Cordkillers 119 - Cord-Cutting is Over! (w/ Brian Ibbott)

Cord-cutting is dead! So why do Hulu’s owners want to make an OTT service? Also FullScreen launches another service and TiVo finally courts cordcutters. But it’s dead you guys! With special guest Brian Ibbott.

CordKillers: Ep. 119 - Cord-Cutting is Over!
Recorded:  May 2 2016
Guest: Brian Ibbott

Intro Video

Primary Target

Signal Intelligence

Gear Up

Front Lines

Under Surveillance

Dispatches from the Front

FYI Margo Martingdale was NOT in THE Leftovers. The actress you are thinking of was Ann Dowd.

- Lehman

 

Because of studio paranoia, PC users haven't been able to take advantage of their hardware for video content. Steam is offering full 1080p movies at a user-selectable, locked bitrate -- unlike the Netflix "we'll decide to downgrade when we feel like it" system. Also, Netflix only streams in 1080p with the Windows 8/10 Metro app -- Win7 or Linux are left behind. The killer app for Steam will be if it offers UHD. I have a 4k monitor with Displayport and full HDCP support, but there's absolutely no legal way to watch any 4k movie content on it. None. I hope Steam plans to fill that void.

Sure, the HTPC crowd is tiny, but so are the new generation of HTPCs. Steam is thinking ahead about the PC being the one box to rule them all.

- BD


 

Dear Tom and Scott,

I can speak to technology as I experienced it in 1970, having been 8 years old at the time. Here are some details you may find interesting:

TV
We had 3 channels on TV. 4, if you counted PBS. PBS was on UHF, the rest of them were on VHF. There was a switch on the TV to switch between the two.
In the attic above our family room, there was an antenna. Every once in a while, my father would go up there and adjust it, when we were getting a particularly poor picture.
One thing that was very annoying was when the vertical hold went off kilter and the picture would roll in a strange way that is like nothing we experience now. There was a dial on the TV you had to turn to try and adjust this.
The TV we had in 1970 was encased in a nice wooden cabinet that sat directly on the floor. When it died, my father removed the electronics and made it into a cabinet that held the VCR and the a/b switch we used to switch between cable and VCR, and the TV sat on top of that.
Phones

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We had 2 extensions, which allowed for some interesting things. Like, I would be up in my parents' bedroom talking on the phone to a friend and my mother would pick up the phone downstairs to tell me dinner was ready.
You could dial your own number followed by the first digit of your number again and hang up quick, and then your phone would ring. A neat trick to play from the upstairs phone to get mom to pick up the one downstairs.
There was a number that you could call that would tell you the time and temperature.
If you didn't want calls, you could take the phone off the hook. The early equivalent of ignoring calls. This was before answering machines, so the phone would just ring and ring until the caller hung up if you didn't answer. Hardly anyone ever just let it ring, though.
Electricity

We had two special electric switch mini-console thingies in our house, one on each floor. They allowed you to turn on outdoor lights and one light in each room of the house. My mother would "blink the lights" in the family room to alert whoever was in there that she needed them upstairs.
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I have to share one other thing, that's probably from later in the 70s, just because it's so hilarious. Our first cable TV came with a box that literally looked like the bottom part of a blender -- you know the ones with rows of buttons, and if you push one down the one that's pushed down pops up. Ours had 2 rows and a switch to switch between them, and a dial to adjust the picture. And a really long cord (yes, a cord) that reached from the TV to the couch or easy chair, so you could sit and change the channels without getting up. Our first remote control.

Love the show!

- Beelissa



Link

www.patreon.com/cordkillers

2016 Summer Movie Draft
 

Tom MerrittComment