I’ve tasted it and it’s good…

As you’ve read here before, I am a huge fan of cutting edge television technology. More specifically, we Tivo, Netflix, and some times even torrent programming. Early on, after we got the Tivo, we tried Amazon’s Unbox service. Not bad, but they had a tiny selection. Since our Tivo is not an HD unit, we quickly looked at other choices.

Then we got Netflix. Sweet! I love Netflix. At first I used it almost entirely to watch the first two seasons of Battlestar Galactica. I found BSG at the beginning of season 3, and wanted desperately to watch all the earlier stuff. However, with me only benefiting, I saw the wife loosing interest quick if I didn’t sweeten the deal. So, every so often I’d include some kid’s movie that we missed in the theater. Then we went from one-at-a-time to two-at-a-time. That really helped. I tried hard to make sure that I had one and she had one with each turnover. Once we found House, about the same time I caught up on all the BSG episodes, she really started enjoying Netflix. I knew she had accepted it when she would navigate through the queue and prioritize the upcoming movies for herself.

Somewhere in there we got our HDTV. That really was a massive step us for us, as it pertains to entertaining ourselves. We upgraded to HD cable just after that and have really enjoyed our network programming in HD and even the occasional cable show, like Discovery’s Planet Earth. Then the Xbox Marketplace started adding movies we actually wanted to watch, and our HD movie watching experience began. What fun that has been. Now, I won’t even consider renting a movie that doesn’t have an HD option.

Then, for the few of my Twitter and Pownce friends, you saw me mention last week that I gave an already cancelled Sci-Fi program a shot; Firefly. Holy cow! How did I miss this one?

I quickly found a way to get the entire season, plus extras, and started watching it. However this one proved to be a little challenge. It also gave me the chance to try out my new set up. Just last month, I reinstalled OSX on our extra Mac Mini and hooked it up to the HDTV, via the DVI. I stripped off all the applications that would be unnecessary and simplified the extras I knew I would need. This system would become my very own, more powerful Apple TV. No hacking required for web browsing and access to things like Divx/Xvid support, alternative media viewing with VLC, and more freedom with my iTunes media. It took less than 30 minutes to get all the correct codecs installed and to set up my dock just right. I have a bluetooth mouse, for navigating, but no extra wireless keyboard. Now if only I could figure out a way to navigate the OS, simply, with the Apple remote. I digress. Firefly…

So, I had set this up a few weeks back and hadn’t really had a chance to give it a try. With my newfound interest in Firefly, I decided that it was ready. The weakest link was the audio quality. For now, all I have is a simple 1/8″ to RCA cable. This is plugged into the audio out of the Mac Mini and into our audio system, stereo only. For now it will have to do. (There’s a chance I may have a used Logitech USB audio interface coming my way. It has optical input/output and some other nice features.)

I have stored the entire season of Firefly on my primary computer’s external hard drive. They are wrapped in an AVI container in a nice Xvid format. With the right codecs installed, these files should play just fine in Front Row. For some reason they don’t. No problem, that’s where VLC arrives to save the day. Yes, yes, I could try and troubleshoot the first problem, but I just didn’t have the energy. Someday, I’ll figure it out. This time, I just wanted to watch Firefly.

Quickly using the mouse, I opened up the first episode of Firefly, over the network, in VLC and hit the full screen button. It started just fine. Now in all it’s compressed/HD glory I sat back and enjoyed Firefly for the first time. Additionally, to my satisfaction, the fancy little Apple remote works just fine controlling the playback in VLC. Mmmmm, technoligic.

I’ve also watched a few of the iTS purchased episodes of The Office, which play quite nicely. Now all I have to do is try out renting a movie through iTunes, to see how easy that works.

I’m ready for DVD’s to go away, and have no plans on playing around with HD-DVDs or Blueray-discs. I’m going to skip them all together.

Here’s a lesson for all those greedy, communists running the huge media companies. I’ll buy it or rent it, if you offer it through one of the dependable, high quality alternatives. But, if I want to watch it, and you’re stuck in 1990, then expect me to get the content I want, where I can. I’ll pay for it, if you let me.

Then, recently I bought a PSP, (the special edition Darth Vader one!). I thought that I’d give the little thing a try for playing some games. It came with Star Wars Battlefront II and I got SOCOM II to go with it. Without reviewing each game here, I enjoy them both and am glad to have them. One thing holding me up has been that I failed to get a Memory Stick. So, I couldn’t save any of my games or update the software when the Skype addition came out last week.

That just would not do! I found a sweet deal at Circuit City’s website for a 2gig Memory Stick Duo Pro ($30) and then shot over to my closest one to pick it up. Yes! I’m in business now!

The next day was my first chance to try and load up a movie. I loaded up ffmpegX and re-encoded the Firefly AVI’s into the perfect PSP format; mpeg-4. ffmpegX actually has the perfect settings built in as an option. No messing around. Even cooler, that sweet open-source app names your new movie following the PSP’s lame naming convention. It’s hard to find the right movie file, but I don’t care. I can now watch movies on my PSP!

The very next change I had, I watched the second episode of Firefly, on the PSP. Awesome!