WalkerPad

Charise is back under the knife on Nov 10th. They will be placing two temporary pins in her wrist. Right now it sounds like she will be out until Feb06.

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.

Who new cute was so easy to package for shipping.

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We turned Kaily loose at a pumpkin patch today. She seemed to have a really good time. Mostly she stayed in the big blue jumping things, pretty much had to crow bar her out of there. She liked the pumpkins too, but really no contest.

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There is a handfull of new pictures of kaily playing on the jumping thing, totaly ran herself raggid, and some of the fun stuff they had up.

Charise and Kaily picked out one pumpkin, not sure if it will be carved or not, last year we really got almost no tricker treaters.

Looks like a need to fix a tag bug with the g2 albums :p

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.