I caught part of an interview on TV some while back with three archeologists. I can’t recall the name of the show and I’m not even sure of the channel. I think it might have been TVOntario. Anyways, one thing that does stick in my mind was the last question asked which went something like, “What is the one thing you wouldn’t want to find on a dig site.” Each of the archeologists answered differently.

1) An Archeological Anomaly. Although the archeologist said “pyramid,” (in Canada). This would be a problem since it would mean having to rethink many theories about the site and possibly the entire history of a region or a country. And it also threatens the credentials of many doctorials and masters. The last thing a professor at a university wants is to have their doctoral thesis destroyed since it could mean not only loosing their credentials but their credibility as well as their job.

2) Gold. Finding gold on a dig site would seem to be desirable, although it only draws in looters and onlookers. One of the worst things for archeologists is to have the place looted because the artifacts loose their connection to the site. Where and how an artifact is found is often just as valuable as the artifact.

3) A skeleton. With the possible exception of a tomb, when a skeleton or mummy is found on a dig the police often have to be called in and the dig shut down, possibly for some time, until they can determine if there has been any foul play or whether it’s just an ancient burial. But even in the case of a proper burial the body may need to be handled with special procedures, as is the case of a First Nations burial. I recall one story of a farmer accidently discovering one and many other burials have likely been found that way.

While nobody would say that TV is dead by any means, the recent US shutdown of analogue TV can be seen as the passing of an era. TV as people knew it in the 1950s is practically gone. People don’t watch television anymore, they watch video. And that’s even more true of the newer generations.

In the 50s, 60s, and 70s, people would sit in front of the TV, often as a family, and watch it when their favorite shows came on. Then in the 1980s the VCR became a feature in most people’s homes. (While the home VCR came out in the 60s, it wasn’t mainstay until at least the late 70s.) Suddenly people started to watch not just live TV but recorded TV.

But nowadays a person can watch a TV show not just from a live broadcast but from a DVR (including TiVo), a VCR (there are many still in use), a DVD, streaming across the Internet or as an Internet download (in many different formats). And even so-called live TV can be watched delayed on a PVR so that the ads can be passed over or the show can be paused. In the “old days” the idea of pausing TV was not even considered. People had to rely upon long ad breaks to find the time during the show to do what they need or wanted to do.

While older generations are still use to TV, newer generations are going to get use to the various ways in which they can get their shows. As it is the quality of a downloaded show may be just as good as cable or satellite. They are not going to have the patience to sit through ads nor wish to wait and watch a show at the specific time a network decides to air it. Broadcast TV will be considered one of many options. And it’s this shift in attitude that could eventually lead to it’s demise. The shows will remain but they just won’t be delivered by broadcasters.

For the time being (at least the next few decades) TV isn’t going anywhere. It’s still the best way to deliver TV content and the Internet just can’t handle live TV like a Superbowl or Oscars the way TV can. Radio is still around despite music (or at least specific songs) being more easily accessed through the Internet. And TV is a passive medium, which makes it more relaxing than trying to load up a video on a computer. But broadcasting is expensive and eventually the revenues needed to support the system could fall away, leaving the Internet as the new broadcasting medium.

TV as we knew it , the analogue broadcast one always watched live, in the 50s, 60s and 70s has now passed away.

It almost seems as if the new fall television season hasn't started. There's just so little new material to interest me, and even many of the existing shows I've been watching don't seem to appeal to me. I tried to watch Flash Forward but lost interest after the first five minutes. I did watch the pilot of Eastwick but doubt I'll watch any more episodes; there's just too much male-bashing going on.

There's still one or two shows I've yet to see, but the following is based upon what I expect to be my current fall viewing schedule. I'm leaving out Jay Leno only because I'm likely to watch it off and on, catching it when it's convient as I did when he was on the Tonight Show. I watched the current Tonight Show over the summer but I'm more likely to watch instead. Pretty much all the shows I watch are recorded first.

Monday

8pm Heroes

9pm Trauma

I can't say if I'll stick with Heroes. I watched the pilot and it wasn't that bad. And considering there's no competition at that time I'll likely keep watching it. And there appears to be only 13 episodes this year, so it's not going to be a full year commitment.

I've yet to watch Trauma which premieres tonight. It's one of the few new shows I've any interest in. I'm hoping it's going to be like a modern Emergency, although I don't expect anywhere near the amount of action the previews make it out to have. And I'm not interested in medical dramas right now, so I might not watch past the pilot.

Tuesday

8pm NCIS

9pm NCIS:LA

NCIS:LA may be the only new show I watch. While it's not as strong as NCIS, it's not unwatchable either. And NCIS has been starting to slip in the writing lately, but it's still a strong show. It's uncertain as to whether Ziva will return to the team (after the season premiere), although I wouldn't mind a new face. The whole Ziva/Tony thing is getting tired.

Wednesday

8pm Bones

Wednesday seems to be the lightest night of the week so far. Bones is airing on a Canadian station a day earlier than the US so I'll likely watch it then.

Thursday

(8pm Bones – if I miss it on Wednesday)

9pm Supernaturual

9pm Fringe

10pm The Mentalist

Supernatural and Fringe are both airing at the same time, so I'll likely do some time shifting or tape one off-air. Although I've yet to watch last week's episode of Supernatural so there's still a chance I'll drop it. I wasn't too keen on it after last year, although that might partially have been because I was watching so much. This year is much lighter so I might have the time for it.

Friday

8pm Smallville

Like Supernatural I was going to drop it, although with it switched to Fridays there's nothing to really interfere. Although like Supernatural, I've still yet to watch last week's episode which was the pilot. And I tend to watch a lot of recorded stuff on Fridays so I wouldn't miss it.

Last year was initally suppose to be it's last year. And when last season ended this year was suppose to be it's last year. But now they are saying that it might not be. It's appearent that they're just going to run it into the ground. If it really was it's last year I would have cause to watch, but otherwise no. What I might do is to skip it and if it does turn out to be it's last year I catch up over the summer.

I'm not listing Saturday and Sunday because I tend to watch a lot of recorded stuff then, like movies and stuff I may have downloaded. I also spent the summer catching up with Legend of the Seeker, so I might get back into watching that show when they air new episodes.

So that gives me about 9 or 10 shows to watch this year, which is about half of what I tried to follow last year. And of those, four of them I'm likely to drop. Fortunately, I've got a lot of recorded stuff to catch up on or watch again.

With the exception of The Mentalist and whatever Leno episodes I catch at 10pm, prime time this year seems to be only two hours long. I lost interest in medical shows after ER went downhill and with the two NCIS, Bones and The Mentalist I don't need any more cop shows. Even Fringe is something of a cop show.

At least one of the shows I would be watching, Chuck, won't be starting until after Christmas. By then Heroes should be finished. There was also another new show this season that won't be starting until then, although I can't say whether I'll watch it until I see it. I'm also able to get RTN off-air at times and there's a few older shows on it I find interesting. Although I have seen practically all of them, even if it was years ago.

Overall, I don't expect to be spending any less time watching things, although I expect I'll be watching much more video than TV. I do have at least one show each night to watch. And I am managing to catch up on stuff I expected to watch over the summer but I still have a large backlog. There's been a lot of movies that have come out in the past couple years I've yet to see. And with a new computer I now want to spend time tranferring video tapes I've bought and stuff I've taped over into a digital format. So I doubt I'll be bored.

I got a new computer system recently which mean a whole lot of new setup. And one of the biggest problems one can have is with TV tuner cards. My first TV tuner card was an ATI All-In-Wonder which I got with my old computer

The TV tuner card I originally got with the computer was giving me a lot of trouble. Mainly it wouldn’t synchronize properly with the video and it wasn’t picking up ATSC at all. So I returned it and got a Hauppauge WinTV 1250. The 1250 worked well, although I had trouble with the video going dark. It turned out to be an XP compatibility issue with the drivers that came with the card. Since I was using composite input through the S-Video it wasn’t reading the signal properly. I found the latest copy of WinTV7, version 1.2, and after installing that it worked fine. No more underbright screens. I found the link for WinTV7 v1.2 in a forum post which I ran across while searching for the problem. The main page still gives the outdated software. (http://download.cnet.com/Hauppauge-WinTV-PVR-USB/3000-2110_4-130941.html)

WinTV7 is a good program, when it’s working. It almost emulates all of what Windows Media Center does. And it doesn’t require special equipment as Media Center does. However, I don’t know if it works with cards other than the Hauppauge cards. And the 1.1E version which came with the card wouldn’t work properly. It often displayed the image as too dark (which seemed to be a card driver issue) and in full screen mode it would also freeze the image when it reached either the end of the buffer or it started to synchronize with the broadcast. WinTV7 v1.2 fixed those issues although it doesn’t always block the desktop properly, allowing some distracting garbage on the black bars at the side of the screen.

I also ran into two other major problems. One was the screen resolution. I have a widescreen monitor but a standard definition input from the satellite tuner. So the picture was stretched out. I managed to figure out a work-around by setting the Windows resolution to 1280x720. It can make things a little hard to read but it adjusts all video, including webpages, to display as if I was using a SD monitor. Unfortunately it seems to be the only resolution in Windows that allows for this. Although I haven’t looked into customizing the resolution yet. Still, at least the TV looks normal.

Another problem I had was with synchronization of the audio and video. This showed up on both the former TV card and the new Hauppauge. The problem apparently has to do with the built in video recording and is likely an issue with all PVR cards. But I managed to resolve this by reconfiguring the connection with A/V system. Before I had the TV tuner and a couple of VCRs running through my amplifier then onto the computer. This was to allow the amplifier to be used for the sound. What I had to do was to use a TV selector switch box, which I picked up a while back for use on the amplifier, and run the output of the switch box into the computer. I then take the audio output of the computer and run it back to the amplifier. This works well, and I tend to leave the switch on the VCR since it’s also getting a TV input. Although the delay makes it difficult to change channels with the tuner since there’s a delay between when I press a button and when I see the results.

Windows 7

I downloaded a copy of Windows 7 RC 7100 some time back, although my machine at the time didn’t support it. But with the new machine I had to try it out. The new Quad Core machine came with 32-bit XP Home, which is like putting a speed limit on a sports car. It works, but it doesn’t really show it’s full potential.

I tried it with Virtual PC 2007, although it wouldn’t recognize most of my hardware, including the TV card, so I couldn’t assess it properly. The only way to truly tell how it would work would be to install it. Since my XP setup is working and the Windows 7 RC expires in March (effectively), I decided to set up a dual boot system with Windows XP left where it was and Windows 7 in a second partition. This meant partitioning off part of the HD which I did with EASUS Partition Master. (They also produce a version called Partition Manager which one can download for free http://www.partition-tool.com/download.htm)

With the dual boot system I can now switch between XP and Win7 on startup. And since Win7 is a fully installed OS, I can figure out all the problems I’m going to encounter while still being able to go back to the working XP system if needed.

One of the biggest reasons I wanted to try out Windows 7 was to be able to run Windows Media Center. Unfortunately, the program is designed to INSIST that you have an Infrared Blaster connected to your computer if you wish to use the composite or S-video input. It will not allow you to finish the TV setup otherwise. You can still use the antenna input, but the picture quality isn’t as good. There is a workaround for Vista, but because of the way Windows 7 finds new hardware this doesn’t work. And what’s worse is that this is a problem which has been going on for years yet Microsoft’s attitude has been openly to insist that there’s nothing wrong and that you need to buy more hardware rather than to fix the software. This is exactly what’s wrong with Microsoft; taking a know-it-all attitude rather than listening to the customers.

I can’t say whether I’ll upgrade the OS or not. For now I’ll keep Windows 7 on the machine and play with it until it expires. After that I’ll decide what to do. Since I can’t properly run Media Center I’m less inclined to switch, although I do like the improved performance. Going to a 64-bit system does mean that my old webcam won’t work, but I didn’t expect to be able to use that anyways. And I don’t want to spend a couple hundred on a new OS. Of course there’s Linux, which I might install in the partition after Windows 7 expires, but that has it’s limitations, particularly when it comes to games.

I only installed Windows 7 yesterday so I have some playing around to do. Right now I’m finding that I can’t run WinTV7 and Media Player because they both are responding to the remote so I have to choose between the two. Assuming there’s a way to shut down Media Player I’ll just use WinTV7 for now.

There are also some alternative free programs to choose from. Since I have something that works, I don’t want to buy another program. On my last machine I started using Dscaler because it allows for resolution adjustments. (http://www.dscaler.org/) That has a lot of adjustments and works for most cards, but it doesn’t currently allow for the remote or ATSC. It will allow for recording. I tried installing MediaPortal but I couldn’t get it to startup in XP. And it seems to require a lot of pre-configuring. MythTV appears to require pre-compiling and is more work than what I want to do right now. I’m checking out GB-PVR although I haven’t got it working yet. I[‘m also checking out TVersity, although that appears to be more for video sharing than live TV.

So far the leader is WinTV7 v1.2. If I can get Windows Media Player working I’ll use that, and I would like to try and get Media Portal to work since it so closely resembles Windows Media Player.

I've been meaning to get more postings done but I've been too busy with other things lately.

A few things I wanted to cover:
I've switched my main page to http://writerpatrick.webs.com now because Geocities is shutting down. I'm not going to bother recreating the other Geocities pages I had, however most of the videos I had up can now be found on YouTube under Writerpatrick. I'm also not bothering to recreate the list of Saturday Morning TV show previews because someone has already created a Wikipedia entry for it (some time after I had created mine, although Wikipedia didn't exist when I created mine). I may try to do one for Prime Time Previews, or at least re-post that, although I've not had the time to update it lately and there just doesn't seem to be much interest in it. I am going to try to repost the pumpkin pictures, although most should be available throughout this blog. The images shown on the blog are only a partial list, but I might update them with the rest.

If you haven't noticed, I've been producing two podcasts, Podcast Ping found at http://podcastping.blogspot.com and The Blue Hot Gossip podcast at http://bluehotgossip.blogspot.com. I initially was going to do just a gossip column, but I'm more into the comedy shows at the moment. I'm developing a series of specials for Podcast Ping called the 13 Days of Halloween which I'll start releasing on October 19th. I'm also planning to do a Christmas Calendar for Podcast Ping running from December 1st to the 25th. Although it will depend upon how well the Halloween specials do. As for Blue Hot Gossip, I just released an episode today and will have one out in October before the Podcast Ping specials. I may do one more this year, if I find the time. I haven't done nearly as many episodes this year as last, although if I do Christmas as well as Halloween that should raise the count. And since I'm trending towards specials for Podcast Ping, I'm inclided to drop the episode count.

I've started a toy store at http://patrickjmcnamara.webs.com. And I'm developing a new toy for it that I'll be promoting in October. This will help me determine the effectiveness of the podcasts and may influence my decision as to the future of the podcasts. While I'm not doing the podcasts just to sell stuff, their ability to sell helps me to justify the work they require.

The Torrentcast, in particularly Mininova's Content Distribution, has been the best distribution tool by far. Unfortunately, since many torrent sites take from others it's impossible to know exactly how many downloads a show may get. But I can say that there has been over 365,000 downloads just from Mininova (plus about 20,000 from before Content Distribution started). I've only been able to find the numbers for one other site, and they don't appear to be counting the same downloads. That site runs over 350,000, meaning that I've probably had somewhere around three quarters of a million downloads in total. And there may be many more I don't know about. I could have even passed a million, although I'm only counting the ones I can find listed. I do plan on posting until I reach at least the million mark, provided it's feasable. Right now I'm seeing about a thousand downloads a day, with many shows exceeding 5,000 downloads. One posting appears to have over 20,000 total downloads.

I subscribe to a few Usenet groups and it does seem to be slowing down lately. Although the activity in the groups I subscribe to is decent, most of the groups offered are effectively dead.

I was looking at the numbers on Google groups, which lists Usenet groups amongst others with statistics, and a few interesting this emerged. Note through that since I'm using Google groups for stats, some of the groups listed aren't Usenet groups and would affect the results, but I expect the results should be similar. It's sort of like using the statistics for overall fruit sales to show the sales of apples. The problem is that I couldn't find stats for just the Usenet alone.

1. The most popular group is news.admin.net-abuse.sightings with 5584 subscribers and 24,150 messages in the past month.

2. Google lists over 4 million groups, or (according to my calculations) precisely 4,196,088.

3. Over 4 million, or 4,002,393 groups received no messages in the past month, effectively making them "dead" groups. 209,038 groups have absolutely no members, while 3,595,378 have less than 10 members. Note that a "member" is likely anyone who ever posted to that group, so someone who only posted a single message could be classified as a member.

4. Many groups are mistakes or variations on the same title as other groups, such as bainaries instead of binaries. This accounts for many of the dead groups.

5. From the numbers it appears that 193,695 out of 4,196,088 groups, or about 4.6% of the groups have any activity at all. over 95% of the groups are dead. 15,282 (about 8% of the "active" groups or less than .4% overall) get at least 100 messages per month, or roughly 3 per day, and could be considered active. Those active groups getting less than that are marginal and could go either way. 

6. Of the 13 highest activity groups, many appear to be auto-posters and restricted groups. 3 have only 1 member while 1 has only 4 members. One of them is for the Dow Jones.

7. A surprising number of the most active groups are foreign language groups. However, alt.tv.american-idol is amongst one of the 14 most active with 1,231 members and 14,282 messages per month.

8. About 60,000 (59,930) have been posted to in the last day. About 158,000 have been posted to in the last 10 days.

9. Comparing Google groups for rec.arts.tv: Google groups stated 3,122 subscribers although I counted less than 100 posters for the past day. This discrepancy is partially due to posts not getting through and that fact that I'm comparing one day's activity to one month's, although the same people tend to post so over 3,000 is too big a discrepancy. This is most likely the result of Spammers who are filtered out. As a result, most of these numbers are inaccurate.

Although these are stats for Google groups and not the Usenet specifically, one thing seems clear. The problem is not that the Usenet is dying, as much as it's just not getting rid of it's garbage. The Usenet is alive, but in pieces. It needs to get rid of those groups which are no longer active. 95% of the Usenet is dead, but the rest is alive and active.

Many news-servers do try to clean off dead groups since they only serve to slow the system down. As such, when one tries to get a listing of newsgroups they'll often see only the actual active groups. So a newsserver might list only 10,000 groups. One I use has about 30,000 groups. But not all are active.

Referring to the Usenet is like referring to the Internet. It's a collection of things, not one specific thing. Individual groups may die but the Usenet continues. However, overall Usenet activity is something that can be measured. If the News Admin group is the most popular Usenet group, then we know there's at least 5,500 people using the Usenet. The problem is that there's no clear number as to how many use the Usenet overall. It could be 10,000 or it could be 100,000, if not higher.

But when we look at it from an ISPs point-of-view, even 100,000 may not be all that much. There are millions of people using the Internet, so it's possible that an ISP may be running a server for only a small fraction of it's users. A newsgroups that gets 100 posts a day may be getting them from 50 to 100 different servers.

Based upon the net-admin group, let's say there's 5,000 servers and 100,000 users. That's 20 users per server. Even a popular system like AOL may have only 1,000 Usenet users and 1,000,000 Internet subscribers. So why support a system for only .1% of your users?

For an ISP that may have only 100,000 subscribers, that .1% would work out to only 100 customers. Chances are they aren't going to drop your service, and even if they do it may not make much difference. Out of the 100 they might loose only 2 or 3. And it's more likely that the customer will stay with the service and find another Usenet server.

Supporting a Usenet server might cost the ISP $100/month but if they're only making $20/month per customer they could afford to loose a few. And if you're talking net profits, the ISP might be making only $2 net, so even loosing nearly half those customers would leave the ISP better off. And for and ISP with only 10,000 customers, they're better not having a server than having one for only a few people. Even loosing 5 customers at $20/month would mean that they break even.

The Usenet will not die from lack of popularity alone. While individual groups may rise and fall, the Usenet as a whole continues to adapt. The problem is that those running servers are often shutting them down because it's no longer financially reasonable.

And since the advent of the Usenet, forums have appeared. Those are the greatest competition to the Usenet. New users aren't bothering with the Usenet anymore, they're using forums instead.

I expect there will always be those that offer Usenet service as long as it's financially reasonable, and there will always be those that wish to use the Usenet. There will also be groups such as rec.arts.tv which are likely to never die since they deal with constantly popular topics. The problem is whether these people will have the Usenet access. Those who don't know where to look for free usenet access after loosing their servers are unlikely to subscribe, thus furthering the diminishing activity. And even free servers don't last forever; one often finds themselves switching servers each year or two.

So in summary, the Usenet is not dead, although it's under constant attack. There are those who will continue to use it as long as they can, but it doesn't seem to be drawing in many new users. Groups do die, but the end of a newsgroup doesn't mean the end of the Usenet. Still, with service being shut down and forums drawing away potential new Usenet users, it's hard to say if the Usenet will still be around in ten years.

If the Usenet dies, it will be with a whimper unheard by most.

(For those listening on the Odiogo podcast feed you might want to just read this post on the website instead. I don't know how it will play.)

Now that that the networks have released their fall schedules (http://www.thefutoncritic.com/guide.aspx?id=fall_2009), I can now make some tentative plans on what I'll watch in the fall. These are tentative because it will all depend upon any changes the networks make in their programming. It's also dependant upon what new shows catch my interest.

I'm just listing the prime-time shows. I'm so use to watching The Tonight Show at 11:35pm, but after watching Leno at 10pm--which I might tape and watch after 11pm--I don't know if I'll want to bother with Conan.

Monday

Since I've decided to drop Heroes I'll probably skip it this year, however I will watch Chuck when it returns. I'll also check out Trauma, but I'm not going to stick with it if it's just another ER. With the possible exception of Bones, which is more a crime drama, I've had my fill of medical dramas for a while. At ten I'll watch Leno.

Tuesday

I started watching JAG part way through the first season and I watched it until it finished. That got me into NCIS and I'll probably watch it and it's spinoff series from 8pm until 10pm. Since none of the new shows at 10pm interest me, I'll likely watch Leno at 10pm.

Wednesday

Nothing at 8pm or 9pm interest me, although I am interested in Human Target when it starts after Christmas. I'm also curious about Eastwick which airs at 10pm. If I like it then I'll watch that, otherwise I'll just watch Leno.

Thursday

As I've said before, I'm a fan of Bones and it seems that I'll have it for another two years at least. So that's what I'll be watching at 8pm. I've generally lost interest in Supernatural, although I would like to check out the season premiere to see where they plan to take the season. However Fringe is also on at that time. While both shows are marginal for me, I have been warming more to Fringe. It seems my decision to pick it over Eleventh Hour was the right one. I also like The Mentalist so I'll most likely watch that at 10pm. There is some chance of taping other shows. This appears to be the busiest night for me.

Friday

This really, really, really is suppose to be the last season of Smallville. And aside from Leno it's about the only thing on that night of any interest to me. But lately I've been watching a lot of recorded stuff on Fridays so I'll just tape Smallville and watch it sometime over the weekend. If I'm not feeling up to watching anything recorded at 10pm I'll watch Leno.

Neither Saturday nor Sunday holds any shows of interest to me, so I'll be watching recording those evenings if I'm not busy with something else.

Of course this schedule is really about shows I'd like to catch and since I record almost all the shows I watch, it doesn't necessarily mean that I'll be watching them at those times.

Excluding Leno, which I don't have to watch and will most likely just watch when it's convenient, I'm looking at about five to nine shows. This is a comfortable level and about half of what I was watching this past year. I've also got a lot of stuff recorded to catch up on, so I don't mind the spare time. Although there could be as many as four or five hours of Leno on top of that. Still, I have a feeling it could seem sparse after this past year and the desert of summer broadcasting.

My Toystore: http://patrickjmcnamara.webs.com