WalkerPad

Bah, we are all pretty sick. Kaily got Croup some sort of nasty cold/flue/throat/hacking cough thing. Kaily has had a good fever going since Saturday. We hit urgent care saturday (pointless, but safe), and then saw her Dr. today but not much to-do about it. Now Charise and I have low grade fevers… oh and one the cat keeps making nasty sneezing noises. *sigh* It’s just going to be a long week and this is just he ramp up to Charise’s wrist surgery.

Steve from Akimbo was nice enough to stop by again and made a few comments.

In retrospect I have such a weird mix of personal/family news and general tech comments that maybe I should split the blog or something….

Anyway, Steve Mentions that they don’t think the MCE Akimbo interface is ugly. Well ok, ugly is of course relative.
So more specifically my issues are, it’s blurry. The fonts are blurry the edges on pictures and boxes are soft and not well defined. The colors are more washed out (more then MCE). Everything has a weird low contrast, making for zero pop. The fonts being soft is particularly is bad. This makes it pretty hard to read from the couch when contrasted to the standard MCE interface. So, maybe ugly is the wrong term, how about less usable then it should be ?

This is on a 50″ Pany rear projection LCD LC13. This set runs at a native 720P and that is what I have windows outputting. MCE looks very good. HD Tivo shows look incredible. Games look good both at 720p and 800×600.

I was explaining to Charise how the Akimbo system works. Charise and her friends (other moms) have talked at length how they would be willing to pay to get a good quality commercial free kids network (not smoltsy GI Joe, transfer toy selling shows, but Sesame street and what not). I suspect this could be a big thing if done right, you should her the moms go off about this type of thing.

I’m going to have Charise poke at the system. When I described the monthly fee she was emendable. Then added how “a LOT” of the other shows have additional fee’s her reaction was a swift “That is not right”. I love using her as a sanity check, some times I can go a bit around the bend, then wonder if it it’s just me thinking funny things.
So there you go, from a non techi mom a first reaction to the price schema.
Then she asked something I hadn’t really though about. “Could I pay 12 or so dollars and have no fee’s?”. No, but maybe that is something akimbo should think about, I imagine it would be more like $15 though. I bet they could grow a lot more market share if folks didn’t feel nickel and dimed.

Being nickel and dimed irritates people. Paying for access to pay… is not a customer friendly model. The Akimbo folks like to point at the volume of other free stuff they offer but it’s hard to find and well… mostly seems to be crap (certainly with some acceptations). Volume is irrelevant, relevant free content is what matters. Really though if you are paying an access fee to get it, then it’s NOT free in the first place so I sort of object to the way that term is being used, but oh well.

On the HD side, it’s great they are going to be offering something. My question is will it be inside the window of their preview? I doubt I will pay to get a look at what I imagine will be a bunch more pay to play content.
Being wrong about that last part would be a good thing.

HD things I would like to see?
Kids shows, even if just unconverted
Anima
Adult swim (if it ever managed to show up on MCE)
Mmm everything else? I hate standard def :p. Really what I’m looking for here though is an excuse to watch the Akimbo content rather then my sat feed. Give me stuff that is relevant in HD. Stuff that my cable/sat company is still sending in SD and you have a big win.

The subscription feature as available needs some work, I’ll just leave it that. It also seems to mainly be available for pay content (I don’t think I noticed it on any free channels but I didn’t kill myself looking). Tivo like power words maybe? Don’t know but it doesn’t impress.

I use rollup2 so I don’t think my experience has been impacted by not being up to date, something Steve also mentioned was generally needed… Can you even get Akimbo without it?

I realize a lot of this read negative. So, some good things
It is nice and efficient to go hit the web site to setup shows. In fact it’s way better to do this then trying to use the akimbo MCE interface IMO.
Down loads seem pretty snappy, bandwidth is not overly choked (then why the time outs on page access through MCE? Need cluster?)

Fix it:
How about this give pay content a different color box or font so it can be seen at the top level instead of forcing people to drill down and then be annoyed about something that sounded interesting but no way would you shell out for it? A small graphically icon at the top level for mixed channels in the same color font as pay stuff would add identification for mixed bags? It all seems like a no braining. Honestly I can’t help but feel the obscuring of payed vs. not um… already subscription payed (Free) content is being made deliberately blurry, that bugs me.

1. Add a filter to hide all pay content in all modes and all channels that only have pay content. Lets see what is really being offered.
2. Fix the navigation bugs. Right now there is not a way from the UI to even submit bugs.
3. Make the UI hi res and fit better into the MCE experience. It’s fuzzy and ugly and slow. Why can’t I just get my akimbo content with a filter to recorded shows in MCE?
4. Season pass? Maybe I’m missing how to do this… My little girl seemed to like High 5 (made my teeth hurt, but not as much as Elmo). So how do I say go get some more of that and Q it up? Do I really have to dig around a and say DL each of these? Maybe I’m just a newb and missing it though.
5. Remove the show expiration dates. If you are going to ask folks to give you rent every month, you really can’t be taking away the things they download, that is just silly. I get that this is probable an IP issue, but jeez, maybe you can make the owners see that this make their content LESS valuable and your service along with it.

I won’t start the HD comments. Akimbo has said they want and plan do it. Good. I’ll judge it if and when they do…assuming my preview period has not expired . I’ll be curious to see what compression they use. I’m guessing mpeg 4 type files but that would not win much MS love so maybe not. The current resolution on stuff looks pretty bad on my 50″ Pany. Worse then the standard def coming across my HDTivo… but not so bad as to not be watchable. HD would add a lot of value, it might even be enough to get me to occasionally (very occasionally) open my wallet for some of the never ending sea of pay content. Though then I’m going to very quickly have a problem with paying a monthly if that is what is expected to get anything decent. Akimbo simple can’t have it both ways, Apple and the other music and what providers all sea that and ofer one or the other.

Well my off the cuff impression of Akimbo for MCE is not so good. This is not the killer MCE app I was looking for.

I think I approached with an open mind, I didn’t have any particular expectations after looking at the web site, but thought hey some anima and other stuff might be good and worth signing up for.

The premise. Akimbo wants to charge ten bucks a month to deliver their content over your bandwidth (it boggles my mind that anyone would get a dedicated cable like box for this service, but I digress, and that type of box has never been my preference).

My DSL line is a little anemic but hey I figured I could probable mange.

That is only the tip of the iceberg in fees though. Besides the monthly fee, almost every single show I looked at has a fee on top of it, seemly always around two bucks or so. Some as high as five. All the Anima had a price tag, all the marital arts stuff or movies….

Ooo I can watch the travel channel fro free :p, I don’t even watch that crap on Sat in HD I’m sure as hell not going to pay monthly for it a second time. Buy hey maybe that is just me.

Everything has an expiration date on it, free content (what there is of it that is not utter rubbish) is 7 days, paid seems to be 30. Now what the hell, this is going to a DVR, why would I pay for something that is just going to expire, it’s MY disk space and my bandwidth it was delivered over, this should pretty much makes it my property at least in regards to how long I want to keep it. I really don’t understand this approach it is very 1980 but guess that is where the content owners are still stuck.

I might put up with a few restrictions to get access to a incredible huge Netflix size library, sadly not going to happen any time soon, but certainly not for this paltry offering that you have to pay for repeatedly.

I couldn’t find cartoon network on the channel list, maybe it’s not for MCE or something lame like that, really one of the only things that sounded interesting. I’ll have to see if they have updated their lineup listing for MCE, the prerelease stuff was a pretty vague.

All and all there where a grand total of two channels that I’m interested in but won’t use (fee’s all the way down) and a couple others that might be interesting but are a mix of free and fee and frankly the whole things is annoying enough to put me off for good, but I’m going to see if a couple of the kids shows are any good for Kaily

Oh yeah, the UI embedded in MCE seems to be very flaky, I was getting frequent time out’s (load from their new release on MCE maybe the culprit) and other navigational errors pretty constantly. Things like the channel buttons suddenly moving you left instead of up, all would return to normal after hitting enter on something then going back, but it kept happening.
The UI looks like they might have dome some half baked port of their box UI and failed to really shake out the bugs.

I’ll probable post something more towards the end of the 30 day trial but off hand I doubt I will even point out how to use it to Charise, I can tell it would only confuse and irritate her, not a good state to have an already wounded wife in.

Akimbo, so promising, so not even close.

Edit:
The Akimbo rep guy was kind enough to stop by and made a few comments. Setting aside the marketing speak, I do love a company that listens and while I’m not impressed as of yet with this offering, that goes a long way with me. Those that listen (and actually hear) generally will be succeed, in the long run.

He correctly points out that this is a free Preview trial and it’s limited in its content and scope.

Fair enough, but lets all remember about first impressions. Seems to me they might want to rethink what they are offering. I don’t enjoy getting milked for fees (*shakes a fist at wells fargo, and just about everyone else*) and that is what I walked way feeling like it was all about.

My DSL performance through SBC has been pretty miserable and they just ended my promotional rate. I called horizon to see about FiOS, I had to call since my address wouldn’t come up in their online check tool. According to somebody in their fiber department not only is not available but they are not going to roll out in this area, ever.

Non compete with SBC? Sure a good thing they got all those concessions to help move competition forward by building out infrastructure nationaly… Hmmm.

I’m not a fan of Comcast but I might have to go back. My average DL from high through places is bellow 200, and the sbc support is… not useful. Not that comcast is much better but I’m hopping there 4mbs service might be a manage a bit better performance.

*sigh*

The FCC seems to think that removing line sharing is going to create more incentive to compete? Whole situation around here is pretty ugly, you would think that the heart of the valley would be a broadband utopia trying to show that you don’t have to be an island to make it all come together.

I was hopping for something big at Apples press show.
*yawn* 2$ for low res crappy tv vids? Pay more, get less, the apple way. It is to laugh.
Sorry, is there DVI out or something on that iMac thing, no. Looks like 20″ is your ONLY playback avenue. I guess the new mini’s might come with front row too though, maybe somthing will happen there. No tuner support? Sure the remote has less buttons, the product dose less, a lot less, duh.

I’m disappointed, I thought Apple would introduce a Strong competitor into the HDTV arena, but this is just a gimmick, and not a very compelling one, to drive pod sales. This is not going to create even the slightest bubble of competition and innovation in the PVR market place. It’s definitely not going to cause MS or Tivo or DirectTV or anyone else currently in the convergence market to one degree or another to loose sleep. Bummer we need some more competion and more big players to wake up the providers.

Well, turns out that Charise also broke her wrist. We just found out today, it had been bugging her since she fell but all the focus was on the elbow. The wrist started popping, so after dragging her feet for a bit she went in and had it x-rayed. Yep, its a separation (which I guess is worse then a fracture but not a break, or maybe it’s just a break that runs along the bone, not sure). So they want to put a pin in it but Charise demurred and is going to where a brace for a while and see if it will start to heal on it’s own. Boy… I would say she just can’t catch a break but… Anyway they are checking her for a bit longer from work and will check her wrist again in a week. It’s all on the same side, and this time actually x-rayed the other arm to for comparison.

We managed to catch Serenity. Dam, that was one movie this summer that did not disappoint. First good sci-fi I have seen in years. I hope it does well at the box office. Good choreography, none this start a move and then cut to the end of it Hollywood crap that is so predominate everywhere these days.

Go see it.

Charise is doing a lot better, though the pain really gets to her some times when she tries to tuff it out without to many meds (they still can make her stomach pretty upset). They are also going to start pushing her harder in physical therapy first day of that pretty much made her a wreck friday night. Sort of sucked a bit of the fun out of the old date night, but I thought that was going to happen so we just took it easy.

Speaking of which, kaily had her first over night away from home up in SF with Nana. Everything seemed to go well. It was a bit unnerving though I kept tip toeing and turning the volume down on things at night, subconsciously worried I would wake her up.

In the nobody cares but me department I Finlay, almost accidentally, managed to fix a nasty little problem with java that was making my desktop act very wonky and not letting me run any java applets reliable. Weird one, ruining a complete vid driver removal then installing the ATI cat 5.9 drivers fixed it, though the events should have been totally unrelated. Whoop for me anyway!

It was a busy weekend and we where only able to do about half of what we wanted to. I did a demo at the chinese moon festival, it was “ok”, parking was a mess. I’ll post some pictures if I can find anyone who took some. Then we we had a birthday party BBQ to go to which was a lot a of fun but exhausting. Charise is still far from 100% but is generally doing better overall, definitely on the mend! Sadly we couldn’t get over to the east bay for Derek and Milda’s baby shower, we have liked to but it was to much and to short of notice (one week). I’m off to buy a chain saw, don’t ask.