Archive: Video
What Makes an Event TV-Worthy or Web-Acceptable?
Decades ago, somebody buying a new album would have to decide: Is this good enough to get on CD, or will I not feel like I'm missing anything if I only get it on tape. Eventually, music fans could replace "on tape" with "as a digital download." Lately, viewers as...
By Rob Pegoraro | August 26, 2008; 10:36 AM ET | Comments (9)
Vongo Vanishes (But Will Live On, Sort Of)
Yet another movie-download site has ended its run -- but the people behind it say its sequel is already off to a fine start. Vongo, the movie-rental service launched by the Starz movie channel in 2006, stopped taking new customers on Aug. 1 and will close up shop entirely on...
By Rob Pegoraro | August 13, 2008; 03:27 PM ET | Comments (2)
Flip Camcorder Is No Flop--For Now
As a critic, I'm supposed to throw my opinion into the story, saying upfront whether I like something or not. But for today's review of the Flip Mino video camera, I had to step back a little from my own perspective. The review I would have written for myself, or...
By Rob Pegoraro | June 26, 2008; 11:34 AM ET | Comments (5)
Now Showing on the Netflix Player: Hollywood's Busted Business Model
Once again, I'm cranky about the state of movie downloads. For the third time just this year, I've found a promising product--in this case, Roku's Netflix Player--undercut by a crummy selection of movies to watch off the Internet. But why is that? To get a better picture of how fundamentally...
By Rob Pegoraro | June 5, 2008; 12:31 PM ET | Comments (11)
Apple Adds HBO Shows To the iTunes Store
HBO is finally starting to recognize the Internet as one of the ways people watch TV. Three months after inviting viewers to watch its series "In Treatment" for free on its Web site, it has begun selling copies of some of its shows on Apple's iTunes Store. Unfortunately, it's doing...
By Rob Pegoraro | May 13, 2008; 12:23 PM ET | Comments (3)
Cameras With High Ambitions For High-Definition Video
As I've noted before, I'm not a fan of having to carry around multiple devices if a combination gadget can do all of their jobs. So I had to check out a pocket-sized, point-and-shoot camera--make that, two of them, Kodak;s V1073 and Panasonic's Lumix DMC-FX500. (Other HD-capable cameras are available...
By Rob Pegoraro | April 24, 2008; 10:59 AM ET | Comments (0)
Feds Fix Digital-TV Coupon Site
You should now be able to request a $40 digital-TV converter box coupon at dtv2009.gov without running into any security errors. This morning, Todd Sedmak, the communications director for the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, e-mailed me to say that the configuration flaw I noted in Sunday's Help...
By Rob Pegoraro | April 11, 2008; 12:56 PM ET | Comments (14)
Checking Up on the DTV Conversion
Earlier this week, the Consumer Electronics Association held its annual Washington Forum, a multi-day gabfest on tech-policy issues. With less than a year to go before the shutoff of most analog TV broadcasts, the digital-TV transition was Topic A this year. I spent a good chunk of Wednesday and Thursday...
By Rob Pegoraro | April 4, 2008; 01:41 PM ET | Comments (19)
Revisiting Digital TV: A QAM Query
The digital TV transition keeps coming up with new wrinkles, even after the thousands of words I've sunk into the topic this year alone. One of the latest concerns QAM tuners--the acronym stands for "Quadrature Amplitude Modulation," and, perhaps appropriately, rhymes with "qualm." This part allows a digital TV to...
By Rob Pegoraro | March 14, 2008; 01:03 PM ET | Comments (0)
Readers Respond: CD-Video Lives! (Sort Of)
I should have known this by now, but I got a fresh reminder on Monday--no technology, however forgotten it may be among the general public, vanishes completely. This episode started with last week's chat, when I got this odd query: Rosslyn, Va.: Ok, keeping in the grab-bag spirit, here's a...
By Rob Pegoraro | March 12, 2008; 08:49 AM ET | Comments (0)
Bonus Review: Vizio's "Value" LCD HDTV
Ever since the prices of flat-panel HDTVs started falling below the going rate for high-end desktop computers, people have been asking if the no-name or small-name brands of TVs were a safe alternative to the Sonys, Panasonics, Sharps and Samsungs of the world. So for my recent comparison of movie...
By Rob Pegoraro | March 11, 2008; 10:00 AM ET | Comments (13)
ITunes' Incomplete Movie-Rental Inventory
When Apple added a video-rental option to its iTunes Store in January, the company said it would "offer over 1,000 titles by the end of February." Well, it's now early March and I'm glad that I didn't echo that phrasing and instead wrote that the company "plans to offer 1,000...
By Rob Pegoraro | March 5, 2008; 03:25 PM ET | Comments (18)
More Digital-TV Answers
Last week's column and blog entry on the digital-TV transition were supposed to answer all the questions people might have about this switchover. Not quite: My inbox, comments on this blog, an appearance on WAMU's Kojo Nnamdi show Tuesday and yesterday's two-hour Web chat were filled with queries from readers...
By Rob Pegoraro | February 22, 2008; 10:43 AM ET | Comments (36)
Apple TV's Tune-Up
Today's column takes a look at Apple and Microsoft's new movie-rental download services. I found a great deal to like in both services; even with their issues, I could see myself renting movies this way with my own money. That's much more than I can say for all of the...
By Rob Pegoraro | February 21, 2008; 12:49 PM ET | Comments (5)
Hasta La Vista, HD DVD
We're not going to have the Blu-ray/HD-DVD format war to kick around anymore. This morning, Toshiba announced that it would stop making HD DVD players and recorders, a surrender that yields the market to the rival Blu-Ray format. A statement on Toshiba's Web site attributed the decision to "recent major...
By Rob Pegoraro | February 19, 2008; 10:04 AM ET | Comments (116)
Deciphering Digital TV
For as long as I've been covering digital TV--just over a decade, according to the Post's archives--the electronics industry has promised cheap digital converter boxes that would let people keep using their old analog sets even after analog broadcasts vanish from the airwaves. Last week, one of these boxes showed...
By Rob Pegoraro | February 14, 2008; 10:43 AM ET | Comments (46)
Up Next On Your HDTV? Could Be MASN
Just about anybody who's bought a high-definition TV wants to know when they'll have more HD programming to watch. And around the Washington area, one of the bigger gaps on the high-def menu can be blamed on the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network. MASN has been in business since 2005 and has...
By Rob Pegoraro | February 8, 2008; 09:16 AM ET | Comments (28)
Dueling Digital-TV Headlines
Two press releases appeared in my inbox within an hour of each other. The National Association of Broadcasters fired first: Consumer Awareness of DTV transition Grows Substantially Washington, D.C.--Consumer awareness of the federally-mandated transition to digital television (DTV) has grown substantially over the past year, reaching 79 percent according to...
By Rob Pegoraro | January 30, 2008; 01:45 PM ET | Comments (33)
DVR Rage
Yesterday morning, I e-mailed my friend (and fellow Hoya) Anthony to ask how long it took him to catch his breath after the end of Saturday's Georgetown-West Virginia game. His answer? Catch my breath? More like overcome my anger. All he did was pause the game to check on his...
By Rob Pegoraro | January 29, 2008; 11:18 AM ET | Comments (0)
Help File Help: Copying DVDs to Your Computer
For several months, I've had this question in my list of potential Help File topics: Why can't I copy my Star Trek DVDs onto my Mac or my iPod, the way I copy my audio CDs today? The short answer is that DVDs, unlike audio CDs, contain a layer of...
By Rob Pegoraro | January 23, 2008; 10:52 AM ET | Comments (21)
The Definition of Flat TV Flattens
LAS VEGAS--For years, "LCD or plasma?" has been the "paper or plastic" of the HDTV business. The two flat-panel technologies have offered roughly comparable picture quality and pricing, so many people have puzzled over which one would be right for them. To further complicate things, you could also opt...
By Rob Pegoraro | January 9, 2008; 11:40 AM ET | Comments (14)
Web-ifying the TV
LAS VEGAS--For all the people who like to watch television with a laptop open on the coffee table [raises hand], your next TV set may be waiting on the show floor here. A few different manufacturers are demonstrating sets that can link to a home network and display Web...
By Rob Pegoraro | January 8, 2008; 04:30 PM ET | Comments (4)
A (Very) Big-Screen TV
LAS VEGAS--This year's winner of the recurring "who can make the biggest TV of them all" battle is Panasonic, which is showing off a prototype plasma flat-panel set that measures 150 inches across (or, if you prefer, 12.5 feet or 4.17 yards). Technically, it's not a HDTV: Its resolution, at...
By Rob Pegoraro | January 7, 2008; 06:30 PM ET | Comments (6)
Warner Waves Goodbye to HD DVD
LAS VEGAS--Right before CES, Warner Home Video ended its neutrality in the high-definition video format war. Instead of shipping movies in both of the two competing, incompatible formats--Blu-Ray and HD DVD--it announced that it would ship high-def copies of its titles in only Blu-Ray, starting in May. I sat...
By Rob Pegoraro | January 7, 2008; 02:07 PM ET | Comments (51)
Fios and CableCards
This weekend's Help File column will probably cover a lesser-known feature of Verizon's Fios TV service: The ability to tune into the fiber-optic service without renting a tuner or digital recorder from Verizon, so long as you already have a tuner or DVR that includes a CableCard slot (say, the...
By Rob Pegoraro | November 14, 2007; 02:00 PM ET | Comments (23)
Baseball's DRM Strikes Out
Things that you buy are supposed to stay purchased. But you can't count on that if your property is a video or audio download "protected" by copy-control software: If somebody unplugs the so-called digital rights management system enforcing those controls, you can lose access to your purchase. The latest example...
By Rob Pegoraro | November 9, 2007; 12:54 PM ET | Comments (0)
TV On Your PC
For this week's column, I used the world's most open, democratic communications medium to watch some televised drivel. I'm not proud of that. But after a day or so of feeling guilty, I realized something: I was stuck at home with a cold, I was tired, and if I wasn't...
By Rob Pegoraro | October 4, 2007; 12:13 PM ET | Comments (10)
Apple to NBC: Fine, Take Away Your Downloads
You don't usually see this kind of public truculence in a tiff between name-brand companies, but somebody at Apple sure seems to be sick of dealing with NBC. In a press release issued this morning, Apple says it will stop carrying NBC's shows on the iTunes Store because NBC wanted...
By Rob Pegoraro | August 31, 2007; 02:44 PM ET | Comments (27)
High-Definition Disc Disarray (Cont'd.)
The Blu-Ray versus HD DVD format war -- one of the stupidest storylines to come out of Hollywood lately -- just keeps getting more convoluted, as each side finds a new way to declare that victory is inevitable. For those of you who have remained mercifully ignorant of this mess,...
By Rob Pegoraro | August 22, 2007; 10:59 AM ET | Comments (0)
Getting CableCarded (updated)
I've written previously about the checkered history of the CableCard--the little subscriber-identity module that's supposed to let you use the hardware of your choice with any cable TV service. It's a wonderful idea in theory, but in practice cable companies have made it as difficult as possible to get one...
By Rob Pegoraro | August 15, 2007; 09:50 AM ET | Comments (0)
TiVo Gets Serious
Today, TiVo announced the debut of a high-definition digital video recorder it should have shipped two years ago. The new TiVo HD--shipping in August--can record high-def programs off the air and, with the help of a CableCard, from digital cable services. And it sells for $300, less than half the...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 24, 2007; 11:30 AM ET | Comments (25)
Opening Up the Cable Box
If you placed an order for a new cable box starting yesterday, it's supposed to come with some extra assembly required: popping a "CableCard" into a slot somewhere on the box that stores all your subscriber information. That step comes courtesy of a long-delayed Federal Communications Commission regulation that came...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 2, 2007; 12:25 PM ET | Comments (0)
Happy Birthday, Star Wars!
Thirty years ago today, Star Wars -- one of the greatest movies ever made! -- debuted in movie theaters. Decades later, this film (the second I ever saw in a theater) remains one of my favorites. One reason why: It gets computers right. Star Wars and the movies that followed...
By Rob Pegoraro | May 25, 2007; 03:38 PM ET | Comments (0)
Another AACS Key Crack
Remember that AACS encryption key I wrote about a few weeks ago--the one that could be used to unlock HD DVD or Blu-Ray movies and copy them to a computer? Remember how the trade group behind this encryption said it had already solved the problem by using a different key...
By Rob Pegoraro | May 18, 2007; 06:01 PM ET | Comments (4)
A State of High-Definition Denial
What do this t-shirt, this picture puzzle, this song (MP3) and this collage of highway signs have in common? They all include the 32-character code that a trade group called the AACS LA has been struggling to get taken off the Web. The utter futility of that effort gave me...
By Rob Pegoraro | May 10, 2007; 08:46 AM ET | Comments (15)
DVD Recorders: Now Safe To Buy
Almost five years ago, I tried out a new kind of electronic gadget--a massive box that could record on DVDs, not just play them. It had a few issues, as I wrote: The Philips DVDR985 is $1,000 worth of bulky electronics. It's material for 68 pages of frustratingly dense manual....
By Rob Pegoraro | April 13, 2007; 09:36 AM ET | Comments (0)
Time to Revise The TV-Service Shopping List
Tonight, I will be able to sit down and watch the Washington Nationals get clobbered by play the Atlanta Braves. For a lot of people, that's not a brag-worthy thing. But my TV provider, Dish Network, hasn't carried the Nats' regional sports network, MASN, until now. By finally remedying this...
By Rob Pegoraro | April 10, 2007; 12:40 PM ET | Comments (0)
Movie Downloads, Direct To The Living Room
Paid movie downloads to computers have yet to see anything close to the success of music downloads. But that isn't stopping the movie industry from trying. The latest attempts aim to eliminate the need to watch the movie on a computer--not in the most obvious way, which would be to...
By Rob Pegoraro | March 20, 2007; 05:21 PM ET | Comments (18)
Rules For The Digital-TV Transition
What sort of help will be provided to households with old, analog-only TVs when analog broadcasts vanish from the airwaves in 2009? The answer to this mysterious aspect of the switch from analog to digital television just got a little clearer. Earlier today, the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information...
By Rob Pegoraro | March 12, 2007; 05:42 PM ET | Comments (0)
A Digital Deadline Dawns
You wouldn't necessarily know this from the news or what you see in stores, but analog TV tuners have now earned the status of contraband goods. Starting today, all television sets with screens bigger than 13 inches--plus anything else that can pull in a TV signal off the air, from...
By Rob Pegoraro | March 1, 2007; 04:40 PM ET | Comments (0)
MASN on Dish? Maybe...
Today's story about the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network's broadcast schedule for Nationals and Orioles spring-training games may be annoying reading for sports fans who get their TV from the MASN-deprived Dish Network. (Disclosure: As a Nats fan, a Georgetown grad and a Dish customer -- well, it's still cheaper than my...
By Rob Pegoraro | February 9, 2007; 03:14 PM ET | Comments (7)
A Day With the MPAA
The Motion Picture Association of America's symposium I attended yesterday had many interesting and enlightening moments--though not all made the MPAA look that good. The various industry types who spoke did make some useful points that bear consideration. For instance, Warner Bros. CEO Barry Meyer argued, in a particularly scolding...
By Rob Pegoraro | February 6, 2007; 07:40 PM ET | Comments (7)
