded shrimp and Hebrew National franks). [More]
Comcast To Add Third Dimension Of Boringness To Masters Golf Tourney
By 3.16.10
Maybe golf would be a more interesting televised sport if it appeared that golf balls or clubs were flying out of your TV right at your head. Comcast will put the theory to test come the April 7, when it will broadcast the Masters in 3D both on TV and online. [More]
Leaks: How Much It Sucks To Be A Comcast Customer Service Rep
By 3.12.10
Come, come hither. Step into the flesh of a Comcast customer service rep. Doesn’t it feel nice? Yes, yes. This is what it’s like to work for Awesome Cable Inc. Now you know what they go through, and tricks and tactics for dealing with them. Come my pretty, and let the Comcast mole teach you the ways… [More]
New 3D TVs To Cost You $1K Per D
By 3.11.10
Colin Boyd of Get the Big Picture put together a roundup on the upcoming home entertainment craze of 2010, 3DTV. The verdict: New bigscreen, 3D-capable TVs in the 46 to 50-inch range from Panasonic and Samsung will cost about $3,000. And the early industry standard seems to be that the sets will come with two pairs of glasses. Additional glasses, required for watching in non-blurry vision, will cost an extra $150. [More]
No More Daily Show Or Colbert Report On Hulu
By 3.2.10
The New York Times is reporting that Viacom plans to pull its Comedy Central programming from Hulu next week because it can’t reach an agreement with the video site on compensation. In a post today on its blog, a Hulu executive notes that Hulu was “unable to secure the rights to extend these shows,” and that they’ll be gone as of 11:59 pm PST next Tuesday, March 9th. After that, you can continue watching them on TheDailyShow.com and ColbertNation.com. [More]
Cut The Cable And Watch All Your TV And Movies Online
By 3.2.10
Cutting cable can save you upwards of $500 a year, and Lifehacker shows you how to do it while still getting to watch all your favorite shows and movies online. [More]
Dish Network Overbilled Me By $600
By 2.23.10
Jason says Dish Network stuck him with an unwarranted $300 bill, then after it credited him back the $300, billed him another $300 for no good reason. He says Dish has corrected the errors now, but he wants to disconnect. [More]
Vision Media Tries To Squash Blogging Of Public Documents Re:Frivolous Lawsuit
By 2.17.10
The makers of the Hugh Downs video ripoff we wrote about are suing 800notes.com, a site that lets people anonymously post info about unsolicited calls they receive. Vision Media wants the posters’ identities revealed. That’s not uncommon, but what’s really rich is that they asked the judge for a gag order to stop 800notes lawyer, Paul Levy of Public Citizen, from posting the motions about the case online. Yes, they wanted to stop people from reposting public documents because doing so was “embarrassing” and “defamatory”. [More]
Oscars Give In To Viewers, Tell Winners To Save "Thank You" Lists For Backstage
By 2.16.10
The stores you go to might not be listening to your complaints and suggestions, but someone is — the producers of this year’s Academy Awards broadcast. In a move sure to please the viewing audience and outrage the celebrity publicist community, the folks behind the Oscars have asked winners to prep two speeches: One for their on-air acceptance and one for a separate backstage webcam. [More]
NBC Blocking Certain ISPs From Online Olympic Streaming
By 2.16.10
If you connect to the internet via Verizon DSL, don’t expect to be able to catch your triple axels in real time. Robin complains she and her husband have been ring-blocked since NBC didn’t put the ISP on its approved list. [More]
