I know I’m not the first person to do this — in fact, I’m probably closer to the 2 millionth person — but I thought it’d be a fun experiment nonetheless. On my recent honeymoon to Italy, I took pictures of some locations with both a DSLR and an iPhone 4. Can you tell which is which?
Burano
Venice
There’s a growing demand for “à la carte” cable pricing — i.e. the ability to pick and choose just the individual channels you want.
After all, why pay for stuff you aren’t using? You don’t want the electric company forcing you to keep your lights on when you’re not home. Paying only for the TV that you plan to consume makes sense. More choice and lower bills? Sign me up! Right?
There’s just one problem with that line of thinking. There isn’t a direct correlation between the bulk of your cable bill and the number of channels your receive. Choice is definitely good, but we could wind up paying more for less. A lot less.
I tried out Sony’s Google TV solution at a Sony store today. No, make that: I tried to try out Sony’s Google TV solution. I wanted to write a quick post today about my first thoughts on it, but I can’t, because I spent more time trying to figure out the darned remote than I did actually using it.
The remote is a perfect example of “too much of a good thing.” 90% of the buttons are only needed very occasionally, which means for most basic tasks (like, say, watching TV) it’s just a lot of wasted and confusing space. And when you do need to use one of the extra buttons, it’s not-at-all obvious which button is the right one to press. I had to **gasp** ask a sales guy for help with something as simple as moving the cursor when using the Google TV web browser (the answer: the large round button on the upper right doubles as a mini touch-pad — cool, but not the least bit intuitive).
I still want to try Google TV at home at some point, but based on my five minutes with Sony’s solution, I’m now leaning towards giving Logitech’s Google TV box a try. Its remote interface has to be better, right?
Some viewers are simply more valuable than others. No, I’m not talking about the precious 18-49 demo. CBS has been doing just fine going after all the eyeballs they can, even those with cataracts. I’m talking about the fact that how you choose to watch a TV show significantly affects your power as a viewer. Here’s my list, from the most powerful way to watch to the least:
buchnotes 