seantorbett.com

Broadcast television engineering topics and rants.

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The PlayOn Beta. Bridging Internet Video To My TV.

7 October, 2008 (18:00) | Computers, Projects, TV | No comments

About a month ago I was selected to download MediaMall’s PlayOn Media Server and try their beta version of software that bridges content from several Internet video provider sites to a TV.  In reality it requires a few more components along with the software to make it work, such as a PC to run the [...]

New Site Location, New Site Look, New Site Smell.

6 August, 2008 (15:41) | Computers, Projects | No comments

I thought I had a good thing going for the past few years by having my websites hosted by 1AND1. Unfortunately, over the past month 1AND1 has been having serious reliability issues and my sites have been inaccessible for days(!) at a time. Calls to the tech help line were anything but helpful. [...]

Dr. Horrible Tops In ‘TV Shows’ On iTunes. Only It’s Not A TV Show…

21 July, 2008 (13:29) | Computers, TV, rant | No comments

As broadcasters continue to face eroding audiences, lousy programming, declining ratings, a lackluster fall line-up and pending changes in FCC rules regarding ‘localism‘; here comes another punch in the gut.
Joss Whedon of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Firefly and the Serenity movie fame created a three part mini-musical (!) video netcast called “Dr. Horrible” that only [...]

Will The Popcorn Hour NMT Replace My XBMC?

13 June, 2008 (10:18) | Computers, Projects, TV | No comments

Not yet.  And after the latest debacle with the June 18th firmware, maybe not ever.  My old, original xbox softmodded to run XBMC is still more polished and faster than this little guy, despite the glowing reviews I read which led me to purchase the Popcorn Hour NMT in the first place.
As [...]

Comcast got Hacked! Thank You ‘No Script’!!!

28 May, 2008 (19:22) | Computers | No comments

I just tried to log into my Comcast webmail and was greeted by the following at the Comcast.net main URL:

It looks like KRYOGENIKS EBK and DEFIANT are looking for credit on this hack.
Thankfully I have ‘NoScript‘ installed as a plugin for my Firefox browser to minimize the exposure I would get when something like [...]

Local Broadcasters Can’t Catch A Break. Mostly Their Fault.

26 May, 2008 (17:14) | Computers, TV, rant | No comments

A writer’s strike, shitty programming and the Internet. Oh my!
Viewer’s are leaving appointment television by the droves and broadcasters are scrambling to do something, anything to keep them firmly planted on the couch during prime time. I’ve covered the topic of declining viewers in the past, but the trend in hemorrhaging viewership of [...]

Is the NAB Show going the way of COMDEX?

17 February, 2008 (14:07) | Computers, NAB, TV, rant | No comments

For those that don’t know, COMDEX was a computer centric convention that ran in Las Vegas from 1979 to 2003 before lagging attendance from competing conventions and the convergence of consumer electronic devices ultimately made it uninteresting and killed it off.
Back in November of 2007 Avid, currently facing too much competition from Final Cut software [...]