There isn’t any word on when/if it will be deployed but there is some very interesting information about the direction that Netflix is heading with their Watch Now feature. Of particular interest to several people I know at about 7min into the presentation they show a shared movie viewing interface that allows you to sync up movie viewing with people that are, presumably, on your Netflix Friends list. There is also a built in IM client for chat.
A few of the other things that they show off are Firefox and Macintosh compatibility as well as support for Chapters and Subtitles which are all extremely welcome additions.
Something else that is not stated, but I think is at least somewhat implicit is that since the new player is built on Microsoft’s Silverlight (formerly WPF/e) technology it should be relatively easy to create a Media Center plug-in that can run the player. I’m hoping that is part of their design plans but I’m not quite holding my breath just yet.
All that said I have to say that I actually think that the existing implementation is an excellent start. There have been a couple of occasions when I was between movie shipments and wanted to watch something that I was able to use Watch Now to see a few things, including all of Red Dwarf Series 2 and 3. While it is not nearly as comfortable to watch things at my desk as it is from my couch, the convenience was still nice.
I finished “Dark Cities Underground” by Lisa Goldstein yesterday, and I’m still having some trouble figuring out exactly what to say about it, but I think I need to say something.
To begin with, I really adored the idea behind this book. While it isn’t entirely original, it is a very nice twist on several similar ideas seen in books by Jasper Fforde, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, and Robert Rankin and is related in many ways to movies like “Stranger than Fiction”. It is a sort of meta-fiction where the line between fiction, mythology, and the real world is a sometimes elusive thing. If you are like me and enjoy that blurring of reality the basic premise of “Dark Cities Underground” is worth looking for despite the problems of the narrative.
Oh, the problems of this narrative.
For the record: I am not one that needs a lot of depth to my characters. I’ve been reading and enjoying mediocre SF and Fantasy for long enough that as long as the story or idea is good the characters can be borrowed from the front of a high sugar cereal box and I’m just fine with that. I do however have my limits and the lack of depth in Ms Goldstein’s characters is pretty amazing. I think that it might be possible to argue that this lack of depth could be appropriate for the meta-fiction context by placing simplistic characters in a blended world of fiction and reality except that my personal definition of meta-fiction involves putting realistic characters in that blended world where the edges of fiction and reality are vague. Without good characters my suspension of disbelief just can not kick in, and I end up writing a paragraph about how I didn’t like the characters.
Cardboard characters themselves would not by themselves inspire such caution about recommending this book to friends. The plot, or more specifically the author’s use of the Plot Stick of Doom, is where I get reticent to even mention this book. If you have ever watched classic horror or SF movies before George Lucas got into the industry you would be hard pressed not to have noticed the obvious strings, models, and primitive blue screens that were the state of the art until the late 1970s. If you have ever watched an episode of Star Trek and noticed that “rock” is Styrofoam or an episode of Doctor Who and the plethora of bubble-wrap costumes, you will have some idea of how subtle Lisa Goldstein is with plot. If you don’t like books that are telegraphed early and often you will not like this book.
Despite all of that I kind of liked it. Despite the flawed narrative the very interesting core idea is explored very well and in decent context. I still don’t think I can call it a good book, but it might be worth reading.
I lost a bet (for no actual money, but I do owe someone dinner) that said it would be done before Thanksgiving with the release of the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player.
Just an update about how Intelliflix is doing. I decided back in July that it wasn’t worth the hassle of trying to cancel my prepaid 1 year membership, so I’m just keeping track of how it’s performing at this point.
A couple of interesting tidbits:
The inventory of Xbox 360 titles displayed on their site has not changed since I joined on April 8, 2006, even though 24 titles have been released since then.
I have received exactly 2 game discs from Intelliflix, both of them Xbox games. (I joined because they advertised that they rented Xbox 360 games.)
I have received a total of 25 discs from Intelliflix in the time that I have received 69 discs from Netflix.
It takes an average of 6 days for a movie to report as “shipped” before I see it in my mailbox. (Fastest: 3 days. Longest: 10)
It takes an average of 4 days for a movie to be reported as “returned” after I ship it back. (Fastest: 3 days. Longest: 5 days)
Longest time between shipments in a queue: 52 days. (At the suggestion of their customer support department, I have my account split into 3 queues. The “game” queue has shipped 2 discs to me in the time that it has existed, I have received one of those. The queue was created on July 5, 2006.)
The most notable feature added to their website is that now they tell you which of the items in your queue they apparently do not have in their inventory.
As you can see I’m still not particularly happy with the service, but I think it would be far more trouble to cancel my 1 year prepaid membership than to continue to track how well they are doing and maybe satisfy my curiosity about whether they actually have any Xbox 360 games at all or not.
Just in case there was any lingering doubt over the likely absence of anything “good” in the announced Marvel Avengers movie, Bags and Boards says that the person responsible for writing this oncoming travesty will be Zack Penn who has a decidedly checkered record.
I just don’t know if I can even begin to be properly pessimistic about the chance that the newly announced series of Avengers movies is going to be even watchable. Have you seen the travesty that is The Ultimate Avengers Movie? It’s not even like the recent Marvel movies have been really very good. The decline in quality is obvious, and by the time they get around to this long list it will be CaptainAmerica all over again.
Despite a fairly busy and somewhat inflexible layout, DailyMotion seems to have a really nice feature set. However my attempts to post through their “Post to Blog” feature rather than copy/paste the string into my own software doesn’t quite seem to be working with my installation of WordPress at the moment. Update: It actually appears that it did post successfully every single time, but was showing an error on the DailyMotion side of things. Kind of odd. I’ve left the best of those three attempts in place.
Michael J. Nelson from the now gone MST3K has a new gig, but doing the same old thing. RiffTrax are audio commentaries that you play on your portable media player while watching a particular movie.
Still, it’s a good enough reason to put “Road House”, the only track available right now, in my Netflix queue. Given the way the poll on their site is going however, it looks like “The Matrix” may just be next.
